CSA Week 10, 2018

CSA Week 10

This week you MAY have peaches, tomatoes, onion, corn, squash, cukes, beans, greens, blueberries, peppers, eggplant, garlic? broccoli? bok choi?

Get your tomatoes!! We have a special price for CSA members of $20.case (non-members pay $25-$30 depending on the week). Do you need something else for preserving? Let me know at my email and we will try to fix you up.

*Earworm warning: you know how I have been writing about the rain and how we cannot get on the fields with trucks or tractors? Well, we have been unable to spray for Corn Earworm moths – the flying jerks who lay their eggs in the corn silk. Subsequently, there are earworms in a lot of the corn now. Here’s what you do: cut it off the top of the corn and be done with it. More about earworms in Farm Dirt

The beans have been awesome! You know most CSA do not include beans, peas or berries in their packed CSA shares because it is so labor intensive. It’s not only the picking, but the packaging up for your box.bag, it all takes time. Enjoy the garlic – it’s still in the drying stage so can be excessively sticky to peel. it’s SO good though!. I can’t help but nibble on it as I am slicing it, a hard-to-disguise fact. Broccoli is happening now or soon, the cauliflower is still a ways off. Glenn says some people may have seen bok choi last week, but I did not field any questions about it, so it’s official, you all passed Veggie ID 101! 🙂

Tomato Pie

I’m keen on making a tomato tart with Boursin or goat cheese spread on a baked pastry crust and topped with sliced tomatoes, but this is quite a bit more substantial and very rich. Be sure to drain the tomatoes well.

• 1 pie shell partially or fully baked
• 2 medium-large tomatoes
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• ½ cup Greek yogurt or sour cream
•  2 Tbs chopped basil
• ¾  cup shredded Cheddar cheese
• ¼  cup diced onion
• Pepper to taste

Peel the tomatoes, slice thinly and place on layers of toweling to drain. Pat with more paper towels to absorb as much liquid as possible. Mix together mayo, yogurt/sour cream, basil, ½ cup cheese and pepper.

Sprinkle remaining cheese over bottom of crust. Arrange tomato slices on top of cheese. Sprinkle onion over tomatoes. Cover completely with mayo mixture and smooth top.

Bake at 375 for 40-50 minutes. Let rest at least 20 minutes before slicing.

Peach Salsa

3 peaches diced
2-3 medium tomatoes diced
1 bell pepper finely diced
hot peppers of your choice finely diced – you are in control of the heat!
1 small onion (I used 1/4 of one of ours) finely diced
2 T cilantro chopped (I just threw down this amount, use more/less/none depending how you feel about cilantro…I sub parsley or basil based on crowd)
2 Tbsp lemon or lime juice
S & P to taste

Toss all together and enjoy with chips, on fish or pork. Fish tacos anyone?

Busy Farmwife Stir-fry

Start your rice if you want it.

Wash and chop any bunch or head of your Asian greens. Heat 2 T of oil and a splash of toasted sesame oil in a skillet (yes, you can use your wok if you have one). If you have an onion to slice, or a couple cloves of garlic, a hot or sweet pepper, or ginger add them to your hot oil and sauté for a couple minutes. Add your chopped greens (please be careful of spattering when the water clinging to your greens hits the hot oil). Toss ’round and season with a little soy sauce and rice vinegar.

This is a fine side or full meal on some rice. It takes less time to make from start to finish than it takes to cook the rice 😉

That’s the super simple and fast version. If you have oyster and or hoisin sauce, by all means use it to boost flavor. Want sauce instead of just juice? Mix 1-2 T cornstarch with equal water (or broth, soy sauce, miso…) and stir into your stir-fry at end of cooking.

Check out:

Fresh Salsa
Toasted-Oat Shortcakes with Basil-Scented Peaches

Earworms, you know, those annoying songs that get stuck in your head and they spiral round and round until you want to scream. Even typing this has put that Kars 4 Kids song in my head. DARNIT!!!

Corn Earworms are native to the Americas and have always been a problem. Since corn/maize has been grown in the Americas for about 7000 years, and the corn earworm is native, we can assume it’s been a nuisance for about 6999 years (ha, ha). From The Wilderness Trail:The Ventures and Adventures of the Pennsylvania Traders on the Allegheny Path, with Some New Annals of the Old West, and the Records of Some Strong Men and Some Bad Ones, Volume 2, By Charles Augustus Hanna: “The Choktah have a remote but considerable Town called Yowanne which is the name of a worm that is very destructive to corn in a wet season…” and from The History of Northampton there is an excerpt from a letter written July 5, (1667?) by John Pynchon,  ” We are sorely afflicted by caterpillars or such like worms eating our corn….”

We also have to contend with the  European Corn Borer (ECB), which is NOT native, so early Americans did not have to deal with that culprit. Sadly, both our native earworm and the ECB have migrated to all continents and are everyone’s problem children.

So, we shall deal with it!

The apples are ripening up and Glenn thinks there will be Molly Delicious in the coming week. Molly Delicious are a heritage apple variety also known as Sheepnose. I love their crisp sweetness. Normally they are followed by the Paula Reds, but this is the off year for those early apples, and not much of a crop. What’s that mean? If next year is a “normal” growing year, there will be loads of Paula Reds! After the Molly’s we will be picking Redcorts, Cortland, McIntosh, Macoun, Golden Delicious, Empire, Ida Red, Ben Davis, Zestar…not necessarily in that order.

I’ll be trying to get my own food put by soon, tomatoes, peaches and salsa canned, beans, zucchini squares and eggplants frozen- so much to do!

Eat well,

Geneviève Stillman