2011 CSA Week 10

Jonathan is probably sitting in a thermal spring overlooking the North Sea right now, so I'll be filling in this week but he'll be back again soon. We steadily are winding our way toward the center of our season, and the fields are full to bursting. My eye is on our tomatoes, our peppers, and our eggplant as they become heavy with fruit and begin to blush. At this time of the year we start to see a pernicious pest that camouflages itself seamlessly with our blossoming tomato plants. They're called tomato horn worms, and immature they're about the length and width of your index finger. Given half a chance, they'll devastate a crop, eating the the fresh young leaves with impunity because the alkaloids in nightshades make them unpalatable to most would be predators. This is the moment when an organic system really has a chance to shine- the carefully tended ecosystem on the farm moves to regulate itself. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs all along the backs of the caterpillars, riddling them with tiny white passengers which will hatch and devour their host, saving our tomatoes in the bargain! Thanks nature.

This weeks share will include:

• Winterbor Kale
• Rainbow Chard
• Cucumbers
• Squash or Zucchini
• Red Torpedo Onions
• Oregano
• Fennel
• Tomatillos
• Sweet Peppers
• Yellow Wax Beans
• a few Hot Peppers
• and a modest pint of You-Pick Raspberries
  

Green Gazpacho
(from Vegweb.com)
Ingredients:

2 cucumbers
2 large green peppers
one bunch of onions
5 tomatillos
2-3 stalks celery
1-2 jalapenos or serranos
1 large handful cilantro
2 or 3 cloves garlic
2 slices white bread (can be either stale or a little toasted)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoon white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Suitable for a raw diet depending on what kind of bread you use.

Chop all veggies coarsely and add to blender. Blend with remaining ingredients until very smooth. Chill well. I like to blend again right before I serve if it separates a little in the fridge. If its too thick, thin with a little water to your deserved consistency.

Garnish with cilantro, chopped scallions, minced jalapeños or green bell peppers, lime zest, or whatever green ingredients you like!

Preparation time: 10 minutes plus chilling time

DILLY BEANS (from cooks.com)

2 lbs green beans
1-2 hot peppers (according to your heat preference)
2 cloves garlic, whole and peeled
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds (optional)
1 head dill (or 1/2 tsp. dill weed)
5 cups distilled vinegar
1/2 cup pickling salt
5 cups water

Prepare jars for canning. Wash and trim beans at ends. Do not snap beans.
Bring vinegar, salt and water to a boil.
In the bottom each hot sterilized jar, put the garlic cloves, mustard seed, and dill.
Pack jars with fresh green beans, packed lengthwise.
Do not snap beans.
Process for 20 minute.

Zucchini Date Nuthins
(from vegweb.com)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup raw whole oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup agave nectar
1 1/4 cups zucchini or summer squash, shredded
2/3 cup dates, soaked in water 1 hour and chopped
1/2 cup chocolate optional

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with paper liners. In large bowl, mix whole wheat flour, oats, baking powder and soda, ginger, cinnamon, and salt with a fork.

2. In a separate bowl, stir together applesauce, olive oil, milk, and agave nectar with a wooden spoon until well blended. Pour over dry ingredients and mix together.

3. Add the shredded zucchini, dates, and chocolate/carob chips, if using to batter and stir with wooden spoon until all ingredients are well combined.

4. Pour into prepared muffin tin and bake 12-15 minutes. Serve with applesauce spooned on top.

Mmmmmm, good!

Makes: 1 dozen muffins, Preparation time: 15 minutes, Cooking time: 15 minutes

2011 CSA Week 9

Heat wave! By last Friday, when the temperature topped 100 degrees, the farm was an arid landscape. Whirlwinds of dust moved across the paths between our fields, and we felt seared by the afternoon glare. We had recently made the difficult decision to transplant our entire fall brassica crop from the greenhouse to the fields--we knew temperatures were going to rise, and rain was not forecast, but the plants had outgrown their cell trays and were suffering from the constriction. We risked the imminent weather and planted them into dry soil and then watched on Thursday and Friday as they wilted in the heat. We are not equipped to water our fields, but we are farming a piece of land that has a high water table and is generally wet enough that in normal conditions our crops find the water they need. In this case, the crops were too newly transplanted to have fully established themselves before the heat struck, and while our other plants weathered the heat well, the new brassicas suffered unduly. And we suffered to see them: The sight of a full block of young plants prostrate beneath an unrelenting sun is painfully evocative of a genuine thirst most of us have never known, and by mid-day Friday Joshua had made the decision to get water to the plants by whatever elaborate series of contrivances necessary. Arduous work on a hot day, but with a semi-functional pump, a nearly-dry well, and a craftily modified tractor attachment, plants were watered in the field for the first time since we have been at Dover Farm.

