Red Wagon Farm

Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

Posted on September 19, 2016 by mo

I wish spaghetti squash had a different name. The name infers that it is analogous to pasta. It isn’t, it is delicious, but it isn’t pasta. It is crunchy and satisfying, but not heavy like pasta. Anyway. This is a really simple and satisfying dish.

You will need:

1 large spaghetti squash
a couple garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup water
1/2 a vegetable bouillon cube. I used Rapunzel brand.
1/2 cup milk or cream or milk substitute
about a cup of cheese. I used up with I had in the refrigerator.
a few tomatoes or other vegetables cut up, or you can leave that out.
Parsley or chives of you have some for garnish

1. Preheat your oven to 400°F. I couldn’t cut this squash in half before it was cooked. It was the hardest squash I have ever come up against. I ended up cooking the squash whole for about an hour then I cut it in half and scooped out the innards. If you can cut yours before cooking it will probably cook faster. Either way, cook your squash until you can get a fork in the flesh.

2. In a large bowl, combine minced garlic, milk/cream/ milk substitute with 1/2 cup water, crumbled bouillon cube. Put your whatever vegetables you like in the cavity of the squash and pour the milk mixture in the cavity. Don’t worry, it won’t leak.

3. Sprinkle the cheese in the cavities of each of the squash halves.

You can’t really see the milk mixture very well. Look really close, it’s there.

4. Roast in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the flesh of the spaghetti squash is very tender and the cheese and milk mixture is melted and bubbly.

This was plenty for dinner for two and leftovers for 2.

Taste like the end of Summer! Looking forward to all the great Fall vegetables to come.

Have a great weeks. See you at pick-up.

Posted in 2016, Recipes, Winter Squash | Comments Off

Peach and Plum Crumble

Posted on September 12, 2016 by mo

I have some family and friends coming to dinner tonight. a few are gluten-free and a few are vegan, most eat anything :). I have the main meal sorted out. We are having a taco bar featuring grilled vegetables and fish and fresh salsas. For dessert I made a crumble.

I wasn’t going to do a blog on the crumble, it seemed too pedestrian to bother. But then I thought it might be a nice idea to share. I love any dish that is more than a sum of its parts. Like aioli (egg, oil, acid, garlic) or bread (flour, water, salt). A crumble falls into that category for me, roasted fruit and a crunchy topping. Very simple, but luxurious when done right. The fruit has to be perfect to start with then, cooked to perfection. An under-cooked crumble is a sad thing, to me at least. I want the fruit to release its natural juices. Under-cooked fruit is neither fresh, or luscious, just a waste IMO.

This is a really forgiving ‘recipe’. You can change it for your dietary needs and personal taste. I made mine vegan and GF.

Peach and Plum Crumble

Preheat oven to 350F

Start with 4 perfectly ripe peaches and plums cut up into bite size pieces. Put fruit in a skillet or cake pan.

Next, use a food processor to pulse the rest of the ingredients

⅓ cup whole rolled oats
⅓ cup toasted chopped nuts, any kind
¼ cup flour (any kind): oat, whole wheat, all purpose, or a gf blend
⅓ cup any kind of sugar. I used brown
½ teaspoon cinnamon or spice you like. I used allspice.
3 tablespoons butter, vegan butter, or hardened coconut oil

Sprinkle the crumble mixture on top and bake until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is soft, about 40-45 minutes.

Crumbles and pies take a bit longer to cook at our higher altitude. Lots of recipes will give much shorter cooking time. Be patient and make sure the fruit has released it juices.

That’s done!

Have a great week CSA’ers! See you at Pick-up!

Posted in 2016, Peaches, Recipes | Comments Off

Farm Tour 9/7/2016

Posted on September 8, 2016 by mo

Amy said this is the 10th year of Red Wagon doing CSA and CSA Farm Tours. Yesterday’s tour was at the original Red Wagon farming location, Teller Farm.

If you have never been on a Farm Tour, what we do is, hook up a hay wagon to the tractor and ride around the Farm so you can see what your food looks like growing, and where your food comes from.

We also give walking tours around the Farm and let CSA members pick and dig some of the crops. Walking around a working farm for an hour or so gives a sober appreciation of the reality of growing, harvesting, and distributing food. We love to show you what we do.

I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story of the day; our beautiful Farm, Farm crew (and Farm dog Roxy), and CSA members will speak for themselves.

