Hi everyone,
We did it. We’ve made it through a summer full of delicious, locally grown produce. Spring onions, greens, melons, corn, squashes and apples; it really has been a treat.
First, some quick housekeeping. We will deliver the shares Sunday morning sometime between 10 am and 12 pm. This is the last share of the CSA Club, but we are going to ask that you come see us one more time Sunday 11/19. Since we’re doing deliveries for everyone, we will make the rounds so that we’re able to collect totes and containers to close out the season. We’ll even promise a treat for everyone so that you aren’t left empty handed.
Next, we want to make sure to give credit where credit is due, and show appreciation for Nichols Farm who did all of the truly hard work. Without everyone at the farm, Gard Mo could not do the work that we do. We also want to give a quick shoutout to all of the other growers and producers that we have sourced from throughout the season for Larder items and premium add-ons
Gard Mo exists because of our conviction that eating locally grown food is not only better for you, but better for all. In supporting the local food system, we strengthen our own community by reallocating our food dollars away from the consolidated, profit-driven, and high-impact large scale industrial food system. In the words of Todd Nichols (our farmer):
Our team on the farm is top notch and we could not do any of it without them. The farm employs around 45 people so when you purchase a CSA share from us you are supporting 45 local households and nearly every dollar goes right back into our local economy. Choosing to eat local not only ensures you healthier and fresher foods it also is good for every other local business.
Thank you all so much for joining us on the journey of our first season. It really has been an amazing experience for Lisa and me. We hope that you all have enjoyed it as much as we have, and keep an eye out for all of the things we have planned for the winter and next season.
Keep eating local.
Ben & Lisa
Hi everyone,
Get ready – this newsletter’s a long one. Please bear with me.
First, shares will be delivered on Friday. Lisa and I are heading to New York for a friend’s Wedding so there will be a bit of a shift in the schedule. We’ll be targeting to deliver the shares Friday evening, between 5pm and 7pm. Please let us know if there are issues and we can coordinate.
As we come up to the penultimate share of the season, it feels like we’re fully past the last sprint of summer and things are winding down now. At Nichols Farm the cooler days have been appreciated as they work to harvest carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips, potatoes and other storage crops that they will have available all winter long.
I was hoping to be able to announce our plans for the winter in this newsletter but to be honest, we just haven’t quite made those plans yet. The closer and closer we get to the end of the season, the more and more I find myself looking forward to a break. We are definitely planning towards a second CSA Club season next summer but we’re going to keep it a little less structured over the winter. We’re hoping to use this time to gather ourselves and plan towards next year. But don’t worry, Gard Mo won’t be completely silent; we’re hoping to winter markets, pop-ups, dinners, and other fun (if not entirely yet planned) things this winter so keep an eye out.
We’ll also still be keeping close with Nichols Farm and other local growers and producers throughout the winter. With that, we will have knowledge of and access to whatever is available so if you find yourself looking for any local groceries in particular, reach out! If someone asks you where you got those delicious veggies, you’ll be able to say “I got a guy”.
Anyways, enjoy the veggies this week!
-Ben
A mix of different colored carrots. There’s orange, ruby, yellow, and (going from outside in) purple-yellow-orange carrots. All very tasty.
Another squash for the centerpiece (or for noshing).
This variety of winter squash was bred at Cornell University and made famous by Dan Barber (chef/author of Blue Hill and The Third Plate). It’s like a butternut squash, but just concentrated down into a smaller package. Super sweet and with a deep squash flavor, they don’t need much more than a simple roast. And with their small size, a roasted half looks pretty on a plate.
Mutsu apples are a golden delicious cultivar, first grown in Japan. In Japan, there are three kinds typically available: Sun, Red, and Silver. Each kind differ in color based on how much sunlight they receive. These from Nichols are a pale yellow-green with red blush, almost a mix of three varieties.
SnowSweets are a University of Minnesota variety. U of M describes SnowSweets as “almost buttery….. sweet with a slight tart balance and rich overtones.” I think they taste like a caramel apple without any of the tacky candy sticking in your teeth.
