(article, Carrie Floyd)
After agonizing over whether to join a CSA or continue to shop at the farmers' market once (maybe twice) a week, I've opted for the latter. For two reasons: I'll go anyway because I love the summer fruit, and the market is closer to my house than the pickup site for the nearest CSA. To sum it up, in three words: berry greed, convenience. The pickup: Last Saturday I bought a flat of local strawberries, along with sugar snap peas, the season's first cherries, and some Walla Walla sweet onions. The results: The first pint of strawberries I sliced up to top French toast. The next two pints went into strawberry-rhubarb crisp. And the fourth was sacrificed to a breakfast of crêpes. Within 24 hours, the berries were on the verge of becoming overripe, so I washed, dried, and sliced them, then divided the spoils between a large bowl and several bags for the freezer. The bowl of berries was tossed with a spoonful of honey, then stashed in the fridge for a couple of days' worth of breakfasts over yogurt with granola. The bags in the freezer are destined for future smoothies. As for the sugar snap peas, they were so good we ate most of them raw, though a handful got thrown into a salad. The cherries were gobbled up equally fast. And I tossed the onions with a splash of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and oil, ground a little black pepper over them, and grilled them alongside chicken for dinner. Delish.