A CSA share can seem intimidating – you’re signing up, prepaying in fact, for 15 or more weeks of random vegetables – but if prepared, using your share each week can give you a sense of accomplishment. Since our goal is to save money and eat better, we really don’t want to waste anything. We’ve found a few essentials are needed to get you ready for whatever comes!
- Salad Spinner
- Resealable plastic bags, in gallon and half gallon sizes
- Pint sized canning jars with reusable lids
- A good knife and cutting board
- A good vegetarian leaning cookbook
- A zucchini spiralizer
Salad Spinner
This is the number one thing that makes this all possible. Here in New England, its worth anticipating that a lot of lettuces and greens will be in the CSA boxes. Having a salad spinner motivates us to immediately wash and dry the lettuces to keep them fresher longer. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Our salad spinner was gifted to us over ten years ago and is still going strong. Something like this would be similar to what we use.
Resealable Plastic Bags
We don’t love the idea of overusing plastics, and resealable plastic bags are clearly all plastic. So after using, we invert them, wash out the inside with soapy lukewarm water, and let dry. Half gallon size bags are good for storing washed root veggies and halves of onions. We’ll use the gallon size bags to save the scraps of onions, carrots, peppers, green beans… anything that isn’t starchy but tastes good as a soup, and store them in the freezer. When the gallon size bag is full, we can make about 19 cups of veggie broth for basically no cost. This always makes me smile!
Canning Jars w/ Reusable Lids
Canning jars, particularly pint sized ones, have so many uses its going on this list. We use them to store and freeze homemade veggie broth, to prep and store liquid ingredients for our favorite refreshing summer beverages, for preparing dressings and marinades, and of course, for canning! We use these Ball Mason Jars and have plenty of reusable lids. When the occasional jar cracks due to being dropped on the floor, or from thermal shock from heating or cooling to quickly, the lack of being sentimentally attached to these generic jars keep the home-life happy.
Knife and Cutting Board
A good knife and cutting board are such important kitchen essentials that we’re bringing it up. They don’t need to be expensive – my favorite inexpensive knives are from Ikea – but they do need to be pleasant to use. If dicing an onion seems like a chore, you need to sharpen your knife or get some new ones.
Cutting boards are surprisingly a personal preference. In our household one of us favors the type you can use to cut up stuff, transport stuff, and then throw in the dishwasher; the other one favors a cutting board that’s larger, nonslip, edged with that trough to catch runaway juices. Your choice, but just make sure it gives you joy when you use it, because you’re going to be using it… a lot!
Vegetarian Cookbook
Yup, you’re getting a lot of vegetables, some of them you’ve maybe never even seen or heard of before. Having a trusty guide, to open your mind to all the possibilities, will set you up for success. We rely on dozen of sources for inspiration and recipes. These recipes come from many different types of media, from hardback books to YouTube channels, we’ll let you know what we find. Currently in our kitchen, we have hard copies of The Joy of Cooking as well as Thug Kitchen.
Zucchini Spiralizer
Zucchini and summer squash will definitely be in our CSA boxes. We have many ways to cook this squash and one of our favorites is to use a zucchini spiralizer to create a zucchini spaghetti. There are a lot of fancy, expenives devices out there, but to us its not worth the storage hassel or extra cost. Here’s an inexpensive option we keep in our kitchen drawer.
Going in to the 2020 CSA season, we expect each of these item to be integral to our overall success. Let us know what your keys to success are in the comments below!
CSAeats 