csa wrap-up

My fingernails and cuticles may be safe from worried biting, but I do have nervous habits like anyone else—and my listmaking compulsion is an especially stubborn one. Deadlines, accomplishments, ideas? Bullet-point them! Write them down! We may be talking about something ridiculously trivial or seriously important, looming or faraway, but if it crosses my mind, it usually gets transcribed on a Post-It. What can I say? I like to organize my thoughts.

Until recently, I’ve been engaging in some public list-making as I shared my weekly CSA recap with you kind souls. This summer brought my first encounter with a farmshare program, and the recap was a vehicle for all sorts of things: exchanging veggie-centric ideas, asking questions, complaining, and doing a little dance whenever an experimental recipe worked out. Most of all, I detailed my CSA adventures to convince myself that I could rise to the challenge. For someone who used to come home from the office too tired to toast bread, the prospect of extensive weeknight cooking was daunting.

And yet! Weeks passed, and somehow I was doing all right. Better than all right, even! Sometimes, it seems, we just need to put a bit of faith in our abilities, and then take on a little challenge. You know, test the waters. It can bring out the best in us—bring out a side we barely knew was hibernating. Despite my doubts and the inevitable missteps along the way, I’ve been able to tame my revolving supply of vegetables (and creatively, too). I like to think that came across in the triumphant CSA posts that resulted. This experience, this first CSA summer, has taught me as much about myself as it has about cooking. I now know what arugula is and can rattle off five ways to prepare it, but so too have I found renewed faith in my resilience when things go wrong, my problem-solving skills when faced with a puzzle, and therefore in my own potential. As life serves me more—more curveballs, more opportunities, more disappointments, more changes—I have to thank summer for proving that I had room to grow.

Now that a glut of summer corn and tomatoes fill my CSA bag every week, I’ve decided against listing every recipe I use in a given week. (As good as corn and tomatoes are in August, your eyes might very well cross if I took inventory of a week’s meals: corn salad! corn chowder! tomato soup! roasted tomato sauce!) But I can’t wait to share, individually, the results of my ongoing CSA experiments.

I’ll start out simply, in order to avert corn-and-tomato overload. This appetizer stars ambrosia melon, a nice little surprise that I found in my share last week. Plus, there is absolutely no cooking involved here! Let’s dip a toe into the season, shall we?

PROSCIUTTO E MELONE WITH BASIL OIL
Serves 8 as an appetizer, or 4 as a light summer dinner
Adapted from Bon Appétit

Ingredients
- small ambrosia melon or cantaloupe, sliced in half and seeded
- 1/3 lb. prosciutto, thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup basil leaves, packed
- 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp. sea salt, or to taste

Preparation
1) In a food processor, purée basil, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt until smooth. Set aside.
1) If you have a melon baller on hand, scoop spheres from melon and transfer to plate. Otherwise, slice and discard melon rind, and cut fruit into small cubes.
2) Wrap bits of melon in strips of prosciutto, securing with a toothpick.
3) Drizzle each piece liberally with basil oil and serve as an appetizer. In the summer, this can become a quick dinner if you have good, crusty bread on hand.