Hi everyone,
Thank you so much for joining the CSA Club for our third season! We’re thrilled to share a summer of fresh, delicious veggies with you.
This year, we’ve expanded with new pick-up locations and groups to meet our growth goals. While this means even fresher produce for you (yay!), it also means a tighter turnaround for the ATue group @ Monochrome. Here’s how we’re adapting:
Newsletter Timing:
On a perfect day, we’ll receive produce from Nichols Farm on Tuesday morning and have it ready for you by 6 PM. However, I typically like to see (and taste) the veggies before writing newsletter blurbs since varieties and sizes can vary so much. To avoid delays, the email version of the newsletter will list the veggies without blurbs. Full blurbs will be added by Wednesday night and updated within the newsletter on our website.
Potential Delivery Delays:
Occasionally, Nichols Farm’s deliveries run late (sometimes arriving in the afternoon). If this happens, we’ll communicate ASAP and may need to adjust: If this every happens on an ATue day, we might have some issues. The best we can do is ask for flexibility form you all. If we think we’ll be running late, we’ll communicate it as soon as possible, and if we think we’ll be running so late as to not be ready Tuesday night, we might flex to Wednesday afternoon deliveries to make it work. So I apologize in advance if we have to do some shifting around and appreciate all the grace and patience that you all give us.
We hope you all enjoy the veggies, and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions or feedback!
—Ben
Cucumbers already is kind of crazy. Nichols has a pretty impressive greenhouse program that enables them to have delicious cucumbers and tomatoes this early in the season. They use a moveable top that allows them to plant directly into their healthy soil with the protection and warmth of a greenhouse. When it warms up, they move the top and boom! Cucumbers and tomatoes and a month ahead of where they otherwise would be.
Another storage item from Nichols, this a pretty fun one and easy to make. Just put a full cob into a large paper bag and use the popcorn setting on your microwave (3.5 oz, ~1.5 mins). If you’d rather, you can always break the kernels off the cob and pop on the stove top like you otherwise would. Season with some Cherry Bomb Pepper or Green Garlic Salt.
This is spring-planted spinach (vs overwintered). The weather to start this season has been a bit cooler than last year allowing Nichols keep spinach going out in the field without it bolting. The flavor is deeply spinach-y and has a nice sweet balance. It’s definitely hardier than baby spinach and would hold up well to a sauté.
The scale that Nichols is at enables them to harvest enough storage crops in the fall to last through all of winter. These sunchokes are one of those storage crops, harvested last fall but still tasting great. Sunchokes are starchy root similar to potato, and can be used similarly. Roasted until tender is always nice. A favorite, but laborious, of mine is to make sunchoke chips to use as a gorgeous crunchy topping for a salad.
Nichols’ arugula is always extra peppery. You’ll often see arugula used in light salads, like with balsamic and goat cheese. But these ones are so peppery I had visions of it carrying a creamy Caesar dressing making it seem like you gave it a few extra cranks of the pepper mill.
Spring onions are always a treat. Harvested before a bulb has started to form, these look more like scallions and can be used similarly. Use the bottom red and white portions the same way you would onion (diced and sautéed at the beginning of any dish), and the top green portion like you would green onion or chives (as a garnish).
Comparing these to the ones from Otter Oaks is pretty fun. They might be slightly different varieties, but more likely the differences are from different growing conditions. These from Nichols are much more elongated in shape, and have more of a spicy bite than the Otter Oaks radishes. Luckily the recipe this week is a simple way to use an abundance of radishes!
We’re starting off the season with a double ration of radishes. Easter egg radishes are typically a mix of different varieties of radishes which is how we end up with the pretty mix of purple, pinks, and whites. These ones from Otter Oaks are particularly sweet and mild.
