Down on the Farm

Riverland Farm - 2 stars
Sunderland, Massachusetts

I've been doing more cooking than usual, first because I'm not traveling much these days for child care reasons, and second because of our farm share. Each week we visit our farm to pick up our fresh, organic vegetables, some of which we have to pick ourselves out in the fields (brilliant idea, making your customers do your work for you). We usually split the share with my wife's parents, but with them out of town we've been eating it all ourselves, which takes a lot of dedication and planning.


This was this week's haul. Roughly from left, there are five ears of corn, two heads of lettuce, a small bag of cilantro, a large bag filled half-and-half with bok choy and an Asian green whose name I forget, two large zucchini, three cucumbers, a large bag of green, purple, and yellow beans, two eggplant, two onions, a small bag of sugar snap peas, a large bag of lemon basil (for pesto), a small bag of purple basil, and a large bag of kale, arugula, and mizuno.

So, the menus have gone something like this:

• Thursday dinner: corn, sugar snap peas with sesame oil, stir-fried beans (green, purple, yellow), rice, salad
• Friday lunch: pasta with pesto
• Friday dinner: fried rice with leftover vegetables, stir-fried bok choy, greens with Korean seasoning
• Saturday dinner: pasta with pesto, sautéed kale
• Sunday dinner: pasta with pesto, sautéed arugula, salad
• Monday dinner: ratatouille with eggplant, zucchini, and onions (and red peppers from the store); rice pilaf
• Tuesday dinner: quick cucumber salad, green beans with vinaigrette, and pizza from Bertucci's

The trick is to prepare vegetables simply, so you don't spend a lot of time chopping additional ingredients or making sauces. That way you taste the vegetable itself, not a lot of other stuff.

Community-supported agriculture is a growing movement across the country. The selection you get any particular week may not be exactly what you want (for example, there are no tomatoes up here in Massachusetts yet), and it can be a lot of work, but it's good for the environment and it gets you eating fruits and vegetables. To find a CSA near you, go to http://www.localharvest.org/csa/.