And the next morning? We woke to the improbable sight of consistent, fully un-forecast rain. And this evening? Temperatures barely higher than seventy and a gentle rain better suited to springtime than late July. So easily can the universe make our worry unnecessary and our work redundant, but we are once again grateful it has done so and we remain prepared for the day it does not. The fall brassicas--the cabbage, the cauliflower, the broccoli, the kale and the rest--are upright, refreshed and recovered. And we feel the same way--slightly cooked, but perhaps stronger for the temporary discomfort.

The share this week:

Lettuce

Green Curly Kale

Rainbow Chard

Chioggia Beets

Carrots

Summer Squash / Zucchini

Cucumbers

Genovese Basil

Parsley

Torpedo Onions

You-Pick Raspberries

Notes about the food:

* We have struggled to grow carrots this year. They are one of the few crops we don't start from seed in the greenhouse (their roots are sensitive when young, and the seedlings would not survive the transplant shock were we to uproot them from cell trays and re-plant them outdoors), and because we sow them directly into our outdoor planting beds they present us with several specific challenges. They require a regular input of water prior to germination--in the greenhouse we water seeds once or twice daily to sustain a consistent level of moisture, but we don't water our fields. This means that once we sow the carrots we are reliant on rainfall to provide the water the seeds require to germinate, and this year we have had either too much or too little: We have sowed carrots in advance of rain that when it materialized was so pummeling that those seeds not washed away were impeded by the soil compaction formed in its aftermath, and we have sowed carrots in advance of rain that was expected but never arrived, so the seeds remained dry. In both cases germination was inconsistent.

Even with appropriate inputs of water, carrots germinate slowly, and those sown into a clean planting bed take longer to appear than most weeds. By the time we see the first sign of carrot greens, they are in the midst of young, faster-growing plants that we did not sow, and there is nothing for us to do but carefully pull the weeds by hand while trying not to disturb the carrots (remember--they are sensitive when young, and won't tolerate disruption in their root zone). It's one of the pickiest, most labor-intensive tasks we perform on the farm. To our work-share CSA members and other volunteers who have crouched with us on hot days and helped excavate row upon row of the things, these might be the most delicious, hard-won vegetables you eat all year. To everyone else they might seem like ordinary carrots, possibly on the small side. In either case we are happy to finally have any carrots at all, and we continue to sow seed and tweak our methods in pursuit of a more perfect carrot crop. From Still Life With Menu:

Cabbage, Carrots, and Onions with Sesame

6 tablespoons sesame seeds

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons sesame oil

2 medium-sized onions

1 large or 2 medium-sized carrots, thinly sliced

1 small head green cabbage, coarsely chopped (6 to 8 cups)

Comine the sesame seeds and salt in a blender, or in a spice grinder or a clean electric coffee grinder. Grind until they achieve the consistency of coarse meal. (This is called gomasio or sesame salt.) Set aside.

Heat a medium-sized wok or a large deep skillet. Add the sesame oil and the onions. Stir-fry over medium-high heat for several minutes. Add about a tablespoon of the gomasio. Keep stir-frying until the onions are soft and translucent (5 to 8 minutes).

Add the carrots and cabbage, and sprinkle in about half the remaining gomasio. Keep stir-frying until everything is tender (another 10 to 15 minutes). Sprinkle in the remaining gomasio, and serve.

* Of the four types of basil we grow, we consider three--cinnamon, lemon, and Thai--to be specialty varieties. Each of those is imbued with a subtle variation of flavor that differentiates them from one another and from the more common large-leaf Italian variety that we offer this week. In most of our cuisine, this basil is the standard, and its scent and taste are immediately evocative of summer. Try it with summer squash in this soup from Food & Wine:

Summer Squash Soup with Basil

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

3 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

2 pounds summer squash or zucchini

1 large baking potato, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise

4 cups vegetable stock or low-sodium broth

1/4 cup shredded basil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot. Add the onion and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned, about 6 minutes. Increase the heat to moderately high. Add the tomatoes, garlic, and crushed red pepper and cook, stirring, until the tomatoes begin to break down, about 5 minutes. Add the potato and squash and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Stir in the vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Add the basil and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook over low heat until the vegetables are tender, about 25 minutes. Serve with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

* Finally, cookies. Possibly the only food for which I have a greater affection than vegetables. A CSA member has shared a recipe that will help us take baby steps (basil is more of an herb than a vegetable, right?) toward combining those interests:

Cinnamon Basil & Lime Icebox Cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 cup flax seed, ground

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cups butter, softened

2 cups granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons nutmeg, ground

2 tablespoons grated lime zest

6 tablespoons fresh cinnamon basil leaves, chopped

2 cups pecans, chopped

parchment or wax paper for wrapping dough

Combine flours, flax seed, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Mix and set the mixture aside.

