Good Eats Weekly Newsletter - June 21, 2017

Having trouble viewing this message, please click here Welcome to the 2nd week of the Summer CSA Share! Localvore Members  & Regular Veggie Only Share Members take a LIGHT GREEN BAG This week your bag contains: Mesclun, Arugula, Parsley, Kohlrabi, French Breakfast Radishes, Celery, Nicola Potatoes, and Out of the Bag: Tomatoes Half Veggie Only Members take a YELLOW BAG containing: Mesclun, Arugula, Scallions, French Breakfast Radishes, Celery, and Nicola Potatoes Localvore Offerings Include: VT Tortilla Company Tortillas Pete's Greens Salsa Roja or Tomatillo Salsa Four Corners Farm Strawberries  The first Meat Share is coming up on July 5! If you haven't signed up for your monthly meat share, sign up today! The Meat Share is $50/ month, four months per share season. Around the Farm... After a weekend of intense heat and humidity, the past couple days of rain have been welcome! ~ Taylar About those plastic bags... For many years, Pete's Greens has used a plastic bag system for packing CSA shares. This approach has it's ups, and it has it's downs. One of the downsides is that we can't re-use the bags for packing veggies - federal food safety regs. Feel free to bring your used bags back to your CSA site and we'll recycle them. Otherwise, I encourage you to get creative in finding other ways to use them, or recycle them at your nearest supermarket or solid waste station. Later this summer, I plan to try out two different types of CSA packaging at some test sites. Change is slow going, but we're working on our packaging system. That said, we do like to limit the amount of plastic used each week, which is why you see so many items loose in your bags. Stay tuned... Pickup Instructions Whether you're a seasoned CSA member or new to the Season, please review the instructions about picking up your CSA share to avoid errors! Check the Weekly Names List Each week there will be a Weekly Names List with instructions about what items to take. Please check off your name so we know whether or not you've picked up your share! Choose your Items If you're receiving a Full Vegetable Only or Localvore Share, please take a pale green bag (and any "out of bag" items). If you're receiving a Half Vegetable Only or Half Veggie with Pantry Share, please take a yellow bag (and any "out of bag" items). Localvore and Pantry items will be out of bag. Please check the coolers for any cold items. Problems at pickup? Sometimes, mistakes happen. Please contact us via email if you have any problems. We may not get any notes left on the names list.     The pale green bag (left) and the yellow bag (right)     Visit us at the Capital City Farmers' Market! Every Saturday, we set up at the Farmers' Market in Montpelier! Come say hi and check out our veggies! 9 am - 1 pm 60 State Street Tobin took this shot from the field last week during a hot spell! Storage and Use Tips  Mesclun: Both shares are getting a beautiful, hearty mix of freshly harvested field greens: baby beet greens, baby kale, mizuna, three types of lettuce, a brassica called Red Giant, and a little arugula. The greens are pre-washed and ready to eat. Keep greens in your fridge and use within a week.  Scallions (Half shares): Often referred to as green onions, scallions are a young onion with a small, white tip and a bright green, tall stem. You can use the whole thing in a recipe but I usually chop off the very bottom of the bulb, and then keep chopping up the stem until the chopped parts become less moist/crisp and more fibrous/leafy. The remaining parts make an excellent addition to soups or salads bringing a mild onion flavor and nice hint of color. We're sending you the entire scallion - so they may be a little twisted, but since you can use the whole thing, we preferred not to waste any part! Parsley (Full shares):  Parsley has lots of benefits: many claim that flat-leaf parsley has more flavor than curly but all parsley has huge nutritional benefits - high in vitamins A, C, and K, and in folic acid (great for pregnant women!). The activity of parsley's volatile oils qualifies it as a "chemoprotective" food, meaning it can help neutralize particular types of carcinogens. Try adding parsley stems to your simmering stock, both to impart flavor and help clarify the broth. It can be sprinkled an a host of different recipes, including salads, vegetables sautes, and grilled fish. It can be a rub for chicken lamb, and beef when combined with garlic, lemon zest, and salt. A nice way to store is to place the parsley bunch stems in a glass of water, like flowers in a vase, and then cover loosely with a plastic bag and keep in the fridge.  