CSA Week 5, 2024

CSA Week 5

The Fabulous Fruit CSA starts this week! Woo Hoo! Totally Tomato CSA peeps, your CSA was set to start this week as well, but the farmer thought it best to hold off a week to wait for more variety and better quality maters.

Things you MAY have in your box/bag this week: lemon cucumbers, cucumbers, golden zucchini, blueberries, cabbage, snap beans, new potatoes.

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. ($30/half bushel slicing cukes, $55/half bushel pickles, $40/half bushel summer squash/zucchini)

Lemon cucumbers are round, yellow, tennis-ball-lookin’ things. Those are the ones people sometimes think are squash, or baby melons…they are all cucurbits!!! In the top 10 questions we get at markets: do the lemon cucumbers taste like lemons? Nope.

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 making a lot of squash breads for the freezer or pickles (squash or cukes are nice). You will thank yourself when you can grab a breakfast muffin or savory squash square out of the freezer or munch on guilt free homemade pickles 🙂

Fresh Summer Squash, Cucumber and Fennel Salad

Simple Slaw Dressing

• 3 T mayo
• 1-2 T white sugar (your preference)
• 1 T lemon juice
• adjust salt as needed

Mix well, toss with small head of shredded cabbage. As this sits for a bit, the cabbage juices will sweeten the slaw even more. Eat right away if you like it crunchy, the longer it sits, the softer the cabbage will become, which is also lovely.

 

Zucchini Soup

• 2-3 zucchini or other summer squash
• 2-4 cups chicken or veggie broth
• ½ tsp curry powder (can use garlic instead)
• dash cayenne
• 2-1C cream (optional for dairy free)

Instructions: ½ – 1 cup cream (this makes for a rich soup…but good without if you are avoiding dairy)

Chop squash and put in large saucepan with broth or stock (add water if needed to barely cover squash). Simmer until squash is very tender. Remove from heat and puree (or have at it with your hand blender if you have one). Add cream, curry powder, cayenne, and s&p to taste. Reheat if necessary or serve cool.  If you avoid dairy, try blending in ½ cup rolled oats or cooked brown rice as a thickener. This soup is the basic recipe for so many soups such as pea, carrot, pumpkin, broccoli… Can use cheese sauce instead of cream: (melt 2 TB butter, stir in equal flour, add 1 ½ cup milk or broth, and stir in shredded cheddar) Kids love it this way.

Oven “Fried” Zucchini Sticks with Horseradish Dipping Sauce-from the Tasty Kitchen

Last week I ran with some very simple zucchini sticks, this week I am posting a traditional recipe 😉

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.

Zucchini Muffins
Orzo and Zucchini Salad
Zucchini and Summer Squash Lasagna

Zucchini Recipes (cake, fritters, pizza, soup…)

Frittata and snap beans

I like these https://www.wellplated.com/healthy-zucchini-muffins/

This picture is now 2 years old, but is a snapshot of every Tuesday morning on the farm when Curt and Halley drop their pups off and we have our Josie and Reid and Kirsten’s Leo. It’s a lot of activity and they all love to hang out (follow, trip, bump into) Glenn. LOL!!

Well there’s a good amount of stone fruit out there! VERY EXCITING after suffering the total absence last year. You may very well see some next week or the week after. I just ate a plum the farmer brought in for me…it was not quite ripe, but still delightful.

We are enjoying a bounty of snap beans and cucurbits, lettuce should be making a come back soon, and there is a small gap in the corn, it usually balances out like that. No one likes to gaps in anything, but it is inevitable and blessedly there is often another crop that is cranking up to fill the void. 🙂

It’s Chimney Swift time! They nest in the flu of the 1825 chimney, as well as in our living room chimney (also 1825). We hear the wing-beats, usually at 10-15 minute intervals, of the parents descend, and then the sounds of the young chirping away to get fed; it is precious. Their clawed feet make it such that they cannot perch upright, but cling vertically instead. Once and a while we have a young’un fall out of the nest into the fireplace – at great entertainment of the cats in our home. Most always we are able to rescue them by putting them up on the smoke shelf or damper.

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 🙂
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 🙂

The garlic will be harvested soon and we likely will let it dry out a bit before you see it. Also coming up will be all the nightshades – peppers, tomatoes, eggplants oh my!

Have a lovely week and we hope to see you at the farm!

 

Eat well,

Geneviève Stillman

Chimney Swift (Wikipedia)