Hello CSA members! This week we hope to bring you: Egyptian walking onions, Easter egg radishes, green garlic, spinach, sorrel, and arugula. The large share will also get rhubarb, chives, and double spinach.
I am always filled with gratitude as our CSA begins. Thank you so much for trusting us to grow your vegetables this season. It is a big responsibility and Wyatt and I do not take it lightly. We really appreciate all you do to support our farm and I don’t think it would be possible for Red Wagon to exist without your support.
This year is a perfect example of why our CSA means so much to us. April 2013 has brought the most snow I have seen in the 17 years I have lived in Boulder County. It’s been great for our snowpack and irrigation water. But it really threw off the start to our farming season. Your financial support helped us get through April because we didn’t have as much to sell as usual at the farmers’ market. I’m not sure what the first few weeks of our CSA pickup will look like. We are a bit light on food in our fields because the snow put us behind. I am hopeful that we will be able to bring you all full-sized shares. If not, the abundant snowpack in the mountains means that we should be able to make it up to you later in the season. It is so helpful to have that kind of flexibility. Thank you!
We have two wonderful resources on our web page and I hope you will use them. The first is our CSA blog, written by Mo. She is more passionate about food than anybody I have ever met in my life. This really comes across in the recipes she writes for our blog. The second resource is an archive of the recipes Mo wrote last year. You can find them in the Recipes section of our web page and they are organized by crop. Be sure to look at these recipes the next time you come across a new vegetable in your CSA share.
Have a great week!
Amy
Red Wagon Farm 
Dale and I picked up our 1st bundle of veggies from our 1st Red Wagon CSA, and our vehicle smelled heavenly all the way home! We wanted to expand our realm of veggie eating and I knew Red Wagon would be a good way to do it because of the many varieties they like to plant and harvest. Our 1st learning – the herb sorrel. I find your many pictures, recipes, hints helpful. It appears not every thing needs blanching before freezing; i.e. the recipe for pesto.
Thanks PJ! I hope you will have a lot more enjoyable veggie surprises this summer. See you soon!
Hi Amy,
We also picked up our first-ever Red Wagon CSA share this week and we’re excited to see what the season will bring!
However, we’d never cooked with sorrel before, so we looked it up to get ideas, and read that it is poisonous in large doses? Several accounts we read said that it can be fatal in high doses and said that since it’s a diuretic, it can cause stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting in smaller doses (so it should be kept away from children and pets).
We also read that eating sorrel while taking certain medications can be risky because sorrel can cause kidney/liver problems when taken with drugs that the kidney/liver processes. We’re both on medications and decided we didn’t want to take the risk of a nasty drug interaction, but we’re interested to hear y’alls thoughts on this strange plant!
Thanks!
Jess & Jamie
I’m excited to pick up our first (ever!) CSA share on Monday! Just wanted to double check that you are, in fact, doing the pick-up on Memorial Day? I’m planning on it.
Can’t wait!
This was really good! I sauteed the spinach, arugula, sorrel, garlic and onion in olive oil or lemon grapeseed oil ~ starting with the onion and garlic and then adding everything else. I added a little lemon pepper and sliced champagne mangos (gold skin, shaped like pears). Looked pretty, tasted wonderful. Leftovers were eaten cold. I also researched sorrel and found the same above information. Lauren (farm pick up person) said sorrel wasn’t as sour when cooked so that is why I sauteed it in with every thing else. My husband tried it raw and made a face and asked me not to give him any, but he did eat it mixed and sauteed.
We decided to go with sorrel instead of kale, since while delicious, organic kale is plentiful at the market right now, and I didn’t even know what sorrel is. I was close to making sorrel soup as recommended by one of the women at the Thursday pickup, until I googled my way to this: http://www.aidamollenkamp.com/2012/04/sorrel-leek-potato-and-ricotta-pizza-recipe/ . The sorrel pesto is SO good. I love this CSA–being compelled to experiment with something I never would have thought about. Because who goes home from King Soopers with a huge bag of sorrel?! Thank you!! We are so glad to have joined this year! Love you already.
Thanks for the great ideas, everybody! As far as sorrel and nutritional information…we are not nutrition experts and don’t have answers to a lot of your nutrition questions. However, here is what Marilyn wrote in our CSA newsletter in June 2011:
“The other vegetable that may be new to you is sorrel. I’ve only seen it directly from farms, never grocery stores since it’s very perishable and wilts quickly. It looks like tender pale spinach, but the similarity ends as soon as you taste it’s lemony tart flavor. This comes from oxalic acid, which is in a lot of vegetables, including chard, spinach, beet greens, parsley and most familiar, tart rhubarb (in fact, the reason you don’t want to eat rhubarb leaves is due to the higher concentration of oxalic acid in the leaves). Concentrations of oxalic acid are pretty low in most plants and plant-based foods, but there’s enough in spinach, chard and beet greens to interfere with the absorption of the calcium these plants also contain. However, the oxalic acid in vegetables is broken down in cooking and doesn’t interfere with the absorption of calcium present in other foods, cheese for instance, that you might eat at the same time. I certainly wouldn’t avoid raw spinach or other leafy greens because of the oxalic acid effect. They have a lot to offer nutritionally as good sources of essential minerals and vitamins including folic acid, potassium and magnesium, vitamin K, carotenes, vitamin C and lutein, important for healthy eyes. Also, only cook sorrel briefly, it will lose it’s bright green color and turn an unappetizing grayish hue.”