What’s In The Box with Recipe Suggestions
Green Beans: Blanching is a simple process that involves briefly cooking a vegetable, such as green beans, in salted boiling water, then removing them from the water and immediately submerging them in ice water to stop the cooking process. If you want to use fresh green beans in a salad, blanch them first to retain the fresh bean flavor but tenderize them a bit. You can also freeze blanched green beans, just pat them dry and put them in a freezer bag.
Italian Potato Salad with Green Beans
Green Top Red 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.
15 Creative Ways to Use Beet Greens
Carrots: Enjoy the fresh flavor of these carrots that were dug this week. Eat them raw as a snack or roast them along with the potatoes.
Fried Rice with Edamame & Corn
Authentic Mexican Pickled Carrots
Green and/or Silver Slicer Cucumbers: This is nature’s refreshing gift to us to help take the edge off of summer heat! Enjoy them in a simple refreshing salad, blend them into a drink, or just eat them with a touch of salt and chili.
Simply Dressed Cucumber & Mint Salad
Smoky Grilled Chicken with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce
Edamame: This was our featured vegetable last week. Read more about edamame and find two recipes utilizing this sweet bean on last week’s blog post.
Sushi Salad with Brown Rice, Edamame, Nori and Miso Dressing
Italian Garlic: Mix minced garlic with diced fresh tomatoes and fresh basil to make a little tomato salad. Melt mozzarella cheese on a piece of toast or a bagel and top with tomato salad.
Cheeseburger Pie with Roasted Poblanos and Corn
Creamy Chicken and Greens with Roasted Poblano and Caramelized Onion
Sun Jewel and/or Sugar Cube Melons and/or Sweet Sarah Melons: Most boxes will contain a small, personal-sized cantaloupe called Sugar Cube. It’s round with a netted rind and the flesh is orange, sweet and fragrant. Sweet Sarah is usually a little larger. Both are sweet and delicious!
Red & Yellow Onions: This week take advantage of the beautiful red onions and use them raw in fresh salads and salsa. Put the yellow onions to use in dishes calling for a base of sautéed onions.
Bell Pepper & Corn Pasta Salad
Green Bell Pepper: Chop it up along with some onion and garlic and use it to make scrambled eggs or an omelet!
Fried Eggs in Green Pepper Rings
Potato and Bell Pepper Breakfast Hash
Poblano Peppers: This is the dark green pepper with a pointy base. It is a hot pepper with a mild to medium heat level and it is also this week’s featured vegetable!
Cheeseburger Pie with Roasted Poblanos and Corn
Red or Carola Gold Potatoes: We’re finishing up the last of our earliest red-skinned, white flesh potato and have now dug some of our next variety, Carola, which is a gold skin, gold flesh potato. Both varieties are great for boiling, steaming or roasting. They have moist, waxy flesh.
Sweet Corn: 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.
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. Store tomatillos at room temperature until you’re ready to use them.
Sun Orange, Chocolate Sprinkles, or Red Grape Tomatoes: The cooler temps slowed down the ripening process, but we are still seeing lots of green fruit on the plants. More to come in future weeks.
47 Recipes You Can Make With a Pint of Cherry Tomatoes
Large Tomatoes: This week’s bags may contain Roma tomatoes and/or several of our other larger varieties including red slicers, yellow slicers, pink slicers, black velvet or Marsalato ruffled red tomatoes. Store fresh tomatoes at room temperature as refrigeration can diminish their flavor and cause them to have a mealy texture.
Open-Faced Bagel with Cream Cheese, Tomato, Onion and Fresh Basil
Green and/or Italian and/or Yellow Scallopini Squash: Both of our plantings continue to produce strongly, so take advantage of the bounty! This week’s boxes have about 2 pounds of zucchini in them.
Vegetable Feature: Poblano Peppers
Poblano peppers have become a farm favorite peppers over the past few years. Poblano peppers are dark green with wide shoulders and a pointy bottom. They have a thinner wall than bell peppers, but thick enough that they hold up to roasting very well. In fact, roasting is the process that takes the flavor of a poblano and brings it to its full potential. Poblanos do have some heat which is on the mild side, but in some years moves up to a medium heat level.
Because of their size and shape, poblano peppers are excellent for stuffing with meat, grain and cheese mixtures. Chiles Rellenos is a classic dish based on roasted poblano peppers that are filled with cheese, coated in a batter, and fried. We have a few recipes in our archives that have become some of our favorite summer recipes to make when poblano peppers are available. These include Roasted Poblano, Onion & Jack Quesadilla and Vegetable Enchiladas with Tomatillo Cream Sauce.
While poblano peppers may be used raw, their flavor is enhanced with cooking and more specifically, by roasting. Roasting peppers is very easy and can be done over a direct, open flame or in the oven. If you have a gas stovetop, you can roast the poblanos directly on your burners over a high flame. If you have a small rack, you can put that over the burner. The other direct flame method is to roast them on a grill. If you want to use an oven, it’s best to roast them under a broiler. If you don’t have a broiler, you can roast them in a very hot oven, they likely won’t blacken as much. You want to roast them until most of the skin is blackened. You’ll have to turn them periodically to blacken all sides evenly. Stay close and don’t walk away because sometimes this happens quickly, especially under a broiler. Once the skin is charred, put the peppers in a covered bowl or a paper bag so they can steam and cool slightly for about 10 minutes. Once cool enough to handle, use the back of a knife to scrape away the skin. Remove the stem and scrape away all the seeds from the inside of the pepper. Now you’re ready to add roasted poblano peppers to whatever dish you’re preparing!
Short & Sweet Weekly Farm Update
The cooler weather has slowed our field production number to a more manageable pace. We all appreciate the more pleasant working conditions and pace. We are about half done harvesting onions and shallots. All of our garlic has been harvested and is dry and being topped for storing for future CSA boxes for the rest of the season. The garlic needs to move out of the greenhouse to make way for the rest of the onions to come in to dry. Once the onions dry down, we plan to have those store too!
We also have a bi-colored variety of Amaranth that should be making its way into your CSA boxes next week. The red Amaranth is beautiful, but this one is spectacular – can’t wait to taste test it too!
