I caught the flu this weekend but I'm feeling better now. Not well enough yet for my normal routine of going out for a beer to write the blog (we don't have internet at home). So I am writing this from my phone and I'll keep it brief! Forgive typos please!
Strawberries will be back in the shares next week I hope.. They are just beginning their second flush and i want sure if we'd have enough for this week..
In both shares this week:
New potatoes! These red skinned beauties are dug from the still growing plants. The skin is thin and delicate and they won't keep as well as storage spuds, but they taste great and cook up a bit faster. More spuds in the larger shares.
Turnips - the delicious hakurei turnips will be making another appearance.
Carrots -. The carrots keep getting bigger each week!
Lettuce- what nice heads of lettuce this year! This time last year we had barely any lettuce thanks to some pesky deer getting in our field. We beefed up fencing and haven't had a problem since!
Walla wallas- more tasty sweet onions. The other onions are growing fast, so next time we'll have a different variety in the share for you.
Swiss chard- a nice colorful braising green bunch!
Garlic- we continue to work at bringing our garlic in to dry, one variety at a time. This is more of the Xi'an, our earliest variety with pretty purple stripes
And in the larger shares only:
Broccoli- broccoli is back in the large shares!
Basil- this will be our very first pick on the earliest basil plants. Pasta primavera!
Zucchini- as the summer squash plants ramp up its working out great to put them in only some of the shares each week. Should be up to our ears in it soon though, and hopefully cucumbers too, which have been a bit slower to get going this year.
Farm Share #4
We will be officially getting into Summer for this week's farm share. Thanks to the cooler weather we've been having lately we are still mostly harvesting the Spring crops. I am not complaining! Although the tomatoes and corn and cukes have slowed down a bit, things are still growing great, and it is definitely easier than last year! This time last year it was so hot and dry, it was really a challenge to keep up with the irrigation. This cool wet week has really given us a chance to catch up, and a lot of the cool weather crops like the peas, broccoli, and greens are loving it. We have a lot of crops right around the corner; the potatoes, cauliflower, fava beans, fennel, and basil are all starting to come on, and the cucumbers and green beans are not far away either, especially with warmer weather forecasted ahead.
Here's what's in this week's share:
Beets- Beets will be in all shares this week, a nice mixed bunch of red, gold, and Chioggia beets. The Red and gold are pretty self explanatory; the gold are just like the red with a nice, sweet taste. The Chioggia are pink on the outside with a pink and white swirl in the middle that's very pretty. http://www.marthastewart.com/274226/beet-recipes
Lettuce- Head lettuce is back in the share this week; not everyone will get the same variety, so it will be either a green butter lettuce, a green oakleaf lettuce, or a redleaf lettuce. They are more modestly sized but very nice! Hope you're ready for em.
Peas- Sugar snap peas making their third appearance in a row. They are coming on strong and really delicious. As I mentioned above, peas are a crop that is happy to have the cooler wetter weather... our peas usually go through the month of July as long as it doesn't get too hot! We are also growing shelling (or English) peas this year, which should be ready in a few weeks.
Garlic Scapes- Garlic scapes appeared in the large shares a few weeks ago, so you may remember...they are the flowering stalk of the garlic plant, which the plant produces a few weeks before harvest. They are truly delicious and easy to use. Use them in almost anything that you would garlic...stir fry, casserole, salad or salad dressing, or raw. They are also my very favorite thing pickled! You can try quick pickling them if you're up for a bit more of a project!
http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/pickled-garlic-scapes-make-ahead-monday/
Radishes- For the first shares, I was worried we may not have enough radishes. I had made a real rookie mistake...using the wrong seed plate in our Earthway Seeder! For direct seeding (putting unsprouted seeds directly in the ground) we use and device built by Earthway, which requires swapping out different seed plates based on the size seed you are planting. Instead of using the Radish/Spinach plate, I unwittingly planted a bed of radishes using the Beet plate. Beet seeds are much larger than radish seeds, so the seed was put down waaay too heavily! We tried to thin the seedlings, but we weren't quite aggressive enough in our thinning, so the radishes were still a bit overcrowded. This time around is a different story. We have a lot of radishes, so I have no worries about not having enough!