Parsnips are in the same family as carrots and parsley. Before the introduction of potatoes from the New World, parsnips were an important staple crop in Europe with the variety grown today having been developed in the Middle Ages.
Like potatoes or carrots, parsnips do well roasted. Peeling the skin can make them a little less bitter, but we usually don’t bother. Parsnip puree is another classic preparation.
The same variety of blue potatoes that we saw earlier in the season. A casserole or au gratin with these might make a fun Halloween dish.
We saw red kale earlier in the season, but that was a different variety. This Redbor kale is thoroughly red (purple) with not even a peek of green.
The sprouts are starting to get larger further into the season. If you’re looking for something different, try making a slaw, thinly slicing the brussels sprouts in place of cabbage.
Fresh ginger isn’t something you’ve likely seen at the grocery store. It doesn’t have the brown papery skin typical to cured ginger. This makes it easy to peel, simply scrap off with a spoon.
I love how peppery this arugula is. On a sandwich, in an omelet, or as a simple salad, it is delightful. If you don’t like the spicy zesty-ness of raw radish, you might not like raw arugula as much. In that case, try roughly chopping and sautéing it with some leek. I’m a little torn on which way I like it more.
Hi everyone,
We have some sad news to share. Alex, the owner of Belli’s, is planning to move out of the state later this month so the upcoming future for Belli’s is up in the air at the moment. Belli’s is still open and hasn’t announced an exact closing date yet while they seek potential new ownership (so stop by while you still can). However, since they will be closed this Sunday, and Lisa and I will be out of town the following pick-up Sunday (more on that in the future), we will plan to deliver shares for the remainder of the season. If there is any issues with this, just send us a message at csaclub@gardmo.com or (630)391-1245.
Lots of tasty stuff in the shares this week. It’s always interesting how the summer is bookended with the same veggies. Similar to the spring, we’ll start to see more leafy greens, radishes, turnips and root vegetables. Keep in mind that the root vegetables, squashes, apples will last for quite a while so don’t be afraid to stash away some produce as we come up towards the end of the season.
Enjoy the veggies!
-Ben
Beets from your last share.
Beets pickled and canned with baking spices, Tinyshop vinegar, and Michigan beet sugar.
Again, I am probably misnaming something. Green Goddess is a classic dressing dating back to the 1920’s. It’s typically made with parsley and tarragon, but we opt to use a larger mix of herbs from Smit’s Farm in Chicago Heights. With a base of Phoenix Bean Soft Tofu, this vegan dressing is great for heartier greens, cabbage or just as a dip for veggies.
Celery leaves, dehydrated and ground with salt. The bright green color is a stark comparison to the drab brown that any celery salt you’ll find at the grocery store will be. Use to season popcorn, meat, or a Chicago-style hot dog.
Honeygold was developed at the University of Minnesota, and is a descendent of Golden Delicious bred for cold hardiness. It’s a firm with golden-green skin and is sweet with floral notes, like honey or rose.
In comparison, the Empires have more of the classic brown apple notes (like apple cider or the soda Manzanita Sol) also with more tartness. Empire is cross between Red Delicious and McIntosh, bred at Cornell University in upstate New York.
We love winter squashes for eating, but also because they make great fall décor. Find a nice place in your dining room, kitchen, or living room to gradually build up winter squashes through the end of the season. Then when you have a hankering for some squash (or because there’s nothing else in the fridge) go grab a squash from your beautiful centerpiece. Just check the squashes occasionally to make sure no soft spots are developing, and if they aren’t, they’ll keep for months (just use them right away if they are).
We went ahead and cut these into sticks similar in shape to baby carrots. This way they are ready for easy snacking or are a simple cut away from diced. 70% of all carrots sold in the US are baby carrots. That fact was one the inspirations for Gard Mo; we think that it demonstrates the convivence problem that makes eating local food difficult for most people. We hope to solve that problem.
