What’s In The Box with Recipe Suggestions
Green Beans: Season with oil, salt, pepper and a touch of garlic powder then roast until slightly golden and wrinkled. They make a tasty snack or serve with a sandwich in place of French fries.
Pan Fried Potatoes & Green Beans
Spicy Green Beans with Sesame Walnuts
Carrots: Send crispy carrot sticks to school with the kids for lunch or a quick snack for your own lunch. Don’t forget to send hummus, ranch dressing, or their favorite salad dressing to use as a dip!
Rainbow Chard: This is a versatile summer cooking green that continues to produce well over a long season. Use it raw in a salad or turn it into a savory Swiss chard pie or gratin. It’s rich in nutrients, so eat your greens!
Smashed White Bean Kale Quesadillas (using Chard instead of Kale)
Green and/or Silver Slicer Cucumbers: Use cucumbers to make this week’s featured recipe for Sushi Salad featuring edamame.
Cold Peanut-Sesame Noodles with Edamame & Cucumber
Edamame: This is a fresh soybean that comes to you still encased by its shell! The beans inside are tender and sweet, but the shell is not edible! Read this week’s vegetable feature article for more information about how to cook and eat edamame.
Italian Garlic: Fresh salsa isn’t complete without fresh garlic! Store at room temperature until ready to use.
Yellow Split Pea & Kale Potato Curry
Onions: This week we are including 1 white and 2 red early variety onions. Both are mild enough to eat raw but are also good caramelized.
Green Bell Pepper: These are considered sweet peppers and can be used raw in salads or cooked in many different ways!
Italian Frying Peppers: These are the long, green, slender peppers that taper to a point. They are sweet peppers, excellent for roasting or sautéing. They may also be eaten raw.
New Red Potatoes: Due to their thin skins, they won’t store for more than a week or two. They are great for boiling, steaming or roasting. They have moist, waxy flesh.
Sweet Corn: We are just starting the sweet corn season. You need to keep your sweet corn cold to preserve its sweetness and we recommend eating it within a day or two for the maximum flavor.
Fried Rice with Edamame and Corn
Tomatillos: First remove the husk from the tomatillo, then wash the tomatillo before using. It will feel a little sticky after you take off the husk, this is normal. Tomatillos are great for salsa verde but can also be used for other things as well.
Vegetable Enchiladas with Tomatillo-Cream Sauce
Sun Orange, Chocolate Sprinkles, or Red Grape Tomatoes: Skewer them along with chunks of onion and zucchini, brush with oil, season with salt and pepper and cook them on the grill!
Easy Marinated Cherry (grape) Tomatoes
Large Tomatoes: Our large tomatoes are taking their sweet time ripening – it always feels like it takes forever. This week you will see one of our large variety tomatoes. Watch for more coming in the weeks ahead. Enjoy slices of fresh tomatoes sprinkled with coarse sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil.
Green and/or Italian and/or Yellow Scallopini Squash: Our Zucchini field is still producing so if you are feeling a little overwhelmed with zucchini, consider shredding and freezing some to use this winter.
How to Freeze Zucchini Without Blanching
Vegetable Feature: Edamame
Edamame (eh-dah-MAH-may) is a fresh soybean that has grown in popularity in the United States over the past few years but has been a part of Japanese and Chinese cuisine for much longer. True edamame intended for fresh eating is quite different than oil-seed soybeans and tofu beans, which are most often grown to make tofu and other processed soy products. The edamame varieties we grow were developed specifically because they produce a sweet bean that doesn’t have a “beany” aftertaste and is the preferred variety in Japan and China for fresh eating. Seed varieties for tofu beans are typically much less expensive than varieties for fresh eating, thus in this country the edamame found in the frozen section, either in the pod or shelled, is likely a tofu bean with that “beany” aftertaste. We actually save our own seed, which still comes at a cost, but allows us to grow our preferred, clean tasting varieties.
Edamame resembles a small lima bean encased in a pod. The beans are sweet and tender and best eaten lightly cooked. Unlike sugar snap peas, edamame pods are not edible and should be discarded. Edamame is hard to shell when it’s raw. It is easiest to cook edamame in its pod first and then remove the beans from the pod. To cook edamame, rinse the pods thoroughly with cold water. Bring a pot of heavily salted water (salty like the sea) to a boil. Add the edamame and boil for about 3-4 minutes. You should see the pods change to a bright green color. Remove the edamame from the boiling water and immediately put them in ice water or run cold water over them to quickly cool them. After the beans are cooked you can easily squeeze the pod to pop the beans out, either into a bowl or directly into your mouth! Once you’ve removed them from the pods, they are ready to incorporate into a recipe or eat as a snack.
You can also roast edamame in their pods. There’s a basic recipe on our website, but basically you toss the edamame pods with oil and seasonings of your choice. Serve the beans whole with their pods still on. While you won’t eat the pod, you can use your teeth to pull the edamame out of the pod and in the process, you’ll pick up the seasoning on the outside of the pod!
You can store fresh or cooked edamame for up to a week in the refrigerator, but it is best to eat them soon for the sweetest flavor and best texture. If you want to preserve edamame for later use, simply follow the cooking procedure above, then freeze the beans either in their pods or remove them and freeze just the bean. It’s fun to pull something green out of the freezer in the winter to enjoy as a snack or incorporate into a winter stir-fry or pan of fried rice.
Edamame is often eaten as a simple snack, but you can also incorporate it into vegetable or grain salads, stir-fry, fried rice, steamed dumplings or pot stickers to name just a few suggestions. They pair well with any combination of traditional Asian ingredients such as sesame oil, soy sauce and ginger. They are also a nice, bright addition to brothy soups such as a miso soup. If you follow the suggested method for boiling edamame before shelling them, the bean will already be fully cooked, so if you are adding edamame to a hot dish or recipe, do so at the end of the cooking.
Short & Sweet Weekly Farm Update
This week, we saw a little cooler weather. With that being the case, we didn’t see some of the vegetables ripen like we thought they would. Thus, we are seeing very few fully ripe tomatoes, but they are out there. Rumor has it the warmer weather is on the way so we ‘should’ see lots of different vegetables (and fruit like tomatoes and melons) ripening for next week.
We were able to get our second cutting of hay completed. We use this hay for our animals during the winter months when they are not able to graze the pastures. We are starting the final harvest of onions this season. Those onions will be stored in the greenhouse for a little while to dry up and set up skins so they will store better for all of us to use throughout the winter!
We are also planting out fall crops, like tat soi, spinach, salad mix, baby white turnips and I heard a rumor that we planted our last crop of basil yesterday. That is a true sign we are quickly seeing the autumn season approaching. Don’t panic though, we still have lots of summer vegetables coming your way before Mother Nature decides to change into the next season!
