I’m a planner. Proud of it. One of those people who goes over recipes, makes a shopping list, and stocks the larder weekly so evening meals and “planned-over” food for take-to-work lunches keep us well fed and happy.

But into my planner world fell a wee challenge: The surprise of the farm share.

A neighbour in Toronto has signed up for a farm share from Clovercroft Farm in Paris, Ontario. Every week, she and many others in our neighbourhood get a delivery of a dozen eggs, plus a selection of vegetables ready for harvest at the farm.

I’ve always been an advocate of following the seasons of fruit and vegetables, as much as is possible in a climate where we have long winters. I ate my weight in Ontario strawberries and asparagus in June.

My generous neighbour was travelling for two weeks in July and asked if we could use their farm share. I buy vegetables! I like to cook! Why not?

Delivery No. 1 brought, along with the eggs, two heads of broccoli, a few small yellow beets and their greens, a big whack of garlic scapes, a box of peas, a bunch of the biggest radishes I’ve ever seen (each the size of my two thumbs together), and three purple thingies that defied my vegetable knowledge.

I did, dear reader, what many of us do these days when faced with a mystery: took a photo of it and posted it on Twitter.

“Sputnik,” replied one.

Said a dad of three young children, “3-year-old Ted agrees, it’s a spider.”

Knowledgeable folks did pile on that this was, indeed, purple kohlrabi. The most enthusiastic chap gave a bit of a recipe: “Dice it up and put it on a salad. Texture is like an apple but pretty sweet.”

And thus began the quest to Use the Vegetables.

Evening one: one head of broccoli went into a raw broccoli salad – chop it into bite-sized pieces, add diced red onion, some raisins, and a yoghurt-mayonnaise dressing. The yellow beans were piling up in our own little garden, so boiled some of those. Cooked the beets after dinner for later use.

I entered the rest of the vegetables (except the familiar peas) into a Google search and guffawed when this came up: Buzzfeed on “31 things to do with confusing CSA (community sustainable agriculture) vegetables.” Farm shares, in other words.

Evening two: out for the night. No cooking.

Evening three: Got the peas out of their pods, resulting in a scant half-cup of peas that we ate raw as pre-dinner nibbles. A recipe I found for beet greens and scapes called for only three scapes to be sautéed as part of the mix. I had 12. Added one extra, but eight not-so-little scapes went back to the fridge.

Reading ahead on something – anything–  to do with the purple kohlrabi, I came across a purple kohlrabi-and-carrot slaw that also used cilantro, which grows in our little garden. However, the recipe also called for one-quarter of a red cabbage and the last thing I needed was another vegetable that’s challenging to use up, so decided  the recipe’s “one large” kohlrabi equalled the three medium-small ones I had and I would balance this with an equal amount of carrot.

Evening four: 
Made the kohlrabi slaw, using for the first time ever the shredding disc on my food processor. The three kohlrabi and balancing four small carrots made a lot of slaw. We had been travelling outside the city during the day and I could not resist picking up the first of Ontario sweet corn on sale at a roadside stand.

Evening five: Leftover slaw. Steamed broccoli head No. 2. Sautéed the small yellow beets cooked on day one to heat them up.

Evening six: Leftover corn and sliced radish with herbs and dressing made a tasty salad (although hardly made a dent in the huge bunch of radishes). I took the remaining garlic scapes to make a pesto for a future meal, using walnuts already in the cupboard and Parmesan. The purple climbing beans had come on strong over the past couple days in the garden, so had that harvest for dinner and lunch leftovers.

We hadn’t touched the eggs as both weekend days over this stretch, when we usually have an egg-based brunch, featured lunches out. And so, as Farm Share bag No. 2 arrived, we were up to two dozen eggs in the fridge – farm-fresh, so confident they can last for awhile compared with eggs that have been sitting around in grocery stores.

However, this bag had little in the way of veggie mystery. Two garlic cloves and four small white onions went into the pantry. A head of romaine lettuce provided a base for a work lunch (add more radishes!), and a small green cabbage gave my newly discovered shredding blade in the food processor another workout to make a more traditional coleslaw. A pattypan squash that will keep for the weekend and a small packet of herbs, including a few lavender stems, rounded out the package.

I don’t think I’d get a Farm Share ongoing: with having some garden crops of my own, and balancing meal prep with paid work obligations, it’s easier to plan once a week rather than having to course-correct to use up vegetable surprises. Still, if ever a kohlrabi comes into my life again, I’ll know I and my shredder disc can make something wonderful.