Another doubling of sweet potato varieties. Last time, Lisa and I simply baked (375F for ~1hr) one of the each of the sweet potatoes to taste against each other. Unfortunatly, we can really only ever do this after sending out the newsletter and via research the descriptions of the varieties online are uninspiring so you all will have to just taste them to determine the differences yourselves.
The Bayou Belles are the purplish-red, ones and the Beauregards are the brick-orange ones.
What corn is to summer, brussels sprouts are to fall. Simply halved and roasted, these are a treat.
A little bit of a surprise this late in the season, and you can tell these are late season. A little larger and tougher, we would definitely slicing before cooking to compensate.
An interesting consequence of the way we have CSA Club setup is that this is the first time you all (B group) have received bell peppers while A group got them three shares in a row.
On the flip side of the bell peppers going to A group, they haven’t received any shallots, while this is the third time B group has. I’d make that trade.
These are my favorite. Raw they have a slight crunch and a funky flavor between a radish and horseradish (mild though). When cooked, the texture softens to creamy adjacent and the flavor mellows out. Try braising whole for the veggie equivalent of a pot roast.
Swiss chard always reminds me of spinach. There’s a fun mix of different colored chard here, some a deep red-orange color. Its has a mild, earthy flavor, with a slightly more hardy bite than lettuces. Give a quick chop and use for salads or sauté, just as you would spinach.
I often worry about the name I attach to things. This is by no means an authentic curry paste. Ginger, Bird’s Eye Chiles, and Cilantro (all from Nichols Farm), is ground with carrot tops and celery leaves from CSA Club shares. Use to make a curry, as a marinade for chicken, or as a spread on a roasted veggie sandwich.
Another round of stock from CSA Club scraps. Use for soup, sauce, braises, rice pilaf or anywhere stock or water is called for.
Cahokia Rice, McLure,IL
Bet you didn’t know rice grows in Illinois. Grown in southern Illinois, not only is the rice sustainable, it’s also a high protein rice. But most importantly, its delicious.
Hi everyone,
It’s really starting to feel like fall now. We’ve been having cool nights and there are winter squashes in the shares (and football is back). I want to thank everyone again for being part of the first season of the CSA Club. Its been very fulfilling for us and we hope that you all have enjoyed it as much as we have. Lisa and I are starting to finalize plans for the CSA Club over the winter (and for next season) and we want your help to form those plans.
First though, I want to share some of our accomplishments so far through the season. Together, the CSA Club has enjoyed a whopping 1300 lbs of locally grown produce. All of that coming from just 70 mi away, compared to the average of over 1500 mi of what you would find in a grocery store. I had also planned on listing the percentage of diet grown in Illinois that would represent, but based on a typical thrifty diet according the USDA food plans each of the CSA Club shares would only account for 28% of fruit and veggies. That doesn’t quite seem right to me. Lisa and I are usually working hard to use everything up before the next share rather than supplementing with additional produce, but let us know if you think different!
Now the ask for help; we want your feedback on the CSA Club to help guide the direction we continue to grow. If you could please fill out this survey, it would go a long way in helping us plan. We appreciate any thoughts, ideas or critiques, that you might have.
Enjoy the veggies!
-Ben
McIntosh apples are a classic variety. Originated cultivated in Upper Canada, they entered commercial production in 1870 and today are in the top fifteen apple cultivars in the US. Tart with a green apple flavor similar to Granny Smith.
Cortlands are a McIntosh x Ben Davis hybrid developed in Geneva, NY in 1898. Striated green and red skin with bright white flesh, these have a more brown
The Oranos are the bright orange and are extraordinarily sweet with a zesty flavor. The Gypsys are the red and yellow, and have a more fruity flavor similar to fresnos (no heat though).
Another last of the season. We like to use eggplant in addition with other veggies (sautéed, roasted, or however) since it’s texture adds a nice variety to the crunchiness of most other vegetables.
