Rocco says, "They are too organic"

     Yesterday was the first pick-up for the Forest Hills CSA. This season we abandoned Woodside. I pride myself on being uber loyal but last year Rocco complained weekly at how small and pathetic our shares were.
    "What is this?" he would say staring at wilted greens, or "two beets, what am I going to do with two beets?" If he hadn't been on pick-up duty, I might have ran out to the supermarket to pad the share just to keep make him happy.
     I tried to defend Woodside; Sergio the farmer was named Sergio and that is enough to win me over and it was the CSA's first season so there would obviously be kinks to work out, but when I visited the Farmer's Market where Sergio had a stand, there were beautiful bounties of things we weren't getting, like huge green cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes. So when I got into Forest Hills, I didn't feel that bad.
    For the first pick-up, I met Rocco in Forest Hills Gardens, which is the most picturesque neighborhood, huge old mansions on gigantic winding tree lines streets, not too shabby a place to get veggies. I wanted to run Rocco through the drill and make sure he didn't do anything crazy.
    Rocco was very happy. The quarts of big juicy strawberries were certainly to his liking and I had to almost slap his hand away as he grabbed berries from other quarts to, "top off" our quart while the volunteers looked on in horror. Let my eye rolling begin.
    "See Jen, just pick up a few from the others so we have more. See that?"
    "What I see if you stealing from other people's fruit shares, Dad." Smile.
     We moved onto the vegetable share which thankfully came pre-packed in nice cardboard boxes. It was overflowing with fresh local vegetables. We got so many things, huge heads of boston and red leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula, white and red turnips and some rhubarb. Half of this share is more than what we got in a full share at Woodside.
     As we left Rocco agreed to volunteer a few weeks, rather than perform other acceptable duties, like take photographs of the CSA events. Rocco is a professional photographer.
     Before the doors closed behind us and I said good night to the friendly smiling and very helpful volunteers, Rocco said, "I am not taking pictures of these people, I can't even look at them. They disgust me. They are too liberal. They are too organic." And he laughs amused at himself.
     I looked at him, not sure how to respond to the insanity and he said, "Boy Jen, these vegetables are nice. I am glad we went with the Forest Hills CSA. I am going to make a big salad tonight!"