Grasshoppers Pickup Number 23

This week's basket contained:

• 5 tomatoes
• 2 turnips
• 1 bag Red Russian kale
• 1 bag Mizuna lettuce
• 1 bunch garlic chives
• 1 bag spinach
• 1 jar salsa

The salsa was a "customer appreciation" gift to those of us who stuck with Grasshoppers through their first winter of operation. I've had it before and it is most delicious. I add a healthy dose of Tabasco because that's who I am.

I think I'm going to make salads with only CSA veggies (lettuce, spinach, tomatoes) this time. Normally I would buy veggies at Meijer and combine them with my CSA goods.

The kale and turnips will (again) go into a greens-and-cornbread meal. I'm pretty sure I have some pork in the freezer that is a requisite for this dish.

As for the garlic chives, this is a stretch but I'm going to use them in a recipe with salmon. The idea is to create an Asian-type sauce for the sauteed salmon. I'm thinking along the lines of butter, olive oil, fresh ginger, oyster sauce, soy sauce, etc. It depends on what I have on-hand.

And here's a confession. I bought farm-raised salmon at Meijer this afternoon. They didn't have wild-caught salmon or tuna so it's not like I had a convenient alternative. I could have gone without or I could have had wild-caught salmon overnighted to my home at 4x the price per pound. My understanding is that farm-raised salmon is not unhealthful unless you're pregnant. (My last pregnancy test came back as "Male", so I'm good.) The problem is that farming salmon is detrimental to the environment. And, of course, farm-raised salmon is to wild-caught salmon as Tyson chicken is to free-range chicken. On the plus side the health benefits of eating salmon--even farm-raised salmon--trump any concerns about toxins in the fish. Yes, there are toxins, but the concentrations are  negligible... even in farm-raised salmon!

Bottom line, given an easy choice, I will always choose wild-caught salmon over farm-raised salmon. If wild-caught salmon is not available or is out of season I might buy farm-raised salmon. One thing for sure: I'm not going to pay $30 per pound plus shipping to have a whole salmon overnighted to me from Alaska.