Praise to Mariquita

Once every two weeks, we can get a vegetable box from Mariquita Farms. They grow organic vegetables, mostly for their CSA and for restaurants. Every other Thursday Julia comes to San Francisco with a truck full of boxes, and parks at one of the restaurants they sell to. The boxes are preordered, and soon the place gets busy with pickups.
For us, this system works better than a CSA, because 1. we haven't found a CSA in the East Bay that has veggies as interesting and fresh as Mariquita; 2. we don't have to commit to a weekly box.
Check out their web-site and also Andy's blog (he is the farmer).

The picture shows the contents of last week's box: Little carrots and big carrots, escarole, rapini, other kind of broccoli, a savoy cabbage, mustard greens, swiss chart, garlic greens, sprint onions, leeks, spinach, fennel, and I am sure I forgot something. Everything is super fresh, organic and very tasty.

When the season is right, we go tomato picking and make sauce, we get a case of apricots and strawberries from a neighboring farms and make jams. Or we get delicious bacon avocados from yet another neighbor.  We love the Pimiento de Padron so much, that they will probably soon grow in our own garden. Thank you!