Monthly Archives: June 2020

Summer CSA Week 4

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At the end of every CSA season we send out a survey to you our members to find out what you thought of your share boxes throughout the season. There are some general questions about how we did, how you felt about the season, and then line by line we ask if you thought you got too much, too little, or just the right amount of every item we send all season long. It’s a long list, as you can imagine.

We use all that information to try to see what, if anything we should change about what we send in the share boxes, and thus, what we should plant on the farm every spring. Over the years it seems like the farm has honed in pretty well to what works for many of you.

Every year though, there are always responses that lean more to the “too much!” side than “never enough!” (we sure don’t want anyone to feel like there’s not enough -except the snap peas – we can never grow enough of those!).

I seem to remember a couple of years back, many members feeling like they had received too many green onions. A few snipped on top of a baked potato won’t use up a bunch a week, but it seems like green onions are often thought of as a garnish in recipes as opposed to a component adding a lot of flavor. Throughout my week, I seem to always be chopping an onion up, even before I’ve fully decided what to make for dinner. I know whatever I make, it needs onion. You can do the same thing with green onions. Whatever recipe calls for onion using green onions would offer that same flavor punch so you can either substitute/or add green onions. Plus, if you’re cooking them down like in a stir-fry, soup or curry you can use a lot of them. It maybe doesn’t need to be said (but I’ll say it), that green onions won’t need to be cooked as long, and can’t be caramelized in the same way as onions can.

In other years I’ve recommended sharing food with friends or family as a way to use up a share if you’re struggling to finish it by the next week. Pot-lucks can be a great way to share and use up whatever you have laying around. This year the option of gathering around food is more complicated, and sharing more difficult. In spite of this, or because of this, I hope you are able to find creative ways to use, store and maybe even share the vegetables you get from our farm.

Feel free to reach out if you have pro-tips on using up a share, or if you have questions that you think others might like answered as well!

For the farm crew,

Karin

 

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In your share this week:

Broccoli – Cauliflower – Cucumbers – Garlic scapes – Head lettuce – Green onions – Pac choi – Radishes

 

Roasted Cauliflower Spread

From Food and Wine

-I’ve said it before that I’m not much of a recipe person, and my educated guess is that this recipe would be very flexible. You could add in some of the garlic scapes and green onions, and probably change up the spices and herbs and still end up with a tasty spread as long as your liquid to solid ratio stays about the same.

  • 1 head of cauliflower (2 pounds), halved crosswise and thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
  • Kosher salt
  • 3 tablespoons tahini (sesame) paste
  • 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
  • Sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 450°. In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower with the oil, ginger and coriander and season with salt. Spread the cauliflower on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for about 40 minutes, stirring once or twice, until tender and lightly browned in spots. Let cool slightly.

Transfer the cauliflower to a food processor. Add the tahini and lemon juice and pulse to a chunky puree; season with salt. Add the cilantro and pulse just until incorporated. Transfer the spread to a bowl and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve warm with pita bread or chips (or on toast!)

Garlic Scape Pesto

  • 10 Garlic scapes
  • 1/3 C Pine nuts or walnuts 
  • 1/3 C Parmesan, asiago or simply parmesan dice or shredded
  • 1/2 Lemon juiced
  • 1/8 tsp Fine Sea Salt or more to taste
  • A few grinds of Pepper
  • 1/3 C Olive oil

Trim the garlic scapes by cutting just below the bulb. Discard the bulb and set the remaining scape aside.
In a food processor, add the chopped scapes. Add the pine nuts, cheese, juice of the lemon and salt and pepper. Process by pulsing until the mixture begins to break down. Scrape the bowl down.
With the processor running, slowly add all the olive oil. Continue to process until all the ingredients are incorporated and broken down, about one minute. Taste for salt.
Store in a covered container or lidded jar in the fridge and enjoy within a week. Also, you can freeze the pesto in a jar or in an ice-cube tray. Once frozen, in the ice-cube tray, remove and place in a zip top bag in the freezer.
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Summer CSA Week 3

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I love this time of year. The time of light. This year, with a little baby added into my evening and morning routines, I find myself wanting to loll in bed for a bit longer first thing than I used to. Even so, it is nice to wake up to brightness, and to have an evening of light.

