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Re: CSA Trends - Responses Received



In reply to John Hendrickson, who suggests need for info on "cooking and
preserving"

Two points. (1) The emphasis for customers of a CSA should be on the use
of vegetables RAW. Everybody knows about cooking, but how few people
understand the necessity for eating RAW foods, because these are the ONLY
source of enzymes. I realize most people don't know what an enzyme is, or
that it is what makes a reaction go, and that it is enzymes that digest
foods, not the stomach acid as most people think.

Maybe the farmer herself, himself does not know this either. He/she should
familiarize with this subject.

I also have heard about "vegetable shock", that people feel when they
suddenly have so many vegetables. I am sure that is the usual case, and if
they don't have time to cook, all the better. It takes little time to use
the vegetables raw.
  For example, I use an ordinary oscillating-blade peeler to slice a
cucumber or zucchini or pepper--it goes very fast. A celery stalk can be
chopped with a heavy blade type knife, or even just an ordinary kitchen
knife, in less than a minute. A saw-toothed knife can slice a very ripe
tomato easily.

It takes very little time to prepare vegetables like this for a
salad--yes, all those I have mentioned,  The only thing that takes time is
cleaning the lettuce, but spin drying is fast. With a good salad dressing
and a change in dressings from time to time, most of the vegetables can be
sliced or shredded for salad---much less time than cooking.

It is a very good idea for the farmer to offer a newsletter or the like.
In it should be not just cooking recipes, but ways to utilize raw foods.
DEAD foods do not give life. 

It is quite a commentary on common eating habits, that the health centers,
where people go when they are about to die of cancer, etc., go all out to
give them ONLY raw foods.  If they had eaten raw food, not dead food, for
decades before, they would not be in the position of having to learn at
50/60/80, etc.

Maybe the farmer could offer sprouted seeds, a much easier offer than any
other vegetable.  For enhancing a salad, nothing beats sprouts--especially
sunflower sprouts. I see clover and alfalfa, but I cannot recommend eating
the bean sprouts raw. (The Chinese and East Indians, with  thousands of
years of experience with such sprouts, never, ever use them raw, but only
slightly cooked.)

Another idea for CSA farmers is to utilize the weeds so abundant on any
land. The edible ones are everywhere. I have a set of color photo cards,
an ordinary card pack size, about 54 cards in a pack, that show the edible
weeds, and they are very recognizable. I found them when I was teaching
organic method, and looked far and long to get photos so good anyone could
recognize the weeds.

There is no reason why a farmer could not add these good, fairly bland
tasting weeds to his boxes: lamb's quarters, chickweed, purslane, malva,
for salads. They could also be cooked, but that would be a waste.  These
weeds are MUCH more valuable as food than the other vegetables. They are
usually mineral accumulator plants, and purslane has been singled out by
even  the medical community for its content of its valuable fatty acid
  Miner's lettuce is coming up now, and is also bland and a splendid
addition to the raw food list.

As to "preserving"---. Hopefully no one is canning, since that is the
worst possible end to a good vegetable--practically nothing of value left
in it except mineral, and maybe not even that if cooking liquid has been
drained off first.

Freezing is 2nd best to raw, and the best of all is drying, if done
correctly on stainless steel shelving..

Someone said something about the need for information on storage and
preserving methods.  I can assure you that the compendium of methods and
information that I put in the Storage chapter of the Organic Method Primer
UPDATE is compiled from all the current good, English language books on
the subject, so it saves the effort and expense of tracking down all those
books. It is all here, and very well indexed.  

In fact, actually there is even more and unusual info, that you would not
find in the other books.
  Out of the 700 pp of this book, the Storage chapter is 36 pages, 11x 8. 
So it is easy to get to the public library and look up that chapter--much
easier than going thru a dozen books on storage.
Any salad with slivered weed leaves has a much more interesting flavor
than a plain lettuce salad.

B. Rateaver


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