The flavor of these carrots is wild. The distinctive aroma of carrots is due to terpenes. This family of compounds can have aromas ranging from flowery to citrusy to piney. In these carrots I notice prominent baking spices, like clove or cardamom.
One last round of Patty Pans will be the last of the summer squash. Earlier this week, we split some Patty Pans hamburger style and grilled, charring the outside but keeping the center firm. They were like squash cutlets.
This is the last corn of the season so we’ve left them whole again for grilling in this nice cool weather to close out the season. If you don’t have a grill, another option is to bake husk-on on a sheet tray at 350F for ~45 mins.
There Cipollinis in the shares a couple weeks back back. Sweet and disc shaped, these are great roasted whole, or used anywhere else you would use onion.
Similar to corn and eggplant, this will the last of the melon for the season. With that in mind, and because these are nice small ones, we left them whole for you to be able to delay the last few bites if you’d like. My preferred method for cutting melons is to first cut off each end, and then stand up the melon to trim the rind top to bottom, following the curve. You then left with a naked, whole melon that can be halved and then cubed. But the classic wedges are always a fun way to go too.
We have a theme this week of two varieties of the same veggie. It should be fun to compare the differences
The Covingtons have brick orange skin, while the Carolina Rubys skin is well.. ruby.
Shelled beans might be the best benefit of being part of the CSA Club as shelling them is quite laborious. We typically put something on the TV and plod away at the beans, that way you all can easily enjoy them. The cold weather has baked beans or soup on my mind for these.
A member of the brassica family, collards have a deep savory flavor in comparison to kale. It’s hardy, and stands up well to long slow braising. Check out our recipe here.
We froze the shells from the peas received in the shares earlier in the season so that we could make this stock. Steeped lightly with herbs and garlic, this stock is stock is light and aromatic. It would work great for a light ramen, or split pea soup.
We often like to have braised greens in the refrigerator, whatever greens we might have. They an easy reheat to serve with whatever else is for dinner that night. We also add spoonfuls of it to soups or stirfrys to easily add some greens to more medley type dishes. Here we used some of the collards from your share along with some other greens frozen earlier in the season, braised in CSA Club Stock and Dill Pickle liquid and seasoned with housemade Paprika.
Some memories of spring; pickled at the peak of the asparagus season. Because the anthocyanins that give the purple color are water soluble, they’ve bled from the outside of the asparagus to the pickle liquid and flesh giving a beautiful pink hue. These would be the ultimate garnish for a Bloody Mary.
Hi everyone,
I hope the last couple of weeks have been great. As we cruise through peak season, we are planning and working on a number of preservation projects to build up the Larder and take advantage of the bounty of produce. We’re also brainstorming if/what form the CSA Club might take over the winter so that we can start planning towards that as well. If you have any ideas, please send them our way!
Enjoy the veggies!
-Ben
A mix of two varieties. The Yellow (green ) beans are crisp, with little to no flavor; great if you don’t like green beans much, and still great if you do. The Lewis green beans are thicker than the French green beans. This makes them great for slicing into about ~ 1/2″ pieces and sautéing. They have a mild flavor that leans towards the greener end of the spectrum.
A variety of fingerling potato, Red Thumb are red skinned and with blushy red fleshed. These creamy and firm. We like to simply steam whole (boiling also works) until fork tender, and then toss with oil and season. The skin stays firm and gives it’s own type of crispness that contrasts the creamy interior.
Crisp, sweet and deeply carrot-y. A fun fact is that historically, orange carrots are the newest to be popularized with purple, yellow and even white carrots having been consumed for most of history.
A mix of mini varieties of sweet peppers. There’s adorable yellow mini bell peppers, and orange lunchbox peppers.
As best as I can tell, there appears to be a mix of zestar, summar macs, and empire, but there might be as many as one more variety mixed in.
We hope you all aren’t getting tired of melon. They’ve been pretty great so far this year.
Besides corn, there isn’t anything that represents summer quite as well. Crisp, refreshing, and sweet.
