This weeks box is projected to contain:
- - A bunch of kale or collards. The kale is Lacinato kale (also known as dinosaur kale). If you have time to check out the plants, they're quite beautiful. They're in the west garden, to the north, just south of the apple tree. They look like palm trees. Try making vegetarian lasagna with this or kale chips (although it's a bit of effort for not a lot of punch) or saute.
- - A spaghetti squash - pre-cook this in the oven and serve. Cut in half, put face down in a baking tray with some water, cook at 350 for about an hour until fork tender. Scoop out. Serve as a side dish with salt and pepper and a little butter or on top of nacho chips as a layer for nachos or as a base for meat sauce. Yummy.
- - A melon - maybe 2 if they're really small - Either Cream of Saskatchewan (yellow watermelon), Ambrosia (cantaloupe), or Rocky Ford (green musk melon)
- - A bunch of New Zealand Spinach - interesting fresh or sauteed.
- - A bunch of beans (check the board)
- - A box of tomatoes
- - Some salad tomatoes or cherry tomatoes
- - Some tomatillos. I have the Salsa Verde recipe posted on the recipe blog but that just covers the spicy portion of a green salsa. If you make that and then mix in some tomatillos that have been blanched and mixed up in your blender (maybe a 50/50 ratio, depending upon your tolerance for spice), you'll have an excellent green salsa. Of course, if you really like spice, skip the tomatillos altogether and just make the serrano pepper mixture - yum.
- - Either a box of eggplant or okra. I noticed there were a lot of boxes of okra left on Saturday. If you don't like okra, please let me know and I'll figure out what to substitute. We really like it sauteed until it's crispy - you need to weed out the big (woody) stalks, if they're in there. I'm trying to keep them out.
- - Maybe 1 or 2 summer squash - I haven't picked them yet so I'm not sure what's there.
- - A head of Napa Cabbage. This is good sliced thinly and used fresh in an asian salad. Google it - you'll find lots of ideas. I've had it mixed with crispy noodles. It's also good sauteed like bok choy. Or, if you're really into food preservation, this is what they use to make kim chi with. If it's limp at all, just soak it in cold water for 20 minutes or so (hydro-cool it) and it should pop back to it's crispy self. Same with beets, carrots, and other greens.
- - A few carrots - these are big so they should go a long way. Try shredding them into a cabbage salad or slicing them julienne style and blanching them then sauteing with thyme and salt in a little peanut oil.
- - Serve-yourself potatoes. Not sure which type yet. They might be freshly dug which means they might have fresh dirt on them. But this is when they're most tender - just scrub them up a little and cook. If they're freshly dug the skins are so thin that you really don't have to peel them. Even if you make mashed potatoes. They might be a little lumpy due to extra skins but it is said that there are a lot of minerals in the skin. Also, if we serve fingerlings, you don't have to peel them - just clean and roast.
- Various herbs
- Various Spicy Peppers - The spicy peppers are starting to come into their glory so there will be more available in the coming weeks. The Ghost Peppers haven't ripened yet but if you're interested in one, please let me know. I'll keep those separate from the others. Also, be careful of the tiny Thai peppers. They're very spicy.
- Some Sweet Peppers - These include yellow, red, chocolate, green bell and long green (Jimmy Nardello) peppers. If they're in your box, they're sweet. Try to keep the spicy peppers that you take from the table separate from your box contents because some of the anaheims (spicy long smooth green peppers) are easy to confuse with the Jimmy Nardellos (sweet long crinkly green peppers).
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