A few years ago, my sister and I were walking out of a spa visit in Harvard Square when we happened upon a farmer’s market. We both oohed and aahed over the tomatoes and other wonderful items on display, and she suggested that I put together some of the items to make a panzanella.

Panzanella???, I responded. She then went on to explain that it’s a bread salad that can be used to showcase some of the wonderful seasonal items you can get during the summertime. Of course, with kiddos that love bread, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese, this is a great dish all year ’round. You can use this as a light entrée or as a side dish, and it’s easy enough to make in bulk to have as a side for parties. It’s also easily scalable; if you don’t want a lot, just get a smaller bread and half everything else (one pint of cherry tomatoes instead of a quart, 1/2 lb of mozzarella instead of a full pound, etc.).

Note also that you can substitute chopped tomatoes for the cherry tomatoes and cubed mozzarella cheese for the mozzarella pearls; I use them because they’re time-savers. For the cherry tomatoes, I strongly recommend either doing this when they’re in season or getting some of the NatureSweet ones; flavorless cherry tomatoes do nothing but add color to the dish, so you want ones with flavor.

Given that the flavors here all pretty much stand on their own, also make sure that you’re using an olive oil that you really LIKE. We tend to use Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil, if that’s any help.


OM NOM all year long, but especially in the summertime!

Prep Time: 20 mins

Cooking Time: 0! None! Zilch! (yeay)

Serves: 6 as a main dish, more as a side dish


1 loaf fresh ciabatta bread (or other similarly large, crusty bread)

2 pints (1 quart) cherry tomatoes (or 4-5 large tomatoes, cubed in 1/2″ cubes)

1 english cucumber

1 lb mozzarella pearls (or 1 lb mozzarella, cubed in 1/2″ cubes)

8-10 leaves fresh basil

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper, to taste

Make it Happen

1. Chop the bread into roughly 1/2″ cubes. Place them in a large serving bowl.

2. Wash the cherry tomatoes and dry them carefully. (I use a paper towel). Add the dry tomatoes to the bread and stir to combine. (Drying them prevents them from turning the bread into a soggy mess.)

3. Wash and chop the cucumber into 1/4 – 1/2″ cubes. Add them to the bowl and stir to combine.

4. Separate the mozzarella pearls and add them to the serving bowl, stirring to combine.

5. Wash, dry and roughly chop the basil leaves until they are in no more than 1/4″ pieces. Add them to the serving bowl and stir to combine.

6. Drizzle some of the olive oil over top of the mixture and stir to combine; add the remainder of the oil and stir to combine further.

{At this point, you can season further and serve or cover with plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator, to bring out at a later point in the day. This is a perfect item to prepare in advance of a party. If you want to do most of the prep in advance of a big meal without taking up space in the fridge, simply move the mozzarella to the LAST step.}

Adventures in CSA: savings and how we shop grocery store circulars

The other day, while heading into dd’s school to pick her up from afterschool care, I was approached by a neighbor who had checked out the blog recently. She commented that she was interested by the findings I’d made on savings from using a CSA rather than buying fruits and veggies from the store, and she had a small bone to pick. As she explained it, she tends to shop based on sale prices and her shopping is certainly influenced by what’s on special every week. I definitely get where she’s coming from, so I wanted to take a moment to explain how I get to the numbers I’ve recorded in my various entries (starting with Adventures in CSA year 1).

My basic premise was to take a CSA box’s contents and compare the price for having selected the very same things from the grocery store where I shop every weekend. We weighed every item that we received from the CSA and I then plugged the prices from the store and the weights (or quantities, if sold by the item) into an Excel spreadsheet that was copied and pasted into the blog post.

The prices I chose were for the closest possible item (which wasn’t necessarily the organic version, since the fruit & veg I got were local but not necessarily organic, per se) and were for the “no-card” price. My store, like so many grocery stores, has an affinity card program where you get better prices by having their card than if you came in off the street not having it. Why would I do this? My rationale was so that I wasn’t biasing the results by listing the prices you’d need to get by giving up personal information. While a lot of people participate in affinity programs, not everyone does and – since the prices at our farmstand don’t ebb and flow based on whether or not they know anything about our purchases – I wanted to approximate what it would be like to purchase the same things if you just came in without a prior relationship with the grocery store.

And then we get to the issue of straight sales. As my neighbor pointed out, sales on specific items influence her purchases. Honestly, the same is true for us. However, when working with a CSA, the box’s contents are controlled by what’s ripe rather than by a store’s attempts to drive specific purchases. For example, right now, there’s not a ton that you’d get in your CSA box other than squash, apples, potatoes and maybe some onions. By contrast, what’s on sale right now at my grocery store (based on their flyer): raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, apples, pears, avocados, grape tomatoes, squash, potatoes, mushrooms, peppers, and baby carrots. Of those, only the apples, squash and potatoes could have been produced locally (and none are marked on the flyer as being local). The berries came from places like Argentina, Chile and Mexico. If we’re lucky, the grape tomatoes and avocados came from California – but it’s likely that at least one, if not both, came from Mexico.

So here’s the rub: especially during the fall and winter months, what gets put on sale at the grocery store may never even show up in a CSA box because it’s only in season thousands of miles away from where we live. That doesn’t mean we won’t buy berries; both of the kids are berry-monsters and love to eat them a half-pint at a time. My point is more around the fact that if you want to buy locally, your purchase decision will be driven by what’s in season and what’s ripe at that particular point. For a place like New England, where the winter months require importing berries and other fruits & veg from farther-flung parts of the world, it’s a great thing that these are ever put on sale so that you’re not paying full freight (quite literally).

My neighbor has an excellent point about sales having an influence, and in New England (as well as other four-season locales) you have to be willing to buy things that aren’t grown locally in order to be able to eat certain foods – like berries – all year ’round. The other option is to preserve things early and often, such as my canning-crazed friend Local Kitchen. And, thankfully, there’s room for lots of different approaches to eating healthy foods all year long.





Without further ado, this week’s tastiness:


Adventures in CSA year 2 week 12

Red + Green + Multicolored Cherry Toms = HAPPY ME


Year 2 – Summer Week 12
Farmstand Unit Price (per lb) Farmstand Total Item Cost
Tomatoes 2.26 $2.99 $6.76
Macintosh Apples 2.46 $1.49 $3.67
Broccoli 1.26 $1.99 $2.51
Corn (ears) 4.00 $0.69 $2.76
Wax Beans 0.83 $2.99 $2.48
Cherry Tomatoes (pint) 1.00 $3.50 $3.50
Farmstand Total Cost $21.67


