My CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, started this past week and it included local organic strawberries!
Price information - I selected the Medium share which is $540 a season ($27 a week) plus 1/2 dozen eggs for $40 ($2 a week) and 1/2 lb. of cheese for $75 ($3.75 a week/$7.50 a lb.)
The share included: Kohlrabi, garlic scapes, Swiss chard, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, onions and strawberries along with the extras - 6 eggs and a 1/2 lb of cheese.
The cucumbers, lettuce, onions, strawberries, eggs and cheese are already stuff I would normally be buying at the store. The garlic scapes, swiss chard and kohlrabi are not in my normal cooking repertoire - cooking and getting my family to eat them is my adventure for the week!
The Results
In the past week, my family has managed to eat all of the eggs, most of the strawberries, the Swiss chard, some of the garlic scapes, and one of the onions. The rest of the vegetables will keep for a while so I haven't had to throw anything out.
One of the top reasons I never participated before is my family tends to be busy in the evenings leaving little time for experimenting with new and unusual vegetables. This past week was no exception and I only managed to try one of the new vegetables in Shrimp with Swiss Chard and also used the some of the garlic scapes in my traditional chicken in lemon sauce.
The Swiss chard ended up being pretty good. It is fairly mild and picked up a lot of the flavor of the sauce. The recipe I used wasn't that great and I wouldn't cook it again but I will definitely give the Swiss Chard another try.
The garlic scapes were not quite what I expected. From reading up on them, I thought to use them to replace both the regular garlic and the green onions in my families favorite chicken in lemon sauce. It didn't quite work. The chicken still tasted great but was missing the garlic flavor and the scapes were tougher than a typical green onion.
Useful Advice
Absolutely do not eat the green parts of these regular onions. They are not green onions (even though they look like a large version of a green onion.) They taste vaguely of a green onion and mostly of horribly strong and rotten onion-y trash.