Around the Farm It's snowing! In May! We had a snowy weekend up here in Craftsbury, and it also snowed on Monday night! We are still looking forward to our fields of salad greens later on this week, though! Luckily the snow has been melting by mid-morning. We are really excited to have cucumbers back! Our plants are yielding about 60 cucumbers per day, so we were able to send you all cucumbers in your shares this week! It's truly a sign that summer is on its' way!
-Kate |
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Fancy / Localvore
Mesclun Cilantro Cucumber Yellow Onions Parsnips Carrots Potatoes Black Garlic Take a purple bag! |
| Everyday Standard
Mesclun Basil Pac Choi Romaine Cucumber Yellow Onions Black Radish Potatoes
Take a yellow bag! |
| Lean & Green
Mesclun Buttercup Lettuce OR Romaine Cress Basil Cucumber Green Garlic
Take a green bag! |
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Pantry/ Localvore Shares and Pantry Add-Ons This week's pantry/ localvore pantry items are Milanaise All Purpose Flour, VT Creamery Goat Cheese Spread, Champlain Orchards McIntosh Apples, and Slowfire Bread. Please read more below.
Cheese Shares: Cheese is OUT of the bag. This week's cheese share is Willoughby from The Cellars at Jasper Hill. The cheese is labeled with your name. Egg Shares: These are delivered OUT OF THE BAG. You'll find your dozen labeled with your name. Note that for the next several weeks your eggs will be a mix of full size eggs and smaller eggs. This won't last long! Axel's young hens have begun to lay and pullets lay small eggs for the first few weeks. They will size up over the next few weeks.
Bread Shares: These are delivered OUT OF THE BAG. This week's bread share comes from Elmore Mountain Bread.
Milk Shares: These are delivered OUT OF THE BAG. They are in a cooler. Our milk share comes from Sweet Rowen Farmstead in West Glover. Paul used to work at Pete's Greens years ago, but now he is milking a small herd of heritage Lineback cows. His milk has a delightfully grassy flavor, as his cows are pasture-raised. He leaves it cream-top, and pasteurizes it over very gentle heat in order to reduce human interference as much as possible! This milk is bottled fresh for you on Tuesday nights! These are delivered OUT OF THE BAG. They are in a cooler.
Store orders: Everything ordered from the store is packed separately.
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Axel's hens soaking up the sunshine today in Craftsbury! |
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A Few Notes...
- We have packed shelf-stable store orders, eggs, and bread into lidded totes this week!
- We have updated the automatic payment settings in Farmigo. If you are set on autopay, your card will be charged when your balance falls below $25, rather than waiting until your account falls below $0.
- To help us plan out our veggie availability and schedule with our non-veggie producers, we need to have all orders for the coming week placed by Friday night for the next week's delivery. The Sunday night deadline is just too tight for us!
- If you ordered any bulk items in the store this week, they will be OUT OF THE BAG. They will have a label with your name on it. Store orders must be placed by Friday night of the week before delivery.
- Continuing your Good Eats CSA into the summer? No changes are necessary to your member account! If you are on auto-renewal, your deliveries are ongoing no matter what season we are in. No waitlist is necessary! We encourage new or returning members to let us know if they want to switch their share as soon as possible as space may be limited at some sites or for some shares. If you are interested in helping us spread the word about our CSA, let us know!
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Need some help getting the hang of our online member portal?
Check out our tutorial below! |
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- Milanaise AP Flour: This week we are sending out this wonderful organic all purpose flour from Quebec. At 11.5% protein this white flour is a true all purpose flour. Use it in everything from muffins & pancakes to pie crust, cookies and breads. This is the same flour we sent a 2 lb bag of in early April. Because we know good flour can be hard to come by lately, we are sending 5 lbs of this one now, and we have rounded up some other wonderful flours that we will be sending to you in the months ahead including a whole wheat pastry flour, a higher gluten flour for bread baking and a lighter than whole wheat flour. Stay tuned! You can also find great flours available in our store.
