Many wonderful things come with the onset of spring. Those who have gardens are probably planning what to plant, dreaming of a bounty of produce that they’ll chop, eat, freeze or can throughout the summer. Others are anticipating all the new, seasonal produce at farmers markets: peas, spring onions, spring greens, asparagus, and eventually, tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes. And you are researching ways to make the most of your CSA share.CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It’s a concept that began about 25 years ago as a way for communities to support local farms in a systematic way.Farms sell shares of their harvest to customers. In return customers receive weekly allotments of produce, but sometimes also meat, dairy, eggs, or honey.This is good for farmers because the cash flow allows them to plan better over the year. Getting the money up-front means they have to do less marketing during the months when they need to spend time in the field.And it’s good for customers because we get tosupport the local economy,help the environment by buying goods that are not industrially produced and shipped, andenjoy fresh, seasonal produce that inspires us to eat more creative, nutritious salads.Subscribing to a CSA share is not for everyone. Food waste from unused CSA boxes is one of the reasons why people are hesitant about signing up and why they don’t renew. If you throw a lot of produce away already, subscribing to a CSA share is not going to magically make you start making more salad and using your produce. In fact, it may make matters worse, since your box could include vegetables you’re not used to eating and unsure about preparing.What are some of the ways to make the most of your CSA share? Read on to decide whether a CSA share is for you and how you can be sure to use your CSA share if you decide to invest.Ways to make the most of your CSA: Think aheadBefore signing up, think about your cooking and food preparation habits.Do you enjoy cooking? Do you prepare most of your food at home? Are you a salad lover hoping to add to your already well-established repertoire? Are you looking for ways to get out of your vegetable rut and support local farmers at the same time?If you answered yes to these questions, you’re probably a great candidate for a CSA share, because you’ve already built your life around preparing and eating fresh produce on a regular basis. If you don’t prepare a lot of food at home, subscribing to a weekly box of produce is not going to magically result in behavior change.Also consider your schedule during the months that you’ll receive your CSA box. If you’re going to be unusually busy or out of town a lot, it may not be a good fit.Ways to make the most of your CSA: Do your researchEvery farm’s CSA share is a little different. The variety of produce you receive will depend a lot on the size of the farm and how long it’s been in business.Many farms provide a list online of typical items in their share. Some even have newsletters or blogs for their customers that include recipes. Check out Local Harvest, a site that provides a directory of thousands of CSA farms or do a simple internet search to find more information about farms in your area. Farmer’s markets and local associations may also have information about participating farms in your area. When choosing a CSA share, also consider cost, size of the share, pick-up times and locations, and the terms and conditions.Popular CSA shares sell out early in the season, so February and March (now!) are are good times to do your research and sign up.Ways to make the most of your CSA: Eat in seasonPurchasing produce from local growers means you will receive vegetables and fruits as they are harvested.If you are used to shopping at supermarkets that sell many types of produce year-round, you may find it challenging at first to work with less flexibility. For example, you may not start seeing tomatoes in your box until late June. Lettuce is typically abundant early in the season, less so in the fall when you may see more hearty greens.You can always supplement with items from the supermarket, but if your goal is to use up your box, know what to expect based on the time of season.Get out of your produce comfort-zone. You don’t have to have tomatoes to have a great salad; kale and spinach can easily stand in for lettuce.Ways to make the most of your CSA: Get creativeThe opportunity to try a variety of different and interesting vegetables is one of the great joys of subscribing to a CSA share. This is the time to get creative with kohlrabi, turnips, daikon radish, watercress, chicory or other produce that’s not in your typical supermarket haul.Most vegetables you receive in a CSA box are delicious right out of the box, washed, chopped and tossed in a salad.Try flash pickling roots or shredding hearty greens to add different tastes and textures to your salads.Ways to make the most of your CSA: Supplement with staplesYour CSA is obviously not going to sustain all of your meals for an entire week. But you also don’t necessarily have to run to the supermarket every time you get a new box just to round out your meals. Keeping a few pantry staples on hand means you have many recipes ready to go at your fingertips: just add produce.We usually keep a good stock of dried beans like black beans, garbanzos, and lentils that we can easily cook in our Instant Pot, along with grains like quinoa, brown rice, and bulgur. Cook up a couple batches of your favorite beans and grains to have on hand when your produce arrives, and whip up a dressing with olive oil, vinegar, and spices from your pantry.Instant