CSA Week 10, 2019

CSA Week 10

This week you MAY have celery! Early Mac apples! peaches, tomatoes, onion, corn, squash, cukes, peppers, eggplant, garlic? bok choi?

Get your tomatoes!! We have a special price for CSA members of $25.case (non-members usually pay $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.

This week we hope to give everyone celery. It is very flavorful and what is referred to as “stringless”. Try it out and see what you think! Naturally, we enjoy it as a dipper, but it is magical in stir fry, soup and roasted. It is quite tall and we usually leave most of the leaves on the head. Use the leaves as flavorful greenery in soup, salad, stuffing other veggies or a roast.

I’m loving on the Early Macs this week. They are nice and crunchy, slightly tart, and the perfect travel food with all the driving I have been doing. The uninformed mistake the cloudy appearance of our fresh fruit as some kind of spray, but not so! The bloom is still on them which means they are beautifully fresh. That bloom is really loads of tiny wax scales that provide some natural protection from insects and disease, while also protecting from desiccation. Cool right?

The beans have been plentiful! 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.

You may get 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 just starting to appear, as well as some of the cabbages – now or soon.

Check out:

Zucchini Recipes (cake, fritters, pizza, soup…) in case you forgot about them 😛
Summer Tian

Celery Soup – tough to do better that this one at Epicurious
Green Gazpacho
Creamy Zucchini Soup – this is pretty much how I make mine, except with actual measurements LOL

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

I had this bit in last year’s letter because we were having a problem with worms in the corn at the time. Thankfully we are not plagues as much as last year (the rain was making it impossible to control) but you might enjoy the little morsel below to satisfy the little Cliff Clavin in all of us.

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.

August is the BEST time to preserve the bounty of the garden. The past few years I have found myself waiting, sometimes to my detriment, for school to begin, when I won’t be “occupied” in the kitchen instead of doing something “fun”. it would be a perfect year to get Faith to help me with the tomatoes, but since she is neither a fan of salsa or any cooked tomatoes, I don’t see that happening. She loves fresh tomatoes, though. Weird. Anyway, I bet I can get her help making zucchini squares and chocolate zucchini cake because she loves to bake AND she like to bring them for school lunch. It’s time to can peaches too!  If you find yourself with a lot of something, don’t forget to expand whatever recipe and freeze it in whatever portions work for you/your family. I made extra stuffed peppers the other day and individually wrapped them for supper for whoever when I am not here, or too tired 🙂

Last week several picked through crops were knocked down and the land prepped for the fall plantings of broccoli, carrots, radishes, etc. It is particularly satisfying, and good looking, because it’s been the perfect growing season for weeds!

Enjoy the Early macs this week – the Paula Reds are next. Last year was the off year for them, so there should be quite a few this season. Coming up: garlic, Chinese cabbage/Napa, leeks, broccoli…

Eat well,

Geneviève Stillman