CSA Week 9
This week you MAY have corn, squash, cukes, beans, greens, tomatoes, blueberries, peppers, eggplant, peaches, kohlrabi or cabbage. Yaaaa, peaches Baby!
This is prime time for tomatoes…you need a lot? Break out those salsa and sauce recipes, or simply can some whole tomato goodness to remind you of Summer when it is snowing. We have a special price for CSA members of $20.case (non-members pay $25-$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.
I am hoping many of you received kohlrabi last week and imagine if you didn’t it might happen this week OR the first cabbage! You know the kohlrabi and cabbage are cousins right? Along with their good friends broccoli and cauliflower, these vitamin packed veggies are all crucifers or cole crops.
Recipes
Any Fruit Crisp
Prepare any fruit you have laying about. I’ll be honest with you, I never peel my peaches when I make crisp (THE HORROR!) but simply rinse extra fuzz off, cut up in chunks, sprinkle with a little flour and lemon juice and toss with any berries languishing on the counter.
With my fingers, I blended a stick of butter with ½ cup flour, ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup oats (might have been closer to a cup, I don’t measure anything). Top the fruit with this mixture (if this is new to you, it is crumbly, so just sprinkle/spread it around the best you can). Bake at 400 degrees for 25-35 minutes, until the fruit is tender and the top is crisped and golden. YUM!
A few notes:
- crisp gets soggy the next day but is still delicious; I have enjoyed it on yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast.
- You can mix fruits freely, but apples cook at a different rate than peaches, so take that into consideration.
- Crisps and cobblers are a perfect way to use soft fruit that no one wants to eat fresh.
- The crisp topping may benefit from cinnamon and nutmeg, especially with apples and feel free to add a little granola or finely chopped nuts or seeds if yo have them
- If your fruit is dry (as apples can be), you may want to sprinkle a little water and lemon juice over them before topping.
- Substitute whatever flour you like, I have had the best success with corn flour, but have used blends of rice flour too.
- Cook with The Force, I do!
*Wet fruits like peaches, nectarines and blueberries really need the addition of some thickening agent, if you skip that you may have a runny, yet delicious, mess. I mostly use wheat flour because it is handy, but I can go gluten free any time with instant tapioca, tapioca flour or potato starch – so make necessary substitutions but not ommission 😉
Member Mary sent me a couple recipes she was enjoying from the Times. Thanks Mary!
Summer Squash Fritters With Garlic Dipping
By Kim Severson YIELD About 18 fritters TIME 1 hour, 25 minutes
FOR THE FRITTERS:
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup shredded white Cheddar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 large eggs
¾ cup cold beer
1 cup grated zucchini (about one 6-
to 7-ounce zucchini), drained on
paper towels 15 minutes
1 cup grated yellow squash (about
one 6-to 7-ounce squash), drained
on paper towels 15 minutes
1 small yellow onion, halved and
thinly sliced
½ cup canola oil, for frying
Member Mary added a T parsley and a tsp dill, also noted it was evn better the next day and could have fried them in coconut oil 🙂
LINK TO RECIPE
She also recommended Cucumber Salad with Soy, Ginger and Garlic Looks great!
Member Carie sent me these recipes noting, “Another favorite for the kid who can’t eat corn on the cob. Stores well in the fridge for a quick veggie with lunch or to bring to a picnic/party.” Apologies i do not know who to give credit to for the recipes 🙁
Kale Corn Salad
Prep time, 20 mins, Total time, 20 mins
Serves: 2 entree-sized or 4 appetizer servings
Ingredients
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp honey
• ¼ tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large bunch black/dinosaur kale, stems removed
• 2 ears fresh corn, cooked until just tender
• 1 cup cooked quinoa or other grain
• ¼ cup sunflower seeds
Kale corn salad
Monday, July 9, 2018 7:56 AM
• 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large bunch black/dinosaur kale, stems removed
• 2 ears fresh corn, cooked until just tender
• 1 cup cooked quinoa or other grain
• ¼ cup sunflower seeds
Instructions
In the bottom of a large salad bowl, whisk together the lemon, honey, salt and olive oil. Chop kale leaves and add to the bowl. Toss to combine with the dressing and let sit 5 minutes.
