email this pageAt the beginning of the season, my CSA gave me a choice: full share or half share. Faced with this decision, I felt a peculiar emotion. I pride myself on feeding myself and my husband vegetables a-plenty, and although a full share is enough for a family of four, I checked the “full” option because I felt the overwhelming need to prove that two real vegetable eaters like us would have no problem with it. I call that healthier-than-thou feeling “vegismo” (on the machismo model).
Turns out vegismo, like so many emotions, can steer you wrong. By mid-July, the vegetables were coming thick and fast. Every week, my personal challenge was to use up that week’s selection before next week’s arrived; real vegetable eaters wouldn’t get lapped. I won, but I cheated: dinner guests.
One of my winning strategies was couscous. Combine it (I use the whole wheat kind) with large quantities of almost any vegetable, and dress it up with a couple of flavors reminiscent of the part of the world whence it came: olives, pine nuts, feta cheese, raisins or chopped dates, mint, cardamom, cumin, and lemon. Breathe a sigh of relief.
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