Average Jane Has Plenty of Vegetables

I'm now nine weeks into my CSA share that provides seasonal organic vegetables every week. This week I got summer squash, tomatoes, green beans, a cucumber, carrots, lettuce, fresh garlic and a huge bunch of basil.

Naturally, my goal is to eat everything I receive. I fell down a bit on that with some of the greens we got early in the spring because I have absolutely no cooking or eating history that involves chard, kale, etc.

My husband and I have resorted to a lot of convenience foods over the past decade or so, and it's been a challenge to plan thoughtfully enough to include lots of vegetables instead of just resorting to a meal of sloppy joes with some potato chips and pickles are a vegetable, right?

Last weekend I made a batch of borscht that came out great. Unfortunately, my husband was too beet-phobic to even try it.

We've been having a lot of green salads with our meals, which happened often when I was growing up except that we always had iceberg lettuce back then. Today I'm making pesto out of this week's basil, some salsa and probably a green bean salad. Not sure if the salad will accompany me to a potluck or just be a side dish with some kind of grilled meat.

Earlier in the season I purchased some extra strawberries and made a
batch of jam for the first time since I was a teenager. I'm hoping to
be able to get my hands on enough small cucumbers to be able to make
pickles later on.

I'm really enjoying the fresh vegetables and herbs. I'd been buying grocery store varieties for so long that I'd forgotten how flavorful vegetables are supposed to be. It's also nice to know what's in season so that I can go to the farmers' market on weekends and supplement my share, if needed.