Spinach- We were going to put arugula bunches in the share, but the spinach is so nice right now, and without any broccoli, kale or chard I thought spinach would be nicer because you can cook with it if the lettuce is enough salad for the week... seems like many people can't get enough spinach! We are having a very successful spinach growing season so far with several very nice plantings.
Herb bunches- Well, we had a case of what my friend and former boss Georgie Smith calls "remay blindness". The remay is the big white floating row cover that you may have seen in our fields that is great for keeping away pests and warming up the crops. But it prevents you from being able to see what's going on, and if you forget to pull up the corner of the remay to peek, you have no idea what's going on under there. In this case, the cilantro started to bolt (send up a flowering stalk) as it often does (although this was unusually early) and I missed spotting it. Because of this, we won't have cilantro left for the end of the week...so Thursday folks will be getting dill bunches instead. When we get into the next herb planting I'll remember to swap it around so everyone gets both!
IN THE SMALL SHARES:
Zucchini- The Summer squash plants are growing fast now but still just getting going with their fruiting. I'm hoping this week we'll have enough zucchini to go in all the small shares....with more on the way soon for everyone. You may have to halve this recipe, but this is a great way to use zukes-
http://www.justataste.com/5-ingredient-zucchini-fritters-recipe/
AND IN THE LARGE SHARES:
Carrots- More carrots out of our first Spring carrot beds. These should be a piece of cake to get rid of.
Scallion- The scallions have grown so nicely this year, I have found myself using them all the time in the kitchen in things I'd never thrown scallions into before...but the standby has been to throw some into a lettuce salad with carrots, radishes, and hakurei turnips.
http://www.saveur.com/gallery/Scallion-Recipes
Cabbage (or kohlrabi/broccoli)- We have some beautiful little heads of "Melissa" semi savoyed (slightly crinkly leaved) cabbage. It has a nice green and purple leaf and a delicious crunch. Unfortunately, the back part of the bed has been mysteriously slow to head up...a few folks may get mini cabbage heads, in which case we'll throw in a bit of broccoli or a kohlrabi bulb to make up for it!
Here's what's in this week's share:
Beets- Beets will be in all shares this week, a nice mixed bunch of red, gold, and Chioggia beets. The Red and gold are pretty self explanatory; the gold are just like the red with a nice, sweet taste. The Chioggia are pink on the outside with a pink and white swirl in the middle that's very pretty. http://www.marthastewart.com/274226/beet-recipes
Lettuce- Head lettuce is back in the share this week; not everyone will get the same variety, so it will be either a green butter lettuce, a green oakleaf lettuce, or a redleaf lettuce. They are more modestly sized but very nice! Hope you're ready for em.
Peas- Sugar snap peas making their third appearance in a row. They are coming on strong and really delicious. As I mentioned above, peas are a crop that is happy to have the cooler wetter weather... our peas usually go through the month of July as long as it doesn't get too hot! We are also growing shelling (or English) peas this year, which should be ready in a few weeks.
Garlic Scapes- Garlic scapes appeared in the large shares a few weeks ago, so you may remember...they are the flowering stalk of the garlic plant, which the plant produces a few weeks before harvest. They are truly delicious and easy to use. Use them in almost anything that you would garlic...stir fry, casserole, salad or salad dressing, or raw. They are also my very favorite thing pickled! You can try quick pickling them if you're up for a bit more of a project!
http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/pickled-garlic-scapes-make-ahead-monday/
Radishes- For the first shares, I was worried we may not have enough radishes. I had made a real rookie mistake...using the wrong seed plate in our Earthway Seeder! For direct seeding (putting unsprouted seeds directly in the ground) we use and device built by Earthway, which requires swapping out different seed plates based on the size seed you are planting. Instead of using the Radish/Spinach plate, I unwittingly planted a bed of radishes using the Beet plate. Beet seeds are much larger than radish seeds, so the seed was put down waaay too heavily! We tried to thin the seedlings, but we weren't quite aggressive enough in our thinning, so the radishes were still a bit overcrowded. This time around is a different story. We have a lot of radishes, so I have no worries about not having enough!
