Spoutwood Farm CSA Harvest Guide: Week 17-Oct 3, 2005
To view the first harvest for this week, click here
To return to the 2005 Harvest Guide page, click here
WORK HOURS: Please contact Liz ASAP (by phone or e-mail) to confirm a day and time you are planning to work on your share hours. THIS IS IMPORTANT! We need to know in advance that we have help on the schedule.
Green and Colored Bell and Hot Peppers – Bells are great fresh, in salads, or stir fries. Habaneros scorch!
Eggplant – Eggplant has just about had it.
Tomatoes and Cherry Toms – Great fresh, in salads, or on sandwiches, but not so hot in stir-fries, though you can make a mean curry with them. Tomatoes are almost gone. The sun gold cherries are still going.
Lettuce – The lettuce is gorgeous.
Yakina Savoy – This oriental cabbage family green can be cooked like spinach, so use in Veggie of the Week recipe with the spinach. Very good stir fried and raw in salads.
Mustard Greens – Use those bitey mustard greens in salads and sandwiches.
Spinach – Spinach is for salads or cooked into everything or by itself. See Veggie of the Week and Recipe
Kale– The kale is reviving with the cooler weather.
Herbs – Basil, Sage and Parsley.
Flowers – This week’s bouquet features zinnias, African marigolds, tansy, asparagus tops, globe amaranth, mums and petite wild daisy.
Recipe of the Week : Chickpea-Stuffed Peppers
From Kate's (Vegan) Cookery Site - http://www.earth.li/~kake/cookery/
Serves 3 as a main dish, 6 as a starter
* 2 tsp olive oil
* 1 small onion, finely chopped
* 4 large handfuls spinach, torn into small pieces and washed
* 1 tsp mild curry powder (commercially-bought is fine)
* 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
* 8 Tbsp (1/2 cup) canned chopped tomatoes, including juice
* 2 Tbsp tomato or 'Italian vegetable' puree
* 50g (2oz) whole meal breadcrumbs (roughly equivalent to 2 x 1cm-thick slices)
* 1 x 400g (14oz) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and roughly hand-chopped
* 4 Tbsp chopped roasted (sweet bell) peppers (optional)
* 3 medium peppers, halved and hollowed out for stuffing
Heat a wide heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. Add the oil and heat for 10 seconds or so, and then add the onion and fry, stirring occasionally, until well softened. Tip in the damp spinach, sprinkle over the curry powder, raise the heat and stir, toss and fry until the liquid has mostly cooked out of the spinach and it is collapsed but still moist. Transfer to a large bowl.
Add the garlic, tomatoes, vegetable or tomato puree, breadcrumbs, chickpeas and peppers. Season with salt and black pepper and mix well; it should be reasonably moist but not dripping. Stuff the filling firmly into the pepper halves, mounding up on top.
Bake in a low-sided dish at Gas Mark 6 (200C, 400F) for about an hour, turning the dish around once and lowering the heat towards the end if the peppers are getting too browned. This length of time makes the
peppers deliciously soft - if you like them firmer, reduce the time
Mother Earth Harvest Fair is October 1 and 2 at the Farm, 10-6 both days. It was a blast!
Spinach
Most associate the origins of spinach with Southwestern Asia. Despite the modern day affinity for spinach in the Mediterranean diet, spinach was unknown in the ancient Mediterranean World. Why, you ask? Heat and spinach growth are diametrically opposed. It took Arab ingenuity to figure out an irrigation system that could support the spinach crop in a warm climate. This they did between 226-640 A.D. The love affair between people and spinach ran rapid through the Middle East from that point on spreading to Spain and from there through the Old and New Worlds.
By the 15C John Locke tasted a wonderful broth of spinach and herbs while traveling through France. It didn’t take long before the whole of Europe were enjoying this tasty leafy vegetable.
Spinach and chard are in the same family. Spinach is a green leafy vegetable that may be eaten raw or cooked. Although Popeye ate it out of a can gifting him with super-human strength the truth about spinach is that it is a delicate host of nutrients.
Spinach is high in beta-carotene and is a great antioxidant. Spinach is high in:
Folate, Vitamin K, Magnesium, & Manganese
Spinach is also a great source of protein in combination with whole grains or beans (garbanzo is a favorite pairing.)
So where does delicate factor in? Spinach is delicate because it looses most of its’ nutritional value after four days from harvest. Spinach is best eaten right away! A word to the wise: Eat your spinach harvest within four days! The less you cook spinach the more nutrients it will give to you! (Spinach when cooked reduces its volume by ¾ by the way.)
The
truth is that spinach has about as much iron content as other green leaf
vegetables despite Popeye’s antics. History tells us that D.E. von Wolf
in 1870 was recording his scientific findings in a scientific publication
in which he misplaced the decimal point in the numeric amount of iron in
spinach. The world was astounded and impressed about the astronomic amount
of iron von Wolf found in Spinach, so the Popeye myth was born.
There are delicious recipes for spinach, many honored by the culture they come from by maintaining the status of feast day or holy day dishes. ‘Wedding Soup’ in Italy, Greece and Spain now appear very similar to the soup John Locke ate in France in the 15th Century. Spinach paired with a sharp cheese and a grain or bean can be found on a table in India, Mexico or Great Britain. Enjoy a salad or experiment with a recipe!
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