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
When Nichols sends us multiple varieties of apples, they’re usually mixed. Most of the time, we’re able to distinguish between the varieties and separate them out for you, but this week we just couldn’t tell the difference. Jonamacs are a cross between Jonathan and McIntosh. Initials are a cross between Gala and Redfree, which also gives them Jonathon ancestry via the Redfree. Either way, we’re certain whichever variety they are, they’re delicious.
Edit: I think we figured it out. There were only Initials in the shares for ATue. Both are in the shares for ADel+AFri. The Initials have Golden Delicious heritage which shows. They are the bigger somewhat yellow ones. The Jonamacs are smaller and a brighter green.
This will actually be the first time we’ve ever had pears in the shares from Nichols. I’m not sure which variety they are as Nichols didn’t note it in their list. Let us know what you think about them!
Back in July, when we first received green beans in the shares I noted that it would be the first of a lot. In the 3 shares since then (including this week’s) we’ve had green beans in each one. And now I’d expect this to be last. Green beans, likely many other of our favorite summer specialties are extremely seasonal. I hope you all have enjoyed the greens beans as much as we have. I’m sure I’ll already be looking forward to them next season by December.
We had Canada Golds as ‘new’ potatoes back in July. Now fully matured, they’re making a reappearance in the shares. Now the potatoes are fully matured, they’re 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. Canada Golds are very similar to Yukon Golds and make great all-purpose potatoes; perfect for frying, mashing, boiling, or baking.
You’ll often see a similar variety in super markets branded as sun gold. Otter Oak has been growing this particular variety of gold cherry tomatoes for a couple of seasons, and Jarvi mentioned that people will usually start asking when they’ll have them as early as June.
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.
Orange carrots are actually a somewhat recent development. The color comes from the pigment carotene which is a precursor for vitamin A, meaning that our bodies convert it into vitamin A. Purple, red, white, and yellow carrots have been eaten since medieval times, however the orange, carotene-rich carrots that are prevelant today seem to have developed in Holland in the 17th century. There are stories of the orange carrot being a point of pride for Dutch people as they often refer to their monarchy as the House of Orange, after William of Orange.
Leeks are a top-tier allium. We split them down the middle to best clean them, and then cut them into nice manageable sizes pieces. Like this, they are easier to use than onion or garlic. Simply slice and they’re ready to be the base of flavor in whatever you’re cooking.
Continuing the tour of colored bell peppers, this weeks are red. The flavor is pretty similar to the orange: sweet and fruity.