Spinach- We were going to put arugula bunches in the share, but the spinach is so nice right now, and without any broccoli, kale or chard I thought spinach would be nicer because you can cook with it if the lettuce is enough salad for the week... seems like many people can't get enough spinach! We are having a very successful spinach growing season so far with several very nice plantings.
Herb bunches- Well, we had a case of what my friend and former boss Georgie Smith calls "remay blindness". The remay is the big white floating row cover that you may have seen in our fields that is great for keeping away pests and warming up the crops. But it prevents you from being able to see what's going on, and if you forget to pull up the corner of the remay to peek, you have no idea what's going on under there. In this case, the cilantro started to bolt (send up a flowering stalk) as it often does (although this was unusually early) and I missed spotting it. Because of this, we won't have cilantro left for the end of the week...so Thursday folks will be getting dill bunches instead. When we get into the next herb planting I'll remember to swap it around so everyone gets both!
IN THE SMALL SHARES:
Zucchini- The Summer squash plants are growing fast now but still just getting going with their fruiting. I'm hoping this week we'll have enough zucchini to go in all the small shares....with more on the way soon for everyone. You may have to halve this recipe, but this is a great way to use zukes-
http://www.justataste.com/5-ingredient-zucchini-fritters-recipe/
AND IN THE LARGE SHARES:
Carrots- More carrots out of our first Spring carrot beds. These should be a piece of cake to get rid of.
Scallion- The scallions have grown so nicely this year, I have found myself using them all the time in the kitchen in things I'd never thrown scallions into before...but the standby has been to throw some into a lettuce salad with carrots, radishes, and hakurei turnips.
http://www.saveur.com/gallery/Scallion-Recipes
Cabbage (or kohlrabi/broccoli)- We have some beautiful little heads of "Melissa" semi savoyed (slightly crinkly leaved) cabbage. It has a nice green and purple leaf and a delicious crunch. Unfortunately, the back part of the bed has been mysteriously slow to head up...a few folks may get mini cabbage heads, in which case we'll throw in a bit of broccoli or a kohlrabi bulb to make up for it!
Blog for Week 3
It is a beautiful Sunday morning as I'm writing this. We have lots of new crops beginning to come on...for the first few shares, it's sometimes a challenge to come up with enough variety of crops, as there just aren't too many things ready to harvest and so many of them are greens. As we get into Summer, the challenge becomes deciding what NOT to put in the shares because there is so much food to harvest!
We (mostly Jack) made a big push on irrigation, and got a ton of watering done this past week. I'm glad we did, because the forecast was making it look like we would get some rain, and while it did drizzle a bit it didn't amount to much. While it gets hotter and drier in July and August, by then we have already gotten quite a few crops out of the ground; the early greens, peas, and broccoli, the garlic and early onions....and other crops, like the potatoes, winter squash, tomatoes, and storage onions, we are beginning to cut off water to encourage curing or fruiting. So, really, this time of year is peak irrigation season for us, and it can be quite a challenge to keep up with it all.
Hope you're enjoying your farm shares, we have lots more good stuff on the way for you!
ALL SHARES:
Carrots- We started digging up some carrots (the only way to really tell if they are ready) and they are sizing up quickly! We will be able to get everyone a bunch this week. They are still on the small side, so they are a great size for snacking. Carrots are a real staple of the farm share, so we will try to keep them coming throughout the entire year with many successive plantings.
Peas- We are quickly getting into peak pea season, so the peas will make another appearance in the share this week. They are so sweet and tasty! While it takes quite a bit of work in the Spring to trellis the tall pea vines, it starts paying off this time of year, as we don't have to bend down to pick all the peas. I like to harness a bucket around my neck so I can go down the rows and pick with both hands free. I think the peas are best raw, but last night I chopped some up and put them in a pasta sauce. Below is a recipe for sautéing them. Baby Nico is loving her some snap peas these days.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/sauteed-sugar-snap-peas-recipe.html
Spinach- Yum! Spinach is making its first appearance in the share. After two weeks of gigantic lettuce heads, I thought it was time for a break from lettuce. If you want to keep the salad train going, this spinach is young, sweet and tender, perfect for spinach salad. If you've had enough salad to last a while (or you're still working on the lettuce), then try cooking your spinach.
