CSA Bounty!: Week 1

Oh. My. Goodness.

Today we received our first share from our CSA farmers and it was absolutely delicious. Let me say again: absolutely delicious.

It's still early in the season here, and our Spring has been cool, so this first share wasn't big, but boy did it satisfy. We received two crisp heads of lettuce - one romaine and one butter, I think, and then a bag stuffed full of what looked like rainbow chard, some other kind of chard, and some kale.

I wanted to taste this stuff in a fairly unadulterated fashion, so I made a salad with the lettuce, and I sauteed the greens with some butter, sesame oil, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

To the salad I added my favorite salad fixins, which are some pecans and raisins, apple chunks, cucumber, carrot bits, some feta cheese and drizzled this all over with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The salad was so, so good. The sauteed greens were yet a step above that - the flavor, the flavor, it just didn't stop. The buttery nutmeg-y kale and chard were like no other greens I've ever had. I can see now how mindful eating becomes easy. When the food is this good, you just can't pay attention to anything else!

And then there was the preparation, which made me smile the whole time, because while I was cutting and washing the lettuce I remembered helping to plant the lettuce (not these exact ones - those are still too small to harvest), and I remembered gently fluffing up the leaves to get the dirt out of the middle of the lettuce. The dirt I was now washing down the drain, I knew exactly where that dirt came from and whose hands had planted this glorious food.

Things just won't ever be the same. That sounds dramatic, and I suppose it is. But my mouth and my mind have tasted goodness, and now nothing is the same.