Hi everyone,
We are coming up to the halfway point in the season. It’s pretty crazy to compare the photos of shares from the beginning of the season to now. The volume of greens has been replaced by a dense array of colors. The bounty of this time of year is truly unmatched. As I munch on green beans, or melon, or cherry tomatoes, or corn, or anything of the other things in the shares these days, I often find myself thinking “I love the summer.”
I wanted to share a little bit from Nichols Farm’s newsletter last week. Todd Nichols writes;
As a diversified family vegetable farm i want to take this moment to let you know just how important you are to us. I say this after severing ties with a local grocery chain who wanted to offer our produce this season. They simply wanted the very best produce we could produce for insultingly low prices. This and they rejected something every week. This is the problem with our global food system. More food goes to waste for being too big or too small than you could imagine. This is why a direct consumer relationship is so important to the small family farm. Thank you for supporting us and allowing us to stay in business.
We know that being part of a CSA can sometimes feel like a burden, especially when life gets busy. It can be a lot of food and sometimes things that are foreign or difficult to use. The ambition of Gard Mo is to lessen some of that burden, and we hope that we’ve been able to do that for you all thus far in the season.
If the goal is a local food system that can support our communities (we believe it is), the stability of CSA members goes a long way in enabling the small farms needed for that vision. We’d like to echo Todd and thank you all for supporting us, and the local food system.
-Ben
We love corn, and with that like to add it to just about everything we cook this time of year. With it off the cob, its easy to just toss into a pan with whatever else were cooking (like maybe the green beans). Similar to peas earlier in the year, they freeze well just like this, but best practice would be to first blanch.
This variety of green beans is thicker than some of the others and with that , we like to slice them into about ~ 1/2″ pieces to sauté. They have a mild flavor that leans towards the greener end of the spectrum. These would work great with the corn and cherry tomatoes for a nice veggie medley.
There’s no such thing as too many tomatoes this time of year. Cherry tomatoes are great since they generally last a little longer, are easy to snack on, and slice into pretty cross-sections to cook with or garnish just about any dish.
August is for tomatoes and at their peak like this, we like to enjoy them just as they are (plus a little salt).
A different variety of bell pepper than what was in the last share. This bell pepper is orange skinned, sweet, and fruity.
It’s pretty wild how aromatic and complex these melons are. Even uncut, they perfume the entire room. An interesting problem that we run into is that without cutting open a melon, its very difficult to tell what variety/color of it is, and there is so much diversity that we’ve seen 4 different varieties in a single week. The beauty of the CSA Club is that we are able to make sure that everyone gets some of each of the varieties.
Eggplant is part of the nightshade family (tomatoes, peppers, and even tobacco). Interestingly though, it’s the only nightshade to have been domesticated in the Old World; the others originated in the Americas. With tomatoes coming into season, caponata would be a great use for these eggplants.
To double down on cucumber-iness, recently we’ve been making a cucumber sauce (tzatziki) to dip slices of cucumber into. It’s been pretty tasty.
We’ve moved on from spring onions and into full fresh summer onions. Without a curing step though, these haven’t formed the papery exterior yet and are best kept refrigerated. These in particular are super sweet with only a mild flavor and crisp texture.
Blistered shishito peppers are one of my favorite quick dishes. Quickly sauté/roast in a ripping hot pan/oven, and season (maybe with some green garlic salt) and your set. Be careful though; most of the shishitos will be mild but every now and then there is a spicy one. Its like playing hot-pepper-roulette.
Fermented with dill, garlic, and coriander these are crunchy, funky, and everything you want in a pickle.
Cherry Bomb Peppers from Nichol’s Farm, dehydrated and blended with salt. If you can get past the capsaicin, the aroma is floral and fruity, like raisins and roses. Heat isn’t too crazy, with a nice warm linger. Use on popcorn, potatoes, grilled meats, roasted veggies, or anywhere you might use a chile powder (just mind the extra salt).
Basil, mint, and nasturtium leaves. This mix is aromatic, and complex. The basil brings lots of floral notes while the mint and nasturtium are earthy and add complexity.