Martha has lots of nice recipes:
http://www.marthastewart.com/274254/spinach-recipes#340110
Or I was thinking a spinach dip would be great for dipping snap peas, carrots, broccoli, and turnips in....
http://www.chowhound.com/recipes/fresh-spinach-dip-30667
Walla walla sweet onions- We transplanted these early onions way back in the early Spring. They are sizing up fast now with the long day length! These sweet onions are juicy and mild, without much of the pungent bite of storage onions. They are great for eating raw in salads or sandwiches, or cooking up to use in any onion-y dish.
Broccoli- Lots more nice broccoli still coming on from our first planting, and the next succession is already starting to head up. Unfortunately, our napa cabbage planting all bolted (started flowering) before it formed heads, so no napa cabbage in the Spring shares! Small shares will have a small head of broccoli this week, with more broccoli in the full shares. Also:
Kale- A bunch of kale in the small shares this week! Full shares got kale last week. If you haven't tried making kale chips, it is simple to do and makes for easy healthy snacking:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/crispy-kale-chips-recipe.html
LARGE SHARES:
Garlic- We'll put a head of our first (mostly) dried garlic. This is one of my favorite varieties, "Xian", with beautiful purple stripes on the skin. As an Asiatic variety, it is always the first garlic we grow to be harvested. We brought all the Xian in a few weeks ago and hung it to dry...most of our garlic varieties are still out in the field, but we will be bringing them in one by one over the coming weeks to hang in the barn. Xian has a mild sweet taste and large, easy to peel cloves.
Hakurei Turnip- These delicious white roots are mild and juicy with just a tiny bit of spice. Last night I put some sliced up roots in a salad, and sautéed the greens in a pasta sauce with albacore tuna, snap peas, garlic, scallion, olive oil and white wine.
Salad Mix- A bag of our salad mix, which is composed of baby lettuces, spinach, arugula and mesclun mix. Instant easy salads, just add some crumbled cheese and dressing!
Zucchini- The Summer squash plants are just getting going, but we need to pick the first fruits to encourage the plants to keep growing and fruiting. In no time at all we should be harvesting piles of beautiful summer squash for all the shares...for this week, I'm hoping we can get one zucchini each for the large shares. Fingers crossed!
We (mostly Jack) made a big push on irrigation, and got a ton of watering done this past week. I'm glad we did, because the forecast was making it look like we would get some rain, and while it did drizzle a bit it didn't amount to much. While it gets hotter and drier in July and August, by then we have already gotten quite a few crops out of the ground; the early greens, peas, and broccoli, the garlic and early onions....and other crops, like the potatoes, winter squash, tomatoes, and storage onions, we are beginning to cut off water to encourage curing or fruiting. So, really, this time of year is peak irrigation season for us, and it can be quite a challenge to keep up with it all.
Hope you're enjoying your farm shares, we have lots more good stuff on the way for you!
ALL SHARES:
Carrots- We started digging up some carrots (the only way to really tell if they are ready) and they are sizing up quickly! We will be able to get everyone a bunch this week. They are still on the small side, so they are a great size for snacking. Carrots are a real staple of the farm share, so we will try to keep them coming throughout the entire year with many successive plantings.
