If We Are What We Eat, I Will Be a Zuccini

Another project I have going at the moment, since I am having a "normal life" with a job and such, is ordering a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box every couple of weeks. Each week the South Central Farmers--an organic cooperative--delivers pre-ordered boxes to different places in the city. One of the drop-off points is here on campus.

The box is an omakase kinda deal. You get what is in season and available, with no substitutions. Overall, this is good, as that is what we should be eating anyway, and I probably wouldn't have the knowledge and discipline to research and buy these things on my own. In the grocery store I mainly just default to things like avocados and broccoli year round because they are super-accessible taste-wise, and I know how to store and cook them. This same laziness had led me to consider skipping the CSA box this week, but then I got an email from my friend in China, telling me how, because of all the bacteria on the food where she is, she is relegated to eating McDonalds, porridge and stuffed buns if she doesn't want to get sick. This made me say to myself, "Self, suck it up and order your CSA box."

This week's box consisted of lots of leafy greens that I never buy on my own: Blue Kale, Siberian Kale, Green Chard, Red Chard, as well as beets, peaches, many zucchinis, and these:
I had to write and ask what they were. (To be clear, I would not have recognized most of the greens, but they were on the packing list, while these were not). They are Ronde de Nice squash--kind of like mini zucchinis, apparently. I would link to a wikipedia page, but it seems they are so exotic that one doesn't yet exist for them.