Dear John,

We started with our CSA before the pandemic. Is that right? We had another CSA, once upon a time. But their pickup venue went chaos and, according to my search of our email, we started picking up boxes on January 23, 2020. Just enough time to get used to the routine of breaking down boxes to leave at the porch before everything happened. And our home filled with boxes from the weeks turned to months turned to years of no box left behind. Now that branding shows up in closets and on shelves all around our house.

A few months after that initial sign-up, I emailed another farm asking if they would be doing their CSA in our neighborhood in 2020. We didn’t make it to their CSA then–details of delivery days and times and who knows what else–but we did get on their email list. And when I look at the past six years of newsletters, it looks like I opened most of them. Telling the story of a farm is a talent. Teaching me about the local foodways is a gift.

So we’re switching CSAs! To another farm, a sister farm of the always opened newsletter. This week we’re auditioning the small share. Maybe we try the medium box in a week or two before we place our order for the season? It looks more straightforward to skip weeks with this CSA, which maybe will help us avoid the overwhelm of summer. (Though, I want all the produce! It’s so good!) There are farm days where we can go and visit, or do an Easter Egg hunt. It’s woman owned and operated. It’s Black Farms Matter. It is regenerative and holistic and buzzy buzzwords and I can only assume buzzy bees.

Good Eating

Dear John,

It’s been approximately a month since we picked up our last produce box of 2025. Tomorrow, we pick up our first box of 2026. For the next bit, we’ll just have the community produce box. Approximately every other week, but maybe a little bit less.

The CSA we’ve done for the past several years offers a winter box. We decided to take some time off to catch up on using what we have. (Knowing that we’d be getting the community produce. And that we can go to the grocery store. And that we could even sign up mid-season if we change our minds.)

It is a bit of a relief to not be deciding how best to consume ALL the produce each week. Instead puzzling through how to use up bits and pieces of the odds and ends. This week collard stems got chopped, sauteed, and mixed into a pasta bake. The vegetable scrap bag was made into stock–only for me to decide that, no, I wasn’t make sweet potato soup; it was chili. The bean liquor quickly becoming the liquid for rice and the base for another soup. (The stock is still waiting to be used.)

Your mom made a comment that our way of cooking is harder. It’s true that there are times I’m jealous of the auto populating meal plan routines/calendars–like the pizza, spaghetti, and hot dogs that I knew to expect most weekends of my childhood. When I wish we could have the quick and easy dinner ready to go without the guilty background concern about whether the lettuce or tomatoes or whatever will still be good when we get to a day with enough ease to prepare them.

But there is also an ease to not needing to think about what’s in season, because it’s already in front of us. The fun of figuring out how to use a less familiar ingredient (or alternatively, an excessively familiar ingredient). I’m not making decisions about what to buy at the farmers market. I’m making decisions about how to use what we already bought.

With that said, here’s some things we’ve already bought.

Cozy meals

Dear John,

We skipped produce pickups while we were out of town. We ate radishes and peppers and carrots dipped in ranch fun dip on the road. We took squash and sweet potatoes and parsley and peppers to family and friends. But sick weeks followed by travel weeks meant we ended up with some very sad foods in the fridge. Some got tossed in the compost (applesauce that molded weirdly quickly), some got sauced (lettuce into a cream dip), some is destined for soup (chard once the Royal Coronas finish cooking).

The chill is finally in the air. I want to curl around casserole dishes and soup bowls. I also want to be able to eat soon after coming in the door and not after the oven has preheated and the casserole has baked for an hour. So, um, things to consider.

Cozy meals