Tips for dealing with your CSA

Don't get me wrong, I love participating in a CSA (community supported agriculture) program.  But sometimes it can be overwhelming.  What the heck do you do with all these vegetables while keeping the meals interesting?  Where do you store all of it?  How do you keep things from going bad before you use them?

Here are some of things that I have learned along the way that have helped us enjoy our CSA as much as we can:

• Go through all of your produce right away. Our CSA box comes to us on Tuesdays.  So Tuesday evening is all about washing, prepping, and storing.  It is so much easier to do it all at once and then you have grab-n-go veggies all during the week. Dealing with everything all at once also means that you only clean up once.  And who doesn't like that!?
• Have a place for everything.  Within each season, the same characters usually show up over and over again in our bag.  So we have a container that is always used to store leafy greens.  And tomatoes always have a special spot on the window sill to bathe in the sun.  Beets have claimed their own corner in the crisper.  This is nice because it limits the amount of time spent on finding containers and places to put everything.
• Freeze what you know you can't use.  If I know that we are heading out of town or that we are just not in the mood for the 86 round of spinach, then I immediately put those items in the freezer.  That way there is no waste and I am building our stock-pile of go-to items that I can pull out whenever I need them.
• Stockpile recipes.  Do beets intimidate you?  Not sure what to do with a kohlrabi?  Well, I have conquered this by discovering delicious recipes on the web and through friends.  I house all these recipes on my blog or on Tastebook.  That way I can go to just one (or two) places to find some kale inspiration, when I am at a loss on how to prepare it in a new and interesting way.
• Plan your meals.  I am a huge proponent of meal planning for multiple reasons.  But one of the biggest reasons is the elimination of food waste.  Your less likely to forget about those green onions tucked away in the crisper if you have a plan to use them in enchiladas on Thursday.
• Be generous.  If you hate radishes and know that you will never eat them, then pass them along to someone who does love them.  You won't feel guilty about them wilting in your fridge and you get good karma points for sharing with others.  Win - Win.
• Compost.  Inevitably some food will be wasted.  It just happens.  But it is much easier to swallow if you compost.  I'd like to think that the old veggie is still feeding someone... the earth.