Peas- We are quickly getting into peak pea season, so the peas will make another appearance in the share this week. They are so sweet and tasty! While it takes quite a bit of work in the Spring to trellis the tall pea vines, it starts paying off this time of year, as we don't have to bend down to pick all the peas. I like to harness a bucket around my neck so I can go down the rows and pick with both hands free. I think the peas are best raw, but last night I chopped some up and put them in a pasta sauce. Below is a recipe for sautéing them. Baby Nico is loving her some snap peas these days.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/sauteed-sugar-snap-peas-recipe.html
Spinach- Yum! Spinach is making its first appearance in the share. After two weeks of gigantic lettuce heads, I thought it was time for a break from lettuce. If you want to keep the salad train going, this spinach is young, sweet and tender, perfect for spinach salad. If you've had enough salad to last a while (or you're still working on the lettuce), then try cooking your spinach.
Martha has lots of nice recipes:
http://www.marthastewart.com/274254/spinach-recipes#340110
Or I was thinking a spinach dip would be great for dipping snap peas, carrots, broccoli, and turnips in....
http://www.chowhound.com/recipes/fresh-spinach-dip-30667
Walla walla sweet onions- We transplanted these early onions way back in the early Spring. They are sizing up fast now with the long day length! These sweet onions are juicy and mild, without much of the pungent bite of storage onions. They are great for eating raw in salads or sandwiches, or cooking up to use in any onion-y dish.
Broccoli- Lots more nice broccoli still coming on from our first planting, and the next succession is already starting to head up. Unfortunately, our napa cabbage planting all bolted (started flowering) before it formed heads, so no napa cabbage in the Spring shares! Small shares will have a small head of broccoli this week, with more broccoli in the full shares. Also:
Kale- A bunch of kale in the small shares this week! Full shares got kale last week. If you haven't tried making kale chips, it is simple to do and makes for easy healthy snacking:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/crispy-kale-chips-recipe.html
LARGE SHARES:
Garlic- We'll put a head of our first (mostly) dried garlic. This is one of my favorite varieties, "Xian", with beautiful purple stripes on the skin. As an Asiatic variety, it is always the first garlic we grow to be harvested. We brought all the Xian in a few weeks ago and hung it to dry...most of our garlic varieties are still out in the field, but we will be bringing them in one by one over the coming weeks to hang in the barn. Xian has a mild sweet taste and large, easy to peel cloves.
Hakurei Turnip- These delicious white roots are mild and juicy with just a tiny bit of spice. Last night I put some sliced up roots in a salad, and sautéed the greens in a pasta sauce with albacore tuna, snap peas, garlic, scallion, olive oil and white wine.
Salad Mix- A bag of our salad mix, which is composed of baby lettuces, spinach, arugula and mesclun mix. Instant easy salads, just add some crumbled cheese and dressing!
Zucchini- The Summer squash plants are just getting going, but we need to pick the first fruits to encourage the plants to keep growing and fruiting. In no time at all we should be harvesting piles of beautiful summer squash for all the shares...for this week, I'm hoping we can get one zucchini each for the large shares. Fingers crossed!
Second Farm Share
Well, this is quite the little heat wave we are having. Jack is down in Portland where it is supposed to hit 100 degrees, and Whitney is up in the mountains hiking, where it is hopefully quite a bit cooler. This warm weather really dries everything out quickly, which makes me grateful that the cool wet weather of the last week or so allowed us to get all caught up on irrigation.
Aside from a few pest issues, which seem to always rear their ugly heads around this time of year, everything is going great at the farm. We have been able to improve our deer fencing and our irrigation system, get a working fridge going in the farm stand, and get all our plantings in so far this Spring. If the weather stays warm, and we're able to keep up with watering everything, we are primed to have a really great growing season.
I forgot to mention last week, I try to include a few recipes in the blog each week, but there are a few go-to websites that are great if you're struggling to figure out what to do with a new vegetable. The first is www.epicurious.com, where you can even type in several ingredients and find recipes that include both, i.e. cucumber fennel, or lettuce parsley, etc. As anyone who used the blog last year knows, I became a devotee of www.marthastewart.com over the course of the year. Searching for an ingredient on Martha's website brings up a whole trove of info about how to store, clean, and prepare different ingredients, plus tons of great recipes. Although I'm sad to report that there seem to be a lot more adds on both sites than ever before!
