Meat Christmas

Kelly is excited the moment I pick him up from work. He steels himself, though, and falls in beside me. Walking to the car, we exchange sideways glances and I pull my scarf further up to hide my face, trying to look nonchalant. "You got the stuff?" he asks. I nod and motion him towards the car. "It's in the trunk," I say. He gets in and we drive back to his place, fully aware of the items hidden in their bags. I pull into a spot away from prying eyes and pops the trunk. He gets the items out and hugs them to his chest. We're silent all the way upstairs to the safety of his apartment. "Alright," he says as soon as the door is shut and locked behind him, "let's see what we got."

This is my first CSA. Before Kelly, the only CSA I knew was the Community Service Advisor in college. That morning, I drove all the local middle school and approached the unmarked, white van. I gave Kelly's name and got a plastic bag in return. Knowing it would be five pounds, I was a little disappointed that it didn't strain a single muscle (there's something about the word "pounds" that lends a sense of gravity and mass--a bit of oomph that would cause some effort instead of swinging it at my side as I walked back to the car). As I promised, I waited for Kelly to get out before we unwrapped our meat Christmas, eager to see what CSA Santa brought us.

Kelly digs into the bag, eager to see what we got. He oohs and ahhs at the pork chops thin enough to be prosciutto, a lump of chicken breast the size of my fist, and a unknown hunk of beef that Kel has already designated for braising and smothering. He tosses me the chicken breasts and I put them down on the table, eager to decide what to do...my limited cookbook flipping its pages through my mind.