Hello CSA Club!
We hope you all are enjoying the bliss of Chicago summer. The cooldown in weather has been a nice relief and starts to bring fall to mind but we still have a few more weeks before that shift will happen with finality.
We’re hosting a dinner with Next Door Dinners Tuesday September 9th at El Paseo Community Garden in Pilsen. Next Door Dinners hosts pop-up dinners across the city to build community and raise money for charity. For this dinner, Gard Mo will be coordinating all the food so it’s sure to be filled with the tastiest local produce! Plus all proceeds will be going to El Paseo Community Garden who hosts a slew of incredible programing in their beautiful garden space.
NDD is completely volunteer run — if you have any interest in volunteering, there are still spots open for prep night. You can sign-up here.
Be sure to grab your tickets for the dinner soon as space is limited! Tickets are pay-what-you-can so that NDD can be as accessible as possible. Reserve your ticket to the dinner here. We hope to see you all there!
Hope you all enjoy this week’s bounty.
—Ben
We had this same variety of potato as ‘new’ potatoes back in the beginning of July, almost two months ago. Now the potatoes are fully matured and are best stored slightly warmer than refrigerator temperature (45-55F). Low cupboards generally work well and are what we’d recommend for where to store the potatoes now. However, if you suspect that the storage space might be warmer than 75F, keeping the potatoes in the crisper box of the refrigerator might be a better bet for optimal longevity/quality.
Nichols didn’t specify exactly which variety we’d receive this week. Unfortunatly it’s been a bad season for Nichols’ corn crop. The intense heat we had over the last few weeks was causing the corn to mature faster than Nichols was able to harvest. This combined with all of the rain yielded cobs that were somewhat lesser in quality than Nichols generally prides itself in. Luckily for you, we take care of trimming away the less than edible portions of the corn so all you get are the still-delicious kernels.
It’s not often that we get the exact same thing two shares in a row. Fortunately, sugar cubes are hard to be disappointed by.
Jarvi from Otter Oaks described these as an asian/middle eastern variety. They’re similar to the ones we had back in the 5th share. Try out this Adobo Baingain Bharta recipe from Azziza (last year’s CSA Club assistant).
Zestar are a University of Minnesota developed variety first introduced in 1999. Early ripening, these also have a great flavor; a nice sweet-tart balance with darker cider-like notes.
We saw red kale earlier in the season, but that was a different variety. This Redbor kale is thoroughly red (purple) with not even a peek of green.
Similar to garlic, we like to peel our shallots and then keep them refrigerated. That way its a lot easier to add them to whatever you’re cooking. Shallots have a little more complex flavor than onions and can be used like you would garlic (in a larger amount), or just like you would onion. They would do the green beans justice.
Fresh beans are something that you’ll never at the grocery store. The red speckling of the cranberry beans is pretty, but will fade when you cook them. Being fresh, they cook much quicker than dry beans would. To cook these, first sauté a bit of shallot, onion, and/or garlic in a pot until fragrant. Then add the beans and enough water to cover with an inch or two to spare. Bring the pot up to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for ~ 20 mins or until the beans are soft. You can add any other seasoning, veggies, vinegars, as you’d like.
