Hi everyone!
It’s crazy that we’re already at the second to last share of the season. With that in mind I thought now would be a good time to reminisce about all of the delicious produce that we’ve enjoyed so far this season.
The CSA Club as a whole will have gone through nearly 4,000 lbs of produce over the season. We’ve enjoyed about 36 different types of vegetables and fruit with a total of more than 70 unique varieties across those produce items. The most frequent items we had (>5 times each) were apples, lettuce, onions, carrots and peppers. Not far behind were kale, sugar snap peas, summer squash, corn, and winter squash. Just to name a few other highlights we received in the shares, we also had strawberries, joi choi, english peas, melon, and tomatillo. It’s been a satisfyingly delicious season.
In past seasons, we’ve flirted with doing something over the winter but we’ve never been able to land on something. We can say confidently that we will be taking a pause this winter. In the next newsletter, I’ll share a few options for getting your local veggie fix over the winter (there are a surprising amount of options). I’ll also share a couple other end of season housekeeping things such as a final tote/container return after our last pick-up.
Thank you all so much for being a part of the CSA Club. It means so much to us that you all trust us to provide you all with delicious produce and we couldn’t do it without the commitment and reliability you all bring to the table. With the upcoming life change Lisa and I have of welcoming a baby into our home, we’re hoping to use the time off to prepare as well as continue the work we’ve already started of planning for next year for Gard Mo and the CSA Club. We’re hopeful that we can still manage to fit Gard Mo into our lives, but it’s going to take a lot of help. The plan as of now is to have a CSA Club season next year, but there is a chance that our winter break is extended indefinitely. We’ll be sure to keep you all updated.
Hope you all enjoy the share.
—Ben
I don’t think you would be able to find scallions quite this big at the grocery store. Popular in Chinese cooking along garlic and ginger as the base aromatics for most dishes, the white portions can be used just as you would onion while the greens are perfect for a garnish and bringing a nice brightness when sliced thinly and added fresh to dishes.
Collard greens are most famously used in the dish simply called ‘collard greens’ or ‘collards’. The name ‘collards’ however is derived from the same word as other brassicas its closely related to. From On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee;
Several vegetables in the cabbage family, ‘kale’, ‘collards’, and ‘cauliflower’, have names that derive from the Latin word ‘caulis,’ meaning “stem” or “stalk,” the part of the plant from which the edible portions emerge. ‘Cabbage’ itself comes from the Latin ‘caput,’ meaning “head.”
In the list Nichols sent me, they had noted bell peppers for this week but not onions. Yet when we received the shares, onions and peppers! My guess is that as we near the end of the pepper season, there weren’t quite enough for all of the CSA shares Nichols does (>1000 per week) so they added some onions to compensate. Rather than giving half shares half a pepper, we thought it’d be nice to just slice them up along with the onions for a fajita mix. Definitely prioritize using these up first compared to the other things in the share since they’ll go bad the quickest. Hope you all enjoy it!
Greenhouse growing enables Nichols to greatly expand their variety and availability of produce at the beginning and end of seasons. As we start to approach cold nights that lettuce wouldn’t enjoy, growing it in a greenhouse keeps the temperature more even from the day to night allowing them to thrive and increasing the diversity of things we receive in the shares.
We had shallots in the shares back in August. Peeled shallots are a staple in restaurant walk-in coolers -but they’re typically enormous and a little sad looking. These from Nichols are smaller and have an intense flavor. We like to use a couple here or there in dishes like we would garlic or onion. Peeled and refrigerated like this they’ll keep for a long time also. Lisa and I still have some left from August that I used in chiliquilies this morning for breakfast so no need to rush to use these.
“Supersweet winter” isn’t the variety of these carrots, rather it describes the timing of their planting and harvesting. Once cold weather hits, carrots that are still in the ground convert starches to sugar. In that context, these are early winter carrots but the sweetness is already there. The carrots are building up in our refrigerator from the ample amount Nichols has put in the shares this year so we’re planning to use these for carrot cake as a different format for enjoying them.
This the second time we’ve received Jonathan apples this season. We haven’t been a particular rush to eat all of our apples. Come Thanksgiving, we’ll be thanking our past selves for hording away apples since we’ll make the most delicious mixed variety apple pie to bring to the festivities.
Kabocha squash are popular in Japan. In Japan though, ‘kabocha’ is used to refer to this squash, pumpkin, and other winter squashes. They’re extremely sweet with a nice firm texture. We have used them in place of pumpkin for pumpkin pies before to great success.
These are a fun different brassica. They’re a cross between brussels sprouts and kale, forming small heads on a stalk similar to brussels sprouts instead with kale leaves. We’ve trimmed the outer large leaves off and packed them separately. This way you can cook them separately since the large outside leaves tend to be fully cooked before the cores are tender. Use the leaves as you would kale and kalettes as you would brussels sprouts.
Empires have the classic brown apple notes (like apple cider or the soda Manzanita Sol) with nice tartness. Empire is cross between Red Delicious and McIntosh, bred at Cornell University in upstate New York.
