Eating my way through the CSA: Roasted Tomatillos

With the fall harvest approaching, my first year in subscribing to a local CSA, or community supported agriculture farm, is coming to a close. My family signed on to share a share with another family: good friends  we have known through school, soccer games, and synagogue for over ten years. We decided to go in together in a CSA share as one brave experiment.

The very wet spring that gave way to a very dry hot summer created spotty conditions for the young farmers of the East Hill CSA. Buying into a CSA comes with its risks and rewards, as we were warned. But in the end, joining made me feel good that I am helping local, sustainable agriculture and like the farmers, I am taking a gamble on Mother Nature in hopes of bringing healthy food to my family’s table.

Highs of belonging to a  CSA included (for us at least):

• The discovery of Kale and Kohlrabi that can be oven baked, salted and eaten like chips;
• Fresh herbs;
• A weekly sunflower or wildflower bouquet  in midsummer;
• Patti pan squash;
• Bags of mixed greens for salad that include edible flowers like nasturtium
• Pints of home-grown grapes that really taste like grapes (my daughter proclaimed they tasted like grape candy). Delicious, if you can work your way around the seeds.

The lows

• Discovering that the weekly box of bounty is not all that bountiful for two families;
• Sharing one eggplant or two (very puny) sweet potatoes can be an exercise in tactical negotiations between two families (Weekly bartering included exchanges like: “You take the sweet potatoes, I insist!”; “Are you sure?”; “Yes, you take the sweet potatoes, but can I have the one cucumber”; “My kids don’t like Swiss Chard, really, you take the Swiss Chard this week …I’ll take  the tomatoes…” and so on.);
• Beets. Though the beet offerings as of late are getting more plump, the tiny beets at the beginning of the season in my opinion were not worth the stained hands and countertops for their size;

But readers, as the headline of this blog post promised, this post is about Tomatillos. It’s also about  using the blogosphere to find recipes for my CSA goodies.

Since I’ve been blogging, I have come to appreciate search engines. I find it interesting to learn from my blog stats what search terms draw people to my blog.   For example,  hundreds of people searching for “arugula” or “arugula leaf” have found their way to my blog. So, after my friends decided to bestow  me with this week’s share of almost  two dozen  tomatillos, I returned the favor to the blogosphere by searching for Tomatillos on WordPress.

If you find that you have in your possession a lot of these late-season green, globular fruits with a papery shell, you may want to give this recipe a try for roasted tomatillo salsa that can be used for enchiladas. I found it on Angelinna’s Cottage Blog. Thank you Angelinna, whoever you are.