First taste

By Caroline Cummins

May 28, 2007

The pickup: This is the week my CSA, Dancing Roots, starts up. I head to the dropoff house and, along with assorted parents, hipsters, children, and dogs, fill bags with young spinach, teenaged lettuces, mature braising greens, leafy-topped carrots and radishes, and a Sungold cherry tomato plant. And oh, yeah, a dozen pastured eggs.

The results: The radishes, spinach, and lettuces go into salad. The carrots, along with some other leftover carrots, celery, and onions, become a spicy soup. The braising greens get, well, braised, and eaten with pasta. The tomato plant goes into the ground, where it struggles confusedly for a few days and then recovers. And the bright-orange yolks of the eggs go into a wickedly caffeinated coffee ice cream.