Some times there are aspects of local produce that are worse than what you could find at the grocery store, and celery has a couple of those. Increased exposure to sunlight causes celery to develop more chlorophyll (the green color) and more lignin (what makes it tough), but whether its due to variety, conditions, or techniques, we couldn’t tell you why local celery doesn’t have the bulky greenish-white stalks of the grocery store version. The consequences are that this celery is small, tough, and bitter, but intensely aromatic.
Some ways to deal with this is to use the celery for stock, where it would be strained off anyway. Or you could chop it small reducing the tough long strings into small pieces. Or the most “french” thing (a term we use to refer to a task that’s overly laborious in the pursuit of perfection) would be to peel the celery to remove the strings entirely.
These are the leaves from the celery stalk. We like to use them as you would any other herb (more like cilantro or parsley, and a little less like basil or mint). Add as a garnish to about any dish for added freshness and aromatics. The celery flavor comes through for a nice earthy depth.
Candy onions look just like your standard yellow but their flavor is mild and sweet. This lends itself well to slicing and serving raw over something like a salad, as well as roasting to further develop some of those sugars. We also like to pickle these, where their sweetness balances well with some acid.
Patty pan is squash that is disc shaped, with both green and yellow varieties. Its flavor is about what you would expect from a summer squash, so take advantage of its adorable shape when cooking or try out this Patty Pan Taco recipe we shared last year.
Nichol’s refers to these banana peppers as ‘hot’ but out of all ones I’ve tried so far this season, I have yet to pick up on any heat. But maybe that’s just me (my disclaimer incase you find a hot one). Some of these have started to turn red as most peppers do if left on the vine long enough. The more red, the more fruity the flavor, while the more yellow ones have that characteristic flavor you might recognize from pickled banana peppers often on generic pizza-place salads.
Romas are the most famous variety of plum tomatoes. These are more fleshy than heirlooms or slicing tomatoes, making them great for making a sauce with as they are less watery. But they still taste pretty great just for a salad or sandwich also.
A very simple Salsa Verde; just tomatillos, onion, and jalapenos roasted and blended. Not too spicy with a thick consistency, it’s easy to eat a lot of this quickly.
From Tortilleria Atotonilco; Back of the Yards, Chicago.
Local Illinois-grown corn that is nixtamalized and ground in-house daily.
We almost always have tortillas in the refrigerator as they are, in our opinion, the best vehicle for veggies. No matter what you have on hand, you can always throw it on a tortilla with some sauce and something crunchy for a delicious taco.
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.
These French Green beans are a slender variety of green beans. They tend to be one of the more fragile vegetables. Because of this, local ones are much tastier than those at the end of long supply chains. These are sweet, crisp, and have a depth of flavor that’s lightly floral with notes of fresh mushroom. I enjoy snacking on them raw, but with a quick sauté and some shallot they are exceptional.
There are a couple different varieties of cherry tomatoes in this mix. A yellow one that is a nice burst of tartness. A skinny red one that has a more mild flavor. And one that is more similar to the multi-colored heirlooms that are coming into season at farmers’ markets.
August is for tomatoes and at their peak like this, we like to enjoy them just as they are (plus a little salt).
Similar to garlic, we like to peel our shallots and then keep them refrigerated. That way its a lot easier to add them to whatever you’re cooking. Shallots have a little more complex flavor than onions and can be used like you would garlic (in a larger amount), or just like you would onion. They would do the green beans justice.
Muskmelons are the subcategory of melon that includes cantaloupe (orange) and honeydew (green),. There are lots different varieties that often are just called one of those two more popular names. Growing up, I never really saw the appeal of them. My first season of a CSA changed that. These melons are intensely sweet with a flavor that reminds me of a milk caramel candy.
Another variety of potatoes, in their new form, Butterballs are particularly creamy with a mellow flavor. Simply boiled with some butter is not a bad way to go with these.
These peppers look like they would be spicy, but aren’t. A fun range of green to red, melrose peppers have a lighter flavor. Thin skinned, they’re great for grilling or roasting whole.
