Share Notes December 8th, 2023
CSA Share Notes:
We’re loving all these nutritious greens, loading us up with vitamins in a very sweets-heavy time of year. It’s helping us keep all things in balance. We hope you’re doing both: enjoying the treats AND treating your body well, all in the right balance.
We’re thinking that Thursday, Dec 21st, we’ll likely take off from CSA harvesting, and give our garden a full week break before we pick things back up after the holidays. Plus many of you will likely be traveling starting Friday the 22nd, so it may not make much sense for us to load you up with a ton of veggies right before beginning holiday celebrations. But we’ll keep you informed by email of our final plans.
We also think we’ll get several more harvests out of our fall garden (we’re thinking maybe 3-4 more?) for our Fall CSA members, but because some of the crops are delayed, many of them won’t be ready until after the turn of the new year. Even though the gregorian calendar says that Fall is over on December 21st, our fall garden will still have a few good boxes coming your way in 2024.
Here’s this week’s vegetable line-up:
- Turnip – Scarlet Queen turnips are rosy pink, beautiful, and delicious. Cook them just like you would traditional purple top turnips. Chop up the greens into one inch ribbons, chop up the roots, dice an onion, mince some garlic, and chop up a couple strips of bacon. Cook the bacon, onion, and garlic together for a bit, till bacon is cooked, but not crispy. Add the chopped turnip roots, sautee about 5-7 minutes till fork tender, toss in the greens and add a few splashes of chicken stock. Cook till the greens are nice and tender. Salt and eat as is, or add a bit of hot sauce, or red pepper flakes, or pepper vinegar that you made this past summer.
- Spicy Spring Mix – This is a wonderful flavorful salad or braising green, with loads of interesting and beautiful Asian greens, offering a blend of textures and colors for a lively salad. Settle it down a bit by using it 50/50 with your leaf lettuce, or some tender kale. Definitely top with sliced radishes.
- Kale – We’ve got gorgeous bunching greens this week. We have a couple of good kale recipes on the blog: roasted squash and kale salad, as well as kale pesto potato salad, but options abound online. We like to make really simple “massaged kale” salads with a bit of strawberry or fresh mango, red onion, and dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar. This week the Large shares received Red Russian kale, Regular shares received curly kale AND Lacinato kale. And Mini shares received Lacinato kale.
- Collard– This crop went to the Large shares this week. This green is excellent cooked exactly like described in the Turnip blurb up top. That’s the proper southern way to do it. But it’ll work really well in any recipe that calls for Kale, too!
- Chard – This went only to the Regular shares this week. This variety is called Bright Lights. It’s closely related to spinach, so feel free to swap it in to a recipe that needs cooked spinach. Make a beef roast in your crock pot and toss in large-torn chard leaves for the last 30 min. to braise. It’s delicious. We also use ours in veggie egg scrambles, in quiches and frittatas, or sauteed and topped with parmesan and pine nuts.
Below are all the items we’re sharing with you today that were not grown by Red Moon Farm:
- Red Radishes from Salt Marsh Farm, Saltillo, TX. These crunchy, delicious, abundant bunches are just heavenly. Enjoy them dipped in melted salted butter, on top of avocado toast sprinkled with sesame seeds, or just snacked on with lemon juice and salt. They’re fantastic!
- Lettuce from Salt Marsh Farm, Saltillo, TX. Green oak leaf heads and red frilly heads of “Salanova” lettuces, excellent in a salad, or atop a leftover turkey sandwich (which was my quick, super satisfying lunch today during CSA packing. Lettuce, radishes, and turnips spilling out- so delish).
- Sweet Potatoes from Tony Philips, Grand Saline, TX. We’ve got the same wonderful sweet potato producer just a couple of miles from Red Moon Farm, Tony Phillips. He’s been in Sweet Potato cultivation for decades and uses no synthetic herbicides or pesticides. Additionally, he never uses post-harvest growth-inhibitors (endocrine disruptors) which you’ll find in regular grocery store tubers.
Veggie Storage tips:
- Everything wants to be washed well before cooking, but keep the dirt on till then, to prevent faster spoilage.
- Sever all roots from their tops -this keeps the roots from turning rubbery- and either discard the greens or save them for your braising pot or next batch of home-made stock.
- Leafy greens and bunched root crops want to be stored fairly dry and sealed up in a container/bag in the fridge.
- Sweet potatoes should be stored at room temperature.
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
