CSA, Week Nine... Melon!

[lydamorehouse]

Image: a bounty spread out on my dining room table (enumerated below.)

This week's CSA has several exciting things. First off, we got, as you can see: cabbage (napa), carrots, corn, collard greens, eggplants (Thai), melon (sun jewel*), onions, radishes, and potatoes.

So, the sun jewel melon... it is listed in Wikipedia as "oriental melon,' but it is also known as 黄金瓜 / huángjīn guā  in Chinese, 참외 / chamoe in Korean, and 真桑瓜 / makuwa uri in Japanese. i am incredibly excited to try this melon. I suspect it's going to be part of (or all of) dessert tonight.  According to the Wikipedia article I linked to, the makuwa uri was once so popular in Japan that its name became synonymous for ANY melon.

The Thai eggplants are also a new-to-me vegetable that I'm going to have to hunt down some recipes for.  Just wandering through the Googles leads me to a lot of curry options, so I'm excited about that. Apparently, I can eat these raw? I'm going to have to try that!

Anyone else finding interesting things in their CSA boxes? At the farmer's markets? In their backyards?

Comments

[bibliofile]

I'm mostly just excited at all the tasty tomatoes, grown in DIRT (to quote one vendor's sign). So good. I'm still buying them faster than I can eat them, but at least tabbouleh's easy to assemble even when the store is out of the boxed mix.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah... I hate tomatoes. I realize this makes me an outlier and a freak, but I don't like them fresh from the farm or in heirloom varieties or... kind of at all. I will eat tomato soup occasionally, but I don't even really like tomato sauce? Which means I don't like pizza.

Yep.

I know.

HEATHEN, that's me.

Anyway, I am glad YOU enjoy the fresh tomatoes. Our share came with a couple? I gave them away!

[bibliofile]

Sorry to bring up bad associations! You'd asked what we're finding at farmer's markets, so. I do understand that not everyone likes tomatoes, fresh or otherwise.

For the record, I also like pickling cucumbers. When I lived in Chicago, I could find them all year around. Here in Madison, they're available mainly in the summer -- and at farmers markets.

[lydamorehouse]

No bad associations! Sorry if I came off that way.

Yay for yummy food! That's what I meant to say.