Lettuce - Lilttle Gems or Bavaivian - crunchy ribs, both hold up to creamy dressings and lots of toppings
Carrots
Kale - Red Russian
Garlic
Tomatoes - Many of you will get New Girl, a smaller red tomato.
Eggplant
Persian Cucumbers - Large Only
Cantaloupe - Small Only
Watermelon - Large Only
If we are short on eggplant some people might receive shishito peppers and eggplant next week.
Last year I made this simple and delicious soup during corn season. I loved using the corn cob stock and decided I would make some risotto with corn stock instead of chicken stock. I didn't end up getting a chance last year before local corn was done for the season and it has been on my mind ever since. Last night I adapted a recipe from the New York Times and really enjoyed it. There is a lushness to risotto made from homemade chicken stock that this didn't have, even with a bit of heavy cream, but the flavors were lovely. I also grilled some green beans and chopped and tossed them some diced tomatoes and olive oil. Soup and risotto might not be at the top of your list this week with the high temps, but I think corn is the ultimate summer food no matter how it is prepared.
Corn - White corn was always my dad's favorite so I chose this variety thinking of him. We have two successions of corn this year and hopefully we will have some yellow corn in September.
Cherry Tomatoes
Zucchini
Cauliflower or Green Beans - whatever you didn't have last week
Red Onions
Radish - Radishes aren't heat lovers but I seeded some right after the last hot spell in part because a customer has been raving about a quinoa and black bean salad from the cookbook Naturally Nourished that you top with a radish salsa. If the radishes look horrible we will sub something else or perhaps you will have a few radishes and a few carrots. Update - The radishes look horrible so there is also a head of lettuce in your box along with a small bunch of ugly radishes. They aren't pithy and the eating quality is still good but while they have survived the heat okay they have been attacked by symphylans. We first spotted them in a different field a couple years ago. They are difficult to manage/control. Fortunately other than a few red daikon radishes in the same bed there aren't any other root veggies in that field.
Parsley - Large Only
Week 11
I had a gentleman buy some arugula on Saturday and tell me he was using it to make a salad like the one he had in Lucca, Italy 20 years ago. It has arugula, pine nuts, shaved parmesan and a balsamic vinaigrette. He was excited to find our arugula as the baby arugula in the store just isn't the same. I think that is something most of us do, at least I know I do it. Rarely do I take a vacation without coming home and trying to recreate a dish. It isn't just about the dish, it is also a way to remember a great trip. Sometimes the recipes stick around (spam musubi, chicken pho) and I make them at least a couple times a year. Other times they only get attempted once.
If you get a purple cauliflower, please flip it over and admire the underside of it. Maybe it is just me, but I love the stem ringed and purple and the pretty little leaves edged in purple.
Have a great week.
Arugula
Cauliflower or Green Beans - This week Wednesday will get Cauli and Thursday will get green beans. Next week it will be the reverse
Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumber - traditional slicing style
Small Head Lettuce
Basil
Garlic - Large Only
Anyone wondering where the cherry tomatoes are? Me too. I am hoping we have enough to put them in boxes next week. We have been harvesting them for a couple weeks now, but they just haven't taken off enough to give enough to fill all the shares. The corn is looking good - probably two weeks out!
Potatoes
Rainbow Chard
Sweet Onions
Head Lettuce
Carrots
Broccoli or Kale - Last Monday when we went to harvest we realized that with some of the issues we have had following the heat dome, it might be best to spit the broccoli up over a couple weeks. As a result some of you got broccoli last week. If you did you will get kale this week. If you got kale last week, you can expect broccoli this week.
Zucchini - Large Only
Kale
Salad - I thought the salad of baby lettuces tasted great last week so we are going to do it again!
Persian Cucumbers - Here is a short piece in the LA Times about the rise of this style of cucumber from 2011. It was very interesting to me and probably somewhat interesting to those who garden and like to grow cucumbers. The rest of you might want to skip it :). We grew these for the first time probably about 10 years ago. The seed was given to us by a friend's dad who is from Iran. They didn't really catch on with us though and we didn't grow them again until about three years ago. They are great. They are excellent in smashed cucumber salads which I am a big fan of - the New York Times has a good recipe but there are many out there.
Beets
Carrots
Head Lettuce - Large Only
Have a great week!
We discovered more things this week that took a little hit from the heat. Hopefully that is the last of the surprises. The weeds, on the other hand, seem to be thriving. We have enough crew to get almost everything planted and harvested, but we are going on year two of not being able to manage the weeds the way we should because we are short on labor.
Last week's big projects were getting all the garlic out of the ground and getting the weeds under control in the winter squash. It is always such a relief to have all the garlic pulled and in the barn. This week we have a big round of fall crops to get transplanted and need to seed our final round of carrots.
Salad Mix
Zucchini/Summer Squash
Garlic
Potatoes - gold skin, gold flesh this week.
Herb - Dealer's Choice
Snap Peas if they are available and if not Carrots
Cherry Toms - Large Only
There was lots of talk of last week's heat at market this week. Pretty much every farm took some sort of hit, from shellfish to berries. In retrospect I made a poor decision to transplant out some cabbages, kale and broccoli mid week, about 1200 plants. They were in small plug flats, 128 to a tray. The greenhouse that we keep our seedlings in has no climate control, poor ventilation and even with the shade cloth on it is stuffy and hot. At a little over three weeks from seeding they were more than ready to go out. I doubted hanging onto them for another week would do them any favors. The cauliflower, which seems to be the most sensitive to transplant, we held on to and didn't transplant. I thought if we just watered the heck out of them they would do better in the ground than the start house. I was wrong. The cauliflower, while a little long in the tooth was fine, but we lost a lot of the stuff we transplanted, probably more than half. We won't feel that loss until the very end of August and September. We have another planting seeded three weeks after that one that typically would overlap slightly so we should be able to weather it okay.
On the happy side of things I ate my first Sungold cherry tomato this week.
Carrots
Lettuce
Collards
Cucumbers
Potatoes - True new potatoes with super thin skins and creamy flesh. They won't keep long, refrigerate if you aren't going to eat them ASAP.
Scallions - Small Only
Cauliflower - Large Only
Mystery Item - Large Only
