Hello folks,
It is Memorial Day and I am writing our first farm blog of the year. About 24 hours later than I originally intended to, I have had some technical difficulties combined with procrastination. Generally I will try to have the newest blog posted by Sunday evening so that Monday pickup folks have at least 24 hours advanced notice of what will be in their shares. With two share sizes this year, I debated about how to format the blog and decided on what you see below; first I will list the items in ALL shares...sometimes the size will be a bit larger in the large shares (i.e. a large head of broccoli instead of a smaller head). Below that, I will list the items that appear ONLY in the large share. As mentioned in the email, if you decide at any point that you'd like to switch to receive the large share size, it should be no problem.
We have settled on this time of year to start our shares and are very happy with it. It gives us a week or two of the Spring produce (lots of fresh greens) but almost immediately we can begin to add some exciting stuff. In the coming weeks we should be starting to pick peas, beets, broccoli, and carrots. Some farms' shares start much earlier in the Spring, and to me it seems a bit monotonous to give out just lettuce and radishes and kale for more than a week or two. That said, enjoy the fresh Spring greens now, while they are at their nicest, knowing that we'll have a lot more produce coming your way soon!
Here's what's in the share....
EVERYONE:
Head lettuce- Wow, this is some of the nicest head lettuce we have ever produced here at Ebb Tide. Previous years' members will probably recognize the big heads of Bergam's Green in your share this week. This variety is so great...it gets really large while staying tender, sweet and crunchy. These should be big enough to make several salads, many sandwiches...or one very, very large salad!
Radish- A staple in Spring on the farm, we grow these French Breakfast radishes every year. They are a little different from the ones at the grocery store, long and tapered with white tips. The flavor is also different, sweeter, juicier and much less spicy than the big round red radishes you may be more familiar with. Those spicy radishes are great for tacos, but these ones (while also great with tacos) are much easier to use in a salad or snack on raw.
Kohlrabi- This may be one you're not familiar with, but don't worry, this vegetable is very easy to use! It is best served raw- with a knife or a peeler, Simply cut away the purple skin on the bulb at the base of the plant. Then slice it into pieces as you would an apple, and enjoy. The whole bulb is crunchy, sweet and edible. Try tossing it in a salad or dipping it in hummus or blue cheese dressing. And the tops are delicious cooked as you would cook kale!
Fresh garlic- These large plants are where garlic comes from! In the coming weeks, we will bring the garlic in to dry and the bulbs at the base will draw energy out of the green stalks until they look like the garlic bulbs you're more familiar with. At this stage, the fresh garlic is still garlicy, but it is much milder, less spicy, and the stalk is edible as well as the bulb. The stalk is great for chopping up and using as you would green onion...the bulb can be chopped up (no need to peel it as you would dry garlic) and lightly sauteed, or blended into a nice salad dressing.
Normally I like to put more recipes in the blog, but for this week I'll just tell you what I might do to use up a lot of the stuff listed above...quickly and easily! Wash and spin a third to a half of your head of lettuce, and hand tear larger leaves. Peel and slice kohlrabi as described above, into bite size pieces. Slice up 4-6 radishes. Finely chop the green stalk of one garlic plant. Toss all these together in a salad bowl. Use a food processor to puree the garlic bulb, along with a few tablespoons each of olive oil, rice vinegar, dijon mustard, and mayonaisse. Add salt and pepper to taste. Dress and toss the salad right before eating. Enjoy!
Swiss chard- Swiss chard is in the same family as beets and spinach, and it has been growing like a weed ever since we planted it in early April. These multi colored "rainbow" bunches add some nice color to the share. Wow, I was going to pick a recipe, but so many of these looked great I thought I'd let you have a look and decide for yourself! http://www.epicurious.com/tools/searchresults?search=swiss+chard
Arugula- Arugula is a salad green with a peppery lemony flavor that is very popular in Italy. We cut the arugula hard last week to stock up for the holiday weekend, but I'm hoping it will grow back enough to give you each a small bunch. You could add it to the lettuce salad I described above, or blend it up in food processor to make a dip or pesto. If we run out of arugula, we may substitute a few spinach bunches instead.
LARGE SHARES ONLY!
Walla walla onions- These are our first sweet onions of the year, they were looking small but I was surprised when we began pulling a few to see that the actually have some pretty large bulbs under the ground. Super sweet juicy onions that are easy to eat raw or cooked. Great on sandwiches!
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/grilled-sweet-onion-and-butter-sandwich
Strawberries! The strawberries are off to an early start in this warm spring, but I wasn't sure if we'd have enough for all the shares, so large share members are the lucky recipients. Hopefully we'll have enough in the next few weeks to get them in all the shares!
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