This week’s share:
Spicy greens mix (great for salad or to stir fry)
Baby kale (extra tender at this size, better for eating raw)
Arugula OR an extra bunch of kale
Broccoli raab (bunch of bright green leaves)
Butternut squash
Celery
Celeriac (Big brown, ugly, root mass. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover this vegetable is delicious.)
Salad turnips (leaves are very edible!)
Potatoes
Onions
Hi CSA members!
First of all, a HUGE thank you to Dennis Samatulski, a friend of the farm who volunteered to deliver this week’s shares. I’m not able to do the drop this week, and this favor is just beyond helpful. THANK YOU DENNIS!!
Now the for the normal silliness:
As many of you have probably surmised from reading these newsletters, Mimi and I do not have conventional 9 to 5 jobs. We don’t know what it means to leave for the weekend because if we do make it away we’re always leaving something behind – a pig or seedlings or transplants – that could go hungry, get too hot, or too wet, or too dry, or whatever. We don’t know what it feels like to come home for dinner, because we’re always at home, but we’re also always at work. Too often work literally invades our home, like when we had to harvest all that winter squash early last month and our entire living room was full of pumpkins, sweet dumplings, and sweet mamas (doesn’t sound so bad to have a house full of those, I guess). I suppose we run on a cycle, just like everyone else. Instead of the 5 day work week schedule, though, we’re on more of the 200 day work week schedule. It goes from the beginning of April until sometime in mid October. We get lunch breaks, and there definitely are some benefits to the set-up, but man, it’s a LONG week. And folks, it’s Friday.
That’s right. No more planning, no more planting, just weekend preparation at this point. Just some harvesting to do, tons of plants to pull out and till under, cover crop to plant, irrigation and other infrastructure to put away, tools and equipment to clean up and a whole lot of food processing to do for ourselves. Sure it’s a busy Friday, and maybe it’s only Friday morning, but it feels good. And just to be clear – I’m not complaining about the 200 day work week. We also get a heck of a long weekend.
Here are some notes on this week’s harvest:
Broccoli raab: You can use broccoli raab pretty much the same way you would use any braising green. Steam it, saute it, add it to soups, etc. Related to broccoli and turnips, it has a nice tender leaf, and we’re happy to add it to this year’s vegetable repertoire.
Baby kale: This would be great to stir fry up with your spicy greens mix. Kale at this size is more flavorful and tender then the larger leaves we’ve been giving you. You could also do a raw “massaged” kale salad. Not to sound too …..but drizzling chopped kale with olive oil and literally massaging it with your fingers will make it soft and tender, and that way you can enjoy the nutritional benefits of eating it raw!
Celeriac: This is seriously one of my favorite vegetables. The winter Mimi and I spent in Alaska we had a morning routine: 1. Wake up. 2. Cut celeriac into 1 cm cubes. 3. Drizzle with plenty of olive oil and roast on a baking sheet at 350. 4. Leave the celeriac roasting for an hour while cross country skiing. 5. Come in from skiing, fry up some pork, cook some eggs over easy, and enjoy with celeriac. You’d never think it, but it’s maybe the best breakfast I’ve ever had.
Celeriac is also known as celery root, and it is literally the root of a celery plant, though it’s a variety of celery you wouldn’t want to eat – the stalks are super stringy and not too tasty. Regular celery doesn’t have a big enough root to be worth harvesting as celeriac. It’s kind of like chard and beets: same species, bred for different parts to eat.
Another great use for celeriac:
After peeling, grate it raw in equal proportions with carrots and apples, and coat with a honey-mustard-vinegar dressing. Super tasty.
