CSA Week 11, 2018

CSA Week 11

This week you MAY have apples, peaches, tomatoes, onion, corn, squash, cukes, beans, lettuce, peppers, eggplant, broccoli? chard? tomatillos?

I am hoping to get tomatillos into boxes this week so you can make a little salsa verde! Sadly, the blueberries are winding down, but the apples are getting cranked up.

*STILL IN FORCE: 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.

If you cannot handle a few creatures, if we are present, please feel free to remove the corn from your box and leave it with us. We just don’t want you to leave your corn at a location where it cannot be rescued. Thanks. Someone asked what we spray on the corn…well, nothing right now 😉 BUT, if we could have gotten on the field to spray when the moths were laying their eggs, we use Spinosad or pyrethrum (both on the OMRI list).

While Tomatillos are in the nightshade family with tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, they are still not a tomato 🙂 Remove the papery husks and rinse before using.

Salsa Verde

Broccoli Soup

I posted this years ago and just hunted it down in my old WP blog 🙂 Simple and highly adjustable soup! Make it vegetarian or vegan too!!!

ZsaZsa’s Corn ‘Oysters”

~an old New England dish.

• 1 egg beaten
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1/2 C flour
• 1/2 t. baking powder
• kernels scraped from 3 ears of corn
• 1 T. melted butter

Add all the above together-adding milk to make a heavy pancake batter. Melt some butter or bacon fat in a skillet or griddle. Drop batter onto hot pan by serving spoon size dollops. Turn down to Med heat. Brown, turn and brown other side. Serve with applesauce or maple syrup. Make about 8 ‘oysters’

Fresh Summer Corn Chowder
4 ears corn, cut off the cob
1/2 large onion, minced
1 T butter
2 cups diced potatoes
1 cup water
3-4 springs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
4T flour
2 cups milk
In large saucepan, saute onion in butter for 3 mins or until tender. Add the potatoes, water, thyme, salt, pepper and corn. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 mins or until potatoes are tender. In small bowl, whisk flour and milk until smooth, then gradually stir into soup. Bring to a simmer and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Yield: 4 servings.

I thought this recipe looked good Roasted Zucchini and Tomatillo Salsa Verde

Even though the farm is a mess, you should come out and pick some berries or apples, we even had a group on the prowl for hot peppers last week. You can try to tie it into another activity out this way, like Old Sturbridge Village, Rock House Reservation, brewery hopping… You can find out more about what goes on in our neck of the woods here.

I left a head of broccoli in a plastic bag on my counter for two days…as you might imagine, it was quite yellow. Broccoli has a very high rate of respiration and breaks down its own carbohydrates quickly to produce energy. Chlorophyll is used up quickly AND ethylene gas is produced.  At room temperature and high humidity, broccoli has a very short shelf life. Broccoli should be stored very cold, in a bag that breathes a little (lest you trap the ethylene in), and not with fruit (big ethylene producers). Other crops that suffer from high respiration rates are, surprise! sweet corn, peas and mushrooms. Crops that suffer quickly from ethylene damage include lettuces (the russet spotting at wounds), spotting and pitting on summer squashes, cucumbers, peppers…. Having said that, it’s not harmful, you can still eat the lettuce, squash, cukes, even the yellow broccoli is technically fine. This damage can happen quickly and it is good to know it is not going to hurt you if it happens…which I hope it does not!

School starts for Faith Monday the 27th. Am I the only one who thinks that’s gross? I miss the days when Labor Day was the last hurrah of Summer and school started AFTER that. Reid has been back at school for a couple weeks already; he’s an RA this year and, apparently, it is not the same as when I went to school. We miss him at the markets he worked and at Southboro/Framingham CSA but are glad he is making good choices about working and paying for school!

School is starting? Cue the weather change and apples! That weather change always induces a little melancholy in me: I am sad to see my children return to school, I know the summer has come to an end, I have so much “putting by” to do, and I am seldom ready for the Fall…or Winter. No worries, I will muddle through, put on a sweater, accept the new schedule, preserve what I can, and enjoy stuffing my face on all-things-apple!

Hopefully, this new, dry air will also dry up the fields enough to get back on them and prep for our late Fall crops we depend on to sustain our stall at the Boston Public Market. There’s still time to get the last cole crops and storage roots planted.

Curt and Halley will be gearing up for their Winter CSA and Kate will be busy with turkeys and Thanksgiving. I love that, between all of us, we can feed you for so much of the year!

Eat well,

Geneviève Stillman