What’s In The Box with Recipe Suggestions
Broccoli Raab: This is the green bunch that has little broccoli like florets. It has a slightly bitter taste with hints of nutty earthiness too! It’s tasty cooked with olive oil, garlic, onions, white beans, pork products, sweet and hot peppers and pasta.
Linguine with Broccoli Raab and Peppers
Broccoli: We are down to our final weeks of broccoli harvest. Enjoy this week’s fresh broccoli or consider blanching it and freezing it. Frozen broccoli is great to have during the winter!
Broccoli Romanesco and/or White, Purple or Yellow Cauliflower: Our fall cauliflower and Romanesco crops continue to trickle in, but this won’t last long! All of these selections may be used interchangeably in recipes calling for cauliflower. Include them in soups, stir-fry, baked casseroles, or fresh vegetable salads.
Orange Carrots: Ever considered making beverages out of carrots! Check out the recipe links below.
Rainbow Chard: Enjoy this nutrient and flavor-packed green as its season will end with the cold weather (when that happens). You can chop the leaves and steam them just enough to wilt them down. Cool and freeze them for use this winter in soups, casseroles, etc.
Orzo Pasta with Chickpeas & Chard
Italian Garlic: Make a batch of Garlic and Herb Buttermilk Dressing to use it as a salad dressing with this week’s head lettuce or spinach. Of course, you can also use it as a dip or sauce with other vegetables too!
Garlic and Herb Buttermilk Dressing
Red Summercrisp Lettuce: This is the last of our fall lettuce varieties. Soon we’ll be shifting gears to fall chicories including some gorgeous heads of escarole. Read more about this variety of lettuce in this week’s vegetable feature article.
Butter (Boston) Lettuce Salad with Honey Mustard Vinaigrette
Yellow & Red Onions: Let your food be your medicine too! If you feel a cold coming on, make yourself a cup of onion tea!
Jalapeño Peppers: There is one jalapeño pepper in your box this week.
Green and/or Red Bell Peppers: Our pepper fields are slowing down, so enjoy the final tastes of these sweet peppers.
Orange and/or Red Italian Frying Peppers: These are the long, slender brightly colored peppers that are packed loose in your box this week. They are sweet peppers appropriate for eating raw or cooked.
Salad Mix: Toss salad mix with a sliced apple and a simple dressing for a quick salad option. You could even add cooked chicken, salmon or beef to turn it into a full meal!
Spinach: If you’re building up a surplus of greens, consider turning this week’s bag of spinach into Creamed Spinach with Mushrooms. It will disappear before you know it!
Creamed Spinach with Mushrooms
Variety of Tomatoes: We’re very close to the end of tomato season, so the volume in your box is significantly less. Use them to make one more round of BLT sandwiches, your favorite salsa or a quick pasta dish!
Easy Spinach and Tomato Frittata
Red Kuri or Sweet Jade or Metro Butternut Squash (please note that if the squash was larger, we were only able to fit one in the box this week, not all members will receive 2 small ones as pictured): Red Kuri squash is red on the outside with rich, orange flesh that is versatile in use. Use the flesh to make soup, purees, baked goods, pies, or simply roast or steam it. The Sweet Jade is smaller and green, but exceptionally delicious! Metro is a flavorful butternut variety.
Roasted Red Kuri Squash and Coconut Soup
Honeybun or Jester Squash (please note if the squash was larger, we were only able to fit one in the box this week, not all members will receive 2 small ones as pictured): Honeybun is a type of acorn squash that is marketed as having excellent flavor, with a dramatic improvement over the Sweet Dumpling variety we have planted in the past. Let us know what you think!
Quinoa with Roasted Squash and Pistachios
Chicken Enchilada-Stuffed Squash
Vegetable Feature: Broccoli Raab
Broccoli Raab is darker green in color and has thicker stems that resemble broccoli stems. If you look in the center of the stem, you’ll likely see some small broccoli florets pushing up. Broccoli Raab is in the brassica family and has a mild mustard flavor with a slight bitterness. We like to grow broccoli Raab in the fall when the flavor is milder and more well-balanced.
You can eat nearly the entire bunch including the stems. Sometimes the lower portion of a thick stem can get a little tough so you may need to discard the bottom inch or so if you find this to be the case.
Broccoli Raab is a popular Italian vegetable but is also found in Asian cuisine as well. It is often used in pasta and pizza dishes paired with sweet Italian sausage, garlic and cheese. While you can eat broccoli Raab raw, it is most often cooked. It’s tender enough that it doesn’t require a very long cooking time. It can be boiled, steamed or sautéed. In Italian cooking, you may find recipes that have longer cooking times to ensure the leaves and stem are very soft and tender. Many times, this preparation is done with a lot of garlic and olive oil. We prefer the bright, light flavor of broccoli Raab so usually just cook it long enough to wilt it and soften the leaves.
If you taste a bit of the leaf in its raw form and don’t care about the bitterness, try cooking it before you rule it out. When cooked, the flavor of broccoli Raab mellows out. It also becomes more balanced if prepared with a splash of vinegar at the end.
As it is with leafy greens, Raab is a nutrient dense, powerhouse food! It is a good source of potassium, calcium, iron and vitamins A, C, and K. Broccoli Raab has a slightly nutty flavor.
Short & Sweet Weekly Farm Update
Sunday was a day filled with lots of laughs and sunshine too! We went for an Oktoberfest theme and helped out the potluck with HVF brats and salad mix. We worked with People’s Food Co-op in La Crosse to source the organic sauerkraut and buns, so thank you to Chris and staff for helping us out. With all the other creative side dishes we had a wonderful meal and even desserts too!
Then it was off on the wagon tour. We had two wagons heading out with Luis and Alejandro driving and Richard and Rafael acting as the tour guides. With a few stops along the tour, two of the favorite stops were the daikon radishes and sweet potato fields. The look on the faces of the children when they see how big some of the daikon’s were, was priceless. Richard and Rafael needed some help digging up the sweet potatoes. The decision was made to wait a little bit before we dig the sweet potatoes.
The tour moved on to the pumpkin field. There, members met up with Kelly, Jose Luis and Antonio who were set up with paints, so members (mostly the kids) could paint their pumpkins to take home. After the pumpkin picking and painting, the tour headed back to the farm to end the day. If you haven’t made it to a farm party yet (either Strawberry Day or Harvest Party) you should consider trying to do so next year!
