CSA Week 5
The Fabulous Fruit CSA starts this week! Woo Hoo! Tomato peeps, your CSA was set to start this week as well, but your farmer was not happy with the quality of the heirloom tomatoes so far and thought it best to hold off a week. The heirloom tomatoes, in particular, look pretty roughdue to the cool wet weather of June.
Things you MAY have in your box/bag this week: cucumbers, summer squash, kale or chard, lettuce, blueberries, and beans…
It’s time for bulk orders of cucumbers or squashes. Please talk to your market/CSA person or email me for ordering by the half bushel. Or email me directly if you would be picking up at the farm.
To recap the cucumber situation: With all the varieties of cucumbers we grow, it’s not that outrageous to wonder what’s what. After all, the squashes and cukes are all cucurbits and share many characteristics! Naturally we grow the regular slicing cucumber, but we also grow the Kirby or pickling cuke, as well as Persian, which are very smooth skinned and almost seedless, and the heirloom Lemon cucumber, which are round, yellow, tennis-ball-lookin’ things. Those are the ones people sometimes think are squash, or baby melons…also cucurbits!!! In the top 10 questions we get at markets: do the lemon cucumbers taste like lemons? Nope.
Recipes
What have you been up to with your CSA goodies? Please share any recipes or ideas with me to share with everyone in this letter and/or post your creations on Instagram or FB and tag @stillmansfarm and #cookingwithstillmans
Get going with the making a lot of squash breads for the freezer or pickles (squash or cukes are nice). If you see chard, check this one out.
Sriracha Fridge Pickles (with chard stems)
This is good frittata weather, served with a side salad of course 🙂 We actually do not have AC for ourselves, our worker housing has it, just not us. If I really do not want to turn the oven on at all, I will get the eggsset up by leaving the cover on the pan. Tonight, the “kids” want Caesar wraps, so I am grilling a turkey breast and the rest is salad – perfect.
Oven “Fried” Zucchini Sticks with Horseradish Dipping Sauce-from the Tasty Kitchen
I’m just a little too lazy this afternoon (been cutting flowers and running around all day sweating ;)) to type up what I do, but I found this and it looks just right!
These zucchini sticks are crispy without deep frying. Add the addictive horseradish dipping sauce and you’ve got one delicious appetizer or side dish.
- 2 whole Medium Zucchini (or other squash)
- ¼ cups All-purpose Flour
- ½ teaspoons Onion Powder
- ½ teaspoons Garlic Powder
- ¼ teaspoons Freshly Ground Black Pepper
- 1 whole Large Egg, Beaten With 1 Teaspoon Water
- ½ cups (heaping) Italian Bread Crumbs
- 3 Tablespoons (heaping) Seasoned Panko Bread Crumbs
- 1 Tablespoon Grated Romano Or Parmesan Cheese
- 4 Tablespoons Olive Oil Or Vegetable Oil
FOR THE HORSERADISH DIPPING SAUCE:
- ¾ cups Low Fat Or Regular Sour Cream
- ¼ cups (scant) Mayonnaise
- 2 teaspoons (heaping) Prepared Horseradish
- 1 teaspoon Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
- Kosher Salt And Freshly Ground Black Pepper, To Taste
Preheat oven to 425ºF. Brush a 15x10x1-inch jelly roll pan with 1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil; set aside.
Trim ends from zucchini and cut in half lengthwise. Cut each piece in half crosswise, then cut each piece lengthwise into 2-3 wedges. Try and keep the pieces about the same size. Combine the flour, onion powder, garlic powder and black pepper in a shallow bowl. In a separate shallow bowl, beat egg and water. Combine the Italian bread crumbs, Panko bread crumbs and cheese on a piece of waxed
paper or in a shallow bowl (a glass pie plate works great for this). These zucchini sticks are coated in a 3 step method: flour, egg, then bread crumbs. Dip each zucchini stick in the flour mixture, coating all the sides. Tap off any excess flour.