If this is too finicky, just store loosely wrapped in a plastic bag in crisper drawer. Parsley is a great addition to your potatoes this week or with tomato dishes. French Breakfast Radishes: Always store the radish greens separate from the radish bulb. Both parts are edible - the greens are a little bitter but saute up nicely. I love radishes with a slice of thick crusty bread in the morning - sauteed in butter or olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. Try cutting up some scallions or chives for a little extra spice.  Kohlrabi (full shares): Kohlrabi, the weird UFO like veggie, kind of tastes like broccoli but packs the nutritional punch of the other members of the cruciferous veggies (broccoli, kale, cabbage), and when you cut it up into strips and cook it, it is completely unintimidating (it looks like apple slices or plain potato strips).  So this makes it a veggie that is easy for even picky kids to try and often like. It's also versatile. It adds crunch and body to a salad, it's great tossed on grill in a drizzle of olive oil in roasting basket or tin foil, it's great as a side dressed up in a myriad of ethnic flavor profiles, and it's terrific in many dishes calling for a veggie melange. And to top it off, it stores a long time, so you can eat everything else in the fridge first and then 3 weeks later discover you still have perfect kohlrabi. To use it, cut off that tough colorful exterior. Then cut up the white part into whatever shape you like.  Eat it raw or cook it up.  Recipes below. Celery: On its own, celery has a mild flavor but is excellent for flavoring sauces, stuffings, pasta dishes, soups, and other items where flavors all meld together. Wrap unwashed celery tightly in a plastic bag and store in the coldest part of your refrigerator. To maintain really crispy celery, place it upright in a glass of water in your fridge and cover loosely with a plastic bag. Tomatoes: Heat loving tomatoes are doing well these days! Tomatoes are out of your veggie bags and in a separate paper bag. Please, only take 1 bag of tomatoes! Store tomatoes at room temperature - never in the fridge. I prefer to slice them with a serrated knife to preserve as much of the tomato as possible. Nicola Potatoes: Nicola Potatoes are golden skinned, golden fleshed potatoes that are truly all purpose. They are great for boiling, mashing or roasting and are plenty waxy enough to make excellent potato salad. Nicolas have a very special attribute among potatoes - they are low on the glycemic index compared to all other varieties. Store in a plastic bag in the fridge if you are not going to use right away. Please note: this is some of the very last of our fall storage potatoes. As we packed the potatoes, we did some sample quality tests. Some potatoes are perfect but others have some internal breakdown that is not obvious from the outside. We hate to waste food, so we're going ahead and sending you the potatoes, but lowering their value, and understanding that the quality may not be perfect. If you have a bad bunch of potatoes, please let me know right away. Please try to eat these potatoes within a week. Non-potato eaters rejoice - it'll be a few weeks before we have any more potatoes in the share! Veggie Storage and Use Tips are on our website too, so please bookmark the recipe and storage tip section.  I am sure you will find it useful. Changes to Your Delivery? If you will be away some upcoming week and need to make changes to your share delivery, let us know at least 1 week before the change. You can have your share donated to the Food Shelf or you can skip your share delivery and you will retain a credit on your account toward the purchase of your next share. Sorry, we cannot make changes to the week's delivery after noon on Monday. Localvore Lore At the end of every share season, we survey our members to gather feedback on the season and gather recommendations for the future. Just a couple takeaways I wanted to share from the Spring 2017 survey... There are so many great food producers in Vermont, and we try to pull in items from a wide swath of them. That said, many producers are pretty small scale. At any point in our share season, we may have upwards of 150 - 300 pantry share members, so this volume is really high for small producers, especially those making fresh, artisan foods! When selecting items for the share, we look at some simple criteria: 1) Regionally grown ingredients. We ask our bread bakers to use wheat and grains grown in Vermont, New York, Maine, or southern Quebec and look for cheeses using Vermont milk. Sauces and dressings and other products should primarily contain Vermont-grown ingredients. We consider Quebec local for us; it's often closer to get to some farms across the border than it is in southern Vermont! 2) Organic (certified or not) or poduced using environmentally conscientious practices. 