Adventures and Thoughts of Team Cross

The thirteenth week of veggies!!!

Broccoli or Cauliflower: Thinly slice broccoli or cauliflower stems and florets. Sauté over medium high heat in oil for 2 minutes. Toss with thinly sliced carrots, cucumbers, and a soy peanut vinaigrette and serve with grilled halibut.
Green Top Carrots: Carrots are a great vegetable to pickle. Make a refreshing salad with raisins, broccoli, pickled carrots, and peanuts. Pickled Carrot Tops: When pickling carrots, chop the tops into ½ inch pieces and add at the end.
Snap or Snow Peas And Green Beans: Remove the stem before cooking. Sauté with garlic and squash, toss with parmesan, and serve over polenta.
Summer Squash: These tasty summer squash are delicious raw as well as cooked. Cut the squash horizontally or vertically, depending on the scalloped ribbed edges, so you can see the colorful edges, toss with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and serve on your next veggie platter.
Cucumber: See This Week’s Veggie Feature on the back.
Sweet Spanish Onions: Try a sweet onion sauce to accompany grilled steaks. In a medium saucepan, cook 1 cup of chopped onions with butter, a splash of white wine, chicken or vegetable broth to cover, salt and pepper until the onions are tender and the liquid has evaporated. Puree until smooth.
Fresh Garlic: Roast fresh garlic with fresh thyme. Use in pastas, sauces, or spread on bread. Read all about the trials & tribulations of growing garlic in this week’s main article, by Katie & Richard.
Green Top Beets: Beautiful Gold Beets!! Use the beet tops first, the beets will keep for a couple of weeks if you are starting to accumulate them. For the tops, heat olive oil in a pan, add sliced fresh garlic, a pinch of curry powder, and beet greens. Cook until wilted. For a great breakfast sandwich, thinly slice beetsand onions and sauté for 2 minutes. Place on top of a fried egg between some delicious toast!
Thai Basil: This basil has purple stems and has a slightly more anise flavor than sweet basil. Like the name states, it goes well in any Thai dish. Try a Thai beef noodle dish. You can use most everything in the box this week; carrots, onions, garlic, peas or beans, try some beets as well! Don’t forget about the Thai chiles to spice it up a bit!
Red or French Breakfast Radishes: Use the greens and the radishes both by braising with butter. Cut radishes and greens into 1-inch pieces. Place in oven proof pan with 2T butter. Add enough chicken stock or vegetable stock to cover by half. Braise until tender and the greens are wilted.
Thai Chiles: These small slender chiles are very spicy, but they add a lot of flavor to any dish. When making sauces or soups use the whole chile and remove before serving. Grind chiles up in a spice grinder, and you’ll find they are a lot better than chile flakes you buy. Be sure to wash your hands after handling.
Salad or Sauté Mix: Now that peaches and blueberries are here, make a salad with peaches, blueberries, blue cheese, fennel, and red wine vinaigrette.
Choice – Fennel: One portion per share, please.

Another wonderful box of veggies. We are starting to get a little bit of a pile-up in the fridge of veggies that we need to eat. We recently joined the Seward Co-Op and tried Quinoa (not overly impressed).

Here is the list from Harmony Valley Farm about this week’s vegetables!

White Cauliflower: Great raw, in salads, steamed and covered in cheese or add to a stir fry or sauté. Store stem side down in a plastic bag in the fridge crisper drawer.
Broccoli: Use in salads, omelets or stir-fry, broccoli cheese soup is always good. Store the same as cauliflower.
Green Top Carrots: Carrots are always good raw, used in soups and salads or roasted with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Carrot Top Tea: Take a handful of chopped carrot tops, cover with hot water and steep for about 15 minutes. Strain the greens, add a little honey, and enjoy chilled or hot. Store green tops separate from carrots.
Green Top Beets: Chop and sauté the greens in oil with garlic and onion. Boil whole beets, let them cool, peel and slice. Add them to lasagna, salads or casseroles. Store greens separately from beets in fridge and use greens within a few days.
Zucchini/Scallopini Squash: See This Weeks Feature
Cucumbers: This week’s possible varieties: Slicer – the familiar green cuke. Piccolino – Smooth, thin skin, small green cuke. White – either Pearl or Mini White cuke. Any of these are great to top sandwiches or make a cold cucumber soup for those hot days to come. Store in a plastic bag in the fridge away from apples and citrus fruits, which give off ethylene gas that accelerates cucumber deterioration.
Fresh Garlic: Sauté chopped garlic in butter and add to pasta or let cool and use for garlic butter. Fresh garlic stores in the fridge or let it dry on the counter top.
Fresh White Cipollini Onion: Peel and toss in oil, herbs and spices and grill until soft. These have a sweeter taste and are a good replacement where ever onions are called for.
Amaranth Greens: Chop and sauté leaves in a little oil with garlic, add cumin and some chili pepper. Add chopped greens to broth soups a few minutes before serving. Store leaves in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Sweetheart Cabbage: Salads, stir fry, or coleslaws are a few ideas. Store in a plastic bag in the fridge until it is time to use.
Sugar snap or Snow Peas or Green Beans: We just started picking beans this week – many more are on the way! A great snack raw or in salads. Throw a handful into your next stir fry. Store peas in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to a week. Remember to remove the stem and string before eating. Green beans are excellent fresh or steamed. Store in a perforated plastic bag in the fridge and use within 4-5 days.