salad. No supermarket necessary.Learn more about Instant Pot »Ways to make the most of your CSA: Use storage bags to keep your produce freshA few weeks ago, at our local natural foods chain supermarket, we discovered Peak Fresh re-usable produce bags that supposedly keep produce fresher for longer in the refrigerator. We always feel guilty buying more plastic stuff, but we thought if we could commit ourselves to re-using these bags, it would be okay. Plus, we feel even more guilty throwing away forgotten produce, so we bought a box. We haven’t even had a chance to reuse them, because they work so well.The produce we stored in the bags a few weeks ago looks just as fresh as the day we bought it. The bags supposedly breathe, which allows damaging ethylene gas the veggies produce to escape. These bags will help your CSA produce last longer, so you throw away less.But remember, it’s actually better to eat your veggies.Check out the Peak Fresh bags »Ways to make the most of your CSA: Pickle it, just a little bitWhoever said pickled or fermented foods don’t belong in salad doesn’t know salad. If you’re skeptical, take a look at our Cauliflower Shawarma Salad recipe and the beautiful pink, pickled turnips. Pickling is the process of using a vinegar brine to preserve vegetables; fermenting is the process of using a salt brine or culture to preserve vegetables. If done properly, pickled vegetables can be preserved in the jar so they don’t have to be refrigerated. Preserving picked vegetables involves some equipment and cooking.Fermenting vegetables involves using natural probiotics to “pickle” the vegetables. These natural probiotics are said to be good for you. It doesn’t take as much equipment but can take a lot more time. You should store fermented foods in the refrigerator rather than cooking them.We’ve really like our Easy Fermenter Lids used with large, wide-mouthed mason jars.There are plenty of pickling and fermenting recipes online. If it’s a vegetable, it can be a pickle.Find out more about fermenter lids »Ways to make the most of your CSA: Make-ahead salads for weekday lunchesWe love spending our Sunday afternoons making salad.Why?We work at day jobs all week, which makes for little time between Monday 8 a.m. and Friday 5 p.m. for making salad. Sad, but true.A little prep on the weekend means more time for salad eating during the week.If you subscribe to a CSA share, you’ll want to plan ahead to you use your produce throughout the week. A salad a day is a great way to do that. All of our salad recipes can be prepared ahead of time and last for up to 5 days in the fridge if you store the dressing separately.Invest in some high-quality food containers and some smaller ones for dressing.A CSA share may seem like a big investment, but we’ve found several in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area that cost about $23 per week. Given what we spend on food on a weekly basis, that seems economical. Not to mention, someone’s doing the shopping for us!Just make sure you know the best ways to make the most of your CSA share and have a plan for using your produce so all of your potential salads don’t end up in the compost.Have you ever purchased a CSA share? How did you make sure you used up your weekly produce?Disclosure: The Salad Lobby earns a commission for purchases made through links in this article, at no extra cost to you. Share on FacebookShare on Twitter8 Responses Jen February 13, 2017 Great stuff! Those easy fermenter lids are very intriguing…You mentioned freezing, and things like spinach, kale, summer squash, carrots, berries, and most herbs freeze pretty well. Chop herbs (or throw them in whole) to ice cube trays for easy serving sizes. Slice carrots and summer squash thin, lay them on a baking sheet, freeze, then store in ziplocks. Same for berries (minus the slicing). Spinach and kale leaves can be layered in ziplocks and frozen – couldn’t be any easier. I haven’t found the need to blanch veggies before freezing.But I also have a plug for dehydrating! Apples, pears, carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, beets… The options are endless. Save them for snacks or store them in the pantry for winter stews. You can (generally) mix and match in the dehydrator so you don’t necessarily need a bunch of one thing to make it worth the energy use. We have an old-school version but I’ve heard rave reviews about the Excalibur. Your oven works fine too, or if you live in a hot, dry, climate, I hear that a tarp on your driveway works as well.Also, if you don’t like certain things, or can’t get through a whole share by yourself each week, or can’t afford a whole share but want to support local food, go in on a share with a neighbor or friend.Thanks for these great tips and thanks, as always, for supporting local farmers! Reply Lindsay February 13, 2017 The fermenting lids are great for keeping air out and controlling mold. So far we’ve had great success.I always forget about dehydrating! Dehydrated tomatoes soaked in olive oil make an amazing salad dressing. I love the image of folks drying vegetables in their driveways. If I saw that I would immediately want to be their friend! Thanks for the great suggestions Jen. Reply Catherine @ Ten Thousand Hour Mama February 13, 2017 I absolutely love slightly pickled vegetables, but I rarely make them. I need to get on that! I’ve never bought into a CSA partly because my husband doesn’t eat vegetables. (I’ve been working on that for more than a decade! HA!) But I need to look into splitting a box with a friend or buying a half-share. Reply Lindsay February 13, 2017 Quick pickled veggies are so delicious and easy. I