St. Johns November 2019 Newsletter P2_STM81677 November Newsletter | Page 11

live snails were shipped daily, visited stone caves where the famous Roquefort cheese
was cured and salt marshes where sea salt was produced, fishing boats at 4 AM to snag
fish for that day, farms and gardens in the back of restaurants where the daily harvest
was turned into a meal and so on and so on. In one case, live frogs were kept in a cooler
and dispatched to order as needed. A shriveled old fella would ride his bike to one
restaurant with a straw filled basket of the most remarkable goat cheeses you could
ever imagine. The farmers markets there were truly that: produce harvested the day or
2 before, grown in the season where it was at it’s peak for flavor and brought to market.
From this way of life some visionaries in California, Alice Waters being a main player,
adopted this way of cooking and eating. This is where the major push for seasonal,
local and farm to table began. This is it in it’s purest form but from there has turned into
something very different. Now, we are over fed, over stimulated with regards to food
and inundated with any kind of food we want whenever we want it. Not necessarily a
bad thing and I certainly enjoy the convenience of anything anytime but what about
the idea of seasonal, local and farm to table: what options are there if I want to eat
differently?
CSA(community supported agriculture) is an answer to that question. Starting in 2
weeks, we will receive a large brown bag every week for several months with produce
harvested that day from Down to Earth Farms. We only have a general idea of what
will be in that bag but we will know it was living in the dirt hours before we get it. It will
not always be the prettiest, cleanest or most familiar produce but it will be as fresh as
fresh can be, grown in the season for which it is best suited to grow, grown hyper locally
and it will support a local farmer and his family. It will not be the cheapest or easiest to
prepare but it will be delicious. We will need some supporting ingredients for balanced
meals but the main focus will be what is in that bag. Eggplant, tomatoes, herbs,
radishes, kohlrabi, broccoli, lettuces, peppers, cabbage, turnips, cauliflower, potatoes,
strawberries, citrus, braising greens, green beans, cucumbers are all potential surprises
we could find when opening our weekly bag. Our meals become veggie forward
meals and that is not a bad thing as I can always revert back to mass produced foods
whenever I want, especially when I crave chicken wings. For more info check out the
Edible northeast Florida magazine/ website or just do a local CSA search and get ready
to cook like you haven’t before!
Eric Fritsche
Executive Chef
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