In your box this week: watermelon or cantaloupe, sweet corn, cucumbers, roma tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, yellow squash (for full shares), scallions, carrots, onions, cherry tomatoes, salad mix, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, bok choi, lettuce (for full shares), kale. Look for chard and/or arugula in the Exchange Boxes.
Next week: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, salad mix, parsley, basil?, cilantro?, chinese cabbage, beets
Soon: potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, delicata squash
Recipe: Simple Carrot Salad, a Springdale Farm Special
Grated carrots
mayonnaise
salt
dried dill
nutritional yeast (optional)
raisins
toasted sunflower seeds
Mix as much mayonnaise as you'd like. Add salt, nutritional yeast (optional) and dried dill to taste. Mix in raisins and sprinkle the toasted sunflower seeds over the top of the salad. Enjoy!
Kale-Potato soup - The New Laurel¹s Kitchen
1 Tblsp. butter 1 large onion, chopped 2 large potatoes
1 clove garlic, minced 1 large bunch kale salt & black pepper to taste
5 cups chicken or vegetable broth, divided (or use part stock part water)
Heat butter in skillet, add onion and sauté until nearly tender. Add garlic and continue to cook until onion is translucent and golden. Add potatoes and 2 cups of the stock; simmer, covered, until potatoes start to soften around the edges. Meanwhile, wash kale, remove stems, chop and steam. When potatoes are very tender, pureé half of them with remaining stock, salt and pepper. Combine everything and heat gently, thinning, if necessary, by adding hot water or milk. Four servings.
Schedule of remaining deliveries: Here are the dates for the remaining deliveries for this season: Sept. 19 and 26, Oct. 3, 10, 17, and 24, Nov. 7 and 21, and Dec. 5. Note that there will be no deliveries on Friday, Oct. 31, and Nov. 14 and 28. The storage share delivery date is still to be determined.
Feedback received on the salad mix: Perhaps not surprising, given that we have over 500 full and half shares, the variety of responses to our request for feedback on the addition of non-lettuce greens to the lettuce mix was extensive. For example:
" I LOVE the stronger tasting greens. The other mixes, with no arugula or other spicy or strong tasting greens, can be very boring and dull."
"We prefer the plain salad mix, but it is still nice to change it up every now and then."
"We pick through and find that much of the less traditional greens in the salad mix have overpowering flavors (one in particular is quite bitter) that detract from what WE are used to. We've given it the ol' college try and just cannot develop an appreciation for that taste. So we just pick many of the more 'flavorful' greens out. It doesn't take much to overpower the rest, just like--if you're not a fan of cilantro--a few sprigs of cilantro completely change the entire flavor of the recipe."
"LOVE IT"
"We do like the Asian greens mixed in"
"We prefer the plain salad mix, but it is still nice to change it up every now and then. We REALLY like the washing and spinning!"
"Loved the arugula and other spicy bits in the salad mix"
"We did not care for the salad mix this week at all. The addition of the chard and beet tops made it taste pretty bitter. All of the other salad mixes have been wonderful, but this week we had to pick out the beet/chard leaves (took a while because there were a lot!). I should mention that white I do like beets, I don't use the beet tops, and we are not swiss chard fans, so that goes in to the exchange box for us. Just wanted to give you some feedback on the thought of adding these greens to our lettuce mix on a more regular basis as you were considering. It is the one thing so far this year that we didn't care for. Again, we absolutely adore the lettuce mixes though!"
Perhaps, as a compromise, we will often include some of the other greens, but not always! Thanks for the feedback!
On the longevity of the salad mix: Sometimes the salad mix stores well, and other times it goes bad quickly. Why? Some of the factors include the growing conditions -- including fertility and moisture levels --in the field the lettuce is planted in; the varieties of lettuce chosen; how 'old' the salad mix is when it is harvested; how densely the lettuce is planted; the length of time between harvesting and delivering; how tenderly it is handled in harvesting, washing, drying, and bagging; how hot it is on the delivery day; and how long it is kept without refrigeration (i.e. when it is picked up and placed in your home refrigerator). If we have made good and timely decisions on all of the above (and perhaps other) factors, then it is likely that the salad mix would last for the better part of a week. If we (or nature or you) did not do a good job on one or several of the above, then the mix can start to deteriorate in a day or two. Besides picking up your box as soon as possible, and refrigerating the mix asap, there's not a whole lot that you can do about it to influence its longevity. (Perhaps you could also pick out the bad leaf or two that may be found upon initially receiving your box.) We could also possibly look into vacuum sealing bags which, by limiting the oxygen that the leaves are exposed to, drastically curtails the spoilage rate. We are not sure of the expense of such a solution, nor how much we'd actually gain by vacuum sealing the bags we put the mix in, so we're not actively looking at that possibility, though it certainly might be worth considering. Actually we are considering moving over to the rigid plastic containers like the ones we put cherry tomatoes in, since there are now biodegradable clamshell containers. They are much more expensive than the ziplock bags we currently use, but at least they do not contribute to the problems associated with plastic production and disposal. A couple of you suggested not washing the lettuce at all, with the hope that it would store longer by not getting wet, but the leaves would actually become limp within hours if they are not hydrated, so we do need to get them wet, and keep them moist, for them to stay fresh. We also expect that many of you like the convenience of not having to wash the lettuce so thoroughly, if at all, before putting it into your favorite salad bowl. We do, too!
In other news: Hooray for Monsanto's unloading their rBST (also called rBGH, or bovine growth hormone) product, after consumer concern over its safety, as well as the pledge of many food processors to use only milk that was not produced from cows injected with their bio-engineered sex hormone. Although somewhat successful in inducing cows to give more milk, Posilac (their trade name for the product) was not healthy for the cows, and was not proven to be safe for humans. Monsanto had fought tooth and nail to prevent Posilac milk to be labeled as such, and legally fought farmers and dairy processors and retailers who labeled their products that didn't contain milk from Posilac-injected cows as rBGH free, but even giants such as Wal-Mart responded to consumer rejection of rBGH by selling milk without the hormone, and so Monsanto has apparently decided to sell their Posilac line. Consumers can claim a small victory, though another competitor has bought the product, so we cannot yet exclaim R.I.P.
Have a great week!
The Seelys
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