Spoutwood Farm CSA Harvest Guide: Week 1, 2004
Welcome to Spoutwood CSA 2004! A hearty welcome to your first harvest of the year. More than likely many of you will be meeting some new vegetables over the 22 weeks of harvesting. We want to make it as easy as possible for both you and the vegetables to get to know each other. Please don't hesitate to call if you feel lost or confused. Remember that harvests go through the first week of November. Beginning harvests will be heavy on greens like kale and chard- and then before you know it the squash, peas, broccoli, beans, etc. will start rolling in. Do not be intimidated by leaves which are wilty or spotted. Soaking wilted greens in cold water, sometimes for an hour or more, will revive them. Little spots and holes, once washed, do not take away from the nutritional value of the leaves. Just eat around the holes. And our washing of vegetables, if needed, though thorough, probably needs some additional help from you, so don't forget to wash! Your handbooks, which tell you almost all you need to know about storing & eating your veggies, will be given out sometime in the next week or two.
Chinese Cabbage - This yellow-green tall head is an ideal vegetable for stir fries, soups, and salads- if you go lightly, using the leafier part (use the whole plant otherwise). The insects go after the leaves, so you may see some cosmetically challenging holes. Just eat what hasn't been eaten by the insects, confident that it's nutritious and tasty.
Swiss Chard - A most wonderful vegetable coming in green, red, yellow and orange. The stems steam, stir fry or boil to a soft and tasty texture. Use raw in salads or cooked any number of ways. Great cooked in butter or olive oil and seasonings added to the hot greens.
Collard Greens - These aren't as suitable to raw eating and are generally cooked as a separate vegetable or chopped into soups or stir fries. In the south they are a staple cooked in bacon fat. Vegetarians may want to substitute a cooking oil like olive.
Garlic Scapes - These curled delights are wonderful! Treat them like spring onions and chop them up in salads or sauté them like regular onions. The scape is the seed stem of the garlic plant, but it takes away from the bulb development, so many people think. But that's a bonus for us because the scapes before they get too tough are perfectly tender for soups, stir fries, salads or a steamed treat.
Green Onions - Use the greens as well as the small bulbs chopped into soups, salads, or stir fries.
Kale - You get a mixture of one of the following kinds of kale: Curly green, Red Russian, Siberian or White Russian and Dinosaur Kale for a nutritious steamed or stir-fried treat. Great also in soup and some even put it in salads, esp. the Red and White Russian, which are not as tough and are closer to the texture of lettuce!
Broccoli - Either cooked in a variety of ways or raw with dip or in a salad, broccoli is hard to beat.
Herb - Apple Mint is fuzzy but cooling. Use it to make tea, hot or cold. Out in the country, its name is simply "tea."
Flowers - One mini rose stem for your delight.
Colcannon from Laurel's Kitchen
3 c chopped kale
2 T butter
4 medium potatoes
sprig of parsley
3 green onions, chopped
1 t salt
1/3 c milk
1/8 t pepper
Cube pots, boil until tender. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Stir kale and onions in a heavy pan over medium heat for 5 minutes. Mash pots with milk and butter. Combine with kale, onions, parsley, salt and pepper. Bake 15-20 min. Serves 4-6.
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