CSA Share Notes:

Welcome to week 3 of our Mini Winter CSA. We’re grateful for the abundant sunshine and warmth, but we know that weather can turn on a dime during Feb. and March, so we’re all just going with the flow of whatever Mother Nature brings our ways.

We are confident that we have at least one more harvest for you from our winter plantings, and possibly more. We’ve give y’all most of the root crops and brassicas, so we have a smaller number of crops to select from. After our next harvest in mid-March, we’ll assess and be able to tell if there is enough left to make any more good boxes for y’all between now and the start of our big Spring season in April. Just stay tuned via email and you’ll be in the loop.

Here’s this week’s vegetable line-up:

• Arugula Flowers – This crop is such a fun treat. Use these beautiful and delicious edible flowers as a salad topping this week. just pick them off the stem and use them as beautiful garnish. Store them in a glass of water on your counter like you would any flower.
• Brussels Sprouts – This crop is so difficult to grow successfully in our climate. It wants long day length (summer time) coinciding with cool temperatures (not here!) Most of the brussel sprouts in the grocery store come from northern latitudes. But every once in a while we have a winter with enough sunshine to produce some good sprouts for us. We’re so excited to have some for you this year. We don’t have a ton, so we suggest you treat them like the specialty item they are for this climate- like perhaps roast them and then use them as a salad topping.  
• Spinach – This crop is just gorgeous. Rich and dark green.  We prefer our spinach cooked to break down some of the oxalates that can be hard on the kidneys. We made a wonderful creamed spinach soup, cooking down some shallots and garlic in plenty of grass fed butter, added a little lemon zest and freshly grated nutmeg, filled the pot with raw spinach leaves and about a cup of chicken bone broth, and cooked it down till it was just wilted and still very bright green. We added a generous pour of heavy cream and pureed it into the most gorgeous bowl of Irish green soup. It was wonderful.
• Lettuce Mix – This versatile salad mix is the perfect base for all your salad dreams and schemes. You can pick out the largest leaves to use on burgers and other sandwiches, or chop some up fine for taco toppings, but in our house, we’re all about the giant salad for dinner.
  • Smoked Salmon caesar salad with loads of parm
  • Southwest style with charred corn, black beans, avocado, and toasted pepitas
  • Blue cheese, bacon, pecan, and roasted winter squash or carrot with a creamy balsamic
  • Feta, kalamata, cucumber, red onion and cherry tomato (we enjoy this style most in July when summer produce is at it’s best! Unfortunately tomatoes and lettuce do not mature together in our climate)
  • Strawberry, goat cheese, roasted beets, pepitas, poppyseed dressing
  • This Paula Deen white wine and cheese dressing is a fave in our house and is excellent with salad toppings like mushrooms, colorful peppers, cucumber, fresh berries, apples, toasted nuts or seeds, and lots more parmesan

• Kale – We’ve got gorgeous leafy greens this week. Bagged curly kale for all the shares. All the greens have increased their sugar content to protect themselves from frost damage, and boy has it made the leaves extra delicious! Check out our roasted squash and kale salad, as well as our rainbow kale salad.
• Cabbage – Everyone received a big, flat Tendersweet cabbage, and either an Alcosa or a purple cabbage, The Alcosa are savoy-leaved cabbages, crinkly and perfect for holding any dressing you top it with. These are all perfect for a slaw to pair with pulled pork sliders this weekend. Last week we did a delicious Asian peanut salad with grilled chicken.
• Carrots – A mixed bunch of our over wintered carrots, packed with high sugar from all the frosts they’ve survived. Enjoy each color, yellow, red, orange.
• Swiss Chard –  It’s excellent braised and served with beef, or roasted in a hot oven and topped with parmesan and pine nuts.

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, cabbages, broccoli, bunched root crops, etc. want to be stored fairly dry and sealed up in a container/bag in the fridge.

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

 

Today’s Regular Share: Left to Rt (top row): Spinach, Swiss chard, curly kale, leaf lettuce, (2nd row) Brussels Sprouts, 2 cabbage, and carrots.

 

Large Share

Today’s Large Share: Left to Rt (top row): Spinach, Swiss chard, curly kale, leaf lettuce, (2nd row) Brussels Sprouts, 2 cabbage, arugula flowers, and carrots.