Fresh Fork: Transitioning to Winter!

Marching season is over and I am relishing in my newly acquired amount of free time. Which so far has amounted to attending a yoga class and falling asleep on our new couch. Instead of marching rehearsal, I get to take advantage of this gorgeous weather this afternoon and force my husband to rake leaves while I cut back bushes and shrubs. With a new house comes new options in decorating so I’m half toying with the idea of getting some Christmas lights ready to go…which we all know is ‘normal’ around these parts. Tomorrow is Friday and I get to go (gasp!) out on a date with my husband. It’s the little things 🙂

The last two weeks of marching season included a frost, so shares were a little smaller.

Celeriac root, green onion brats, acorn squash, apples, collard greens, broccoli

Does anyone else out there think “celeriac” sounds like an illness you catch in the dead of winter? The greens were awesome; they were cooked with bacon and served with chicken and waffles. The broccoli was frozen, for use during the winter on an ‘off week’ from our share.

Apples, red cabbage, butternut squash, beets, broccoli, red leaf lettuce, ground pork

This photo was from last week. The broccoli was used up in cheesy broccoli rice. We’re still noshing away on those apples and I’m way overdue to make some butternut squash soup. I’m still not quite sure of what to do with that cabbage.

With the coming winter season arrives a whole different animal of locally sourced foods. Up in Michigan we didn’t have a Winter CSA option, though we still had some winter markets available (but let’s be honest here…the past few years on November 5th we were scrambling to get leaves up because we had several inches of snow in our weather forecast). I’ve signed up for the Winter Share of Fresh Fork and this week was the first week. The bag was overwhelmingly heavy, a sure sign that it was full of good things – but I find myself getting a little intimidated as this is really going to push my envelope of adding new vegetables to my culinary arsenal.