3) Yummy! We often include items that we are fans of and hope others will enjoy, too! We also like to support our neighboring food producers in the NEK, so you'll find a lot of products from our part of the state. Sometimes these criteria mean we have a lot of last-minute juggling. Take this week's share contents, for example. We have tortillas from VT Tortilla Company and Pete's Greens Salsa. We also have freshly picked strawberries from Four Corners Farm in Newbury, VT. Amy and I spent a lot of time yesterday and today trying to coordinate logistics to get these berries into the share this week. So tortillas and strawberries may be a weird combination, but with such a short and finicky berry season in Vermont, we thought it was worth it!! Enjoy these quarts of berries. Owner Bob Gray said he hasn't had a strawberry crop like this in 30 years. Vermont Tortilla Company is relatively new to the scene, making natural corn tortillas in Shelburne, VT. Their artisanal Corn Tortillas are produced with local organic non-GMO corn, with no added preservatives. With simple ingredients (corn, water, lime) and using traditional practices to stone-grind and steep the corn in minerals, these tortillas have a nice corn flavor and will go perfectly with any grilled meats or vegetables. Because they don't have preservatives, they're being sent frozen. Either keep frozen or use within a week, otherwise they will start to go bad. Our on-farm kitchen produced these batches of Salsa Roja and Tomatillo Salsa. We're including both kinds - please select one. Both are made with our farm-grown tomatoes or tomatillos and farm-grown onions. There is a little heat with both types of salsa. It's coming frozen, so either use soon or stick into your freezer. Recipes Find more recipes by searching our website or looking through past newsletters here. Summer Salad Plate An easy option for a lazy night in the kitchen.  Good and garlicky.  Subsitute any cooking greens for the chard (kale, pac choi, whatever you have left in the fridge).  Toppings Mozzarella balls Fresh tomatoes Extra-virgin olive oil Fresh basil leaves, minced or cut into chiffonade Coarse or flaked salt Cracked black pepper Artichoke hearts Toasted pine nuts Olives Roasted red pepper strips Red onion slivers Capers Chickpeas Croutons Salad greens - arugula works nicely On a large platter or individual plates, make a bed of greens. On top of the greens, arrange rows or rings of alternating and slightly overlapping slices of mozzarella and tomatoes (and other toppings). Drizzle a thin stream of olive oil over the salad. Sprinkle on the basil and salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature. Confetti Kale Slaw Dressing 1/2 c. orange juice 1/4 c. lemon juice 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar 1/4 c. olive oil 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp ground black pepper 1 large firm apple, shredded (1-2 cups) 1 c. shredded green or red cabbage 1 c. shredded carrots 1 c. minced celery 1/4 c. minced scallions 3 c. shredded kale, packed. To make the dressing: whisk together ingredients. Prepare the apple and vegetables and place them in the bowl as you go: Peel the apple or don't, and shred it on the large-holed side of a hand grater. To prevent the apples from discoloring, toss well with the dressing. Thinly slice the cabbage and then cut across the slices about every inch. Peel the carrots and shred on the large-holed side of a hand grater. Mince the celery. Mince the scallions. To shred the kale: Rinse the kale leaves and shake off excess water. Strip the leaves from the large stems and pile on a chopping board. Gather the kale into a compact mass and thinly slice it. Then cut down across the slices, chopping the kale into 1-2 inch pieces. Go after those larger pieces of kale that got away from you when you were slicing it. Add the shredded kale to the bowl and toss well. Serve right away, but the sweetness intensifies as it sits. The slaw will keep in the fridge for 2 - 3 days. Simple Roasted Kohlrabi 2-4 kohlrabi - outer skin trimmed to white bulb, and cut into 1/4 " thick strips 1 TB olive oil salt and pepper Preheat oven to 450.  Toss kohlrabi with olive oild, salt & pepper on a baking sheet.  Bake until browned 15-20 mins.  Works just as well tossed with oil and placed in tin foil and placed on grill. Braised Kohlrabi Braising kohlrabi in white wine really brings out the sweetness of this vegetable. Makes a wonderful accompaniment to grilled chicken or fish. 1.5 lb. kohlrabi, peeled and chopped into 1 pieces 2 garlic scapes, chopped into 1/4 pieces 2 TB butter 1.5 teaspoon fresh tarragon, finely chopped (or 1/2 teaspoon dried, crumbled) salt & pepper to taste 1/4 cup white wine chopped fresh parsley Melt butter in a medium-sized skillet set over medium heat. Add the kohlrabi, scapes, tarragon, salt and pepper, and toss to coat with butter. Pour in white wine. