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My Grandma Vangie made this recipe for us at lunch today, and it was totally DELICIOUS! Best of all, the four garden ingredients are in your box this week — just waiting for you to make Creamy Cucumbers!
Creamy Cucumbers
from the St. Pat’s church cookbook
2 cukes or 1 long seedless cuke
1 med onion
1 tbsp. vinegar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
½ cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tbsp. chopped fresh dill
1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
Thinly slice cucumbers and onion. Mix into vinegar, salt and sugar. Let stand for 30 minutes, then drain off the liquid. Mix mayonnaise, sour cream, dill and parsley. Pour onto cucumbers and mix. Makes about 2 ½ cups.
What to do with all the bok choy we’ve been blessed with lately, from CSA member Lynn:
Unwrapped Spring Roll Salad
1 pack thin rice noodles – cook and save some of the water.
2 small bunches of Bok Choy thinly sliced including the greens.
1 bunch green onions thinly sliced including some of the green.
1 cup diced cucumber.
1 grated carrot.
handful of chopped mint
handful of chopped cilantro
Toss together.
Make a dressing using:
½ cup of the reserved water
½ cup chunky peanut butter
¼ cup Hoisin sauce (or less depending on your taste)
And for a little kick a dash of garlic chili sauce
If serving later, wait to add the dressing. I had some shrimp left over from the night before so I tossed these in with the salad. You could add just about any vegetable.
You can thank your farmer (and my mom) Carol for finding this recipe!
Fennel Salsa
Ingredients
1 English (seedless) cucumber, diced
1 large fennel bulb, diced
1 avocado – peeled, pitted, and diced
1/2 red onion, chopped
1/2 cup pickled banana peppers, diced
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Combine the cucumber, fennel, avocado, red onion, banana peppers,
cilantro, honey, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Allow mixture
to sit 20 minutes before serving.
In your box this week:
- LAST OF: Tomatoes
- LAST OF: Potatoes
- LAST OF: Cilantro
- LAST OF: Basil
- Mint
- Thyme
- Fennel
- NEW! Sage
- NEW! Onion Chives
- NEW! Parsley
- Kale
- Beans
- Cucumbers (LAST OF??)
- Zucchini / Summer Squash (LAST OF??)
- Carrots
- Arugula
- Peppers: All of them this week are sweet EXCEPT the long skinny green Cayenne Hot Pepper
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HERB CONFUSION?? We can help!
From Left to Right:
- Basil: Fresh, dried, frozen (chop in food processor first). Use in pesto, Italian dishes, sauces, soups.
- Onion Chives: Best used fresh. Chop up fresh as garnish for salad, potatoes, or tacos, etc. Can also be used cooked.
- Mint: Fresh, dried, frozen. Mint calms an upset stomach. Dry it and then crumble it into a jar for later use. Last winter I had food poisoning and mint tea helped A LOT. I went through almost a quart of dried mint leaves in a week, and was SO GLAD I had them on hand in the cupboard.
- Thyme: Fresh or dried. Usually used cooked, such as in Italian dishes, hotdishes, and soups.
- Cilantro: Best fresh, could probably be dried? Use it fresh in salsa, spring rolls, quesadillas, with fruit, in cornbread, or as a last second addition to sautes or soups. Cilantro also makes a great pesto!
- Parsley: Fresh, dried, frozen. Another good pesto candidate! Also used in Italian dishes, soups, sprinkled in salads (try it!), or just generally added to pretty much anything.
- Sage: Fresh, dried, frozen. Use it in fall cooking, like with squash soup, potato dishes, and meat things.
FRESH: Keep fresh by putting it in a plastic bag in the fridge. Basil is picky–wet leaves turn black in the fridge. Sometimes it works well to put basil in a vase on your counter. Or put a towel around it in the bag to catch condensation.
DRIED: Just hang the bunch upside down in a place that gets some air movement but that is out of direct sunlight. Stagnant air could facilitate molding, and the sun zaps nutrition and flavor. If you are like me, you always think, “Of course I will remember what herb this is!” but then when it is all dried up it is hard to tell if it was Oregano or Mint or Parsley or what. So just LABEL IT now and thank yourself later.