These are sometimes called cape gooseberries, but gooseberries are something entirely different. If you’ve ever had ground cherries before, their characteristic tartness is probably what you think of. These ones from Nichols are absent of that tartness, and because of that notes of cotton candy and vanilla are noticeable. They sort of remind us of cream soda.
These are long slender varieties, which makes them a little easier to cook with. Eggplant is great at carrying flavor. Roasting, or grilling it gives it a nice smoky tasty that goes great as the star of a sandwich, dip, or just with other veggies.
We’re fully into summer now. Corn is the poster child of summer, and you can’t find much better corn than what’s grown here in the Midwest. Right now the corn is sweet enough that you could eat it raw if you’re like me and have poor self-control. We hope you all are enjoying the season so far. Right now really is the most exiting part of the year with an abundance of veggies in season. Here on out is going to be a whirlwind of delicious produce.
Quick reminder to bring-with/leave-out the totes with the containers from your previous share. If you have any in use, no problem; we can get them next time.
And as always, feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback. You can always email us csaclub@gardmo.com , or for in the moment cooking questions text (630)391-1245.
-Ben
This week we opted to give you the corn pretty much whole. That way you have the opportunity to grill the corn if you would. Husk on is our preferred way so that the corn steam a bit while on the grill. Soaking the ears beforehand will help keep the husk from burning, but we’ve trimmed most of the excess off so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue either way.
New potatoes are an early summer treat. Harvested before being able to cure in-ground, new potatoes have a thin papery skin, and should be kept refrigerated. Raw, they have a crisp texture that reminds me of jicama. Cooked they are extremely creamy which I think makes them perfect for potato salad.
These are the first carrots of this season. When I remove the greens from carrots, I like to leave a little bit on the carrot mostly because I think it’s super cute (it also makes the greens easier to clean). I like to roast early season carrots whole to really lean into how adorable they are. There’s a bit of variety in sizes, so simply halve or quarter the larger ones lengthwise.
A friend of mine used to refer to fennel as “celery that tastes like something.” And that taste is similar to licorice or anise (anethole is the chemical to thank for this). The entirety of the plant can be used: bulb, stalks, and fronds. The stalks are most similar to celery and can be fibrous. Chopping and cooking can help mitigate that. The fronds can be used as you would any other herb. The bulb is what most fennel recipes will call for and can be used in a variety of ways. I like to slice it thinly and toss with oil and vinegar for a salad. I also like to sauté or braise it, as it caramelizes really nicely.
To double down on cucumber-iness, recently I’ve been making a cucumber sauce (tzatziki) to dip slices of cucumber into. It’s been pretty tasty.
This variety of kale is a little frilly with mild flavor and pretty dark red color. It’s hardy and sautés well.
This is close to your typical eggplant, but with a more round shape and speckled purple skin. The old adage is to salt eggplant before cooking to reduce bitterness. I don’t know if it necessarily does that, but salting them does collapse air pockets in the eggplant that helps it cook more evenly.
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. I will warn that while most of the shishitos will be mild, every now and then there is a spicy one. Its like playing hot-pepper-roulette.
Receiving cabbages in shares this time of year is nice as a rainy-day item. It will keep in the refrigerator for months, and you can always just cut a portion off the head to use, and put the rest back in the refrigerator for later (in a unsealed plastic bag).
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 so we just go ahead and peel them for you as well. These in particular are super sweet with only a mild flavor and crisp texture.
This is a white-fleshed muskmelon (think honeydew or cantaloupe). Its crisp, refreshing and has a light melon flavor that I think blurs the line with cucumber.
It’s week 3! I hope you’re enjoying everything so far this season. We are fully into the transition of spring to summer, and its noticeable with the shares. There are still greens, but then there’s summer squash, peas, and broccoli which are ushering in those summer flavors. Before you know it, we’ll be at the peak of the season.
Quick reminder to bring-with/leave-out the totes with the containers from your previous share. If you have any in use, no problem; we can get them next time.
