What’s In The Box with Recipe Suggestions
Green Beans: Green beans are incredibly easy to prepare and delicious whether steamed, roasted, or sautéed with a little garlic and olive oil. They are also an ideal choice for preserving for later use: simply blanch, then freeze them. When the cold weather hits—take them straight from the freezer to make a comforting homemade vegetable soup.
Dilly Beans Recipe (Just Like Grandma’s)
Orange Carrots: Your weekly supply of sweet, crisp carrots is perfect for adding to stews, or you can simply enjoy them raw with peanut butter or your favorite dressing for a delicious crunch.
Moroccan Carrot & Chickpea Salad
Green and/or Silver Slicer Cucumbers: Fresh cucumber salads are the way to go this week. Pair them with tomatoes, melon, edamame, broccoli and or carrots—the possibilities are endless!
Edamame: It’s best to cook edamame in its pods in salted boiling water. Once cooked it’s much easier to pop the beans out of the pods. And don’t forget that the beans inside the pods are edible, but the pods themselves are not!
Italian Garlic: A little fresh garlic can add so much flavor! If you roast the entire bulb, you can squeeze the cooked, roasted garlic out of the papery skin surrounding the cloves. You’ll notice the flavor of the garlic mellows and sweetens as it is roasted and the color of the garlic becomes a light, caramel brown color.
Pull-Apart Roasted Garlic Pizza Sliders
Jalapeño: Ready for a little spice? Make sure you find the single jalapeno pepper in your box. It will come in handy when you make fresh Pico de Gallo or guacamole, however you could also use it to add a little heat to a stir-fry, cream cheese or other sauce.
Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread Muffins
Baked Jalapeño Pepper Mac & Cheese
Sugar Cube Melon: Melons are sweet, refreshing fruits that are ready to eat right away. You can cut a melon in half, scoop out the seeds, and enjoy the flesh directly with a spoon, or add a scoop of ice cream or frozen yogurt in the center for an easy dessert. While they are picked ripe, they will continue to soften and sweeten if left on the counter at room temperature.
Melon Mozzarella Prosciutto Salad with Arugula
Cantaloupe and Black Pepper Granita
Watermelon: While we can’t cut open every watermelon to make sure it’s ripe, we do have a well-trained harvesting crew that has learned to read the signs of the plant to determine if the watermelon is ready to be harvested. As such, to the best of our abilities your watermelon should be ready to eat and will not benefit from any additional time to ripen. Store it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to eat it and enjoy it within a few days.
Red and Yellow Onions: Two kitchen favorites! Yellow onions are great for cooking, while red onions are delicious fresh in salads, sandwiches, tacos, or salsa.
Skillet Roasted French Onion Chicken & Potatoes
Easy Tomato, Red Onion & Cucumber Salad
Mixed Sweet Pepper (Ukraine and Red and Orange Italian Fryers and/or Red Ice): Colorful, crunchy, and sweet! The Italian Frying Peppers are long, slender, and brightly colored. In contrast, the Orange Ukraine peppers resemble a bell pepper but feature a pointy bottom instead of a blocky one. They have a vibrant red-orange color and a thicker wall, similar to traditional bell peppers.
Sweet Corn: Nothing says “summer” quite like the fresh sweet corn in this week’s share, whether you enjoy it boiled, grilled, or roasted straight out of the husk! To easily prep your farm-fresh box, simply cook the cobs, let them cool, and slice off the kernels to use throughout the week. They add the perfect sweet, crunchy pop when tossed directly into a summer salsa, fresh salads, seasonal soups, or crispy fritters.
Sweet Corn Oatmeal with Peaches
Small Tomatoes: Small, sweet, and perfect for snacking! Wash your tomatoes and drain off any excess water just before eating. Add them to salads or skewer them with mozzarella and basil! Don’t forget to either reuse or recycle the container they are packed in!
Tuscan Cherry Tomato & White Bean Salad
Variety of Large Tomatoes: Juicy summer tomatoes are here! This is another big week for tomato harvest, and we’ve included a variety of tomatoes for you to enjoy in salads, on sandwiches and BLTs, or cook them up into tasty sauces, soup or a casserole. Ripen them at room temperature and check in on them every day. If you see a spot starting to form, it’s time to eat it!
Green and/or Italian and/or Yellow Scallopini Squash: Zucchini is one of those vegetables you can use in so many ways. Grill it, roast it, sauté it, or cook it together with your other summer vegetables.
Burst Tomato Galette with Corn & Zucchini
Garlicky Parmesan Zucchini Bake
Vegetable Feature: Sweet Pepper
We grow a variety of sweet peppers to send your way throughout mid to late summer. Peppers do not tolerate frost, so we hope to either be done by picking peppers by the first frost or we cover the plants with row covers to protect them from the cold. Depending upon when we see the first frost, we can sometimes continue picking peppers for a few weeks after the first cold spell!
We start our delivery season with Green Bell Peppers. While it is common to eat green peppers, you’ll find the flavor of a green pepper is milder without a lot of sweetness. This is because green peppers are immature. All colored peppers start out as green peppers. As the fruit ripens on the plant, it makes a transition from green to its fully ripe color. As this change occurs, natural sugars develop in the fruit making it not only sweet but also flavorful.
While we used to focus more on growing Red Bell Peppers, we found that we prefer Italian Frying Peppers. Italian Frying Peppers are a sweet pepper that turn either red or orange in color. They have a more elongated, slender shape that is pointy on the end, and they may be eaten raw or cooked.
We also grow a unique variety that we call Ukraine Peppers. Ukraine peppers are a sweet pepper that resemble a small bell pepper. When fully ripe they are orange red in color and have a blocky top that tapers to a point at the bottom of the pepper. They are similar to a bell pepper, but with a pointy end and more orange-red flesh.
Lastly, we grow Mini Sweet Peppers! As the name states, mini sweets are a small, sweet pepper. They are one of the sweetest, most flavorful peppers you’ll likely ever taste. We should be seeing them in share boxes in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for them. When ripe they turn red, yellow, or orange, depending on the plant. We save our own seed, which is a labor of love given there are only a few seeds per pepper! However, it’s worth our time because our strain has exceptional flavor and is acclimated to our growing region.
Farm Update
It’s been another busy week on the farm! The mornings have felt a bit fresh—a gentle sign that autumn is approaching—even though plenty of peak summer days still lie ahead.
While the mornings say “fall,” our harvest is still overflowing with the best of summer. We are working hard picking crops, tending the fields, and enjoying the incredible variety of colors and flavors coming out of the ground, all while preparing our upcoming autumn plantings.
Change is always happening in the fields, and we can’t wait to see what the coming weeks bring. Enjoy this week’s box—have fun trying out new recipes and savoring every single bite!