FROZEN: I have found it easiest to chop up the dry herb with a food processor, and then put in a bag in the freezer. No water or oil mixed in means the herbs stay crumbly and I can just scoop out however much I want. The super deluxe way of preventing them from clumping up would be to pour the ground-up herbs onto a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet and freeze them flat, and then pour them into a plastic bag after they are frozen. Some people like to freeze them as pesto, or in oil or water, perhaps in an ice cube tray, and then transfer the frozen herb cubes into a plastic bag.
Share your tasty discoveries and inspire your fellow CSA members! To get the ball rolling, here are FOUR recipe ideas from CSA member Melanie:
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I’m absolutely loving my first ever harvest from my first ever CSA!! I’m so glad I joined. I’m pretty much obsessed with food and cooking so I thought I’d give you all a couple new recipes that I came up with this week. On Monday I could not wait to eat my baby bok choi so I made a Asian dish with it (one of my favorite cuisines).
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VEGGIE LO MEIN
4 oz. soba noodles, cooked, rinsed in cold water and drained
2 tsp light olive oil
8 oz mushrooms, any kind, sliced
1/2 cup onions, any kind, chopped ( I used some of this weeks green parts)
4 radishes, chopped (I used the icicle radishes)
1 baby bok choy, sliced thickly
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbsp oyster sauce (or molasses could work too)
2 tbsp dark sesame oil
1 tbsp liquid aminos (or low sodium soy sauce)
1/2 tsp sugar
squirt of Sirracha or other hot sauce
cilantro, optional garnish
chopped peanuts, optional garnish
Heat oil in a skillet or wok over med high until almost smoking (use lower heat if you pan is non-stick, which I don’t recommend). Add mushrooms and leave them alone, without stirring for a couple minutes until browned nicely on the bottom. Toss around the pan and after another couple minutes add the onions and radishes. Cook a few minutes, then add the bok choy and garlic. Mix together the oyster sauce, sesame oil, liquid aminos, sugar and hot sauce. Pour the sauce over the veggies and toss. Add the noodles and toss until coated and heated through. Garnish and eat. Serves 2.
Tonight I was trying to use up some leftover cheese and remembered a recipe I saw on Alton Brown’s show Good Eats called FROMMAGE FORT.
It is a cheese dip that uses up 1 lb of assorted leftover cheese, any kind!! And along with some white wine and garlic I added some lemon thyme instead of the parsley. YUM!!
I’m thinking that if I don’t eat it all tonight it would be an excellent idea for
FANCY MAC AND CHEESE:
Make some pasta but save a little of the cooking water. Stir in some of the cheese dip into the drained noodles with some lamb’s quarters, some of the pasta cooking water and a dash of lemon.
I’ll also be eating RADISH SANDWICHES tomorrow in honor of my grandma:
Mix softened butter with some minced radishes and spread over your favorite bread, OR just put some thinly sliced radishes over buttered bread, sprinkle with salt and eat!
Happy gardening and even happier eating!
Melanie Foster
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- Field mouse tracks across the snow. Notice the line in the center where it dragged its little tail along!
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- Freezing and canning the harvest in the summer makes for easy, fast, and tasty meals in the winter. Here, chunky canned tomatoes are added to sauteed onions and garlic, herbs, and a little maple syrup (all from the farm). Served over store-bought frozen raviolis.
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- Last summer we grew trials of nine different kinds of dried beans. Part of our job this winter is to taste-test all of them! These are the Indian Woman Yellow Bush Beans soaking before being used in a tasty (eastern) Indian curry.
Mom, Dad, and I went down to LaCrosse last weekend for the annual Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference. It is always a good time full of excellent food, informative workshops, and meeting up with other farmers. I personally find it inspiring to see the diversity of people involved with organic farming: young and old, rural and urban, red and blue, dreadlocked and beer-bellied, talkative and stoic, community organizers and self-sufficient livers. Sustainable farming is good for the land, providing us with healthy food and a more robust local economy. By keeping your food dollar circulating within the local community, you are directly helping to create a healthier food system and higher quality of life for all of us — you the eater and us the growers, but also the non-local food eaters who still benefit by having cleaner water, more wildlife habitat, and more resilient rural and urban economies. I think part of the reason that sustainable farmers are a diverse crew is that a vibrant local economy is something that people from all walks of life can agree is a good thing.