haven’t made pickled red onions in a while – they’re my favorite for salads. Sharing a box is an excellent idea if you have veggie resistant family members. Peter and I have been together for 14 years and he definitely hasn’t always been on board with vegetables. There’s still time! Reply Create/Enjoy February 13, 2017 We loooove our CSAs. We’ve used 5 or 6 different farms over the years (maybe more??) and now use one that we pick up at my office. Our favorites are the once where you can pick out specific items, but most of them let you be flexible if you really don’t like something. But we like pretty much everything. =) I haven’t tried pickling much though, great idea! Reply Lindsay February 14, 2017 Every farm is different in how they do things. I like the idea of being able to pick and choose, or trade items. I also love the idea of being surprised every week! Reply Marlynn | UrbanBlissLife February 13, 2017 Okay, now I’m just going to be singing “pickle it, just a little bit” to the “wiggle it, just a little bit” tune for a while 😉 Great tips! I still need to find a good CSA in our area, and I finally heard of one that most friends seem to agree on. But one of my worries is being able to make use of everything we get. These are great tips – thank you! Reply Lindsay February 14, 2017 I’m so glad someone caught that reference! The Local Harvest site we linked to is a good resource for researching CSAs. We’re going with Food Works CSA in the Portland area, proceeds go to Janus Youth Programs. More about that in a future blog post. Sounds like a lot of people share their CSAs with neighbors/friends as a way to use up their box. ReplyLeave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. ΔThis site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Jen February 13, 2017 Great stuff! Those easy fermenter lids are very intriguing…You mentioned freezing, and things like spinach, kale, summer squash, carrots, berries, and most herbs freeze pretty well. Chop herbs (or throw them in whole) to ice cube trays for easy serving sizes. Slice carrots and summer squash thin, lay them on a baking sheet, freeze, then store in ziplocks. Same for berries (minus the slicing). Spinach and kale leaves can be layered in ziplocks and frozen – couldn’t be any easier. I haven’t found the need to blanch veggies before freezing.But I also have a plug for dehydrating! Apples, pears, carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, beets… The options are endless. Save them for snacks or store them in the pantry for winter stews. You can (generally) mix and match in the dehydrator so you don’t necessarily need a bunch of one thing to make it worth the energy use. We have an old-school version but I’ve heard rave reviews about the Excalibur. Your oven works fine too, or if you live in a hot, dry, climate, I hear that a tarp on your driveway works as well.Also, if you don’t like certain things, or can’t get through a whole share by yourself each week, or can’t afford a whole share but want to support local food, go in on a share with a neighbor or friend.Thanks for these great tips and thanks, as always, for supporting local farmers! Reply
Lindsay February 13, 2017 The fermenting lids are great for keeping air out and controlling mold. So far we’ve had great success.I always forget about dehydrating! Dehydrated tomatoes soaked in olive oil make an amazing salad dressing. I love the image of folks drying vegetables in their driveways. If I saw that I would immediately want to be their friend! Thanks for the great suggestions Jen. Reply
Catherine @ Ten Thousand Hour Mama February 13, 2017 I absolutely love slightly pickled vegetables, but I rarely make them. I need to get on that! I’ve never bought into a CSA partly because my husband doesn’t eat vegetables. (I’ve been working on that for more than a decade! HA!) But I need to look into splitting a box with a friend or buying a half-share. Reply
Lindsay February 13, 2017 Quick pickled veggies are so delicious and easy. I haven’t made pickled red onions in a while – they’re my favorite for salads. Sharing a box is an excellent idea if you have veggie resistant family members. Peter and I have been together for 14 years and he definitely hasn’t always been on board with vegetables. There’s still time! Reply
Create/Enjoy February 13, 2017 We loooove our CSAs. We’ve used 5 or 6 different farms over the years (maybe more??) and now use one that we pick up at my office. Our favorites are the once where you can pick out specific items, but most of them let you be flexible if you really don’t like something. But we like pretty much everything. =) I haven’t tried pickling much though, great idea! Reply
Lindsay February 14, 2017 Every farm is different in how they do things. I like the idea of being able to pick and choose, or trade items. I also love the idea of being surprised every week! Reply
Marlynn | UrbanBlissLife February 13, 2017 Okay, now I’m just going to be singing “pickle it, just a little bit” to the “wiggle it, just a little bit” tune for a while 😉 Great tips! I still need to find a good CSA in our area, and I finally heard of one that most friends seem to agree on. But one of my worries is being able to make use of everything we get. These are great tips – thank you! Reply
Lindsay February 14, 2017 I’m so glad someone caught that reference! The Local Harvest site we linked to is a good resource for researching CSAs. We’re going with Food Works CSA in the Portland area, proceeds go to Janus Youth Programs. More about that in a future blog post. Sounds like a lot of people share their CSAs with neighbors/friends as a way to use up their box. Reply