What’s In The Box with Recipe Suggestions
Spinach: We’re almost done with our spring planted spinach, enjoy it now! Spinach will likely not return until late September!
Pea Vine & Spinach Green Drink
Thai Coconut Soup with Spinach & Garlic Scapes
Purple Scallions: Thinly slice the green tops and add them to salads or cooked dishes just before serving for a little extra flavor.
Skillet Strata with Bacon, Cheddar, and Greens
Baby Arugula: Arugula is a spicy green that pairs well with other rich ingredients such as cheese, cured meats, nuts and fruit.
Arugula and Hard Cheese Salad with Toasted Garlic Vinaigrette
Salad Mix: This mix is a blend of baby lettuce varieties mixed with flavorful Asian greens. It is more delicate, thus is best dressed with a light vinaigrette just before serving.
Rainbow Chard: Use the stem and the leaf. Both are tender enough now to eat the chard either raw or cooked.
Skillet Strata with Bacon, Cheddar, and Greens
Purple and/or Green Kohlrabi: No, the color of the kohlrabi doesn’t indicate a difference in flavor or anything else. We grow both colors just to have a little variety in our lives. Once you peel away the skin the pale green, tender vegetable inside is delicious regardless of skin color.
Kohlrabi Fritters with Garlic Herb Cashew Cream Sauce
Strawberries: We should have another couple weeks of picking, but strawberry season never lasts very long. Don’t forget to keep your berries cold to preserve their quality until you are ready to eat them, but please eat them soon after receiving them.
5 New Ways to Serve Strawberries and Cream
Green Zucchini: Store zucchini at room temperature. If you refrigerate them they can get chill injury which will decrease their quality and shelf life.
Shaved Zucchini Salad with Parmesan
My Special Zucchini Bread Recipe
Garlic Scapes: This is the crazy, curly green vegetable in your box. Read more about it in this week’s vegetable feature.
Thai Coconut Soup with Spinach & Garlic Scapes
Baby White Turnips: This is our last week of baby white turnips until we plant them again in the fall. You can, and should, eat both the turnip roots as well as the tender green tops.
Creamy Turnip Grits & Greens (and be sure to make the Brown-Butter Hot Sauce Vinaigrette to put on top).
Pea Vine: Last week to enjoy this flavorful green. If you have been passing up the opportunity to eat these greens, we encourage you to give them a try this week. Store it in a plastic bag until ready to use.
Pea Vine & Spinach Green Drink
Pea Vine Steak Salad with Horseradish
Head Lettuce: Make sure you wash your head lettuce in a sink of clean water before using it. Try to remove as much water from the leaves as you can before using the lettuce or you’ll have a soggy salad!
Vegetable Feature: Garlic Scapes
Garlic is a staple item in our kitchens, but bulbs of garlic to use in the form of cloves are hard to come by this time of the season. We have already seen green garlic in the boxes a couple weeks ago. Green garlic is best when it’s young and tender, but as it continues to grow the base starts to become a bulb and the layers of the plant become tough and less than desirable to eat. As we outgrow green garlic, garlic scapes start to form and we take the next step in our seasonal garlic journey.
Garlic scapes are the long, skinny, green vegetable with a lot of curls that you’ll find in this week’s box. Up until the early 90’s we used to remove scapes from the garlic plant and throw them on the ground! What were we thinking?! We were the first farm in the Midwest to start harvesting the scapes for use as a vegetable, thanks to one of our customers from Korea who asked us to save the garlic scapes for her so she could make pickles. We thought this was odd (remember we used to throw them on the ground) but saved some for her anyway. She was gracious enough to share a jar of pickled scapes with us and that was our introduction to how delicious they are to eat!
Garlic scapes are a curly shoot that forms on a hardneck garlic plant and grows up from the center of the plant in June. All of our varieties of garlic are hardneck garlic. This type of garlic produces scapes as part of nature’s plan for the plant to propagate itself in the soil. Right now, we want the garlic plant to focus its energy into producing a nice bulb of garlic, so we remove the scape from the plant. Nearly the entire scape is edible and is best when harvested young and tender. You may need to trim off the skinny end near the little bulb as it is tough sometimes. Garlic scapes are very tender and do not need to be peeled…Easy! Scapes have a bright, mild garlic flavor. They can be used in any recipe that calls garlic cloves, just chop them up and add them as you would clove garlic. They can be grilled or roasted, pickled, or fermented. They’ll store for 2-3 weeks.
Short & Sweet Weekly Farm Update
Kelly’s report: All I can say is wow, we have some pretty great CSA members! Thank you to all the members that came out and enjoyed the afternoon on the farm. The weather was perfect – we could not have asked for better. There were minor sprinkles here before 8am, then we had overcast skies with a light breeze to keep the humidity at bay. It is always great to see and talk to everyone and this year I was able to do more of that. Those of you that have been here in the last couple of years for Strawberry Day know that I have had Jose Guadalupe, also known as Lupe, helping me weigh strawberries that come back from the field. This year, I turned over the lead berry weighing job to Lupe, who in turn was training Silvestre to help him. That allowed me more freedom to talk and get to know ‘My’ CSA Members better. I was hanging around there if they needed me, but they both did great! It is great to see our team working so well together!
As usual, I am always amazed at the delicious food that you bring for the potluck. I always wish I could try it all, but that was a lot of food. You guys did a great job! So, my recap is the food was great, the members were great, and I saw a lot of smiles and a few little red faces! I didn’t get to go on the field tour, but I will let Richard tell you about that part of the day!
Richard’s Report: As always, the tour was very fun with lots of good questions! We spent most of the tour in a 5-acre field of Brassicas. That includes the kohlrabi, broccoli, cauliflower, salad cabbages, along with 3 kinds of kale and 2 plantings of Brussels sprouts. Multiple plantings looked very, very good! I think it was obvious to everyone that this whole field exuded health and vitality! Large, healthy leaves with vibrant colors and no weeds or insect damage. How can this be so beautiful? The answer was when plants have everything they need, fertility, water and space to grow, the insects stay away. Insects are attracted to stressed plants. So of course, we are proud to show off a well-cared for field. We found an abundance of Broccoli side shoots to pick! This was exemplary of what we want for a ‘field tour’!