This year we had a few things in mind to focus on, so we went to sessions about pastured poultry, hoophouse season extension, and permaculture orchard design. There was also a really nice panel discussion of and for CSA farmers. Partly because of that discussion, there have been some new collaboration and support initiatives for CSA farmers that deliver to the Twin Cities, such as peer-mentoring options and potlucks for farmers. A few of us are also hoping that we could hold a CSA-specific conference in LaCrosse the day before the usual annual conference begins.
I love being a farmer in Minnesota, and having the winter to rest, dream, study, plan, organize, and collaborate. I honestly don’t know how they do it year-round in warmer places. The annual organic conference is one of the signs that spring is right around the corner. We are tapping maple trees right now, and getting ready to start the onion seeds next weekend. Another growing season is upon us, and as the days get longer and longer we too are feeling more energized and excited. Here we go again for another trip around the sun!
Looking forward to sharing the growing season with you,
Chris.
Here’s a super simple cucumber recipe thanks to CSA member Debbie! Wash the cukes first and soak a while in ice water.
NEVER FAIL COLD WATER DILL PICKLES
2 quarts fresh cukes
2 heads dill (When I don’t have it, I use dry dill seed & dill weed)
3 Tablespoons canning salt
1 cup white vinegar
3 cloves garlic, sliced thin
2 Tablespoons whole mixed pickling spice
Pack cukes lightly in 2 quart jar. Add rest of ingredients. Fill jar with cold tap water. Keep in the refrigerator. Shake occasionally to dissolve the salt. Leave sit 2 weeks.
We just broke into the 1st jar of the season-yum!
PS-Another cuke beverage-Cucumber water is refreshing and delicious. Just add a few slices of cuke to your glass or pitcher of ice water. It’s a lot like adding lemon slices but the cuke slices are crisp and crunchy when the water is gone!
From CSA member (and newlywed!) Amy:
Here’s that fennel recipe I was talking about, it’s in Asparagus to Zucchini – very yummy and easy.
Baked Fennel
3 large fennel bulbs
vegetable oil
3 large garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon vegetable seasoning
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 to 1 1/2 cups chicken broth or vegetable stock
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut tops off fennel bulbs and cut each bulb in half. Lay fennel, cut side down, on an oiled 8-inch baking pan. Sprinkle with garlic, oregano, basil, vegetable seasoning, and pepper. Pour 1 cup of broth in pan and cover tightly with foil; bake 15 minutes. Turn fennel over and bake, covered, 15 minutes longer. Add more broth if necessary to keep fennel from burining to bottom of pan. Uncover pan and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Turn oven up to 450 and bake until crumbs brown. Six servings.
Thanks to CSA member Syneva:
Ingredients:
2 zucchini, 1 finely chopped and 1 grated
1 small onion, chopped or 1/2 cup green onion
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
3 cloves garlic finely minced
1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1/4 tsp. salt
pepper to taste
2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/2 cup fresh basil chopped (you could also try cilantro)
vegetable oil for frying
Directions:
In a large bowl, mix together the zucchini, onion, eggs, chesse, all spices, adding in flour and cornmeal last.
Heat about 1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Drop 1/4 cupfuls of the batter into the skillet, and flatten slightly with the back of a spatula. Turn fritters over when the center appears dry. Cook on the other side until golden brown. Set aside and keep warm. Add more oil to skillet as needed, and continue with remaining batter. It is essential that all fritters are cooked immediately after stirring in flour or the batter will get glutinous.
CSA member Amy found this recipe and loved it! It’s super tasty, and thanks to the Bok Choy it is packed with loads of calcium, iron, and vitamins A & C.
Due to copyright issues for this one we can provide the link but not reprint it. The recipe also includes chives/green onions, ramen noodles, and wasabi peas.
