Kitchen Misadventures: CSA Part 1

I am a horrible cook. I mean that, really horrible. I'm a decent baker, and, I think anyway, a pretty good cake decorator, but those things I enjoy and have a bit of intuition about. I have never figured out cooking real food, mainly meat and vegetables. I do ok with carbs, I can cook noodles and rice with the best of them, but that's easy. I can also follow directions well enough, so things that come pre-packaged with all the pieces necessary and directions on the back, right up my alley. Hamburger Helper is my friend.

I should also mention, I kind of hate vegetables. I wasn't forced to eat a wide variety of them when I was little, so since then I have survived on a pretty limited list of vegetables that I'm ok with. Carrots, peas, corn, peppers, green beans, lettuce in salad (but definitely not on a sandwich, yeesh), these are my staples. I confess, it is not unusual for me to go a day or two without ever eating a vegetable. I know, I'm a horrible human being.

As I get older and the economy goes downhill and the environment gets worse, I've started to realize that I'm not going to be young and *fairly* healthy forever. I should start taking better care of myself, yes? I've also, for some unknown reason, suddenly taken an interest in gardening. I know, it's weird. I have this random desire to grow vegetables in my backyard and (probably) eat them with dinner. Unfortunately I don't have a green thumb and most of them seem to die within a few weeks (more on that later).

Enter the CSA. What is that you ask? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and means that for a measley $100 I will get 6 deliveries of produce boxes over 12 weeks from local farms. Good for them, good for me, what could go wrong, right? Well, the first box arrived almost two weeks ago and over the course of the next few days I'll post about my attempts to use the contents. For now, here's a list of what was inside. Any guesses on what I couldn't even identify on sight?

• strawberries
• carrots
• fava beans
• parsley
• kale
• chard
• beets
• red onions

I definitely thought the fava beans were giant pea pods and the chard was rhubarb for a good couple of days until Michelle and I started Googling. Yee was able to identify the kale and beets for me (yes, even though I actually like beets I'd never seen them in their original form before). On my own I really only recognized the strawberries, carrots, parsley (a whole heck of a lot of parsley!), and red onions. Sigh. We have a lot of work to do here.