Hi everyone,
It’s been a very busy week for us prepping for the Next Door Dinner tonight. We excited to see all of you that were able to grab tickets (it sold out!!).
We’ve been reflecting recently on all the relationship building it takes to make a small business like Gard Mo successful. It really takes a village. Then to imagine the amount of collective effort necessary to create a regenerative food system to replace our current broken one seems… daunting.
We say “CSA” a lot, but maybe we don’t say what it stands for enough; Community Supported Agriculture. We believe in the ethos of Community Supported Agriculture wholeheartedly as the solution to not only the industrial food system, but also to the disconnect so many of us feel as a result of the material-individualism ingrained in us. Thank you all so much for being part of the community.
Perfectly timed with the heat wave, the shares this week are definitely beginning to show the shift to summer with nearly perfect sized summer squashes and baby carrots; great for grilling and keeping the heat of cooking out of the house.
Hope you all enjoy the share!
-Ben
This is the first time this year that we have included the greens from a bunching veggie in the shares (turnip, kohlrabi, carrot, etc.). If we don’t include them, we typically blanch and freeze them to procrastinate finding a use for them. Since this share is the first that isn’t bursting with greens we figured they wouldn’t overwhelm you all. Beet greens are very similar in flavor to swiss chard, but with a more velvety texture. Use for a salad, sauté, or toss into soup, stew, or curry.
Similar to the spring onions, these green 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.
These are the first carrots of this season. “Baby” carrots at the grocery store should called “polished” carrots, since they aren’t really made from baby carrots. These are baby carrots. When we remove the greens from carrots, we like to leave a little bit on the carrot mostly because we think it’s super cute (it also makes the greens easier to clean). I like to roast or grill early season carrots whole to really lean into the adorableness. There’s a bit of variety in sizes, so simply halve or quarter the larger ones lengthwise.
Summer squash is the broad category of thin skinned and non-starchy squashes. This week’s shares include the first of the season and are a mix of zucchini and yellow squash. These would be great sautéed for an iconic taste of summer.
I’ve been pretty enamored with snap peas this season. They’ve been crispy and sweet. We shared the Snap Pea Salad recipe last week, but these cook up nice as well. At the Next Door Dinner tonight (6/18), we’re quickly charring snap peas, slicing them thinly, and tossing them with pasta and a beurre blanc sauce. Very tasty.
It’s been a great year for strawberries. Plenty of water earlier on in the season to get them growing, and now a lack of it to keep them concentrated with flavor. An extra helping of strawberries were included with this week’s shares so that we can all enjoy them to the fullest.
These are a fun orange that has a great tart fruitiness to them. Nichols noted this week that all of the greenhouses ripened at once, and now they are flush with tomatoes. It definitely showed at their West Loop GCM stand this weekend, and now we all get to help by providing good homes for them.
Tacos is probably most people’s first thought as to what to do with cilantro, but it can brighten up so many dishes. Its great in curries or salads. Lisa made us banh mi inspired sandwiches for dinner that happily took an ample amount of cilantro. If it feels like you won’t get through it all, try making a cilantro chimichurri that can be used on sandwiches or roasted veggies (or meat if you’re into that) and will last a little longer in the fridge.
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 up the beets.