Dip each stick in the egg mixture, letting any excess drip off, then roll them in the bread crumb mixture, coating all sides of each stick and lightly pressing the crumbs onto surface.
Place the sticks, cut side down, on the prepared pan in a single layer with space between each piece. Drizzle all the wedges with remaining 3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil (depending on the size of the zucchini you’re using, you may need a little more oil). You don’t want the wedges coated with oil-use a light hand. The oil sprinkled on the top will allow browning to begin while the surface touching the bottom of the pan browns.
Bake at 425ºF for 8 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from the oven, flip each stick so that the second cut side is facing down on the pan. Return to the oven and bake for 5 minutes more, or until light golden brown. Remove from the oven; turn so that the skin side is down on the pan. Return to the oven and bake for 3–5 minutes more or until golden brown. While zucchini is baking, make the horseradish dipping sauce. In a small bowl, whisk the sour cream and mayonnaise. Stir in horseradish, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Taste
and adjust seasonings.
Serve zucchini sticks immediately upon removing them from the oven with the dipping sauce on the side.
If you have kale and ramps, look back a couple weeks at the kale ramp pesto 🙂
This picture is from last year and it makes me laugh. All the Border Collies were here this past Tuesday, plus 2 puppies, grandkids Trace, Jaide and Kip…it was a busy household.
Farm Dirt
Once again we have gotten plenty of rain and are just now getting onto some fields that have been too wet to drive on. Not only would we run the risk of getting stuck, we also risk damaging the soil structure and we don’t want that. We’ve had some hot days and that is also good. Once it warms up, it is easy to forget that June was cool and not growth inspiring. The downpours have caused tomatoes to split and even if they grow out of it, they look extra strange. – They do taste great though!
We’ve been comparing notes with other growers and we concur, there is no stone fruit of any kind this season. Between the cold snap In January and the freeze in May, that did everything in. On the bright side, our trees look beautiful and healthy, so if we do not have any unusually low temperatures next winter, the crop pf 2024 should be huge to the point we will need to thin them. Some growers tell us they have no apple crop either. We can report some damage, but we certain varieties in particular sections of the orchards look fine. Of course, we won’t know anything for sure until we start picking.
We’d love for you to come out to the New Braintree farm to harvest your own! It is great when members experience the harvest for themselves and it is part of understanding the labor involved with our local food supply. If you have children, it is a timeless lesson to have them pick a head of lettuce, pull a beet, pick berries, eat an ear of corn raw, standing in the field…. Not only does one understand how something grows, but one gains perspective on the labor costs of harvest. Actually, it is a perspective many adults are missing too – so if you’ve never picked a berry or a bean, put that on your CSA bucket list. ALSO, once you make the trip, you also gain insight into the trips we make to deliver your produce 🙂 Check out our directions and other things to do page
We are 25 minutes from the Sturbridge exit on the Pike, so you can pop in at Old Sturbridge Village and we are not far from the Quabbin Reservoir, you can plan a hike after you are done hiking here 🙂 Pro tip: Do not let your GPS get you off the Pike in Worcester or Auburn, unless you have business there or there is an accident…she just thinks it is better, it’s not. Rt 2, drop down though Princeton or Gardner 🙂
Our Chimney Swifts are back nesting in the chimney (duh) and we hear the wing-beats, usually at 10-15 minute intervals, of the parents descend, and then next the sounds of the young chirping away to get fed; it is precious. I honestly had wanted to start a fire a few days in May and June, but once our house guests move it, that is a no no.
Seems like all the kids are into something or another: Curt and Halley busy harvesting the gooseberries, currants, blackberries and such you may see in any farmers’ market pics, Reid and Kirsten have several batches of kraut going and were working on another today, Faith has been cutting and bunching flowers – it’s all good.
The garlic will be harvested and we likely will let it dry out a bit before you see it. Other corps are coming along, but behind, again, due to the cool weather, but we will likely see some small peppers and eggplants in our future.
Have a lovely week and we hope to see you at the farm!
Eat well,
Geneviève Stillman
Chimney Swift (Wikipedia)