Place the butter in a different bowl and beat until fluffy. Add sugar and eggs; beat the mixture until it becomes light and fluffy. Add vanilla, nutmeg, lime zest, cinnamon basil; blend. Take a measuring cup, scoop a cup at a time from the flour mixture and add it to the butter and blend. Add the nuts and stir gently.

Once dough is mixed, remove from the bowl onto a piece of parchment paper that has been dusted with flour. Shape the dough into a log shape and then wrap it completely with the parchment paper. Put in refrigerator overnight until the mixture gets hardened so that you can slice the dough. Take the dough that was refrigerated overnight and using a serrated knife cut the dough into 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch slices. Arrange the cookies on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 for about 10 to 12 minutes until the cookies become golden brown. Place on rack to cool.

2011 CSA Week 8

It is possible that my most notable accomplishment between the ages of 6 and 10 was precocious use of the word "crepuscular." It is also possible that while using it during those years to describe animals such as crocodiles with which it has a relationship more alliterative than factual I was fully unaware of the loveliness of the hour it denotes. I mention it now because it is at this time of year that my waking hours most closely correspond to the hours of daylight, and I find myself rising each morning and later preparing for sleep in the same degree of crepuscular twilight. These mid-July days are long and hot, but I feel eased through them by their bookends, the hour when the sky grows light and the hour when the sky grows dark. And I feel grateful for the opportunity to work in a way that allows me to feel attuned to the full progress of each day, to know that the cool air of a hot day's early morning is a refreshment that will return to us at day's end, and to know that the gradations of color between dark and blue in a brightening sky will be repeated in reverse as the same sky dims. And that's all. At this time of year I like to wake up early and go to bed early: A short thought for a warm season.

The share this week:

Rainbow Chard

Green Curly Kale

Red or Chioggia Beets

Summer Squash / Zucchini

Cucumbers

Fennel

Spring Onions

Cilantro

Dill

You-Pick Sugar Snap Peas

You-Pick Raspberries

Notes about the food:

* With apologies to those whose appreciation of these summertime staples is more nuanced than my own, I use summer squash and zucchini interchangeably. We will occasionally offer them as separate items, but more often they will be grouped together in the share and you will have your choice of the three varieties we grow. Pictured left to right: The zucchini is dark green-skinned and will usually be harvested when it is the largest of the three; the zephyr squash is a variety of yellow crookneck notable for its dual coloration; and the magda is a mid-eastern variety of squash, shorter and less slender than the other two. All can be eaten cooked or raw, and I've noticed when reading seed catalogues and other such resources that their flavor is often described as "nutty," an adjective I'd like to think is synonymous with "zany," but which in this case probably refers to flavors too subtle for my palate. If I enjoy these summer foods thoughtlessly, it's because I'm hot. I certainly appreciate their abundance, though, and their versatility. Try an easy raw salad, or consider marinating and adding them to whatever else you have on the grill this July (From the June 2011 Bon Apetit and The Food Network, respectively):

Shaved Summer Squash Salad

3 tablespoons whole almonds

1 pound summer squash

2 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 minced garlic clove

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

arugula

Roast almonds and coarsely crush. Meanwhile, trim the ends off summer squash. Using a vegetable peeler, thinly slice the squash lengthwise into strips and transfer to a large bowl.

In a small bowl, whisk together extra-virgin olive oil, fresh lemon juice, minced garlic clove, and kosher salt to taste. Pour dressing over squash. Let stand for a few minutes and then add handfuls of arugula. Shave a little Pecorino over the squash and toss. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Garnish with the almonds.

Marinated Zucchini and Summer Squash

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons fresh chopped thyme leaves

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound zucchini, trimmed and sliced diagonally about 1/4-inch thick

1 pound yellow squash, trimmed and sliced diagonally about 1/4-inch thick

Whisk the vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and thyme in a large bowl to blend. Season with salt and pepper. Gradually whisk in the oil. Spoon 3 tablespoons of the marinade into a small bowl. Cover and set aside. Add the zucchini and yellow squash to the remaining marinade in the large bowl and toss to coat. Transfer the mixture to a 13 by 9 by 2-inch glass baking dish. Cover and marinate at room temperature at least 3 hours or cover and refrigerate up to 1 day.

