Newsletter October 10th

Pete’s Greens Good Eats Newsletter Oct. 10, 2007

This week’s share contains: mesclun, ½# mixed peppers, 1 bu. ruby red chard, ½# zukes, 1 red kuri squash, ½# broccoli, ¾# roma tomatoes, 1# yellow onion, 1 bu. sweet salad turnips, ½# eggplant, yogurt, and eggs

This is the last week of our summer share period! Thanks to all of you who joined. It definitely felt like our most successful share yet. Thanks to all of you who have signed up for our Oct.17-Feb 13 share period and hopefully we’ll see those of you who didn’t again next summer. I have been feeling much gratitude towards our share members as we struggle to collect money from late paying wholesale customers. It has made a tremendous difference to the financial situation of the farm that you are willing to pay us ahead of time and trust us to provide the food promised. It also is very gratifying to see the truckload of CSA shares leave the farm and realize that they are going right into people’s kitchens with no middlemen. We love Good Eats and consider it to be the future of Pete’s Greens.

With that in mind please take a couple minutes to fill out our Good Eats assessment form. Your feedback, both positive and negative helps us to improve. Our goal is for Good Eats to get better and better over the next year so any suggestions are appreciated.

We continue to fill the cooler with roots. In fact we are starting to wonder where this enormously bountiful crop will all fit. Yesterday we pulled a daikon radish that is 2 ½ ft. long and 4 inches thick. I’m hoping to dry it down for firewood. I’ve head rumor of a kohlrabi that is the size of a volleyball lurking somewhere in the field. Some unsuspecting winter shareholder might be lucky recipient of it. We are slightly over halfway with our root harvest with 3 weeks to go. If the weather holds and our backs last, we’ll get it done. -Pete

Recipes and Storage Ideas:
Hi everyone! In your shares this week you received beautiful Kuri Squashes and enough vegetables to make an awesome ratatouille. Serve the ratatouille over hot pasta or creamy polenta and have leftovers in a salad for lunch the next day. There are dozens of recipes out there for ratatouille, but mostly i just cook eggplant, onions, peppers, lots of garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes and zucchini in olive oil. I also like to add fresh herbs and red wine towards the end, but the beauty of this dish is that it lends itself to interpretation. -Elena

Chard: Store as you would mesclun. Dry and in the cooler. Try wilting and tossing with pasta or making a creamy sauce and tossing for a side dish to roasted meat. Anything you use spinach in, chard will substitute quite nicely.
Salad Turnips: Sweet turnips are a treat on salad or as a snack with dip for the kids. Store in the fridge.
Kuri Squash: Leave it out on the counter. Slice through the hard skin, clean out seeds and drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in the oven until tender.