No Organic for Me, Thank You!

I'm all for organic, don't get me wrong from the title of tonight's blog! I'm just not for organic bugs. Or organic mealy vegetables. That is not my idea of tasty organic delights!

Where I live, there is a lovely big farm that supplies food to the cafeteria, and since the farm manager just left, we got a memo saying that everyone was welcome to pick what they liked for 50 cents a pound. Now my mom and I can never pass up a deal, especially when you can get organic vegetables for 50 cents a pound! So about thirty minutes before sundown, we began to tromp our way down the rows, trying to decide what to harvest.

There was only one problem. We had no idea what we were looking at! We could recognize the tomatoes (which was one of the few items that were not available to everyone), the corn and the squash, but everything else looked rather foreign. The most experience I ever had with a garden was helping my Opa with his little plot and picking berries from my aunt's tiny patch. And that was years ago!

We finally decided that a particular bunch of red leafy tops were beet greens. We busied ourselves trying to dig down to the beet, but the one that was on the end of the largest beet top was about the size of a marble. A very small marble. Unsuccessful in locating the beets, we harvested the beet tops and carried on. I pulled up some red lettuce and carefully placed it in a plastic bag.

A little further on, we came across a trellis with vines all over it. Really long beans grew all along, none of them smaller than 12 inches and most of them quite a bit longer. After we picked about 10, we decided we had the equivalent of 60 regular beans, and moved on to the next patch of green. We found row after row of squash, our least favourite vegetable, but finally, in the fast fading light, we came across a real treasure trove. Parsley, spring onions, and bell peppers clustered together, standing green and fresh in the rich dirt. We picked to our hearts' content and ended up grabbing three large leaves of kale. After weighing the two plastic bags and depositing our dollar and twenty-five cents in the money box, we headed home with our treasures.

Then the real adventure began. As a naive city girl, I happily swished the kale leaves about under the running sink and then placed them on the cutting board, ready to chop it into pieces to add to the already-steaming green beans on the stove. Thankfully I took a closer look. On the large vivid green leaf, I saw fat little bodies of a translucent colour sitting in clumps and hiding on the edges. Peering even closer, I realized that these were not drops of water that had yet to be shaken off, as these bodies all had teeny hairy legs! They were most definitely bodies of the aphid nature!

I hurriedly stuck the leaves in a huge bowl of water, added salt, and waited. About 15 minutes later, I was able to use two of the three leaves, after carefully inspecting for all live creatures and finding only one or two that I was able to remove. I added the final vegetables to the pot and put the lid back on.

Minutes later, the vegetables started to burn. After hastily transferring them to a second pot and adding fresh water, I tasted the green beans. They were very mealy and floury and extremely unappetizing. I ended up spending at least 10 minutes picking out all the green beans, along with the potato cubes I'd thrown in earlier from the raw potato we'd put in a very salty carrot soup at lunch to absorb the extra salt. (Note: it really does work, even with a raw potato, and those potato cubes became extremely salty. Also, if the recipe calls for 20 oz of broth, it's probably best not to use 30+ oz of broth and SALT TO TASTE on top!!!)

Suffice to say, at the end of about 2 hours of effort, I found myself with a small plastic box that contained a rather sorry looking mess of steamed parsley, spring onions, beet greens, and kale. I'm not sure it was worth all that time and energy! I'm also very grateful for grocery stores that carry already-washed produce!

Next time, we'll try the farmer's market. It may be pricier, but I'm hoping there's less bugs!