Prepare the barbecue for medium-high heat. Grill the vegetables until they are crisp-tender and brown, turning occasionally, about 8 minutes. Transfer the vegetables to a platter. Drizzle with the reserved marinade and serve hot or at room temperature.

We are lucky to have friends who are not only CSA members but also enthusiastic volunteers on the farm. And we are even luckier that of those some are not only enthusiastic volunteers on the farm but also excellent cooks who bring us samples of the things they make with our vegetables. Thanks to Kathy Warburton for the weekly help, the company, and for sharing her ongoing hummus experiments with us. Here is one of her recipes, apropos of the ingredient at hand:

Zucchini Hummus

1 large or 2 medium zucchini

1/2 cup tahini

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon cumin

1-2 cloves garlic

sprinkle of cayenne

sprinkle of paprika

Process zucchini, olive oil, and garlic in food processor. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth.

* Fennel is not something we usually offer two weeks in a row, but we want to plant some of our fall crops in the bed space it is occupying, so we are going to harvest the rest of what we began to harvest last week. I like this recipe from Eating Well magazine because it uses the bulb as well as the fronds of the fennel:

Seared Salmon with White Beans and Fennel

3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

1 small bulb fennel, halved, cored and thinly sliced, plus 1 tablespoon chopped fennel fronds

1 15-ounce can white beans, rinsed

1 medium tomato, diced

1/4 cup dry white wine

1 1/2 teaspoons dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided

1 teaspoon fennel seed

8 ounces center-cut salmon fillet, skinned and cut into two portions

Heat 1 teaspoon oil in large non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add sliced fennel; cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 6 minutes. Stir in beans, tomato, and wine. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomato begins to break down, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a bowl; stir in chopped fennel fronds, mustard, and 1/8 teaspoon black pepper. Cover to keep warm.

Rinse and dry the pan. Combine fennel seed and the remaining 1/8 teaspoon black pepper in a small bowl; sprinkle evenly on both sides of salmon. Heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil in the pan over medium-high heat until simmering but not smoking. Add the salmon, skinned side up; cook until golden brown, 3-6 minutes. Turn the salmon over, cover and remove from heat. Allow the salmon to continue cooking off the heat until just cooked through, 3-6 minutes more. Serve salmon with the bean mixture.

CSA Week 9

Your farmers went camping this weekend. Along with some other friends who are also farmers we hiked in the woods and we built a fire and at night we fell asleep to the sound of a gentle rain against the canopy of trees and against our tents. It was a good weekend, and it was significant because it is rare that we both take two days off in a week, and it is rare that we so fully leave the context of the farm during the season. We spend a lot of time here, and I was reminded this weekend that it is easy to lose perspective of your surroundings while you are immersed in them. To leave--to walk away into the woods--provides an opportunity to return with refreshed awareness and see the place you left as if it is new. Growth and change are constant on the farm, but they are easy to miss when they are constantly before your face. Leave for a weekend, though, and the profusion of new plant life--weeds and flowers and vegetable crops alike--is startling. Its like when you were younger and your grandmother would visit from the midwest and even though you didn't feel any taller she would always greet you with her favorite pun: You gruesome! We're back, refreshed, and most things on the farm grew some in our short absence. The squash harvest was particularly epic this morning, but do you think those plants noticed how large and profuse they'd become? Probably not, they didn't leave themselves for a minute.

Here's what is in the share this week:

Beets, red

Onions, ailsa craig

Broccoli, gypsy

Summer Squash

Zucchini

Cucumbers

Lettuce

Cilantro

Parsley

Notes about the food:

*Friend of the farm Sadie Ryn Miller made a delicious beet salad, and she shared the recipe:

Trim, salt and oil one bunch of beets. Add a centimeter of water to a baking dish, add beets, cover with a lid or aluminum foil, and roast at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Peel the beets under running water while they are still warm so that the peels slide off between your fingers. Marinate in vinaigrette (red wine vinegar, olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper). Serve with fresh greens, nuts and goat cheese. Fresh figs and pistachios are perfect additions.

*Sometimes I would like to spend all day eating baked goods. If you'd like to incorporate some vegetables into dessert, try these recipes--One uses summer squash for something sweet, the other uses beets:

Summer Squash "Apple Crisp" (From another friend of the farm.)

