Hi everyone,
The few cool days between the heat waves have been little tastes of fall. But don’t worry, there is still lots of summer produce left in the season. Farmer Todd reported that cool weather crops were being seeded last week, so we have a few weeks before we start seeing those. He is worried though that the heat and continuing drought may force him to reseed, so fingers crossed. Either way, we still have a lot more summer produce to enjoy.
August was a pretty busy month for us. Over the last few weeks, Lisa and I coordinated a couple of dinners. One, a collaboration with our friend and sous chef at Waldorf Astoria, Thom DiCarlo. And the other, in our roles as the Culinary Coordinators for Next Door Dinners. We love getting all of the veggies ready for the CSA Club to cook with, but these dinners are an opportunity for us to get to cook and serve them to people. It’s a lot fun and with how delicious the produce is, it’s always super tasty. We’re hoping to do more of these towards the end of the season so keep an eye out.
Enjoy the veggies!
-Ben
Corn was domesticated in Mesoamerica some 9,000 years ago and has been a staple crop for cultures since. Today, it’s the third largest food crop in the world behind wheat and rice. In the U.S. though, livestock eats more corn than people do. We think that’s pretty silly.
Don’t be afraid to toss the container of corn in the freezer if you feel like you won’t be able to get around to cooking with it. You’ll be happy to have it in a couple months when you’re missing summer.
Continuing the tour of colored bell peppers, this weeks are red. The flavor is pretty similar to the orange: sweet and fruity.
This is a fun mix of purple, yellow, and orange carrots. 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 red and yellow cherry tomatoes. Tomatoes are the second most consumed (colloquial) vegetable in the U.S., just behind potatoes. This is likely due to their savoriness thanks to high amounts of glutamic acid (the ‘G’ in MSG) .
We hope you all aren’t getting tired of eggplant. It’s been frequent this season. We like to use in addition with other veggies (sautéed, roasted, or however) since it’s texture adds a nice variety to the crunchiness of most other vegetables.
These your typical red onions, just a little smaller. Red onion is great raw as a garnish since the color bleeds when you cook it. However, the color bleed works in our favor if you were to pickle them since it’ll give them a nice pink color.
This is a fun variety of cauliflower. The cauliflower version of broccolini; the stalks are long and tender with small florets. Roasting whole keeps them looking pretty, but they work just as well chopped and sautéed.
Boil’em, mash’em, stick’em in a stew; potatoes are always a nice item to receive since they are so flexible and can be the foundation for other veggies.
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.
Besides corn, there isn’t anything that represents summer quite as well. Crisp, refreshing, and sweet.
Honeydew is often included in fruit salads, but don’t let those form your opinion on them. Honeydew is super sweet, and melts in your mouth. Its aptly named, as all I can think of as I eat it is honey.
