Photo by JD Crayne www.jdcraynephotography.com

​ A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Kumquats were first cultivated in China. They look like olive-sized oranges and were once considered part of the citrus family. Now they are categorized as Fortunella, a Genus named after Robert Fortune, the horticulturist responsible for introducing the fruit to Europe.

Kumquats have been grown in the United States since the late 1800's, primarily in California and Florida. There are four varieties of kumquats, but typically it is the Nagami or oval variety that are found in Northern California. The growing season lasts from January through April.

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Photo by JD Crayne www.jdcraynephotography.com

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A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Chard, a member of the beet family, is known for it's high nutritional value. This leafy green is often called Swiss chard, despite the fact that it originated in the Mediterranean and is rarely found in Switzerland.

Different types of chard produce different colored stems and veins varying from white to electric shades of yellow, orange, red, and purple. (The vibrant-colored chards are often bunched together and sold as rainbow chard.) The leaves are slightly more bitter in flavor than spinach, but milder than kale or collard greens. As with all greens, the bitterness mellows after cooking.

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Photo by JD Crayne www.Jdcraynephotography.com

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A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Makrut (Kaffir) limes have a distinguishable bumpy skin, strong tangy flavor and aromatic fragrance. The leaves and zest are used often in Thai, Cambodian, and Indonesian dishes. The inside of the fruit is sour and rarely used for cooking, but the juice is sometimes used as a cleanser in Thailand and for medicinal purposes in Indonesia.

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geekspeakllc/flickr

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A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Fennel originated in the Mediterranean region, but now can be found all over the world. Bulb fennel, a vegetable also known as Florence fennel, is in season from Fall through Spring. Wild fennel, an herb, grows rampantly in the Bay Area throughout the summer months. The Florence fennel bulb is crunchy and tastes of black licorice. Wild fennel does not produce a bulb. Wild fennel flowers, seeds and pollen are all edible and produce a sweeter, more intense anise flavor.

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flickr/cbertel

​ A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Broccoli rabe (pronounced rob), is also referred to as rapini. This leafy member of the brassica family is a staple in southern Italian cooking. The green flowers look like miniature heads of broccoli, but they do not come from the same plant. The taste is earthy like broccoli, with a stronger, bitter flavor and a hint of spiciness.

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​ A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

This root vegetable has been showing up on restaurant menus throughout San Francisco. The parsnip -- the formerly neglected cousin of carrots -- has been sneaking its way into soups, purees, pastas, garnishes, and vegetable terrines all over town.

Parsnips look like carrots, only fatter in diameter and lighter in color. The flavor is sweeter and more mellow than a carrot and doesn't comes to life until cooked. They are best when harvested in late fall or winter, after the frost.

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Royalty-Free Images/Flickr

Angus cattle, like the kind currently chewing its cud at Belcampo Meat's farm.

​For a cow to magically transform into the ribeye steak sitting in your fridge, the animal travels through numerous middlemen: From the farmer to the feedlot, the feedlot to the slaughterhouse, the slaughterhouse to the butcher, perhaps from the commercial butcher to the market, and finally to carnivorous consumers. Over the course of the past half-century, the meat industry has lowered prices through massive, unchecked consolidation -- larger and larger farms, fewer and fewer slaughterhouses.

Belcampo Meats is introducing a different model of bringing meat to the table. If we were talking about commodities and retail chain stores, we'd call it vertical integration: Within the course of the next year, the new company is aiming to bring pasture-raised meats from its farm to its own slaughterhouse in far northern California, then shipping them south to its own retail stores in the Bay Area. Only a few small enterprises in the United States are trying anything similar.

Belcampo CEO Anya Fernald -- organizer of Slow Food Nation and founder of the Eat Real Fest -- first developed the business plan working as a consultant to Todd Robinson, an investor who owned a 10,000-acre parcel of farmland in the Shasta Valley as well as plots of undeveloped land in Uruguay and Belize. Fernald recently closed down her consulting business to run the new venture. (The Uruguay and Belize ventures will be run separately, though there are some interesting cacao and rum projects afoot on the latter site that Americans will soon be hearing more about.)

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A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Spaghetti squash has a mild and unnoteworthy flavor. But, the unique texture of the flesh sets it apart from any other winter squash. The seemingly-solid raw flesh turns into spaghetti-like strands when cooked. The strands are a vehicle for sauces and flavors, much like pasta is.

Spaghetti squash are in season October through December, but can be found year round in the Bay Area.

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Chez Basilic/Flickr

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A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Sunchokes, a variety of reddish tubers, are part of the daisy family. They can be mistaken for ginger or galangal, due to their knobby looking appearance. The flavor and texture of a raw sunchoke can be compared to a water chesnut. Once cooked they have similar characteristics of potatoes without the starch and a taste slightly reminiscent to artichoke hearts.

Often called Jerusalem artichokes, they can be found locally at farmers' markets and on many San Francisco menus throughout the fall and winter months.

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JOE MARINARO/flickr

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A weekly series on what to do with your farmers' market impulse buys and CSA box surprises.

Pomegranates have been celebrated throughout history, especially in the Middle East, and they hold significance for many world religions and cultures. NPR even calls them "the jewels in the fruit crown." They are also revered for their high content of antioxidant vitamins.

The inside of a the fruit are filled with garnet colored arils - crunchy seeds encased in a coating of juicy flesh. The arils, a perfect balance of sweet and tart flavors, are completely edible. Pomegranates can be found in Bay Area farmers' markets and produce stores from late summer until the beginning of winter.

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