Ossining & Croton Local Eats

Welcome to my new column about good eats in and around Westchester County! Primarily, this is geared towards you locavores who want to eat food that's locally and organically grown. I'm planning to scope out area farms and farmer's markets to share what's out there, what's in season and suggest what you should be trying. In addition, I'll offer recipes for cooking some of this bounty.

The photo here is of my first shipment of produce from the Hilltop Hanover Farm CSA (that's short for Community Supported Agriculture), located in Yorktown Heights (hilltophanoverfarm.org). The idea behind this and other CSAs is that you buy a share for the growing season and then every week pick up a selection of the freshest, ripest vegetables that have been harvested that very morning. And Hilltop Hanover offers a U-Pick option for the general public on Saturdays from 10am - 4pm, so you too can enjoy your leafy greens!

It's hard to see what's there, so I'll itemize it (no, the cat was not included):

Garlic chives

Chives

Sage

Scallion

Red Leaf lettuce

Boston Lettuce

Some Other Kind of Lettuce

Beets

Baby spinach

2 bunches parsley

Swiss Chard

For a quick, pre-baseball dinner, I made brown rice with flaked, canned tuna in the rice cooker, and garnished it with fresh parsley and chives. My children even clamored for a lettuce salad with with parsley, chives and scallions (Okay, only one of them clamored, the other just kind of grunted).

As for the rest, I'll probably just juice the beets (they are pretty small) and then maybe make mini-spinach souffles for Thursday. But what to do with the chard? Click here.