Welcome to the 3rd week of the Pitchfork & Crow Summer CSA! Here’s what’s in the share:
- Garlic Scapes – These are the immature flower stalks of garlic. Grilled or sauteed, they’ll add flavor to any dish. Chop them up and use them like you would garlic or green onions.
- Salad Mix – a mix of lettuces with a dash of arugula and a few pea shoots to make things interesting
- Hakurei Salad Turnips – Great sliced raw into salads with just a mild turnipy taste
- Spring Sweet Onions – Tasty overwintered Siskiyou Sweet onions! Be sure to store fresh onions in the fridge and use them up as they won’t store like cured storage onions. Also, use the greens like scallions.
- Butterhead Lettuce – Two heads, two varieties, one red and one green. Butter lettuce is amazing!
- Carrots
- Mizuna – Saute me!!
- Broccoli! – Two heads of tasty spring broccoli! The varieties are all coming on at once and you’ll see some longer stemmed/larger beaded open-pollinated heads mixed in with the shorter stemmed/smaller beaded hybrid varieties we grow. We love it all!
- Green Coriander Seeds – sometime just after flowering we begin to think of cilantro as coriander and eagerly await the forming of the seed. If harvested and used before drying down, the green coriander seed has an amazing citrus flavor that falls somewhere between cilantro and coriander. Tear the seeds and green leaves off the stalk and toss them into salads, soups, or any dish really. They’re fleeting, so enjoy them in the moment.
- Snap Peas
- Shelling Peas – Two type of peas this week! They look similar, but you won’t want to eat the pod of the fattened shelling peas. We’re putting these in pint boxes to help you distinguish between the two.
- Potatoes – Mostly German Butterballs with a few bags of red and Kennebecs to round out our numbers. We are nearing the end of the storage potatoes, but should have new potatoes in a week or two. These slightly dry potatoes are deliciously sweet as the long storage at 34 degrees changes the starches to sugars.
- Seascape Strawberries
Wondering what to do with garlic scapes or how to store carrots? Don’t forget we’ve got a plethora of information available on the P&C CSA member website. You can even add it to your smart phone’s homepage for quick reference. Who doesn’t want a P&C logo sitting alongside your other app icons?
Now that we’re a few weeks into the CSA season, it’s a good time to review our member numbers. Sometime between mid-January and the beginning of April we hit this year’s magic number of 90 shares committed! In past years we’ve usually closed the sign-ups the week before the start of the season in May and last year we didn’t completely fill up until sometime in August. But every season is different and this year we filled up early. After a handful of no-shows and a late addition of a couple of folks on the waiting list we’re now off to the races with 91 CSA shares spoken for.
Our members are split with 52 members picking up in Salem and 31 picking up in Lebanon. The remaining 8 shares-worth of produce are handed off to the Linn Benton Food Share for distribution through local food pantries to community members in need. Like other CSA members, the Linn Benton Food Share paid us a lump sum up front for a weekly distribution of produce. This is an exciting opportunity to work with a fantastic local organization committed to making quality, local produce available to folks who otherwise might not be able to access it.
Our friends at Working Hands Farm outside of Hillsboro recently realized they’d just harvested their 10,000th share! Of course seeing that made me wonder how many CSA shares we’ve harvested over the past 6 years and after a little math I came up with 11,027. Whoa! I guess you do anything long enough and the numbers really add up. We’ve been awfully lucky for your support over the years and we hope to continue on harvesting produce for members who’ve committed to the CSA model and committed to our farm.
This week we sweated through hot weather to keep things on track. We uncovered and weeded the summer squash and cucumbers and they’re both beginning to set fruit. It won’t be long before we’re overrun with the summer treats! Lots of cultivation, irrigation, and a little planting happened this week. The Painted Mountain corn got transplanted, the parsnip seed went into the ground, and the next succession of melons, cucumbers, summer squash, basil, and cauliflower all got seeded in the propagation house. The tomatoes got pruned. We even got the drip irrigation set up in the celery, which never happened last year. Okay, what’s next?
Enjoy the vegetables and we’ll see you next week!
Your farmers,
Jeff Bramlett and Carri Heisler
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Here are a few recipes to get you inspired:
Farmers Market Salad with Aged Gouda and Roasted Portabellas
- 3/4 pounds sliced portabella mushrooms
- 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- 3 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 10 cups mixed spicy greens such as mustard, arugula, tatsoi, mizuna, and watercress
- 1 cup coarsely grated aged Gouda cheese
Preheat oven to 425°F with rack in middle.
Toss mushrooms with 3 tablespoon oil and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper in a bowl. Roast in 1 layer in a 4-sided sheet pan, turning once, until golden-brown and tender, about 15 minutes. Cool mushrooms.
Whisk together vinegar, mustard, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and remaining 5 tablespoons oil in a bowl until combined. Toss mushrooms, greens, and cheese with enough dressing to coat.
Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Butter Dressing
- 6 tablespoons creamy peanut butter (do not use old-fashioned style or freshly ground)
- 1/4 cup low-salt chicken broth
- 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon oriental sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 8 ounces linguine
- 1 large orange bell pepper, cut into matchstick-size strips
- 1/2 cup chopped green onions ( or use the top of your sweet onion)
- 5 large lettuce leaves
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (or green coriander!)
- 1/4 cup chopped salted peanuts
Combine first 8 ingredients in small bowl; whisk to blend. Set dressing aside.
Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain pasta; rinse with cold water and drain again. Transfer pasta to medium bowl. Add bell pepper and green onions. Pour dressing over; toss to coat. Season salad with salt and pepper. Line serving bowl with lettuce leaves. Transfer salad to prepared bowl. Sprinkle with cilantro and peanuts.
From Epicurious via Bon Appétit , http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/noodle-salad-with-spicy-peanut-butter-dressing-109150
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Lettuce Soup
- 1 cup chopped onions, scallions, and/or shallots
- 1 garlic clove, chopped (or garlic scapes!)
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 3/4 teaspoon ground coriander (or green coriander!)
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 3/4 cup diced (1/3 inch) peeled potato
- 8 cups coarsely chopped lettuce leaves including ribs (3/4 lb)
- 3 cups water
Cook onion mixture and garlic in 2 tablespoons butter in a 4- to 5-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add coriander, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in potato, lettuce, and water and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until potato is very tender, about 10 minutes.
Purée soup in batches in a blender (use caution when blending hot liquids) and transfer to a 2- to 3-quart saucepan. Bring soup to a simmer, then whisk in remaining tablespoon butter and salt and pepper to taste.
From Epicurious via Gourmet, http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/lettuce-soup-231995
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pitchfork & crow 