We had a great day. Thanks to all who showed up. Thanks Wyatt and Amy for all you do.

See you at pick-up!

Posted in 2016, Farm | Comments Off

Shishito and Leftover Potato Hash-Browns

Posted on August 31, 2016 by mo

We have a bumper crop of potatoes this year. That means CSA members will be most likely be getting lots of potatoes in our weekly shares. So, I wanted to throw out an idea or two for potato leftovers.

Mashed, boiled, roasted, fried, potatoes are good anyway you cook them (I think). I routinely like to cook more than I need for one meal because the leftovers are so versatile and often more delicious than the original dish I made.

I had some leftover roasted potatoes and needed to make a quick meal. I also had some onions and shishito peppers from last weeks CSA share, so that is what I used here. You can use any pepper you like. I just had shishitos so that is what I used.

I cut up some onion and peppers and tossed them in a lightly oiled pan.

While that is cooking cut up your leftover potatoes. Any leftover potato dish will do, even mashed. This is what I had after I cut it up.

When the peppers and onions look like this.

Chuck in your potatoes turn the heat to medium and let them cook for about 5 minutes or so to let them brown a bit.

Try to just turn them once and let them cook as undisturbed as possible for an other 5 minutes or so. They should look like this.

That is it. Add some eggs or just have this for a quick and easy side dish.

Have a great week. I’ll see you at the CSA pick-ups.

Posted in 2016, Peppers Sweet, Potatoes, Recipes | Comments Off

Watermelon Margaritas

Posted on August 26, 2016 by mo

My favorite thing to make with watermelons is this beet salad. This is my second favorite thing to make with watermelons.

Watermelon Margaritas.

First, you have to turn the melon into juice, and you need some tequila and limes too.

I don’t have a juicer, so I went low-tech turning that watermelon into juice.

I cut it up.

Smooshed it with a potato masher.

Then I strained it to get the seeds out. I got about a quart of juice from my watermelon.

I chilled the juice for a couple hours, but you could use ice, or hey! You could freeze some of the melon juice into ice cubes so you don’t dilute the drink…oh man…I wish I thought of that before I took the pictures…oh well…moving on….Next, I added some tequila and lime. I used about an ounce of tequila and 1/2 a lime for each margarita. But you can use more or less in yours! It’s like a party in a glass.

Happy Weekend Red Wagon CSA! See you next week!

Posted in 2016, Melon, Recipes | Tagged It's 5 o'clock somewhere! | 1 Comment

Storing Parsley and Basil

Posted on August 22, 2016 by mo

Today is August 22, 2016 CSA week #14. Almost 3 weeks ago we got parsley in our CSA share. I put that parsley in my refrigerator to see what is the best way to store it. I put two small bunches in a tall container with water (on the left), hoping that the tall sides would protect the parsley. The other bunch I put in a glass of water. Like I would a bunch of flowers, leaving the parsley leaves exposed to the air. I didn’t take a picture of them on July 29th, darn. This picture is was taken this morning.

I didn’t change the water, or do anything to them after I put them in their containers. Have a look at the difference between the two.

The two bunches on the left that were somewhat protected by the container look nearly fresh. The bunch on the right is droopy but usable.

Here is a closer look at on of the bunches on the left kept in the higher sided container.

I think we can conclude that keeping bunches of herbs like parsley (cilantro too) in containers of water will keep the herbs fresh for weeks. The higher the side, the better!

Let’s talk about basil now. Here at Red Wagon we harvest basil by ‘tipping’ the plants. We only take the top 6 leaves off the basil plants.

We harvest the tips of the leaves because it allows the plant to keep producing harvest-able leaves which, in turn will prevent the plant from flowering. We can harvest our basil all season without succession plantings.

Basil doesn’t like cold at all. That makes storing a little tricky. With a little trial and error I have found that given the way we harvest basil the best way I have found to store the basil is like this.

In a semi-opened baggie in the door (warmest part) of the refrigerator. I don’t have a butter shelf in my refrigerator. If you do, that would be a great place to store your basil.

The semi-opened baggie seems to be the key to storing the basil longer than a few days. I tried storing closed bags and I also tried to poke holes in bags of basil and leaving about a 1/3 of the bag open/un-zipped, kept my basil fresh for 8 to 10 days.

This is day 11 and the basil is starting to look a little sad :-( . It’s usable, but on it’s last leg. I made pizza last night and used some of this basil. I had to pick through it, but it was fine.