Cut the kernels off the corn on the cob and add to the salad along with the quinoa and sunflower seeds. Toss salad and serve right away. Salad will keep in the fridge for 2 days.
Notes: Optional additions: golden raisins, dried cranberries or chopped apples.
Potato Green Bean Salad
Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds red potatoes
• 3/4 pound fresh green beans, trimmed and snapped
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 small red onion, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 dash Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• Add all ingredients to list
Place the potatoes in a large pot, and fill with about 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil, and
cook for about 15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Throw in the green beans to
steam after the first 10 minutes. Drain, cool, and cut potatoes into quarters. Transfer to a
large bowl, and toss with fresh basil, red onion, salt and pepper. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the balsamic vinegar, mustard, lemon juice, garlic,
Worcestershire sauce and olive oil. Pour over the salad, and stir to coat. Taste and
season with additional salt and pepper if needed.
Check out:
Fresh Salsa
Sharon’s Summer Arugula Wrap
Eggplant with Tomato Coulis
Farm Dirt + Water 😉
Still raining here! It’s making it very challenging to grow, but worse than that, we cannot get on our fields to plant the next round of lettuce or the fall cauliflower. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could distribute the water around to those places that need it. Well, I guess the upside for you all is there cannot be any water bans in effect 🙂
The Peaches are stunning, so I am going to revel in that. There’s a nice amount of tomatoes at this moment and we are picking the second crop of cucumbers and summer squashes. The garlic is drying beautifully and the onions are nice size.
Segue:I was doing some research for something else and was struck by some accounts of the weather by 17th century New Englanders. I managed to lose quite some time the other day running down that rabbit hole! You may not know that I am kind of a early America history nerd and fall back to a few favorite references; as the weather weighs heavily on my mind now, I was easily sidetracked and then, of course, had to cross reference what I was reading. Seriously, it all could be about the last several years (we are just talking about the weather here, so there is no need for a trigger warning). William Wood of Massachusetts Bay said of 1620-1621 , “no Winter in comparison,” whereas the winter of 1629–1630 was, “a very milde season, little Frost, and lesse Snow, but cleare serene weather.” The winter of 1662-1633 very snowy, while 1664-1665 was very mild and dry. Both those summers experienced drought followed by William Bradford’s account of a devastating hurricane that occurred in August of 1635 “signs and marks of it will remain this hundred years…”
Winthrop’s “History of New England” is a treasure trove of remarks about the weather and the climate of Massachusetts:
1631 –This summer was very wet and cold, (except now and then a hot day or two,) which caused great store of musketoes and rattle-snakes.
1634 – This summer was hotter than many before. …The weather was very fine and hot, without rain, near six weeks.
1635 – (I assume it is the same hurricane Bradford wrote about) …about midnight it [the wind]came up at N. E. and blew with such violence, with abundance of rain, that it blew down many hundreds of trees, near the towns, overthrew some houses, [and] drave the ships from their anchors. …The tide rose at Naragansett fourteen feet higher than ordinary, and drowned eight Indians flying from their wigwams.
1637 – journal entry about the Governor traveling to Saugus: He returned again the 28th, being forced to travel all the night by reason of the heat, which was so extreme, as divers of those who were new come on shore, died in their travel a few miles.
This was a very hard winter. The snow lay, from November 4th to March 23d, half a yard deep about the Massachusetts, and a yard deep beyond Merrimack, and so the more north the deeper, and the spring was very backward. This day it did snow two hours together, (after much rain from N. E.) with flakes as great as shillings. This was in the year 1637.
1639-There was at this time a very great drouth all over the country, both east and west, there being little or no rain from the 26th of the 2d month to the 10th of the 4th ; so as the corn generally began to wither, and great fear there was it would all be lost.
Bradford and Cotton both write about the effects of New England climate on the crops. I have read countless (and somewhat boring) journals written by New England farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hand-wringing AND thankfulness, with respect the weather having almost everything to do with a successful growing year, has always been a “thing” in Massachusetts. All were thankful for mild winters and warm summers with adequate rainfall and traumatized when the winters were extremely cold and or snowy and the summers were hot, droughty, cold or wet.
Turns out we’re no different!
The pot of gold at the end of our rainbow is the sun shining upon our faces, and the fall broccoli 😉
Eat well,
Geneviève Stillman
