Share Notes 8-15-19
CSA Share Notes:
Welcome to your final share of the summer season! Thank you for coming along for the ride with us. With a 2 week late start, we still managed to deliver 7 solid weeks of shares, which we’re really pleased the garden held out this long. We’re already hard at work getting seeds in the ground for the fall season, so if you want in on that, sign up for the next season. Registration will stay open until we are full, and we’re about half way there.
Now on to this week’s vegetable line-up:
- Cucumbers—Everyone received a few pickling and slicing cucumbers. Crunchy and delicious.
- Sungolds—We had enough for the large shares to all receive sungold tomatoes. Some of them are a little under ripe, so give them a couple of days to ripen up and they’ll be delicious.
- San Marzano Tomatoes—We were able to give you all nice big bags of this tomato. I can’t believe we have so many of these so late in the summer, but they did splendidly this season. Some of them are under ripe, so give those a couple of days to finish ripening.
- Potatoes—The very last of our yellow potatoes. We’ve been saving them to give you on the last day. These are excellent roasted, or we’ve been dong a lot of “smashed” potatoes lately. Excellent with our fresh garlic.
- Garlic—We’re working on growing this crops as a larger scale wholesale crop, gradually working our way up to a full garden zone. You seperate the cloves and plant them in the fall, and each clove becomes a bulb. So you can get about a 6-fold increase each year. We have a few thousand cloves to plant this year, so next summer we should harvest a few thousand bulbs! We found this year’s garlic crop to look a bit ugly (they didn’t like the heavy moisture of spring) but they taste absolutely delicious. Enjoy.
- Sweet Italian Peppers—Large and Regular shares received just a small handful of these long, slender peppers. They’re sweet and delicious. Don’t confuse them with the Cayenne peppers, which are similar in shape, but much smaller. Use our picture below to help you. Use them like bell peppers, or fry them. Were using ours with fajitas this week.
- Sweet Bell Peppers—Both shares received a whole bunch of these peppers this week, green and purple, and a few red and orange. We enjoy bells chopped with cucumbers and tomatoes to make a delicious salad.
- Hot Peppers—Large shares received a whole bunch of jalapeños and Regular shares received some cayenne and jalapeños, plenty for making stuffed hot peppers. If you don’t use them very quickly, store them in the fridge. They last practically forever.
- Okra—We had enough to give to all of you this week. These are all unique, beautiful, and the long slender red okra as well as the Star-of-David okra stay tender, even when harvested a little big. Important tip: we pick them tender, but the larger okra begin to harden up off the plant if you don’t eat them soon, so refrigerate and use them up by the end of the weekend. I love them grilled, all by themselves, or on skewers with other summer veggies. If you didn’t try it yet, give this Indian okra and tomato dish a try. I use ground spices where it calls for whole seeds, as I never have whole cumin or mustard seeds on hand.
- Onions—A whole bunch. You can always use onions!
Veggie Storage tips:
Remember, tomatoes want to be at room temp, NOT in the fridge. Onions, garlic, and potatoes also want to be at room temp. Keep them in a cool place on the counter. Your cucumbers, okra, and peppers, will all last longest if stored in the fridge, although they are fine at room temp for a few days. Everything will need a gentle washing before cooking, but leave the dirt on until you’re ready to use them to prevent spoilage.
We’d love to hear stories and recipes of your culinary adventures this week. Send us a note or post a comment of how you’ve used your CSA share.
Your farmers,
Jess & Justin
Regular Share
