Week 8; August 22, 2013
What's in the box?
basil
beans (dragon tongue and green mix)
broccoli
summer squash/ zukes
sweet corn
bell peppers
eggplant
cucumber
green top carrots
heirloom and slicer tomatoes
melon (not pictured)
*cherry tomatoes are in some of the boxes and will be in different boxes next week*
basil
sweet corn
cauliflower (or broccoli or cabbage)
bell peppers
green top carrots
beans (dragon tongue and green mix)
summer squash/ zucchini
heirloom and slicer tomatoes
Notes on the box...
We bunched the basil this week. It will store well with the stems in a little vase or glass of water on your counter. This will make your kitchen smell nice! Key thing to remember with basil storage is don't let it get too cold and don't let the leaves get wet.
The dragon tongue beans are an heirloom variety and are SO GOOD! We grew them a few seasons ago and had split opinions on them, but this season they are tasting incredible. Maybe they like drastic swings in temperature! The only bad thing about them is that the beautiful purple stripes will go away when you cook them. I suggest a nice marinated bean salad with them to preserve the beauty, or try them with veggie dip!
Tomatoes We will be putting them in the boxes in as great a quantity as we can for as long as we can. We know they are a favorite of everyone, but it looks like this season will sadly be a short one for tomatoes. I guess we can all keep our fingers crossed for a late frost! DO NOT keep your tomatoes in the fridge! They will get mealy. Store them on your counter with the stem end down (on their shoulders). We try to pack a variety of ripeness so you have some tomato to enjoy now and some later.
The sugars in Sweet Corn begin to turn to starch as soon as the corn is picked. This means that you will have tastier corn the sooner you eat it. We prefer to eat sweet corn simply for the first couple of days after picking. Just bring some water to a boil, husk the corn and remove the silk, then drop the ears into boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove from the water and serve right away with butter and salt (or a farm favorite, a little Umeboshi Plum Paste!). If you plan on making corn fritters, corn bread, or adding the corn to soup, you can use the corn that you’ve had waiting in the fridge. Sweet corn stores best in the husk in the crisper of your fridge.
These Green Top Carrots are part of our crop swap with Burning River Farm. They will be getting melons from us. These carrots are just so tasty and beautiful! We hope you enjoy them as much as we do! Storage note: remove the tops from the carrots and store them in a plastic bag. If you don't take off the tops, the carrots will get bendy and not crisp pretty quickly. We've read that the tops are edible, though we have yet to find a way to eat them that we really enjoy :( Any members with suggestions, please send them our way via email or in the comments, please!!
Recipes...
Lots of links week...
Summer Corn Salad Thanks so much to long time members Rob and Susan for this recipe! They said it could have been the entire meal! Yum!
Green Bean Salad with Goat Cheese Dressing
Crispy Baked Parmesan Green Bean Fries
Lots of the veggies this week would go great with this Creamy Probiotic Veggie Dip
On the farm...
Hey there members! You may have encountered some Bandwidth Error messages upon coming to our website in the previous weeks... Needless to say, your farmers built the website and blog, and are obviously not proficient in the language of html code! So, to avoid running into this problem again and again, we would like to put the call out to any of you who may be web master type folks! We need someone to look over our website to help us optimize it. We would love to trade for some farm goodies to anyone who could help us out. We are trying re-sizing the photos on the blog to see if that has an impact, but really some educated insight would help us out a lot! Please email us if you are interested!
It's Summertime again! We've been wanting to sneak away for a swim, but there's too much to get done! Our weekends are being filled with weddings of former workers, and it's been so nice to get off the farm to witness the love and bliss.
We are looking forward to the harvest party here on the farm (you can type "Turnip Rock Farm" into google maps to find us). Party is on September 14. It's a potluck. There will be music by our multi-talented crew. We really hope that you can make it out. Let us know if you have any questions.
Special thanks to our volunteers this week! Sam, Kelly, and Donny friends of Sam, Miranda, and Ben showed up and really made harvest and packing go a lot faster! Greatly appreciated in the heat!!
