What’s In The Box with Recipe Suggestions
Green and/or Yellow Beans: Keep it simple. Lightly sauté or steam until tender and season with salt, pepper and some melted butter. Take a moment to taste how fresh and delicious they are on their own!
Pesto Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans
Greek Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner with Green Beans & Feta
Green Top Gold or Chioggia Beets: Use the leaves as a cooking green (similar to chard or spinach) or slice them thinly and add to salads. The beets are sweet, tender and delicious when boiled or roasted whole.
Golden Beet Risotto with Crumbled Ricotta Salata and Sautéed Beet Greens
Broccoli: Don’t forget to eat the stem as well as the florets. Peel the stem before using.
Creamy Broccoli Cauliflower Casserole
Sweetheart or Tiara Cabbage: The sweetheart cabbage is the one with a pointy head, while the Tiara is a round variety! Take a moment to read our feature on salad cabbage a few weeks ago Vegetable Feature article to learn more about this cabbage as well as ways to use it.
Vinegar Slaw with Cucumbers and Dill
Life-Changing Crispy Baked Fish Tacos
White Cauliflower: Steamed, stir-fried, roasted or raw, there are many ways to use cauliflower. Of course, there’s the classic pairing of cauliflower with cheese sauce that is a winner every time!
Turmeric Roasted Cauliflower with Herb Dressing
Baked Sesame Orange Cauliflower
Collard Greens: This is the bunching green in this week’s box with large paddle-shaped leaves. Since collard greens have a thicker leaf, you will have to cook them a little longer for them to become soft and tender.
How To Make Raw Collard Wraps….and Suggestions for Fillings!
Collard Wrapped Yellow Rice & Black Bean Enchiladas
Green and/or Silver Slicer Cucumbers: Time to start gettingcreative with cucumber jelly, cucumber lime popsicles and sparkling peach cucumber lemonade!
Mexican Cucumber Snack of Pepinos con Chile y Limon
Kale and Cucumber Salad with Roasted Ginger Dressing
Dill: This feathery, fragrant herb adds a nice, delicate, distinct flavor to dishes. If you are adding it to a cooked dish, do so just before serving to maximize the flavor.
Fresh Garlic: The skin around the cloves is a little tougher, but once you remove it, you’ll find plump, juicy cloves! Store fresh garlic at room temperature and it will continue to dry down until you use it.
Sierra Blanca Onions: This is a mild onion that is excellent raw in salads and on sandwiches. It’s also pretty tasty on the grill!
Caramelized Onion, Goat Cheese & Kale Pizza with Balsamic Drizzle
Cowboy Burgers Topped with Onion Rings
New Red Norland Potatoes: New potatoes only come around once a year, don’t miss out on this special, flavorful, delicate vegetable treat! Read this week’s vegetable feature article to learn more about what makes these potatoes special.
Creamed Potatoes With Green Beans
Purple or Green Scallions: Both are mild enough to eat raw, but flavorful enough to cook them as well. Use the green portion of the leaves as well. This may be the last week we’ll deliver onions with the green tops still intact.
Scallion Cream Cheese Bagel Spread
Green and/or Italian and/or Yellow Scallopini Squash: This week’s recipe suggestions includes links to recipes for Zucchini Pancakes & Blueberry Zucchini Muffins.
Vegetable Feature: New Potatoes
Potatoes are a vegetable everyone’s familiar with, but not all are created equally, and this week’s potatoes are, in our opinion, very special. There is a short period of time early in the summer when we have the opportunity to eat “New Potatoes”. New potatoes are not a variety, but rather a term used to describe potatoes that are harvested off of a plant that still has green leaves on them. Our usual practice is to mow the potato vines about a week in advance of harvest. In the week between mowing down the vines and harvesting the potatoes, changes take place in the plant that help to set the skins, making it more durable. That durability means less damage to the skin while handling and extra support when storing. That means the ‘thicker’ skin protects the flesh and makes them better for storage. Freshly dug new potatoes have a flavor and texture unlike other potatoes throughout the season. It is a fresh, pure potato flavor and the skin is tender and delicate. Once cooked, the flesh is moist, creamy and smooth. Simply delicious!
The new potatoes in your box this week are a variety called Red Norland. They are an early, red-skinned potato with creamy white flesh. They need to be handled with care so as not to disturb the skin and expose the flesh, so we encourage you to handle them with care as well. Wash them before use and just give them a gentle scrub if needed.
Potatoes should be stored in a cool, dark place, but not in the refrigerator. We store our potatoes in a warmer cooler at about 48-50°F which is the most ideal. If potatoes are stored in colder temperatures (such as your home refrigerator), the starches will convert to sugars which is not what we want in a potato. So, in a home setting, it’s best to store them in a cool, dry location outside of the refrigerator where they will not be exposed to light. Light causes the potatoes to turn green and bitter. If the potatoes have set their skins, in general they will store for a few weeks at room temperature in a brown paper bag (never in a plastic bag). However, this week’s new potatoes will not store as well and are best eaten within one week.
Some potatoes are classified as “waxy” while others are classified as “starchy,” or possibly a mix of the two classifications which we label “all-purpose.” These classifications are assigned based on the type of starch that comprises the flesh of the potato. Waxy potatoes are generally moister and hold together better. They are best used for roasting, boiling or steaming, and are a good choice for soups and potato salad. We do not recommend mashing them because they usually become sticky and pasty. Starchy potatoes tend to be drier and fluffier. This is a variety of potatoes appropriate for mashing as well as for making roasted potatoes, pan frying, etc. Starchy potatoes are also useful in soups, but they’ll likely fall apart, which is actually good for thickening.
We encourage you to slow down and really savor the flavor of these new potatoes. This is the only time during the season you’ll be able to have this tasty experience of freshly dug potatoes. You really don’t need to do much to them at all! They are excellent simply boiled or steamed with a little butter, salt and pepper. This week, simple and minimal is best. Enjoy!
Short & Sweet Weekly Farm Update
Coming up, we are planning more green beans and possibly some sweet corn! The first green peppers and jalapeños are not far behind. Next week we could even see Tomatillos, eggplants and cherry tomatoes! The crew is also about one-third of the way done harvesting all the garlic for the season, and that is no small job at all. The weather has to be dry so we can dig the garlic so we are hoping the rain we are getting today will stop soon.
We are also ready to harvest the second planting of rainbow chard and dig some green top carrots! All this means that we are not sure what we will be able to fit in the CSA boxes next week.
