Thanks again for signing up to be part of the first season of the CSA Club. The season is starting off strong with this week’s box full of delicious produce.
As we get into the flow of things, we hope to have these newsletters build on these newsletters with additional content to help give tips and tricks on how to make the most of your shares. Be sure to follow us on Instagram (@gard.mo) as we post frequently there, but as keep an eye out as we continue to add new ways to share.
To get the season started Lisa will share some things to keep in mind about the shares, containers, and our zero-waste goals.
Hi! Lisa here. Let’s get this season started with 3 quick points:
With the amount of other greens, we went ahead and hit the pause button on these. Use this week, next week, or in 4 months. You won’t be making a crunchy salad but the flavor and quality of the frozen spinach will be near identical to if you were to have cooked it from fresh.
Add at the last moment to any dish that calls for spinach to minimize over cooking.
Rapini is sometimes also called broccoli rabe. Its from the same family as broccoli (brassicas). Rapini is much leafy-er than broccoli, with the skinniest of florets that are now starting to flower so you’ll see the pretty yellow dotting it. The flavor is very similar to broccoli, but with a slight herbal woodiness that reminds me of incenses.
You can use it the same ways as you would kale. Give it a rough chop, and sautee or roast.
This a red leaf lettuce. It can be on the more bitter end, so as a salad it goes nice with a sweeter dressing (think honey mustard). Alternatively, you can cook it by very briefly by sauteeing it. Sauteed greens like this is a little more common in chinese cuisine, so if you have an sesame oil kicking around, thats a nice finishing touch.
In comparison to the spinach, blanching and freezing here was a little more out of convenience than abundance-management as you wouldn’t likely eat these raw anyway.
Add at the last moment to any soup, stew, braise, or just sautéed veggies to minimize over cooking.
This is likely the last of asparagus from Nichol’s for the season. Enjoy it because you will be missing it soon
These won’t compare to the field tomatoes we’ll get later in the season, but they certainly beat the warehouse ripened ones you’d find at the grocery store.
I like to halve/quarter these and roast them until they are soft and sweet, with much of the intense radish flavor gone. If you like it, these are particularly spicy which can be nice raw with butter or something creamy to dip into.
Just a week or two ago, spring onions looked very different. They were much smaller and the greens were still usable, but at this point in the season the greens are starting to become unwieldy so I didn’t include them (although, you might see them make a reappearance).
The bulbs are also a little bigger so they look more like shallots, then skinny red versions of green onions.
Use the same way you would shallots or red onion.
Sweet Winter Carrots from last season’s harvest. Nichol’s is fortunate enough to have a significant amount of storage crop space so we get to enjoy carrots before the ones this season are ready. Don’t worry though, these are still tasting great with a sweet kick and deep carrot flavor. I 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.
Kohlrabi is another member from the brassica family (same as the rapini). Here though, the base of the stem is what we’re eating. It has pretty much the same flavor and texture as broccoli stems, so you can use it anywhere you would use broccoli (I also like to shred it and make ‘kohl’ slaw). The skin can be stringy, so it’s definitely worth peeling, but it’s thick so best done with a knife rather than a peeler. I went ahead and cut up one for you, but left the other whole. That way it will last a bit longer, you can try your hand it, and you get to see how cute it is.