6-7 cups zucchini or other summer squash

3/4 cup lemon juice

Peel, seed, and chop squash into slices. Combine with lemon juice and cook on the stovetop until slightly translucent. Remove from heat and add:

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

Stir and pour into a baking dish. Top with:

1 1/3 cups brown sugar

1 cup flour

1 tsp nutmeg

1 cup oats

2/3 cup butter

Bake at 375 until golden and bubbly.

Chocolate Beet Cake (From Farmer John's Cookbook.)

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 3/4 cups sugar

2 cups beets, cooked and pureed

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375. Coat a 10 cup bundt pan with oil and dust with flour. Partially fill bottom of a double boiler with water and bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to a simmer. Put the chocolate and 1/4 cup of the oil in the top half of the boiler. Heat just until the chocolate melts, then remove from heat and stir until combined. Combine eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy. Slowly beat the remaining 3/4 cups oil, chocolate mixture, pureed beets and vanilla. Sift the all-purpose flour and whole wheat pastry flour into a bowl. Stir in baking soda and salt. Gently stir the flour mixture into the egg and chocolate mixture just until the flour is mixed in. Don't over mix. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Cool on wire rack for 30 minutes. Remove cake from pan and continue to cool on wire rack. When completely cool, dust with powdered sugar.

*Broccoli, like other vegetables in the brassica family (kale, cabbage, etc.), is a cool weather crop, and the fact that we successfully grew well-formed heads of the stuff in the middle of this hot summer is somewhat baffling to us. We planted it without real expectation, and then watched as it thrived. Remember to eat the stem and leaves along with the florets: much of the plant's nutrition is contained in those parts, and they are just as tasty.

CSA Week 7

I was once told by a friend with whom I was in regular written correspondence that I wrote beautiful letters, but that they were only about the weather. The second half of that claim was likely true: I have been working in the outdoors for many years, and when a person spends the majority of their time under the sky it is easy to become fixated on all things atmospheric. As farmers, we are especially attuned to fluctuations of temperature and precipitation not only because they affect the success of our work, but because, like our crops, we live in the weather as it occurs, and we work in all of it. There is nothing as immediate as the heat of a hot day, and it is a wiser person than myself who can exist in that stifling immediacy and be mindful of the fact that as oppressive as it is on a given day, it is fleeting compared to the span of season. That person would probably write of something other than the weather, but I'm a simple thing: I write what's on mind, and what's on my mind is what I feel on my skin, and what I feel on my skin is what's in the air. All of which is a way of acknowledging the fact that I always seem to start these blog entires with a paragraph about the weather. Sorry. This week's entry: It is still hot but not as hot as last week, and we appreciated the heavy rains on Saturday. It is possible, if we choose to be fully optimistic, that the extreme heat tempered by regular infusions of water will be very good for many of our crops.

Here's what is in the share this week:

Lettuce

Kale, green curly

Swiss Chard

Turnips, hakurei

Carrots, bolero

Onions, ailsa craig

Summer Squash

Zucchini

Basil, genovese

Parsley

Raspberries, pick your own

Notes about the food:

*Our soil had become very dry prior to Saturday's rain, and when the rain fell, it fell fast and heavy. In such dry conditions it takes time for the water to infiltrate the surface of the soil; before the soil is saturated the pummeling rain splashes against the dry ground, and soil is thrown by the splashing water. As a result, some of our crops are spackled with dirt following such a rain. We wash everything we harvest before arranging it at the distribution stand, so this isn't something you'll notice except on the occasional item that we don't wash. Among the items harvested this week, we wash neither the summer squash nor the basil. These two plants don't store well after becoming wet, so once they are cut we keep them dry even though they are slightly gritty. We recommend that you store them as they are, and wash them just prior to use. Maybe you'll use the basil to make pesto:

4 cups fresh basil leaves

1/2 cup olive oil

1/3 cup pine nuts

2 garlic cloves

1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan

1 tsp coarse kosher salt

Combine first four ingredients in blender. Blend until paste forms, stopping often to push down basil. Add cheese and salt; blend until smooth.

I copied the recipe above from epicurious; you can use it as a guideline, but I think pesto is something that invites improvisation. Last night I made some without cheese, and I substituted sunflower seeds for pine nuts.

*I suspect the carrots need no introduction, but I should mention that their presence in this week's share is a small triumph for the farmers. We struggled early in the season to get carrots to germinate, and for a while, as we learned our way around the soil on this piece of land, we were afraid that we'd never grow any. Now it looks like we might have ample carrots for some time.

