I'm switching gears here in an attempt to help these weekly farm updates be more truly weekly-- moving into the blogosphere and out of email/tinkering with formatting on greenpeakfarm.com. From here on out, you can depend on this blog being the most up-to-date information about your weekly shares, what's going on in the fields, and what's being planned for the future.
Some notes about your share this week:
Susan noted that the cippolini onions didn't hold well in the fridge last week. Good point. They and many other leafy green veggies (think scallions, kale, lettuce, spinach,) do best in a high-humidity conditions. You can make that happen by storing your greens in a tupperware with the lid cracked or plastic baggie.
You'll notice your basil has not been field-washed -- it holds much better in the fridge that way, so give it a rinse just before you use it.
Thai basil is an essential addition to Thai-inspired curries, and provides a lovely anise-type flavor. Once the weather heats up, it will produce nice purple spikes of flowers that not only add a great flavor to asian-inspired dishes, but look purdy, too. You can also drop it into your pot of rice as it's steaming to flair it up a bit.
Squash blossoms are great tossed in salads fresh, and they're also a marvelous excuse to deep fry! If you're feeling indulgent, try stuffing them with chevre (I'd highly recommend the fine folks' at Consider Bardwell) and then beer-battering them with a little cornmeal to boot. We whipped some up with some fresh garlic, cippolini greens, cracked black pepper and CB chevre mixed together as stuffing, twisted the blooms shut, dipped and rolled, dunked in hot oil... Good for the soul.
On a heart-healthier note, there are a few notable firsts for the season: summer squash fruits and sugar snap peas. The squash are tiny and tender, and you can use them just like you'd use their bigger sisters. The squash blossoms are the male flowers from the plants, providing the pollen needed to get to the female blossoms (which auto-produce the squash as we know it, which is the flower's ovary.) Once the female blossom is pollinated, the signal is a "go" and the main plant's energy continues to feed the fruit. If not pollinated, the ovary shrivels, turns brown, and falls off. You'll note that the peas are not as sweet as they ought to be. I debated about providing them for the share, as their flavor is not as stellar as I'd like; they will get sweeter as they mature and the sun fuels the plants a bit more.
And as with last week, three different lettuce heads, a bag of mixed salad greens, a bunch of tender, young radishes, and a bunch of Dinosaur/Lacinato/Black kale round out the mix for this week.
In other garden news, I've been hilling the potatoes, which are coming along nicely, and will hopefully be ready for some tender new potatoes in the coming few weeks. Purple flowers are gracing the tops of some of the plants, and on the next hot day, several more are sure to come.
More to come soon. Thanks!
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