Like my little one’s babyhood – I wish I could put some of summer in a bottle to take sips of later in the year.

On the farm we’ve been enjoying the lovely days -though we would rather it rained. When “nice” weather goes on and on, it becomes too much of a good thing–all of the recent rain showers have missed the farm so there has been no real moisture for two months. Janaki has been spending more time than he has (yes, there is a black-hole on the farm where time gets sucked up and obliterated) moving irrigation from one field to the next to keep up with the demands of new plants and sprouting seeds with very young (i.e., short and delicate) root systems. It’s like putting out acres of tiny fires. Oh gosh-what an image.

Not a small part of me feels like our country right now fits this description somehow: like things have gotten to hot and dry for too long, and too few people are running around trying to fix the problems. Maybe what we need is, metaphorically, a deep cleansing rain as a country to wash the dust off and wet our cracking mouths. Or maybe what we need is a salve of sorts. Something to heal. Or maybe we are in a time where we just need to let wounds see the light of day, and have time to air out and be seen before anything more can be done.

I don’t really know.

I do know that with how interconnected we all are (and boy, did we ever really realize how much until lately?), even “just” getting a share from a local farm is part of the healing work. Sustainable food is part of food fairness, just as climate justice is social justice, and healthy choices for an individual add up to being healthy choices for a community.

Thank you for being part of our farm and for participating in our work by gaining your daily sustenance from our food.

For the thirsty farm crew,

Karin

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In your share this week:

Beets – Greens mix – Lettuce – Green onions – Radishes – Spinach – Turnips

So many greens!

Does it feel like you are getting so many greens in your first shares this season? You are! That’s what the early shares are all about- and it feels good after a long season of fewer fresh salads!

It can feel like a lot to keep up with too. It doesn’t take more than a bag of sub-prime wilted greens in my fridge to make me feel discouraged about food choices I make during the week. Look no further than your freezer should you feel yourself drowning in greens. This week, beet tops, turnip tops and any spinach that feels like more than you’d use up this week can all be frozen.

Cut into 2″ square pieces, wash (per last week’s manifesto against gritty greens), blanch in a pot of boiling water for a minute and a half or so, dunk in an ice bath and then remove as much of the water as you can in a towel or by squeezing the greens. Freeze in a baggy or freezer paper for up to a year (but preferably less). Frozen greens work well for smoothies, adding to soups at the last minute or working into a meal of pasta or grains and legumes.

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Quick, spicy pickled radishes

From Cookie + Kate

Serving ideas- on top of or on the side of any thing you eat this week!

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 bunch radishes
  • ¾ cup white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
  • ¾ cup water
  • 3 tablespoons honey or maple syrup
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (this yields very spicy pickles, so use ½ teaspoon for medium spicy pickles or none at all)
  • ½ teaspoon whole mustard seeds (optional)
  • Optional add-ins: garlic cloves, black peppercorns, fennel seeds, coriander seeds

  1. To prepare the radishes: Slice off the tops and bottoms of the radishes, then use a sharp chef’s knife or mandoline to slice the radishes into very thin rounds. Pack the rounds into a pint-sized canning jar. Top the rounds with red pepper flakes and mustard seeds.
  2. To prepare the brine: In a small saucepan, combine the vinegar, water, honey or maple syrup and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally, then pour the mixture over the radishes.
  3. Let the mixture cool to room temperature. You can serve the pickles immediately or cover and refrigerate for later consumption. The pickles will keep well in the refrigerator for several weeks, although they are in their most fresh and crisp state for about 5 days after pickling.

