CSA Share Notes:

Week 2 is here and it’s delicious!

Your vegetable line-up:

• Kale — Large shares received our Red Russian kale, tender and perfect for a raw salad or a saute. Regular shares received our Winterbor kale, the crinnkly type. And Mini shares received Lacinato or Dinosaur kale, my favorite for soups.
• Bell Peppers — Larges and Regulars received our small bell pepper harvest this week. This crops is beginning to slow down for the year, but we’re still getting a few.
• Italian Peppers — These long, slender peppers are so delicious, with no hint of spice. They’re great for fresh-eating, using with dips, making rings for homemade pizza, or cutting into long strips for a batch of fajitas. And everyone got several this week!  Enjoy many more for the next few weeks until we get a frost!
• Hot Peppers — Regular shares received 3 jalapenos, Mini shares received 1 jalapeno and a poblano (don’t confuse your poblano with your Italian peppers! That’d be a hot surprise!) Large shares received a bag of Shishito peppers, a wonderful mild snacking pepper that is great blistered in a hot cast iron and served as an horsdourve.
• Okra — For the Large shares only. This is our lovely heirloom Hill Country Red okra, super delicious. Okra loves high heat so roast it hot or blister in a cast iron. It’s also wonderful raw! This could be the last of this crop. It’s getting pretty tired, and there’s a cool front heading in this weekend which will slow it down significantly.
• Acorn Squash — We turned two of these into a delicious stuffed acorn squash entree this week. So yummy!
• Asian Mustard Mix — For Large shares and mini shares. This frilly, spicy salad green is super flavorful! It’s great raw but can also be sauteed if you prefer your greens cooked. Perfect to pair with your kale.
• Radish — French Breakfast radish for the Regular and Mini shares, Red Rover radishes for the large shares. Slice atop a well-buttered piece of sourdough, or some avocado toast, and sprinkle with some fancy salt and you’re in for a treat.
• Garlic — a bulb or two of our last yield of summer garlic. Yes, the bulbs are teeny- they’re the last ones of the season- but they’ll pack a lot of flavor for a meal or two!
• Turnips — For the Mini shares this week. Lots more coming!  This variety of turnip is actually a FRESH EATING Salad turnip. You don’t cook them! You snack on them like radishes. They are so delicious and nutty and a bit sweet. If you think you don’t like turnips, don’t be afraid to try these, they’re so good!
• Persimmons — Grown by Jessica’s mom and dad here at Red Moon Farm, these are a wonderful fall treat. Make SURE you let them ripen before diving in, or you’ll get a bitter, astringent, inedible bite.  They should be slightly soft to the touch, and a nice full orange color when ripe. They’re excellent raw but you can find awesome recipes using them in fall roasted fruit dishes.  I often request this recipe for my birthday, and we’ve made it lots of different ways.

Items from other neighboring farms:

• Colin Hendee at Emory Market Gardens — Our friend Colin grew your lettuce. Large shares received a bag of cut mixed lettuce, and Regular and Mini shares received mini heads. He is a fantastic grower with just as strict a standard to organic growing as we have. Also like us, they do not hold an organic certification, but you can absolutely consider his crops organic. If you like his crops, you can often find them at the White Rock Lake farmers market on the East side of Dallas. He’s a great grower worth supporting!
• Tony Philips Sweet Potatoes — Our friend and neighbor Tony Philips grows the regions best sweet potatoes, just a couple of miles from Red Moon Farm. These are fantastic, sweet, with a long storage life. Enjoy them on the regular. You’ll get lots more throughout the fall!
  • A few notes about Tony’s Practices: He is not aiming to be organic, so some years the above-ground parts of the plants have non-organic products used on them, however, the roots never have anything applied to them.
  • Usual standard practice in commercial sweet potato production is to use sprout-inhibitors on the crop post-harvest, and these chemical compounds are known to be extremely harmful to the thyroid and other hormonal systems in the human body.** (It’s why, when we can’t get them from a local grower and have to rely on a grocery store, our family chooses to only buy organic potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and garlic.) Well, Lucky us: Tony Philips never, ever uses sprout-inhibitors. His potatoes simply get a clean water bath to rinse the ETX sand off of them, so we eat them with confidence, and we believe you can, too.

Veggie Storage tips:

• Everything wants to be washed well before cooking, but keep the dirt on till then, to prevent faster spoilage.
• Acorn squash and sweet potatoes like to be out at room temperature in a dry spot.
• All leafy greens, the radishes, peppers, okra, and eggplant all want to be in your fridge. Seal them up in a bag or container to retain moisture for longest storage life.

We’d love to hear stories and recipes of your culinary adventures this week. Tag us on Instagram or Facebook, showing us how you’ve used your CSA share.

Your farmers, Jess & Justin

Regular Share

Regular Share top left to right: Salad turnips, curly kale, 2 head lettuce, French Breakfast radishes, (2nd row) Italian peppers, bell pepper, acorn squash, persimmon, and garlic, (3rd row) sweet potatoes, and jalapenos.

Large Share

Large Share top left to right: radishes, bagged lettuce, Red Russian kale, garlic, Italian peppers over bell peppers (2nd row) okra, acorn squash over persimmon, sweet potatoes, shishito peppers, and Asian mustard mix.

Mini Share

Mini Share top left to right: Lacinato kale, head lettuce, Asian mustard mix, French Breakfast radishes, (2nd row) Italian peppers, garlic, persimmon, jalapeno, poblano, (3rd row) acorn squash, and sweet potatoes.