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat and cover. Continue to cook, adjusting heat to keep pan contents at a slow simmer, approximately 10-15 minutes, until slightly tender. Uncover and turn the heat up a bit. Cook until the kohlrabi is slightly colored. Remove from heat and transfer to serving dish. Sprinkle with parsley and serve. Kohlrabi Black Bean Salad This is a very forgiving summer salad.  Feel free to swap in any of the items from your share - get creative! approx 1 cup kohlrabi, peeled and diced 3-4 green onions, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced a handful of fresh cilantro, chopped 3 small radishes, sliced thin 1/2 can black beans, drained and rinsed the juice of one lime Toss all ingredients together. Season with salt to taste and refrigerate at least an hour. Just before serving, garnish with chopped avocado. Radish Salsa Serve with tamales, quesadillas, or tortilla chips. 2 c. radish, chopped 1/2 English cucumber, peeled and diced 1/2 small red onion, minced 1 scallion, thinly sliced 1 tsp minced garlic 1 Tbsp minced fresh chile (like jalapeno or Thai), or to taste, or hot red pepper flakes or cayenne to taste 2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste 1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro leaves S&P Put all ingredients in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust the seasoning, addin gmore chile, lemons, or salt as needed. Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate for up to a day.  Cool Yogurt Soup with Nuts 1/4 c. toasted hazelnuts 2 c. yogurt 1/4 c. milk 1 c. chopped parsley 2 c. coarsely chopped radishes, tossed with 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar   2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil S&P Use the flat side of a wide knife or cleaver or a small food processor to break up the nuts. Vigorously stir the yogurt, milk, and parsley together in a bowl for a minute or two. Stir in a sprinkle of salt and push the mixture through a strainer. Discard the parsley and refrigerate the yogurt. In aother bowl, combine the radishes and olive oil. Sprinkle with S&P. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, stirring occasionally. To serve, taste both the yogurt and radish mixtures and adjust the seasoning if necessary, then spoon some of the radish into chilled soup bowls; top with the yogurt and a sprinkling of nuts. Potato, Scallion and Goat Cheese Frittata Frittatas are one of the easiest things you can make. They make a filling and healthy dinner and you can use any veggies you've got on hand. You can also throw some meat in there to bulk it up a bit- ham, bacon and turkey are all great additions, and cheese of all sorts is welcome as well. 10 large eggs 1/2 cup heavy cream 8 scallions, thinly sliced crosswise on the bias 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick 1/2 cup crumbled soft goat cheese (4 ounces) Garnish: scallions, thinly sliced lengthwise and cut crosswise into 3-inch ribbons Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk together eggs, cream, scallions, and thyme in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 10-inch nonstick, ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Add potatoes, and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and softened, about 6 minutes. Pour egg mixture into skillet, and distribute evenly using a rubber spatula. Stir to combine with potatoes. Bake until set but still loose in the center, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven. Sprinkle goat cheese over top. Bake until cheese melts and eggs are cooked through, about 10 minutes. Slide frittata onto a serving plate. Garnish with scallion ribbons, and cut into wedges. Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote Makes a delicious addition to morning yogurt or oatmeal, can be used as the fruit in a quick cobbler, or on ice cream with ginger snaps! In lieu of the ginger, you can opt for a vanilla bean, split lengthwise.  1/2 cup water 3/4 cup sweet apple cider 3 slices fresh ginger, unpeeled 1/4 cup sugar 1/3 cup honey 1 lb rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 3-inch batons, about 1/2 -inch wide 1/2 pound strawberries, hulled and quartered optional: 1 teaspoon kirsch, or another eau-de-vie In a large, nonreactive saucepan, heat the water, cider, ginger, sugar, and honey (use less if you want a more tart compote) When all the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is simmering, add the rhubarb and let the rhubarb cook in the simmering syrup until it's just softened, which may take as little as 5 minutes, depending on the rhubarb. Remove from heat and add the strawberries and the eau-de-vie, if using. When cool, pluck out the ginger slices. Serve warm or store in a jar in your fridge.