Here's what's in your share this week:
Strawberries- Well, it is always hard to see into the future and know how quickly the strawberries will ripen, but I am hopeful that we'll have enough strawberries to give everyone a pint of them this week. They have been growing sweeter every week and we are selling them fast in the farm stand. Enjoy them!
Lettuce- You might be relieved to hear that the lettuce in your share this week will not be as big as last week's! This is a different variety, a red romaine named "Majestic", which does not achieve quite the same gigantic proportions as the green leaf lettuce. It is very pretty though, and delicious.
Broccoli- This is the very first broccoli of 2016...I actually haven't even harvested a head of it yet as I'm writing this. If the weather stays warm, we'll be picking the broccoli first thing in the morning as it tends to get a bit bitter and doesn't hold up as well if it's picked in the heat of the day. Here is a slideshow you can scroll through to look for a broccoli recipe that sounds good-
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/14-broccoli-recipes-youll-want-make-tonight
Scallions- These green onions are doing great this Spring. They are great for a whole variety of uses...in salads and dressings, chopped up as a garnish or topping, in lots of Asian recipes like stir fries....here's a whole web article about it:
http://www.finecooking.com/articles/scallions-more-than-garnish.aspx
Hakurei Turnips- These will be in the small shares this week, and in the large shares the following week. They are a really delicious Asian vegetable that is super easy to eat. They are best raw, or very lightly cooked, like adding them to a stir fry at the last minute or steaming them very lightly. My favorite way to eat them is to chop them up and dip them in a creamy dressing or dip. The greens are also really nice lightly cooked, similar to mustard greens or pac choi. I think stir fry is the theme this week. With broccoli, scallions, turnips and turnip greens, all you need is some rice or noodles, some meat or tofu, and some seasonings.
In the LARGE share this week-
Beets- As mentioned above, the large shares will get hakurei turnips NEXT week, because you'll be getting our first beets of the season this week. These are growing quickly and should be a good size. The greens are also edible and similar to Swiss chard. I know there are some people out there who don't like beets...my mom was one of them until my dad finally wore her down (I think mostly because he was able to grow beets with great success). So I searched for how to cook beets for people who think they don't like beets, and found this blog post by "alpha mom"-
http://alphamom.com/family-fun/best-beet-recipe-with-onions-goat-cheese-pecans/
Snap peas- Snap peas are one of the most popular Spring vegetables we grow. It seems like we can never have too many of them. Our Super Sugar Snap peas are grown on t-post trellis and sometimes get over 6' tall. Adding more strings to the trellis is a frequent project this time of year. The plants are flowering like crazy, but this will be our very first time picking peas this year!
Garlic scapes- Garlic scapes are mostly unknown in these parts...they are the flowering stalk that grows out of all hardneck garlic plants. The scape is picked many weeks before the garlic bulb is harvested and eaten fresh, unlike most garlic which is dried. Most grocery store garlic is a softneck variety, so those plants never produce scapes. Georgie Smith, my onetime employer at Willowood Farm in Coupeville, told us that in China the scapes are much more prized than the bulb of garlic! They are also excellent in a stir fry, or quick pickled in some vinegar, or added to a appetizer plate. They have a mild garlicy flavor. One of my favorite Spring veggies!
http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/garlic-scapes
Kale- The kale has been selling from the farm stand so quickly that our first planting has been picked down to where it's barely there...fortunately, the second planting is coming on strong and ready to harvest! Once upon a time kale was a vegetable that we had to explain to people....now with the great kale renaissance I think most people have a few kale recipes up their sleeve. Here's a few just in case though..
http://www.marthastewart.com/286367/kale-recipes
Aside from a few pest issues, which seem to always rear their ugly heads around this time of year, everything is going great at the farm. We have been able to improve our deer fencing and our irrigation system, get a working fridge going in the farm stand, and get all our plantings in so far this Spring. If the weather stays warm, and we're able to keep up with watering everything, we are primed to have a really great growing season.
