CSA Week 6
The plan is you should have corn, lemon cucumbers, squash, blueberries, celery, lettuce, beans, and the first onions.
Are you planning on making lots of pickles? Or just having a cucumber binge? Now is the time to get bulk cukes for whatever you are making. There is plenty of squash too! Time to make all your quickbreads for the freezer 🙂 Let me know what market location or a CSA location where you see us to pick up as many half bushel boxes you like this week and we will give you the CSA discount!
TOTAL DISCLAIMER at 11:12pm Thursday night: the website is causing me a work of hurt tonight. I will resume the fight tomorrow. meanwhile, I hope you can glean what you need to from it :{
Lemon cukes are so cute! These fun little heirloom cucumbers go back a couple millennia – Pliny the Elder describes these cucumbers as “shaped like a quince and a golden color” in his Naturalis Historia…that’s a ways back! I am not sure about his recipe for stewed cucumbers though, that sounds a little slimy, I don’t know.
We are sad there are not many tomatoes yet, and what we have are not meeting Glenn’s standards. I know it has been hot the past week, but don’t forget how cool (and rainy) it was all May and most of June. We actually postponed the Tomato CSA to this week. Glad to get started! AND, for our part, meaning the stuff we can control, there will be tomatoes at some point 🙂
This is a good moment to remind everyone that we market Still Life Farm’s produce alongside our own and with the absence of stone fruit this year, we are including their currants and gooseberries in the Fruit CSA. A lot of the “specialty” fruits, as well as the cherry tomatoes and many of the heirloom tomatoes on display are theirs. We don’t want you to think we are holding out on you 😉
Recipes
If you are building up cucumbers, throw them in your food processor/blender with whatever you think goes together for a refreshing gazpacho. No, you do not need to salt cucumbers when you are making soup, LOL.
Suggested ingredients:
4 cucumbers
a celery stalk or two
a bit of onion, unless you really love raw onion, then use it all 😉
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 garlic clove or a couple scapes
3 tablespoons EVOO
S & P to taste
Garnish with chopped nuts, bits of ham, or shrimp if you like.
Where are your recipe ideas peeps? What have you been doing with your produce? Here’s another invitation to share 🙂
Here’s a recipe recommended by Tonya: https://damndelicious.net/2014/04/02/zucchini-fritters/
Last year member Laura sent me this: Here is a lovely green bean and summer squash salad from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking, which is a bit of a veg bible for me.
- 6 or so young zucchini or yellow squash
- bunch green beans, trimmed
- olive oil
- lemon juice—about 1/2 lemon
- parsley—about two tablespoons
- salt
- pepper
Boil zucchini whole until tender but not soft (“slightly resistant when prodded with
a fork”). Drain, cool a bit, and slice into thin rounds. Blanch green beans for 1-2
minutes and drain. While still warm, toss beans and zucchini rounds with “a liberal
quantity of olive oil,” lemon to taste, and a good grind of pepper. Add parsley and
salt to taste just when ready to serve. This can also have boiled sliced new
potatoes added if you have them.
Zoodles and cheese
– Any vehicle for butter or cheese is awesome in my book! I have been making my regular, old-school cheese sauce (you have your own recipe right? Make a white sauce, add lots of cheese, season with some cayenne, garlic, pepper, dry mustard…) and 100% squash noodles for mac and cheese these days. No one is missing the pasta. Do not forget the salting and draining process! Below is a recipe concocted last year…kind of cheater sauce with the mascarpone. After a fair amount of experimentation, I add the seasoning to the sauce, skip the pasta, and simply squeeze extra moisture out of the squash, skipping the sauté and just bake the squash noodles in the cheese sauce until bubbly. One less pan to clean 🙂
I had a bunch of milk about to turn so made a big batch of ricotta, which meant it was time to make lasagna. Yes, I made it with summer squash that I ran through the mandoline to make perfect “lasagna” layers, yes, gotta salt and drain these for a good half hour, and then assemble as usual. Do not cover when you bake it and if it looks wet, bake it longer to dry it up a bit.
Thanks to those who sent me some recipe ideas! Where are yours? 🙂
Tonya says they loved this zucchini recipe! I am looking forward to trying this one: https://damndelicious.net/2014/04/02/zucchini-fritters/
Member Laura sends me this: Here is a lovely green bean and summer squash salad from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking, which is a bit of a veg bible for me.
Zoodles and cheese
– Any vehicle for butter or cheese is awesome in my book! I have been making my regular, old-school cheese sauce (you have your own recipe right? Make a white sauce, add lots of cheese, season with some cayenne, garlic, pepper, dry mustard…) and 100% squash noodles for mac and cheese these days. No one is missing the pasta. Do not forget the salting and draining process! Below is a recipe concocted last year…kind of cheater sauce with the mascarpone. After a fair amount of experimentation, I add the seasoning to the sauce, skip the pasta, and simply squeeze extra moisture out of the squash, skipping the sauté and just bake the squash noodles in the cheese sauce until bubbly. One less pan to clean 🙂
I had a bunch of milk about to turn so made a big batch of ricotta, which meant it was time to make lasagna. Yes, I made it with summer squash that I ran through the mandoline to make perfect “lasagna” layers, yes, gotta salt and drain these for a good half hour, and then assemble as usual. Do not cover when you bake it and if it looks wet, bake it longer to dry it up a bit.
Farm Dirt
Thank you to all those who have checked in with us inquiring about the rain. It is proving to be quite an impediment to the farm and we are so thankful for the raised bed mulch layer; without which we would have lost a lot of crops by now. This much water makes the fruits and vegetables grow very soft too, which means they are more prone to rot in the field and even after harvest. We are also at a standstill for planting, with fields that we can not drive on to prep or plant, and a backlog of transplants Glenn is trying to keep in good shape until we can plant again. One of our bigger concerns is the inability to plant corn, so we don’t know what September CSA and markets will look like 🙁 We have been counting our blessings because we have several friends who have lost entire crops to rivers flooding, with some even having their crops condemned because of possible sewerage contamination. So, we actually have it pretty good, considering….
On the bright side, the bean crop has been a delight, the first onions are coming in and we have beautiful corn right now.
If you are headed out to the farm for berry or any other picking, please remember to wear a hat and sensible shoes or boots and absolutely to not attempt to to drive into any of our fields.
Lots of birds, bugs, Bambis and butterflies on the farm! The Chimney Swifts are very busy feeding babies who make a lot of noise when the parents drop down the chimney with the food delivery. Great Horned Owls were out in abundance last night. Hummingbirds and butterflies are all over the yard and farm – especially in the cut-flowers, where there are plenty of blooms for all. Oh, loads of amphibians too – I bet they LOVE how wet the farm is.
Eat well,
Geneviève Stillman