This week’s box from Harmony Valley Farm was quite bountiful.  Below is the list of some of the great veggies we got this week!

Green Top Beets: Beets and fennel complement each other well.  Make a beet, fennel salad with orange vinaigrette.
Sweetheart Cabbage: See veggie feature on back of newsletter
Green Top Carrots: Don’t throw away the tops!  They are high in vitamin K which the carrot itself is lacking.  Keep checking out the newsletter over the next few weeks for ideas to use carrot tops.  Carrot Top Pesto: Use a basic pesto recipe and substitute carrot tops for ½ of the basil.
Red Boston Lettuce or Green Leaf Lettuce or Romaine Lettuce:Blue cheese, avocado, sunflower seeds, and lettuce with red wine vinaigrette….yummmm!
Sugar Snap Peas or Snow Peas: Keep raw and make a simple vegetable salad with scallions, shaved fennel, carrot rounds, amaranth, and lemon vinaigrette.  Both are completely edible, pods & all.  Snow peas are flat, Sugar Snap are rounded.
Purple or White Scallions: Make a purple scallion cream cheese.  It would be great on any sandwich, wrap, or bagel.  Just chop scallions thinly and stir into room temperature cream cheese.
Fresh Garlic: Having fresh garlic for the first time, I wish that we could have it all year long.  It is milder, juicier and sweeter than dried garlic.  Separate the stalk from the bulb.  Add the stalk to soups or broths to add flavor.  Be sure to peel the cloves as the papery skin is starting to form around them.  Slice and quickly sauté.
Fennel: The whole plant is edible.  Cut the fronds from the bulb and stalks.  They should be used first.  Garnish any dish, chop and add to dips or spreads, or add at the last minute to a stir fry.  The stalks are tender now, but will become fibrous as the vegetable grows.  Fennel can be eaten raw, braised, sautéed or made into a soup.
Amaranth Greens: See Vegetable Feature on back of newsletter
Summer Squash: Slice and enjoy raw with dip as part
of a veggie platter, or lightly sauté and serve with pasta. Store in the crisper drawer.

This week’s box was a little smaller than usual. The picture is the entire box contents (before splitting with friends). A lot of strawberries and some nice looking lettuce (that we had to chop in half) are the highlights! See below for the full list from Harmony Valley Farm.

• Red or Gold Green Top Beets: See vegetable feature on the back of the newsletter
• Broccoli: The stems, leaves, and florets are all great to cook with & eat.  If you are not using the whole plant at once, the stems and florets will last a couple more days than the leaves.
• Napa Cabbage:  The first cabbage of the season.  Chiffonade and toss with carrot rounds, julienned kohlrabi, oil, and vinegar for a light refreshing side dish.
• Kohlrabi: For a tasty quick snack, remove the leaves and reserve for a later use.  Cut the kohlrabi into bite-sized pieces, sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper, and enjoy. Check out last week’s newsletter for recipes & info!
• Iceburg, Red Boston or Red leaf lettuce: Use the leaves as “bread” for chicken or egg salad sandwiches or even a burger.
• Sugar Snap Peas: You can eat the whole pod raw or cooked.  When cooking, add to the dish after it is taken off the heat so the peas will keep that desired crunch.  Some varieties have a “string.”  Break off the top calyx and pull the string away from the side of the pea.
• Strawberries:  Start your day off with a smile by making a strawberry yogurt smoothie.
• Purple or White Scallions: Thinly slice and add to a pizza right before serving.
• Spinach, Bagged or Bunched: This spinach planting was too thin to cut as baby leaf, but grew up nicely to full size, big enough to bunch.  Bunched spinach is heartier than baby spinach.  Sauté ginger, onions, and spinach with sesame oil and finish with a splash of soy sauce.
• Red Komatsuna:  Excellent greens to add to a bodacious “CSA box salad” comprised of your lettuce, broccoli, scallions & shaved kohlrabi, with a strawberry vinaigrette!  Or lightly sauté and serve with chicken or tofu.