Photograph from thebittenword.com on Flickr

For last week's Weekend Cook and Tell we asked all of you to share your stories of CSAs (community supported agriculture) for a challenge we called Hooray for CSA! While opinions ran strong about the value of CSA over farmers' markets, many of you shared wonderful experiences and recipes based around that weekly vegetable pick-up while others gave some pretty strong arguments against them. Let's take a look at some of our freshest stories and thoughts on CSAs.

Twistie is in love with her CSA largely because it's helped her husband "appreciate vegetables he'd always assumed he would hate or had had a single bad experience with." One of the highlights of her CSA experience was an all vegetarian dinner for friends that started with a green salad with oranges, avocado, radishes, and cilantro, kale risotto, and finished up with a pear tart, every single fruit and veggie coming from her weekly delivery.

Taking a hands-on approach, lilmynx13's CSA, Country Roots Farm in Colorado invites members to come and work on the farm and hosts a spring meet-up. lilmynx13 is wary of any CSA that sends out veggies that "smell like a store" or heavens forbid, washes them for you!

AnthonyC's CSA share "encourages me to remember to cook and eat real food," and keeps him away processed foods. He also likes the urgency of having fresh produce that "needs" to be used within a week.

RobertaJ sees her weekly delivery as a "Christmas present waiting to be explored." What began as a community garden project has expanded to offer produce to both restaurants and residents of the low income housing in her area. Their incredible Southern California selection of fruits and vegetables have included avocados, artichokes, cabbage, guavas, cherimoyas, figs, and turnips, all of which have greatly expanded RobertaJ's culinary repertoire.

heddylamar's CSA encourages members to drop by and help with the farm work as well as letting folks choose their own selection of vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Sounds great, right? Even better is the fact that the CSA donates all excess to local food banks.

Not too put anyone off of community supported agriculture but RJ Foodie's story was too incredible not to mention. Apparently RJ Foodie received nothing but chard for an entire summer!

Thanks to everyone who shared their CSA stories for this week's Weekend Cook and Tell challenge. Be sure to head over to Talk and read about next week's challenge: Foods on a Stick.