CSA Share Notes:

Welcome to your very first week of Spring CSA!  We hope you are as excited as we are about the crops coming your way this season.

Here’s this week’s vegetable line up

• Kale—Regular shares received a lovely small bunch of Red Russian kale (flat, oak leaf), and the Large shares received a bag of curly kale. Try our Rainbow kale salad with lentils, or this massaged kale salad, to which you can add any number of delicious toppings. I love it with just fresh strawberries or seasonal fruit and a bit of feta.
• Spinach—A bag of fresh, iron-rich baby spinach for everyone.
• Arugula—A bag for everyone this week.  These leaves are super flavorful and are excellent paired with parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and fresh or dried fruit and a sweet dressing to cut through the peppery arugula bite.
• Beets—Regular and Large shares both received a bunch of our dark red beets.  Remember the greens are so delicious, too and boy are there a lot of them! With beets, roasting is definitely the way to go, as the high heat makes them so much sweeter. Drizzle in oil, wrap in foil, 400 degrees, about 1-1.5 hours depending on size. We then saute the beet greens in a pan with lots of caramelized onion and garlic, then toss the roots and leaves together with a citrus or balsamic glaze.
• Radishes— for everyone. These are French Breakfast radish, a wonderful, crunchy heirloom with a very mild spice. We like to slice them thin on sandwiches or salads, or dip into hummus, but our favorite is to just snack on them sliced thin with sea salt and lemon juice.  FYI, radish tops are edible! You can use them in a salad or cook them like kale or turnip greens.
• Garlic Scapes—This is a very special, once-a-year treat. The garlic plants begin to send up their flower stalk towards the sunshine in the spring time, but in order to get as large a head of garlic as possible, you need to pull out the flower stalk as soon as it appears so the plant doesn’t focus any energy on flowering, but rather recommits itself to growing that huge, pungent root bulb.   The scape is the central garlic stalk that would become a flower if we allowed it to grow. It’s mildly garlicky, tender, and so so delicious.  To prepare, chop the whole thing up into small bits (discarding any parts that are too woody) and saute in the place of garlic in any recipe. The flavor is much more mild, so use about 3-4x as much as you would garlic. If you’re into pickling, these make an incredible lacto-fermented snack. That’s what we’re doing with the extras this weekend.  These also make a fantastic pesto with lots of nuts and parmesan.
• Turnip Greens—A southern classic.  These are the thinnings we took from our thickly seeded turnip row. By removing these (and you guys enjoying them in your kitchen) we’re providing our still-growing turnips with the space they need to form nice big roots.  In about 3 weeks, we should have really nice turnips to send, too!  If you haven’t cooked turnip greens before, wash them well, chop off the baby root, and discard any yellowing leaves, then coarsely chop the greens.  Saute a couple of chopped strips of bacon or leftover Sunday ham with a few big handfuls of diced onion and garlic till softened, then add your greens and about 1 cup of chicken stock, salt, black pepper corns, and a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes.  Simmer and stir the greens down until they’re as softened as you like them. Eat with a side of buttery cornbread.

Veggie Storage tips:

Everything will keep longest stored in the fridge sealed up in produce bags.  All root crops should be severed from their tops to keep the roots from getting rubbery, and the greens stored separately, sealed up to stay fresh.  Garlic scapes will be happiest treated as your greens, kept cold in the fridge sealed up so they don’t dry out.  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

Regular Share top left to right: French Breakfast Radish, arugula, spinach, Red Russian Kale, (2nd row) Garlic scapes, beets, and turnip greens.

Large Share

Large Share top left to right:  French Breakfast Radish, arugula, Curly kale, spinach, (2nd row) Garlic scapes, beets, and turnip greens.

 Mini Share

Mini share: French Breakfast Radish, spinach, arugula, (2nd row) Garlic scapes, and turnip greens.

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