 

Summer CSA Week 2

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Welcome to the early CSA season… you will be seeing many types of greens as these first weeks go by. If you are anything like me you may have a particular kind of excitement for tomatoes, snap peas and cauliflower, but sometimes greens can feel hard to use up, or use well. So, don’t feel bad if this is you- because it’s not just you! Here are my tips on using greens:

Making a point to eat greens earlier in the week while they’re still crisp makes them more enjoyable, and cleaning, storing and preparing them well is also key.

When you pick up your share and get it home, things like head lettuce, pac choi and kale bunches can benefit from a little trim off the bottom and a soak in cold water for a minute. Afterwards, dry them off a bit and put them into a bag with a flour sack towel (if you’ve got lots of tea towels, great, if not, I would highly recommend a 2-4 pack of flour sack towels to use this season). These steps will become more important as the temperatures go up.

Cut greens like our greens mix or loose lettuce mix shouldn’t get wet until right before use, and typically don’t need to be washed since we grow these in greenhouses to avoid rain splatter. You could leave the bag open in the fridge for an hour to cool them off, but don’t forget to fold the top back over or the greens will dry out.

All greens, including Napa cabbage, need to be stored in a plastic bag to avoid drying out and going limp. Same for broccoli and cauliflower. This is a great use for the bags we send some items in that don’t need to be kept in there to stay fresh (i.e., potatoes, tomatoes and snap peas because you’ll eat them all at once)

If you have a way to change the humidity of your fridge- they (and all the veggies in there) would appreciate being fairly humid.

The way I like to clean greens that might be dirty like head lettuce, spinach, kale (and cut greens only if they need it) is using a salad spinner. I’d recommend getting one if you don’t have one. Before I got one, I’d dunk greens in a large pot of water (this is not a time to skimp on water use!) 2-3 times (until it’s clear and grit free) spinning  the greens between each dunk outside in a towel. It was very satisfying, barbaric looking and worked fine. With a salad spinner I put my torn up greens in the basket, fill the base with water and gently agitate, lifting the basket of greens out, spinning, and re-rinsing 2-3 times. I always take the greens out of the water, then dump the water. If you just pour the wash water back through or over the greens into strainer you are just adding all that dirt back in. Maybe that’s obvious to you all, but I’ve seen some crazy stuff with how people “wash” greens!

I’m writing this because grit in greens is a pet peeve of mine. We do our best to clean and cool greens before they get packed in boxes, but the system is never perfect, especially if we have to harvest in the rain.

If using greens up is a struggle, I can’t tell you how amazing it is that most of them cook down to hardly anything at all. And if a pile of steamed spinach isn’t your thing, cut it up in to tiny pieces and put it in any sauce for pasta or other veggies, put it in eggs, just keep putting it in stuff! And don’t hold back on adding seasonings and dressings if that’s what helps you enjoy them. A spritz of lemon juice on bowl of fresh kale isn’t enjoyable for everyone–it’s OK in my book to load up on parmesan cheese and olive oil.

I hope some of these tips might help if you’re new to our Farm, or even if not. It’s nice to start off the season staying as on-top of the share as we can, and finding ways to creatively remove ourselves from the predominant culture of convenience.

Enjoy the food.

For the Farm crew,

Karin

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In your share this week:

Kale – Head lettuce – Green onions – Radishes – Spinach – Turnips

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Turnip Dhal

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 tsp curry leaves (optional)
  • 2 roma tomatoes
  • 2-4 turnips
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp garam masala
  • 1/2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1/8 – 1/4 tsp cayenne (to taste)
  • 1/8 tsp turmeric
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup red lentils
  • 1 3/4 cups water
  • 3/4 cup full-fat coconut milk
  • fresh lemon juice and rice for serving

 

  1. Mince the garlic. Peel and dice the turnips. Wash the tomatoes and dice them as well.
  2. Add 3-4 tbsp water to a pot, add the garlic and curry leaves and sauté for 2 min.
  3. Add the tomatoes and cook for 1 min. Then, transfer the diced turnips to the pot, stir and cook covered for 2-3 min.
  4. In the meantime, rinse and drain the lentils. Add the lentils, spices, water and coconut milk to the pot and bring to a boil. Then, simmer slightly-covered on low for 17-20 min.
  5. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice and brown or basmati rice. Store leftovers in the fridge. As the dhal may thicken in the fridge, add a bit of water when reheating it on the stove.

