Farm Store
The CSA Cookbook Canon
These three cookbooks are the best we've found for both new and long-time CSA members, as well as anyone looking for recipes and tips to help them include more vegetables in their diets. Of course, the recipes in all three books are delicious, so we'll just mention here some of the other features that make them outstanding and set them apart from one another. All three books are suitable for a wide variety of eaters, and will teach you not just to love and eat your vegetables, but to love cooking with them.
All three will be available for CSA members at our farm store & at pickup, and will be available for purchase at our Fulton Farmer's Market stand on Saturdays.
"From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce"
This encyclopedic cookbook from the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC) has all the basics--how to identify, store and cook more than 50 vegetables you'd find at a typical upper-Midwest CSA or farmer's market. It has a clean, easy to read design that allows for seeing many recipes at a glance, making it perfect for quick browsing when you're tired and need to find a process or recipe to deal with an abundance of vegetables NOW (like on CSA pickup night!). This book is great for providing new ideas and flavor combinations. Also includes a fantastic resource section at the end for additional books, products and organizations.
All the recipes are original, created by CSA members and farmers using their CSA produce, and all the vegetables used are to be found at Trillium Haven Farm as well.
"Simply in Season: Recipes that Celebrate Fresh, Local Foods in the Spirit of More-With-Less"
This recent addition to the Mennonites World Community Cookbook series has everything we love about their More-With-=Less cookbooks, plus some features designed specifically for the wisdom and challenge of cooking seasonally. This book if full of unpretentious, broadly appealing classics, as well as innovative ways to incorporate the standbys of a CSA share into traditional approaches (try the biscuit-like spinach squares). One if its appeals is that the ingredients are likely to be things you'd already have on hand. Each season has its own section, and each recipe its own page, listing the vegetables you'll need for that recipes along the side, making this another book that's great for finding just the right recipe quickly on a busy day.
"Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables"
This new cookbook from the famous Chicago CSA Angelic Organics is packed with everything you need to know about the sort of vegetables we find in our climate and how to cook with them. The recipe section is organized by families of vegetables, making this the best of the three cookbooks for teaching you how to cook more flexibly and creatively, and therefore more pleasurably and economically. In addition to everyday meal recipes, this book is full of the sort of recipes you love to make for guests and parities to show how fantastic and sophisticated vegetable dishes can be. This more-than-a-cookbook, with its inclusion of so much of the life of Angelic Organics as well as basic vegetable knowledge, is so informative and entertaining, it's meant to study and linger over, and will enrich your entire CSA experience.
With wit and reverence born of Farmer John's lifetime of farming, this cookbook:
- Features color photographs of the vegetables growing in the fields, and of the crew harvesting, washing, and sorting.
- Builds relationship with vegetables, and deepens the understanding of the farm on which they are grown.
- Features stories, articles, and fresh insights about food and farming from shareholders, farm workers, and Farmer John.
- Explores Rudolf Steiner's biodynamic method of agriculture.
- Chronicles the lives of vegetables as they make their voyage from field to feast.