(article, Miriam Wolf)
We got started late looking for a CSA and found that many were full for the season. Happily, we found a spot with Gardenripe, a family-run CSA based in Silverton, Oregon. Gardenripe's summer season subscription offers a wide variety of veggies and fruit as well as a visit to the farm, where you can pick up to 50 pounds of tomatoes to take home. The best part? They deliver directly to your home, rather than a single dropoff location. The pickup: Gardenripe’s first delivery (by the farmer himself) was not a regular basket; instead it was a flat of perfectly ripe strawberries. One of the Puget varietals, they were big, red, juicy, and sweet, but not overly sugary. The results: The first three pints went into a very simple, barely sweetened strawberry sauce that got taken to a dinner party and served with vanilla ice cream. Four pints went into an almond-graham-cracker-crust pie that uses berries cooked with cornstarch mixed with some quartered raw berries. Grubby-fisted children gobbled up three more pints while sitting on a blanket in the sunshine, watching a Captain Bog and Salty concert. Random midnight snacking will take care of any pints that are left.