Eva, our harvest manager, wanted me to make a salad with the spicy salad mix. The spicy salad mix has some strong flavors going on so I decided to add more strong flavors to stand up to it. I added raw beets and raw snow peas from my CSA share to the salad mix, along with some nuts, feta and this vinaigrette.
If Fava beans seem a bit too fiddly for you, you might like to grill your favas.
Toss the fava bean pods with olive oil and salt and some herbs if you have some on hand. Arrange them in a single layer on a grill over medium-high heat. Grill until blistered on one side – 4 to 5 minutes, then flip and grill for a few minutes more on the other side. You want the fava beans to be smooth and creamy when you pop them out of their skins – not undercooked. They will keep steaming in their pods for a few minutes after they come off the grill. Season the grilled favas with a bit more salt.
To eat: tear open the green pods, take a fava bean, pinch the skin and slide the bright green fava from its skin into your mouth. All the char, oil, herbs and fava juices stick to your fingers…so lick them. The whole experience is really tasty. I hope you try it.
See the bright green beans that have been removed from the pod and then the skin? That’s what you eat.
(Slightly adapted from bon appetit)
Preparation
Place turnips in a large skillet; add water to cover turnips halfway. Add butter, sugar and a large pinch of salt; bring to a boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid is syrupy and turnips are tender, about 15 minutes. (If turnips are tender before liquid has reduced, use a slotted spoon to transfer turnips to a plate and reduce liquid until syrupy. Return turnips to pan and stir to coat well.) **This can be done up to 4 hours ahead of time. Let stand at room temperature. Rewarm before continuing.
Add turnip greens to skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until just wilted, 2-3 minutes. Season with salt.
Hello CSA Members.
This week we hope to bring you:
Large shares will get:
Thanks to All
Posted by Mo
Thank you all who have hung in there with us for the last couple weeks. This has been a challenging year with the problems we had with diseases, heat, drought, and the water problems exacerbated by the heat and drought. Most years it’s hard to say goodbye to the season, but this year I am feeling OK that the season is ending. Phew. 2012 was one for the record books, and not all in a good way.
Here is to hoping for a great 2013. Garlic and spinach are already in the ground for next season!
We had a great farm crew this year. Many are off to new endeavors already. I want to wish you all happy trails and stop by and see us if you are in the Boulder area next year.
Storing Your Root Crops
Posted by Mo
This week you will be getting quite a few root crops. The root vegetables will keep for a long, long time if you store them properly. If you cut off the greens of your root vegetables and put them in an airtight container or bag in your vegetable drawer, they will keep for at least 10 days. If you cut off all the greens and the tap root and put them in an airtight container in the vegetable drawer, they will keep for at least 6 weeks, maybe more.
In this first picture, the carrot on the left will keep for 10 days or so. The carrot on the right will keep for weeks.
The little roots and anything green is what gets slimy and goes bad first so you want to get rid of those for long storage.
This is what a bunch of carrots prepped for long storage looks like before wrapping in plastic and going in the fridge.
Do the same with your beets, turnips, radishes, any root crop will keep for weeks if you take off all the greens and the tiny roots. I like to store my radishes and Hakurei turnips prepped like I did in the above pictures, then I put them in jars in the fridge so I can grab them for snacks.
Remember, we still have 3 more Saturday Farmer’s Markets so you can still get our great vegetables for a few more weeks even if CSA is over.
Thank you again and again and again for your support and enthusiasm.
Gratefully,
Mo McKenna
I am married to an Englishman. Two of my best friends are from Commonwealth countries, Scotland and Australia. One of the biggest food differences I see between the U.S. and Commonwealth countries are the use and acceptance of root crops. Here in the U.S. we are a more “potato on its own” country and our Commonwealth friends are more “throw any root crop together and it will be delicious” kind of people.
Let’s try the latter, shall we? This week we are getting beautiful potatoes, rutabagas and/or turnips. You can do anything with a rutabaga or turnip that you can do with a potato. Rutabagas might take a little longer to cook than potatoes and turnips, but only a little.
Sometimes if I am peeling and cooking something I like to do a big batch for several meals during the week. I am going to peel and dice all my root crop vegetables in my CSA share this week. I will cook them and separate them for two different uses.
Here they are all peeled and chopped up. This will probably be enough for at least two dinners and probably two lunches for two of us.
I had some chicken stock in the refrigerator. It wasn’t enough to cover the vegetables so I added some milk. You could do this with any kind of stock or water even. I added an onion and a few cloves of garlic (I wish I had leeks) and set this on to boil until all the vegetables are soft.
This is after an hour of gently boiling.