*Please don't relegate the parsley to garnish status; it deserves more consideration than the space it usually allotted as some kind of plate-filler next to a sandwich or hamburger. Treat it like what it is: a dark green, leafy vegetable, flavorful and extremely nutritious. Try it with the carrots in this Moroccan Raw Carrot Salad, also from epicurious:

1 pound carrots, coarsely grated

1/4 cup olive oil

3 to 4 tbsp fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 to 4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp sweet paprika

pinch of salt

1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne (optional)

In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients. Cover and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days to let the flavors meld and permeate the carrots. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

CSA Week 6

I mentioned last week that it has been hot, but I'd like to acknowledge the fact that compared to this week's temperatures last week might as well have been January. We're hot, our crops are hot, everything in the region is hot. In these conditions we take precautions to ensure that what we harvest isn't shocked to death shortly after being removed from the ground or from the plant: we get the crops out of the sun and into cool water as soon as possible, and we continue to soak them until they are arranged at the distribution stand. By the time you arrive to collect your CSA share, the crops will have been harvested at most only a few hours ago, but in this heat, even with our efforts to keep them cool, that is a long time. You may notice--especially if you arrive closer to the 6:30 end of distribution--that some of the vegetables are wilting. Don't panic--place any of these crops in cold water when you get home, and they'll revive. You can store them in a dish of water in the refrigerator, or leave them in water on the counter until they are refreshed and then refrigerate them as you would any vegetable. All greens--including the lettuce and kale--will benefit from having their stems cut before you put them in water. The leaves will draw water through the fresh cut, and this will aid the refreshment of the plant.

This week's share:

Lettuce

Kale, red russian

Radishes, easter egg

Beets, golden -or- chioggia -or- red

Summer Squash, zephyr

Zucchini

Sugar Snap Peas

Scallions

Arugula

Cilantro

Raspberries (pick your own)

Notes about the food:

*Summer squash can be abundant at this time of year, as anyone with a home garden can attest. The plants produce a large amount of fruit, and in the heat they grow fast. I've heard of hot-weather climates where squash needs to be harvested twice a day. That said, we feel lucky to have any summer squash at all this year. Our crop was beset by cucumber beetles as soon as we put the plants in the ground, and for a while it looked like they might be fully decimated. The cucumber beetle is a voracious eater with a strong preference for squash plants (squash are cucurbits--the same family as cucumbers). We spent some hours plucking bugs from the plants and crushing them, but it didn't feel like we made a dent in their population. It is thanks only to the plant's perseverance that we have any crop at all, and we're relieved to be harvesting it now. Try this summer squash soup from Fresh From a Vegetarian Kitchen:

4 cups yellow summer squash, cut lengthwise, then in 1-inch slices crosswise

2 cups water (to barely cover squash)

3 tbsp light miso (such as white or corn miso)

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 tsp fresh dill or basil

1 tbsp arrowroot powder

2 tbsp cool water

Bring first 3 ingredients to boil, then slow boil covered until soft, about 5 minutes. Transfer mixture to blender, add miso, garlic, and herb, and puree until creamy. Mix arrowroot and cool water and add to soup. heat through, stirring until soup becomes thick and smooth, about 1-2 minutes.

Or try this recipe for squashamole, a classic from the farm where I worked in North Carolina:

3lbs tender squashes of any size or shape

about 1/2 head fairly large garlic cloves

1 large onion

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp corn oil

1 cup tightly packed basil, mint or parsley leaves (feel free to use one or all of these herbs to make up the one cup)

2 tbsp lemon juice

1/4-1/2 cup heavy cream

salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375. Scrub squashes with vegetable brush. Halve large squash lengthwise, then cut so they are about the same size as the smallest squash.Spread cut side down in a single layer in an oiled roasting pan.

2. Separate but do not peel garlic and distribute among squash. Quarter and peel onion and add to the pan. Sprinkle with salt, then drizzle over oil.

3. Bake until squashes are very soft, 1- 1 1/2 hrs. Using a brush baste several times with cooking juices. Remove from oven.

4. When garlic is cool enough to handle remove skins. Place basil and parsley in food processor. Add the warm vegetables and garlic and whiz to a smooth puree, scraping down side as needed. With motor running, add 2 tbls lemon juice, then slowly drizzle in cream, stopping to taste and adjust the amount for flavor and thickness. Add salt pepper and more lemon juice as needed. Chill to serve.