- VT Creamery Goat Cheese Dip: We have a mix of different goat cheese dips from the VT Creamery this week. There will be a mix at each pickup site, but please only take one! We have Garlic & Herb, Red Pepper & Lemon, and Classic Plain.
- Champlain Orchards McIntosh Apples: This very popular apple has a white, tender, crisp flesh that’s spicy, highly aromatic, and full of juice. It was named after John McIntosh, a farmer in Ontario, Canada who found and introduced it in 1870. Macs are the best selling apple in New England and Canada!
- Slowfire Bread: Slowfire is a farm-based, wood-fired bakery. They make breads and pastries that are naturally leavened, hand-crafted, and baked in a masonry oven. This week, Slowfire is bringing you Country Bread, which is a sourdough made with white, whole wheat, spelt, and rye flour.
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STORAGE TIPS - Mesclun: Store your mesclun in an airtight food storage container lined with a paper towel.
- Cucumbers: These long, skinny cukes taste like a burst of summer. Ideally they like to be kept at about 50 degrees or they may go soft in a couple days. Keep them in a paper bag in the crisper drawer so they stay warmer!
- Basil: Welcome back, basil! It's a sure sign of the seasons when basil starts to appear. Who else is excited to have it back?! Use basil as a way to add extra flavor to your pizza or pizza sauce. It's also a staple in Thai, Vietnamese, and Laotian cooking. It's best to add basil in to your dish near the end of the cooking process so it retains its maximum essence and flavor.Basil should be kept in a plastic bag or kept stems down in a glass of water with plastic over the leaves for about a week with regular water changing. Keep your basil out of the extreme cold as it could damage the fragile leaves. Your basil will be packed in the same bag as your mesclun. Don't forget to take it out when you get home!
- Cilantro: Store your cilantro standing upright in a jar of water, covered with a plastic bag in your fridge. This will keep your cilantro fresh for weeks!
- Cress: This peppery delight is great mixed into salads, on its own, and as a garnish to soups, frittatas, sandwiches, or toast! Store your bunched greens wrapped in plastic in your crisper drawer.
- Pac Choi: Bunched pac choi coming your way with week! Part of the cabbage family, it packs in nutrition with high scores for vitamins A and C and calcium. Pac Choi is mild enough to be chopped up for a salad, particularly if you give it a quick wilt in a hot pan. It's also great in stir-fries and sautés and in asian soups (and other soups too). As leaves become more mature they are more often served cooked. Pac Choi has a mild flavor. The leaves taste similar to Swiss chard and the stems (called ribs) are deliciously crispy and can be substituted for celery in recipes. Store your pac choi loosely wrapped in a plastic bag in your crisper drawer.
- Green Garlic: Green garlic is garlic that is still fresh, and not cured. It is actually the result of thinning out our garlic rows! Keep this in your fridge and use as you regularly would use garlic.
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Visit our store!
Do you need some pastured chicken, cheese, yogurt, dried beans, flour or cornmeal or oats next week?
All of these are available in our online store, you can add these items and have them delivered along with your share next week!
Orders must be placed by Friday at midnight for the following week’s share.
In stock today: - Morningstar Farm dried beans in 6 varieties
- Organic Flours -
- All purpose
- Part white/part wheat flour
- Whole wheat flour
- Whole wheat pastry flour
- White high-gluten flour for bread baking
- Various cheeses
- Yogurt from Butterworks
- Rolled oats
- Pearled barley
- Cornmeal
- Whole chickens from Pete’s Greens
- and lots more!
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RECIPES
We know a lot of you are baking and cooking up a storm these days! If that's you and you've found a great way to use your CSA ingredients, we want to know! Share with us in our Facebook group or email us your recipe (pictures, too)! We'd love to feature it in a future newsletter, and to know what our members are eating these days.
German Potato Salad:
Ingredients: - 3 pounds medium red potatoes
- 5 bacon strips, diced
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1-1/4 cups sugar
- 1 cup cider vinegar
- 3/4 cup water
- 3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
To Prepare: - Place potatoes in a Dutch oven; cover with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 25-30 minutes or until tender. Drain and cool.
