Share Notes May 7 & 9

Share Notes May 7 & 9

CSA Share Notes:

Here’s another great harvest from our garden. New crops are maturing and we’re excited to give you some new variety in your boxes.

Here’s your vegetable line up:

  • Kale—For Regular and Large shares. Regular shares received Curly Kale, Large shares received Lacinato, a chef favorite.  Make a crispy batch of well-seasoned kale chips, or try a massaged kale salad, to which you can add anything. I like it with some fresh fruit like mango or strawberry and a really good EVOO.
  • Collard—Mini Shares. This crop is excellent braised with some red pepper flakes and a tiny bit of smoked pork (bacon, ham, smoked sausage, pancetta)
  • Swiss Chard—Regular and Large shares are enjoying these gorgeous rainbow leaves this week. We really like this great pine nut and parmesan recipe with or without the raisins (in fact we ate it Wednesday night. It’s a spring standard in our kitchen)
  • Spinach—A bag of fresh, iron-rich spinach. These are not baby leaves, they’re huge and mature so it’s better for cooking than raw salads. You can combine it with the chard however you prepare that, or use it in spinach quesadillas, veggie lasagna, or chop it up a bit into a salad.
  • Kohlrabi—This is the crunchy, nutty, sweet bulb of the brassica family (related to broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, brussel sprout). Think of them as broccoli stems but more delicious. This is excellent in a slaw or a stir fry, or even a cream soup, but they’re also really great raw with salt and lemon.   You discard the leaves and peel the tough outer peel from the bulb, slice, and eat.
  • Garlic Scapes—A small handful for everyone.  This is the flowering stalk from the center of the garlic plant. You take it off the plant to allow it to focus its energy on growing a good bulb rather than growing a showy flower (although garlic flowers are really, really pretty!) For these you’ll want to trim away any woody parts as well as the tougher pointy end above the flower bud, then chop all tender parts up nice and small. You can use them raw in place of green onions for a mild garlicky topping, or sauté them in place of garlic into any other prepared dish, like a Mother’s Day quiche, perhaps? Scapes are evidence that our garlic is about a month away from being ready to harvest!
  • Head Lettuce—3 different types today: Green Adriana boston lettuce and a Rouxai red leaf lettuce for both the Large and Regular shares, and a Skyphos lettuce for the Mini shares. Skyphos is my favorite lettuce and is kind of a cross between an iceburg and a butter lettuce. They’re gorgeously colored and really yummy but difficult to grow. We don’t usually have a whole lot of them.
  • Romaine—Large Shares only. We get questions pretty regularly about recalled romaine.  No need to worry about recalled romaine when you’re buying straight from a super small scale local farmer. We aren’t storing or shipping our lettuce in any sort of conditions that could cross contaminate it with e-coli or salmonella, and we are extremely careful about our fertilizer applications being MONTHS before we plant. Our romaine isn’t recalled!
  • Turnips—Large Shares only. These are our utterly incredible Hakurei salad turnip.  Yes, you can cook them, but give them a try raw. They’re astonishingly delicious (coming from someone who doesn’t like turnip!) They’re a difficult crop to grow as the bugs simply adore them (You’ll notice the leaves are pretty holey), so we may not have them for long.  If you prefer to cook them, try them mashed with butter, or roasted.
  • Radishes—Regular Shares only. Easter Egg radishes, many of which are giant, but are still crisp and crunchy. We like to dip them into hummus, but we really like to put them on top of a slice of avocado-smeared Sola bread with a sprinkling of sea salt.
  • Carrots—Mini Shares only.  These are still left over from our winter planting! We’re lucky to have just a few left for you, as our spring planting of carrots takes forever to mature. We should be harvesting more carrots for the whole group in about 3 weeks if they continue to do well

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.  Everything will need a gentle washing before cooking, but leave the dirt on until you’re ready to use them to prevent spoilage.  Things to look forward to: Watermelon radishes are nearly ready, as are beets and broccoli! Maybe 1-3 weeks out on each of those.  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:  Curly Kale, spinach, kohlrabi, Swiss Chard, 2nd row: Garlic scapes, Rouxai lettuce, Adriana Boston lettuce, Easter Egg radishes.

Large Share

Large Share top left to right:  Lacinato kale, garlic scapes, spinach, kohlrabi, Swiss chard.  2nd row: Rouxai lettuce, Adriana Boston lettuce, romaine, and Hakurei turnips

 Mini Share

Mini share: Skyphos lettuce, Kohlrabi, garlic scapes, carrots, and collard greens.