I am going to let this cool a little and take half out for later this week and make a ‘mash’. I will just mash this like mashed potatoes. In England they call this a ‘mash-up’. I’ll save some of the cooking liquid with the vegetables for my mash up. The half left in the pan will be soup for tonight. I’ll probably hit the contents of the pan with an immersion blender but you could leave yours chunky.
Super easy and much more interesting than just potato soup or mashed potatoes by adding a few other root vegetables.
Have a great week.
Mo
Hello CSA members!
This week we hope to bring you one pie pumpkin, potatoes, winter radishes, onions, sunchokes OR Red Russian kale, carrots, and lettuce OR spinach. Large share members will receive lettuce AND spinach, as well as a butternut squash. The fruit share will be getting apples and possibly pears.
In this week’s newsletter:
Winter Keeper Boxes and Mini Fall CSA
Posted by Maddie
A lot of people have had questions about our Winter Keeper Boxes and the Mini Fall CSA. I have a little more information now than I did last week and I thought I would share it with you.
Winter keeper boxes will be available at all CSA pick-ups this week. (Check out Mo’s post below for a list of contents and storage instructions.) The cost of the keeper box is $70, which includes sales tax. If you are a biweekly member and are not regularly scheduled to pick up this week, you can still reserve a keeper box to pick up at your regular CSA pick-up time and location. Send me an email at csa@redwagonfarmboulder.com and I will be happy to reserve a box for you. You can pay when you pick up your keeper box with cash or a check.
We will also have winter keeper boxes available at our two farm stand locations: 95th & Arapahoe in Lafayette, and 7694 N 63rd Street in Longmont. Keeper boxes will be available at both farm stands until October 31st.
Pick-ups for the mini fall CSA will begin next week and will continue for two weeks. The cost of the mini fall CSA share will be about $24.50, which is the same as the regular season share. We will have a biweekly option available for the mini fall CSA. You will be able to sign up online for the mini fall CSA starting tomorrow. Look for an email from Amy tomorrow with sign-up instructions.
Thank you all for being a part of the Red Wagon community! I have really enjoyed seeing each of you at pick-up every week and I’m sad to see it come to an end. Thanks also to those who made it out for our harvest celebration yesterday. I couldn’t think of a better way to end the season.
– Maddie
Winter Keeper Boxes: Storage Instructions
Posted by Mo
Here’s what is in your winter keeper box this year:
Wow.
I wanted to talk a little about how to properly store the food you will get. All the root crops are already packed in plastic bags for you. That is how you want to store all of the root crops except the potatoes. If you are going to use the potatoes in the next week or two you can keep them in the plastic bag they came in and put them in the fridge, or on the counter if you put them in a paper or cloth bag. If you want to keep them 2 or more weeks you should put them in a paper or cloth bag and put them in the garage or a cool room in your house. If they start to dry up and shrivel, use them as soon as possible.
We have talked about keeping squash before. Keep them in a cool room or in the garage on a shelf. Don’t put them on the floor of the garage. They need to have air circulating around them. The area touching the garage floor will began to rot.
The apples you get will keep a long long time in plastic in the fridge.
You will notice that the root vegetables in the Keeper Box aren’t washed as well as you are used to getting. They store better minimally washed or not washed at all. You will have to do a little scrubbing before eating your sunchokes and potatoes, but keep in mind that they store better and longer that way.
If you have any questions shoot me an email at im@momckenna.com.
Thanks for a great CSA season. We say it all the time, but it can’t be said enough. We couldn’t do what we do without our CSA members.
I am so grateful for being a small part of this community.
Humbly,
Mo
Ending the Season with Gratitude
Posted by Amy
I wanted to express my gratitude to all of our CSA members. Farming is never easy, but some seasons are easier than others. This was one of those “other” seasons. In 2011 most of our crops did really well and we had a lot of food all season. I guess this year was the flip side of last year’s abundance. But as always, our CSA is what helped us get through the year.
We started the season with an exceptionally warm, dry spring. The snow pack in the mountains melted off quickly and we didn’t get our usual heavy snowfalls in the mountains in March and April. This means that all of our irrigation water went rushing by in the creeks in the spring and didn’t leave much water for later in the season. By the end of April we didn’t know if we would have enough water to make it through the season. Wyatt quickly (and painfully) rearranged our crop plan and cut some crops from his list. He was able to lease some water for our late summer and fall crops. And we got lucky and had some rain in the mountains over the summer. We feel very thankful that we didn’t have to watch our crops shrivel up and die in the fields due to lack of water!
This was also a difficult year with regards to pests and diseases. Our tomato, pumpkin, and winter squash crops were at least 80% failures. Our tomato plants were heavily damaged by tomato wilt virus, which is caused by tiny insects that float on air currents. Almost all of our tomatoes went to our CSA members and even then, we had to give “seconds” tomatoes a lot of the time.
