Fourth Share

Hello CSA team! We hope you are getting into the routine with your share each week. You are all so pleasant and we appreciate your support and excellent responsibility returning the boxes and coming to pick up during pick up hours :) Things are looking pretty good at the farm. Plants are healthy although we have way too many striped cucumber beetles munching on our cukes and zukes, but the plants are still strong and we expect to put zucchini in the share very soon! We are using a white kaolin clay that can be made into a solution and sprayed on the young curcurbits (melons, cukes, winter squash, zukes) to whitewash them and trick the insects. maybe. The infestation was already strong, so they are not really gone, but at least the leaves are not skeletonized overnight with their whitewash disguise. Our potatoes look good - they are in flower right now and are growing tall and lush. The Colorado Potato Beetle eggs have hatched into gooey orange larvae that we have to go and squish. The presence of tons of twelve-spotted ladybugs that eat CPB eggs and spined soldier beetles and even yellow jackets, who eat the larvae, is a great reward for not using any insecticides on the farm. Love to see those natural predators! We finished mulching all of the tomatoes with straw yesterday. Now it is time to stake them. Broccoli is done and mowed and disked in, and it is time to plant the seeds for our fall cabbage and broccoli crop! The pea trellises are becoming a jungle. We hope you enjoy all the fruits of the farm!

Beets. I really can't recommend highly enough roasting your beets and keeping them on hand to add to a salad with goat cheese, blue cheese, even feta. For something really different - I added a Beet Chocolate Cake recipe to the website. A farmstand shopper suggested what she calls a beet casserole - to me it almost sounds like dessert: She slices the beets very thinly on a mandoline, puts in a casserole in layers, and just covers with a little bit of water with lemon juice and a couple teaspoons of sugar. cover and bake. I've got to try this!

Sugarsnap Peas. These peas are a fun and yummy snack for kids to eat raw. Somehow, they taste even better sauteed in a pan with a little butter until they are bright green. I always snap their stem end and unzip the string, for raw or cooked. These peas are great to add to a pasta salad or potato salad - maybe cut in thirds or halves.

Red Cabbage - full of flavor and nutrients! Thinly sliced red cabbage can be added to any green salad for a little color and crunch. Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage is very tasty and a nice accompaniment for all sorts of dishes, especially grilled meats, particularly spicy sausage. It is nice to mix with green cabbage in a slaw, if you have some left from last week.

Dill. make an herb dip - sour cream (maybe part yogurt) and dill, maybe some parsley, garlic powder. Make your own boursin herb spread - butter and cream cheese in the food processor with herbs (perhaps parsley and dill this week). Use as a fancy spread for crackers or sandwiches - veggie or roast beef.  Dill is an excellent friend to salmon. A quick sauce can be whipped up with sour cream, lemon juice, and dill. You can make a compound butter - butter in the food processor with the dill - form into a log with parchment paper and you can slice off a pat whenever you want to add it to fish you are grilling or roasting. An herb butter will last for ages in the freezer. Lemon, honey, mustard, and dill with some oil and vinegar can make a nice salad dressing. Some cole slaw recipes have fresh dill. One of our most loyal farmstand supporters and neighbors was taking home a bunch of dill to add to homemade salmon burgers - she had frozen salmon to thaw and food process with bread crumbs, an egg, dill, salt and pepper, maybe some dijon and lemon.
 
Parsley. A touch of parsley can add such brightness to most any dish. There are lots of nutrients in this supergreen leaf. I like to give the parsley treatment to all sorts of things: Creamy Polenta, Risotto, Soups, Bread Crumbs for Oven Baked Chicken, Salad Dressings, Marinades, Egg Scrambles, Salsa, Mayo, Sandwiches, you name it. It is important not to overpower your family/dinner guests with the entire bunch of parsley on one dish. It does have a strong flavor, which not everyone loves like me. Parsley is the counterbalance to garlic in terms of breath freshening. A small bunch in a batch of pesto gives a nice balance to the fresh garlic. One of my favorite things as a kid was boiled potatoes with butter and parsley - good olive oil would be a fine substitute for the butter. How about on that pasta or potato salad or on a beet salad?

Lettuce. Romaine - make a homemade Caesar! Butterhead - so good in a salad with thinly sliced radishes and White Balsamic Vinaigrette. One CSA member was making Korean BBQ Beef at home, and had it wrapped in butterhead leaves with a little of the sauce. Two heads of greenleaf. Perfect burger and sandwich and salad lettuce. Good Crunch.

Scallions. We have been adding them to everything. With fresh scallions you can pretty much use the greens right up to the tops. Perfect to finish any Mexican dish or a stir-fry or to add to a green salad or a cole slaw. I love to have them with eggs. Or add to that pasta salad or potato salad with the peas.

Radishes. crunchy royale! nice variety :) The salad with butterhead really is good. Radishes were in that slaw recipe from last week. Try some thinly sliced, salted radishes on buttered bread. You will swear you are in France. How about on that roast beef sandwich with homemade boursin and crunchy lettuce?

Green Chard. Perfect side for that salmon. Add cooked, chooped chard to pasta with cheese. Try it in a veggie lasagna. I usually use the old garlic and olive oil method. Chard is not bad just steamed up. I like to add a tiny pat of butter and a dash of apple cider vinegar in that case. Chard could be nice with potatoes and onions in a home-fry situation. This is mature chard, so I suggest tearing the leaves from the stem, kind of stripping the greens fromt the thick, maybe stringy stem. The stems are full of nutrition and flavor - I would just chop them finely and add to the pan to cook first if you choose to use them. Chard is great for an omelet, frittata, or quiche. It can be thinly sliced to add to a soup or a stir fry. You can make chard pie - in the spinach pie style.

Hope you are inspired, everyone! Keep those ideas coming! Browse cookbooks and the web for more ideas and recipes. Happy Summer!