Summer 2020 CSA Week 1

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It’s the first week of the Food Farm Summer CSA share!

Welcome if you are new to this, and welcome if this is your 20th year! We are glad you’re here. Thank you for being part of our farm by choosing to participate in the farm this season. Using fresh, whole food is extra work, and we are grateful that you’ll do that work. It makes what we do on the farm worth it -indeed it’s the whole point.

The first week of deliveries is a truly exciting time here on the farm, especially this year. We have three crew members who are new to our farm and to vegetable farming in general, and you could just feel the excitement as folks showed up this morning. To those of us who have been around awhile this first box is pretty modest, and the anxiety of the season ahead sits heavy with us. Being able to see the beginning of harvest season through their eyes gives us renewed energy for the sweat and toil that lies ahead.

In that spirit, take this food, bless it in whatever way makes sense to you, and let the energy it gives you propel you into action that makes the world, and whatever you have agency over, more just, fair, and loving.

For the farm crew,

Janaki

 

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In your share this week:

Pac choi – Lettuce – Rhubarb – Spinach – Greens mix – Oregano

The secret to eating your veggies, especially greens? Drizzle something amazing over them! From our friends at the Duluth Grill (who know a thing or two about making our veggies taste extra good):

Curry Sauce!

  • 1/4 cup seeded serrano peppers
  • 1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1/4 tsp cumin
  • 1/8 tsp black pepper corns
  • 1/2 stalk lemon grass
  • 1 tsp chopped cilantro
  • 1 Tbsp fresh grated ginger
  • 1/2 lime zest (use the other half of the lime to make a quarantini?)
  • 1 tsp lime juice
  • 1 Tbsp chopped garlic
  • 1 Tbsp diced onion
  • 1 1/2 tsp aminos
  • 2 Tbsp sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • One 15oz can coconut milk

Toast coriander and pepper corns in a skillet. Trim and chop lemon grass. Combine all ingredients except the coconut milk in a food processor until smooth.

Place puree in medium pot and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add coconut milk, whisk and simmer for another 15 minutes. Serve over greens or roasted veggies, keep sealed in the fridge!

Rhubarb Chutney -from Martha Stewart (she serves it along side thick cut bacon -yum!)

  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup light corn syrup
  • 3 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
  • 8 ounces rhubarb, cut into a 1/2-inch dice (2 cups)
  • 1 shallot, finely chopped (1/3 cup)
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger (from a 1 1/2-inch piece)
  • 1/2 habanero or Scotch-bonnet pepper, finely chopped (ribs and seeds removed for less heat, if desired)
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
  • 1 1/4 pounds extra-thick-cut bacon, halved crosswise
Step 1

Preheat oven to 375°F. Combine sugar, corn syrup, and 1/4 cup water in a medium saucepan. Cover and cook over medium heat until sugar has dissolved, about 5 minutes. Uncover, increase heat to medium-high, and boil until caramel turns medium amber, 3 to 4 minutes. Carefully add vinegar (mixture will spatter and caramel will seize). Continue cooking, stirring, until caramel dissolves again.

Step 2

Stir in rhubarb, shallot, ginger, chile pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper; return to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until rhubarb is tender and liquid is syrupy, about 10 minutes. Strain chutney, reserving syrup, and transfer to a serving bowl. Return syrup to saucepan and simmer over medium heat until thickened and reduced to 1/3 cup, about 5 minutes.