- In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp; using a slotted spoon, remove to paper towels. Drain, reserving 4 tablespoons drippings. In the drippings, saute onion until tender.
- Stir in the flour, salt, celery seed and pepper until blended. Gradually add the sugar, vinegar and water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened.
- Cut potatoes into 1/4-in. slices. Add potatoes and bacon to the skillet; cook and stir gently over low heat until heated through. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve warm.
Parsnip Purée:
Ingredients: - 1 pound parsnips, peeled, thinly sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup whole milk
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- Kosher salt
To Prepare: - Bring parsnips, garlic, cream, milk, and butter to a boil in a medium saucepan.
- Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until parsnips are very soft, 10–15 minutes.
- Uncover and cook until liquid is reduced by half, about 5 minutes; season with salt.
- Purée in a blender until smooth.
Caramelized Onions:
Ingredients: - 2 large yellow onions, sliced 1/4" thick
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- Kosher salt
- Low-sodium chicken broth or water (for pan; optional)
To Prepare: - Heat 2 Tbsp. butter in a large saucepan over medium until melted and sizzling.
- Start by adding just a couple of large handfuls to the pot. Cook, stirring, until onions are soft and starting to turn translucent, 1–2 minutes. Stir in a few more handfuls of onion and repeat cooking and stirring process until you’ve added all the onions. Season with a pinch of salt.
- Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook onions, stirring every few minutes to prevent them from sticking and coloring too much in any one place, until blonde-colored, 15–20 minutes. This is the point of doneness for French onion soup! If you feel like onions are getting too brown around the edges or they’re sticking, reduce your heat a bit.
- If you’re going for onions that are both softer and more caramelized (say for a patty melt or onion dip), keep cooking, stirring on the regular, until onions are unmistakably golden brown, another 15–20 minutes. Because most of the water has cooked off at this point, there might be some bare spots where the pot could start to burn. If this happens, stir in a splash of broth or water. The liquid will dissolve the cooked-on bits, which the onions will re-absorb.
- For extra-dark onions, the kind that make a great burger topping, cook until they start to almost blacken around the edges and go slightly crisp, another 10–15 minutes. This requires constant attention so they don’t burn. No one said caramelized onions were quick!
- Let onions cool in the saucepan, then use or transfer to an airtight container and chill. They will keep up to 1 week.
Radish Salad:
Ingredients: - 1 lb. radishes, trimmed
- Kosher salt
- 1 lemon, halved
- 3 oz. Parmesan, divided
- ½ cup basil leaves, torn if large
- 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- Flaky sea salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
To Prepare: - Thinly slice half of radishes on a mandoline and place in a large bowl. Slice the remaining radish into wedges if larger and place in same bowl. Season well with kosher salt and squeeze and scrunch radishes several times with your hands to work salt into flesh.
- Squeeze lemon halves to get 3 Tbsp. juice; save one half for zesting later.
- Add lemon juice to bowl and finely grate half of cheese over radishes; toss well to coat.
- Using a fork, crumble remaining cheese into bowl. Add basil and 2 Tbsp. oil and toss again. Taste and season with more kosher salt if needed.
- Transfer salad to a platter. Drizzle with more oil, sprinkle with sea salt and pepper, and finely grate zest from reserved lemon over.
Pickled Carrots:
Ingredients: - ~1 lb carrots, tops removed, peeled if needed, sliced into sticks
For the brine: - 2/3 cup distilled white or apple cider vinegar
- 1/3 cup water (for stronger flavor, sub vinegar)
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 Tbsp organic cane sugar (or stevia to taste)
To Prepare: - Add carrots to a large mason jar or glass container. Set aside.
- To a small saucepan add distilled white vinegar, water, salt, and sugar. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and stir to fully dissolve salt and sugar. Taste and adjust flavor as needed, adding more salt or sugar to taste.
- Pour the brine over the carrots, ensuring they are fully submerged. If needed, add more vinegar or a little water to cover.
- Seal well and shake to combine. Then refrigerate for at least 1 hour. The flavors will deepen and intensify the longer it marinates. Best flavor is achieved after 24 hours.
