csa day: box the first

 We get our summer CSA from Tagge's Famous Fruits & Vegetables.  This year, they - and literally all of the northern Utah fruit farms and orchards - were decimated when we (1) got an unusually warm stretch in March, which convinced all the fruit trees to blossom early, and then (2) got two wicked cold snaps, which killed off all the flowers.  The trees all survived (and may be doing well now that all their energy goes into growing leaves and roots, instead of fruit) but you need flowers to get fruits, so northern Utah is having a "fruit famine."  Like, all the best stuff like peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and cherries, and later, pears and apples.  The berries apparently survived better, being easier to cover, perhaps.  But it's a sad season for those of us (A) who love stone fruit.  

Tagge's rallied as best they could, making arrangements with growers in more temperate, coastal regions, to bring in what fruits they could.  But I fear it will be a long summer of squash.

Lettuce and carrot tops not pictured

In our first box we got: red leaf lettuce, cherries, apricots, snap peas, cucumbers (2), zucchini (2), summer squash (2), rainbow carrots and radishes.  The lettuce and radishes were salad-bound; I blanched and froze the carrots (for soup) and peas (for eating); made pesto out of the carrot tops; we had more peas, with cucumber and spiralized zucchini in a veggie bowl with brown rice and peanut sauce; we gave away the other cucumber in exchange for neighbor muffins; ate the cherries; froze the apricots for pie filing (not the best for fresh eating but just fine for that).  Oh, and shredded the rest of the squash - even though there's still some in the freezer from last summer.  Oops.