We also had problems with squash beetles. We planted winter squash and pumpkin plants in June, but as soon as the plants got a few inches tall, the squash beetles attacked the plants and killed them. We replanted the squash and pumpkins 3 times, but the end result was a very small crop.
On a personal note, I have been dealing with a chronic illness, which has limited my ability to work. I’ve really missed seeing all of you at the CSA pickups and at the farmers’ market! I’m hopeful that some more rest this winter will help to restore my health.
We are very thankful that we had a great crew to get us through a hard season. They worked through a lot of scorching hot weeks over the summer and kept planting, irrigating, and harvesting to make sure we had enough food.
And as always, we are so thankful for our CSA members. I got to see some of you yesterday at our CSA Harvest Celebration. There were 4 families at the party who have been members since we started our CSA back in 2007. I feel so honored to have the many members who have been with us year after year. Our CSA members are really the foundation of our farm. I could go on and on about the ways our CSA supports Red Wagon. From a business perspective, our CSA is our most stable and reliable source of income. We know at the beginning of the year how much CSA income we have and how much food to grow. We also don’t have to worry about rainy weather with the CSA, like we do with the farmers’ market. There is nothing like having the crew spend hours harvesting vegetables, only to have the vegetables sit on our table at the farmers’ market in a downpour without a customer in sight. And it has been so nice to get to know many of you over the years and share our successes and failures with you. I really need to spend some time writing more about the ways our CSA members support our farm because I am certain that you don’t know many of the ways you help us. But I’ve already gone on too long here. So for now I will just say, with sincerest gratitude, thank you. We really could not do it without you.
Amy
Harvest Celebration Photos
Posted by Mo
Photographs by Mo McKenna and Anna Mayer
It was great to see so many people at the farm yesterday for the Harvest Celebration. It was fun to see so many of you use the fruit and vegetables you got from your CSA shares in the dishes you brought.
Clay and Jake work at Red Wagon and played some music for us yesterday, along with some friends. Thanks guys! It was really fun.
Hay rides with Sally, Wyatt and Amy were really popular.
In general I think everyone had a really good time.
Hello CSA members!
This week we hope to bring you butternut squash, potatoes, shallots OR red onions, cauliflower OR broccoli, watermelon radishes, and baby chard OR lettuce. Large share members will receive baby chard AND lettuce, carrots, and garlic. Fruit share members will receive apples.
In this week’s newsletter:
Harvest Celebration THIS SUNDAY!
Posted by Maddie
It’s hard to believe the end of the CSA season is almost here! It feels like just yesterday that we were bringing you pints of strawberries and sugar snap peas.
In order to celebrate another wonderful season and to thank our CSA members for making it possible, Red Wagon will be hosting our 2nd annual harvest party this coming Sunday!
Come and walk around the pumpkin patch, take a hayride around the farm, enjoy live music and help us bid a fond farewell to the 2012 season! The celebration will be a potluck, so please bring a dish to share. Red Wagon made veggie chili and will be providing beer. The kids can make a s’more by the campfire, meet our goats, llamas, and alpacas, and explore the straw bale maze!
Date: Sunday, October 14th
Time: 3:00pm-8:00pm
Location: Red Wagon’s 63rd St. Farm and Pumpkin Patch
(7694 N 63rd St. Longmont, CO 80503)
Bring:
I hope everyone can make it! Have a great week and I’ll see you at pick-up.
– Maddie
Let’s Talk About Shallots
Posted by Mo
Shallots aren’t little onions. They are more closely related to garlic and potato onions. Their taste is milder than onions in terms of bite or ‘hot,’ but shallots are more complex and flavorful. Shallots will store for a long, long, long time. The shallots you get this week will keep until at least January or February if not longer.
In most recipes, you can interchange shallots and onions. If I want a more refined or complex flavor (or especially if I want to layer flavors) I will use shallots alone or in tandem with other alliums. One of the best attributes of a shallot is that it melts into the dishes where it is used. The cell walls collapse, leaving only flavor and no crunch.
I think the flesh even looks more refined than an onion. This is an average sized shallot. I put the egg in there for reference. Small or large shallots don’t affect flavor or storage. They are all really good.
Posted by Mo
This week you are getting butternut squash. I would say butternut is the quintessential winter squash here in America. They are easy to cut, peel, cube, and bake. They usually aren’t too big and the flesh is nutty, mildly sweet, and a beautiful orange color.
This butternut squash weighed 3 1/2 pounds. I have found that the weight in pounds of winter squash and pumpkins correlate very closely to cups yielded, meaning a 3 1/2 pound squash or pumpkin will yield about 3 1/2 cups of cooked flesh. Let’s see.
Yep. If I smooshed it down, I think it would be almost exactly 3 1/2 cups. I thought this info might be useful to some of you.