- Will keep in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks (sometimes longer).
Thai-Inspired Salad:
Ingredients - 1/2 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- Kosher salt
- 1 English cucumber, thinly sliced (about 2 1/2 cups)
- 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced (1/2 cup)
- 1 Thai chile, thinly sliced (optional)
- 1 head of Romaine, chopped
- Pickled carrots, to taste
- 1/4 cup roasted unsalted peanuts, roughly chopped (optional)
- 1/2 cup fresh herbs, such as Thai basil, mint, and cilantro, roughly chopped
To Prepare: - Bring vinegar, sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Reduce heat to medium and cook until mixture has consistency of syrup, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl; let cool completely.
- Add cucumber, onion, and chile (if using); toss to combine. Let stand until cucumbers absorb liquid, 5 minutes, then toss again. This component of the salad can be refrigerated up to 1 week.
- Add chopped romaine to a plate. Top with the cucumber mixture, pickled carrots, peanuts (if using), and fresh herbs just before serving.
Cress Salad:
Ingredients: - 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon best-quality red wine vinegar
- ½ small garlic clove, finely grated
- Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 2 small bunches watercress, tough stems trimmed (about 10 cups)
To Prepare: - Whisk mustard, vinegar, and garlic in a medium bowl; season with salt and pepper, then gradually stream in oil, whisking constantly. Whisk until dressing is emulsified and thick.
- Add watercress to dressing, season with more salt and pepper, and gently toss until watercress is evenly coated (you want to be careful not to bruise or wilt greens when tossing, so use a light hand).
Goat Cheese & Apple Tart: Ingredients: - 2 17.3-ounce packages frozen puff pastry (4 sheets), thawed
- 1 egg, beaten to blend
- 6 ounces soft fresh goat cheese (about 3/4 cup packed)
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
- 3 medium apples, peeled, quartered, cored, cut into 1/8-inch-thick slices
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 3/4 cup honey (preferably dark), divided
- 1/2 teaspoon (scant) ground allspice
To Prepare: - Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll out each puff pastry sheet on lightly floured surface to 11-inch square. Using 5-inch-diameter cookie cutter or bowl, cut out 4 rounds from each pastry sheet, forming 16 rounds total.
- Divide 8 pastry rounds between prepared baking sheets; pierce rounds all over with fork. Using 3 1/2-inch-diameter cookie cutter or bowl, cut out smaller rounds from center of remaining 8 rounds (reserve 3 1/2-inch rounds for another use), forming eight 5-inch-diameter rings. Brush outer 1-inch edges of 5-inch rounds on baking sheets with beaten egg; top each with 1 pastry ring. Freeze at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix cheese, lemon juice, and salt in bowl; spread mixture inside rings on frozen pastry rounds.
- Overlap apple slices atop cheese. Mix butter and 1/4 cup honey in small bowl; brush over apples. Sprinkle with allspice.
- Bake until apples are tender and pastry is golden, about 35 minutes.
- Place tartlets on plates. Drizzle 1 tablespoon honey over each and serve warm or at room temperature.
Green Garlic Compound Butter:
Ingredients - 2-3 leaves from your fresh garlic, or 2 cloves of black garlic
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened and cubed
- 1/2 lemon, zested
- salt and pepper to taste
To Prepare: - Bring a wide pot of water to a boil. When water is on the cusp of boiling, prepare a large ice bath.
- Blanch greens in boiling water for approximately 30 seconds. Transfer greens to the ice bath, leaving them to rest for one minute.
- Drain greens and wring out all excess liquid. Pat dry, then finely chop the leaves. If using black garlic, skip steps 1-2.
- In a small bowl, combine garlic greens, butter, and lemon zest. Add salt and pepper to taste, adjusting amounts as you continue to blend the butter.
- Spoon butter mixture onto a piece of parchment paper in a rough log formation. Roll parchment to gather butter into a firm log, twist the excess ends of the parchment, and place in a freezer bag. Compound butter may be stored up to 4 months in the freezer.
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