And as always, feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback. You can always email us csaclub@gardmo.com , or for in the moment cooking questions text (630)391-1245.
-Ben
Nichol’s mentioned that this is the best fava bean crop they’ve had in a while. These broad beans are a lot of fun to use. Quickly boil for 1-2 mins, and toss with some oil, a little acid, and salt for a tasty snack. Or try pureeing them into something similar to hummus. You can use these pretty much anywhere you would lima beans.
More summer squash. This is an item that I’m always happy to receive since it’s so easy to use, and always tasty. We’ve been sautéing them recently and adding to salads for a juicy-burst of flavor.
Early season beets are nice since they’re quite a bit smaller. Roasted whole is a fun way to go, but my preferred way to cook beets is by braising with a decent amount of acid to help brighten them up.
For premium, we went ahead and shredded yours for this week’s recipe.
While these are called pickling cucumbers, they can be used for a as you would any other cucumber. Simply sliced, they’re a nice snack or addition to a salad/sandwich.
This broccoli is super sweet. The florets are great for snacking on or roasting, but to be honest, my favorite part is the stem. Once you peel away the fibrous skin, it has a crisp texture with only a mild broccoli flavor. I like to toss them in with other veggies I’m sautéing for easy variety.
Napa is the variety of cabbage traditionally used for kimchi, but it definitely isn’t a one trick pony. It does really well sautéed, or you can shred it and use it in a slaw. You can use it just about anywhere you would green or red cabbage.
This is the second time we’re seeing kohlrabi this season. They’re starting to get a bigger, and unfortunately won’t fit whole into the CSA Club containers. Fortunately the fibrous skin is a pretty good packaging itself. You can keep it loose like this in the crisper box, or store in a loosely sealed bag/container, until you’re ready to use it.
It’s week 2! I hope you enjoyed the array of veggies from your first share. There are a lot of fun things in the share this week.
Quick reminder to bring-with/leave-out the totes with the containers from your previous share. If you have any in use, no problem; we can get them next time.
And as always, feel free to reach out with any questions or feedback. You can always email us csaclub@gardmo.com , or for in the moment cooking questions text (630)391-1245.
-Ben
Crisp and refreshing romaine. We left the heart whole; one of my favorite things to do with romaine is to split the heart down the middle, oil and season it, and then char it on a ripping hot grill. Served warm, or chilled, grilled romaine brings an amazing smoky flavor to any salad. The loose leaves you can chop for salad, or use on a sandwich.
This is a brassica very similar to bok choy. With small heads, its perfect steamed, stir fried, or grilled. With just a bit of garlic scapes (see below), soy sauce, and vinegar it will hold its own as the star of a meal.
A late spring/early summer icon. These snap peas are crunchy, and sweet with a mild green bean flavor. Eat as a snack whole, slice for a salad, or lightly sautee for a fun side dish.
Swiss chard always reminds me of spinach. Its has a mild, earthy flavor, with a slightly more hardy bite than lettuces. Give a quick chop and use for salads or sauté, just as you would spinach (or mix with some greens you have in the freezer to make large batch of creamed greens that you could snack on all week).
Similar to the spring onions, these fresh shallots are the early harvested and uncured version of the shallots you’re used to seeing. Brighter, and slightly more mild than cured shallots, these can be used in all the same ways you would shallots or white onion.
The greens were looking nice, so I included those as well. Use like you would scallions for a perfect garnish for just about every dish.
Another leafy variation of broccoli. It looks very much like kale but tastes exactly like broccoli, stems included. Use any where you would broccoli. A stir fry with these, the snap peas, and garlic scapes would be mighty tasty.
The scapes are the tender stem and flower bud from the garlic plant. I have overheard people looking for these at the market since April. They carry the garlic flavor you would expect from the bulbs, but bring with an herbiness that’s a nice twist. I also think they’re a bit easier to cook with than garlic. I’ve trimmed them down to manageable pieces. Simply slice, and use as you would garlic (figure 2-4 pieces is equal to 1 clove of garlic).
