CSA Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week's box has spinach, lettuce of many sizes and colors, salad greens, braising greens, pea shoots, beet thins, lambs quarters, bok choy or mizuna, parsnips, gobo(burdock), sunchokes, and onions.

Field Notes.  Ken has been busy catching up with planting.  Saturday we got hail and some ice pellets; it was too windy and cold, so Sunday he went all out!  He planted various members of the onion family, celery root, carrots, beets, and parsnips.

Ken is also doing related jobs like getting irrigation in place.  Each spring it is time to get out the pump, hoses and fittings and get it all set up for use.  He is also working on fencing

Although it has been cold this spring, there are signs of progress:  The garlic that was planted last fall is coming up.
And we have gone from ice pellets to eighty degrees in three days!

The strawberries are blooming.  Some blossoms froze out in that last cold, so we will see what we get!


From the Kitchen. We have been eating green.  I braise greens with sauteed onions and eggs and some of Ken's pickled red peppers with eggs for breakfast.  Salad for mid day and then greens in soup at supper.  Spinach is great paired with hard cooked or pickled eggs in a salad.  It is great in scrambled, baked egg dishes like quiche.  And I add it to soups just before serving - lentil soup and tomato soup are good with spinach.  

I also do the braising greens and Asian greens like mizuna and bok choy in stir fry or wilted in soups. 

We have both green and red bok choy this spring

Parsnips are a spring favorite around here.  At first I scrub, slice, boil four minutes, drain, and cook in a heavy skillet in butter just to the point where they start to brown and caramelize.  The last cool night I roasted some with sliced onion, olive oil and herbs - thyme.  And they are great paired with curry especially in a cream soup.

Sunchokes have inulin, an insulin cousin, so they are very helpful for people with blood sugar issues.  My only rule with sunchokes is do not cook for long as they can turn to grey mush!  Think of them as a crunchy addition to salad or stir fry.  They are a great local seasonal substitute for water chestnuts.

"Til Next Week!