spring CSA, week 3

[cellio]

• 4 parsnips (from three bases :-) )
• 6 Fuji apples
• 4 large-to-huge blue potatoes (nominal 2 pounds)
• 2 green meat radishes, one huge
• bunch Swiss chard (half pound)
• head lettuce
• bag salanova (mixed salad greens)
• bunch red pac choi

(The small share omitted the apples and potatoes, got watermelon radish instead of green meat radish, and got kale instead of chard.)

That's a lot of greens. I know pac choi and chard are both good for sauteing; I have a vague memory that chard works well in a greens-based soup too. Salads are obvious (and I've been making salad for lunch more often lately). Last night I roasted the last of last week's blue potatoes, sliced thin and sprinkled with fresh rosemary and sea salt, and then finished them under the broiler to get nice crunchy crisp bits. That definitely worked, so I'll be doing that again. (I also roasted some parsnips last night.) I might try shredding and pan-frying parsnips (hash-browns style); it seems like that would be nice. Some will also go into a vegetable soup soon (maybe with some greens?).

Halacha tangent: I knew last week that this week's share would not include anything that's problematic during Pesach (when there are restrictions on even owning certain foods), but I found myself wondering how it would have worked otherwise. It depends on when you legally become the owner of the food. In advance, when I paid for the share? When I physically acquire the share each week? So I asked on Mi Yodeya; let's see if I get good answers. (There are some useful leads in a couple comments, and a lot of comments from somebody who didn't like the way I asked the question.)

Comments

[richardf8]

That’s a fascinating question. The first Problem to solve is just what a CSA share is. You’re not buying food, exactly, because you pay your money, you assume your risk, and if a hurricane, has v’hallila should take out the farm you would get nothing, not even a refund. So kinyan can’t happen at the time of payment because you can’t know what you are acquiring.

So I think that places the moment of kinyan when you pick up each box. Most CSA’s tell you what to expect in your box, so if you know that Chametz is part of it, you could simply not pick it up. Pick up locations I’ve used in the past have had a policy of donating uncollected shares to a food shelf, so no kinyan by you, no ownership by you, you miss out on some veggies, but the food doesn’t get wasted.

The other horn of this dilemma, of course, is if joining the CSA means that you own your bit of everything the moment in comes into existence, because you are an owner of everything the farm produces. In this case, you would be obligated to maintain possession of that chametz because you sold it while it was still standing in the field.

But here is the toughest problem I see: your CSA often gives you finished goods. If you joined the CSA, sold your chametz, and then the Farmer, acting as your agent, bought chametz, then your buyer does not own it, and abandoning the box works.