Tag: Bedford Stuyvesant

Central Brooklyn CSA Blog Meal

For our first Central Brooklyn CSA Blog Meal we made garlic scape pesto and spaghetti, served with a farm fresh fried egg, garnished with fresh cilantro and black pepper: it tastes as awesome as it sounds!

Many of us who picked up our first week of vegetables from Central Brooklyn CSA had the same question: “what in the world is a ‘garlic flower’ and what do I do with it?” Alas, there is nothing to fear, garlic flowers (or, as they are sometimes called, “garlic scapes “) are delicious and just happen to be the centerpiece of our first Central Brooklyn CSA Blog Meal (feel free to help us come up with a better title for the blog meal, too)!

Garlic flowers are members of the Allium family, along with onions, leeks, and scallions. And, yes, as the name implies, these curvey tubes are in fact part of the garlic plant. Famers cut the superfluous stems and buds off of garlic bulbs (or heads, as we call them once harvested) to focus the plants energy on the bulb and not the stalk and flower.

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The Central Brooklyn CSA and The New York City Coalition Against Hunger

Although the Central Brooklyn CSA is a community-organized effort of Brooklyn citizens, we are able to provide low-cost shares for citizens through the Farm Fresh Initiative, a program run by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

The Coalition’s original mission was to “coordinate the activities of the emergency food providers in the city so that issues can be identified, prioritized and addressed effectively.” Though its aims have expanded and evolved over the last two decades – for example, it has strengthened advocacy and legislative efforts and now provides national service participants to emergency food providers – food access for all New Yorkers has always remained the Coalition’s animating goal.

The Farm Fresh Initiative is a city-wide program model that addresses this question by providing families with choices while connecting small local farms to low and middle income New Yorkers in traditionally under-served communities.

The centerpiece of this citywide program is a unique mixed income Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model that makes healthy, organic, fresh vegetables accessible to community members of all income levels by offering a variety of personalized payment options, including the ability to purchase vegetable shares using SNAP (Food Stamps) benefits.

NYCCAH’s involvement in the Central Brooklyn CSA is to support the mixed-income and community building aspect of the CSA, provide funding for the subsidized share prices,  staffing support, and an AmeriCorps volunteer who coordinates the CSA.

If you are able to, please consider donating to NYCCAH to help programs like ours running by clicking here.