I forgot to mention last week, I try to include a few recipes in the blog each week, but there are a few go-to websites that are great if you're struggling to figure out what to do with a new vegetable. The first is www.epicurious.com, where you can even type in several ingredients and find recipes that include both, i.e. cucumber fennel, or lettuce parsley, etc. As anyone who used the blog last year knows, I became a devotee of www.marthastewart.com over the course of the year. Searching for an ingredient on Martha's website brings up a whole trove of info about how to store, clean, and prepare different ingredients, plus tons of great recipes. Although I'm sad to report that there seem to be a lot more adds on both sites than ever before!
Here's what's in your share this week:
Strawberries- Well, it is always hard to see into the future and know how quickly the strawberries will ripen, but I am hopeful that we'll have enough strawberries to give everyone a pint of them this week. They have been growing sweeter every week and we are selling them fast in the farm stand. Enjoy them!
Lettuce- You might be relieved to hear that the lettuce in your share this week will not be as big as last week's! This is a different variety, a red romaine named "Majestic", which does not achieve quite the same gigantic proportions as the green leaf lettuce. It is very pretty though, and delicious.
Broccoli- This is the very first broccoli of 2016...I actually haven't even harvested a head of it yet as I'm writing this. If the weather stays warm, we'll be picking the broccoli first thing in the morning as it tends to get a bit bitter and doesn't hold up as well if it's picked in the heat of the day. Here is a slideshow you can scroll through to look for a broccoli recipe that sounds good-
http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/14-broccoli-recipes-youll-want-make-tonight
Scallions- These green onions are doing great this Spring. They are great for a whole variety of uses...in salads and dressings, chopped up as a garnish or topping, in lots of Asian recipes like stir fries....here's a whole web article about it:
http://www.finecooking.com/articles/scallions-more-than-garnish.aspx
Hakurei Turnips- These will be in the small shares this week, and in the large shares the following week. They are a really delicious Asian vegetable that is super easy to eat. They are best raw, or very lightly cooked, like adding them to a stir fry at the last minute or steaming them very lightly. My favorite way to eat them is to chop them up and dip them in a creamy dressing or dip. The greens are also really nice lightly cooked, similar to mustard greens or pac choi. I think stir fry is the theme this week. With broccoli, scallions, turnips and turnip greens, all you need is some rice or noodles, some meat or tofu, and some seasonings.
In the LARGE share this week-
Beets- As mentioned above, the large shares will get hakurei turnips NEXT week, because you'll be getting our first beets of the season this week. These are growing quickly and should be a good size. The greens are also edible and similar to Swiss chard. I know there are some people out there who don't like beets...my mom was one of them until my dad finally wore her down (I think mostly because he was able to grow beets with great success). So I searched for how to cook beets for people who think they don't like beets, and found this blog post by "alpha mom"-
http://alphamom.com/family-fun/best-beet-recipe-with-onions-goat-cheese-pecans/
Snap peas- Snap peas are one of the most popular Spring vegetables we grow. It seems like we can never have too many of them. Our Super Sugar Snap peas are grown on t-post trellis and sometimes get over 6' tall. Adding more strings to the trellis is a frequent project this time of year. The plants are flowering like crazy, but this will be our very first time picking peas this year!
Garlic scapes- Garlic scapes are mostly unknown in these parts...they are the flowering stalk that grows out of all hardneck garlic plants. The scape is picked many weeks before the garlic bulb is harvested and eaten fresh, unlike most garlic which is dried. Most grocery store garlic is a softneck variety, so those plants never produce scapes. Georgie Smith, my onetime employer at Willowood Farm in Coupeville, told us that in China the scapes are much more prized than the bulb of garlic! They are also excellent in a stir fry, or quick pickled in some vinegar, or added to a appetizer plate. They have a mild garlicy flavor. One of my favorite Spring veggies!
http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/garlic-scapes
Kale- The kale has been selling from the farm stand so quickly that our first planting has been picked down to where it's barely there...fortunately, the second planting is coming on strong and ready to harvest! Once upon a time kale was a vegetable that we had to explain to people....now with the great kale renaissance I think most people have a few kale recipes up their sleeve. Here's a few just in case though..
http://www.marthastewart.com/286367/kale-recipes
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