Butternut Squash Ravioli
Yield: about 30 triangle ravioli
I am calling them butternut squash ravioli but you can use any squash you like to make these.
For the filling:
For the ravioli:
Heat the butter in a skillet. Add the shallot until it is softened, then add the sage, cooked squash and goat cheese. Cook until it is all really well incorporated.
Lay won ton wrappers out on your work surface and paint egg white around the edges of the wrappers. Spoon about 2 teaspoons of squash filling on the won ton wrapper. You can either put another wrapper on top and seal, or fold in a triangle and seal. The egg white will seal the wrapper to itself.
I made one ravioli with one wrapper on top of another and the rest I folded in a triangle. I think the triangle is easier and a better size to eat.
You can freeze the ravioli at this point and pull out what you need later. I like to use these on salads with kale or spinach, or in soups like minestrone. You can also use them for a really rich starter. They only need to be boiled for 2 or 3 minutes so be careful not to overcook them.
Boil as many as you need. While they are boiling, brown some butter and more sage in a pan. When they are cooked, drain and quickly saute the ravioli in the butter and sage. You don’t need to cook them any more, just coat the ravioli with the butter and sage and drain them a little before serving.
You can refrigerate the rest of the squash for up to a week or freeze it for two or three months.
There are hundreds and hundreds of recipes using roasted squash. Let us know what you are making with yours!
Watermelon Radishes
I get asked all the time what I do with watermelon radishes.
I have fun.
Have a great week and cook something fun.
– Mo
Hello CSA members!
This week we hope to bring you spaghetti squash, cabbage OR sunchokes, cauliflower OR baby chard, roasted chilies OR roasted sweet peppers, and Red Russian kale OR broccoli raab. Large share members will get cauliflower AND baby chard as well as spinach. Fruit share members will be getting pears and apples.
In this week’s newsletter:
Week 20, is that right? Whoosh, there went Summer.
This week you are getting spaghetti squash. Spaghetti squash will store for a long, long time. They are very bland so you need to add some good flavors and textures to any dish using spaghetti squash.
I hear some people say that they are intimidated by cutting winter squash in half in order to bake them. I have read that you can microwave winter squash for 5 to 10 minutes, making them easier to cut, then proceed with baking. I had never tried that, so I did.
I poked some holes in the spaghetti squash so it wouldn’t blow up in the microwave.
I microwaved it for a total of 10 minutes. After 5 minutes I turned it over and cooked it another 5 minutes. This is what it looked like after 10 minutes of microwaving. You can see how it is partially cooked, but very raw in the middle. While I was microwaving it I preheated the oven to 400°F. After doing this I am positive it will work with any winter squash.
I scooped out the seeds and added some onions, herbs, salt and pepper. I rubbed all that with olive oil and put it in the 400°F oven for about 35 minutes.
Spaghetti squash are the ultimate in stringy squash. To optimize the stringy ‘spaghettiness’ of the squash you want to dry it out a bit so bake it uncovered, cut side up the whole cooking time.
See the meat of the squash pulling away from the squash shell? That is how you know it’s done.
Discard the herbs if you used them and use a fork to fluff up the squash to make it look like spaghetti. Don’t stir it or smash it. Try to keep it fluffed up.
My very favorite thing to do with spaghetti squash is to cut up one of my last very ripe tomatoes and add a little olive oil, parsley and Parmesan cheese. This dish tells me that summer is well and truly over. What a great goodbye.
Jerusalem Artichokes
We have been offering Jerusalem artichokes in our CSA for years now, so many of you love them and look forward to getting them. This is some information for those of you who may be less familiar with them.
Jerusalem artichokes (also called sunchokes) are tubers belonging to the daisy family. The plant looks like an enormous sunflower plant. We dig up the roots to eat, much like potatoes. I don’t want to get into a health discussion here, but if you are interested you should look up the health factors of this tuber, especially if you eat it raw. It has some very unique health benefits.
You can use Jerusalem artichokes in pretty much the same way you would use a potato. Specifically, use it like you would a new potato because you don’t need to peel these. They are washed and ready to use.
They look a little like ginger root don’t they?
You can roast these, bake them, incorporate them in a root vegetable mash-up, or make a soup or a salad. Anything that you would make with a potato, you can make with these. I think they are fun to cook with because your brain thinks it is going to taste like a potato but you get a unique flavor and texture.
I pan roasted some with onions, mushrooms and a little garlic.
They have a very interesting nutty taste and a pleasant crunch that potatoes lose when cooked. Because they are so flavorful with such a nice texture, they work well to compliment a less flavorful, unique textured counterpart…like spaghetti squash.
Have a great week and I hope you try something new.
– Mo
Posted by Maddie
We have a very food-filled newsletter for you this week! Thanks Mo for your great ideas, as always. Today I thought I would also share some recipes with you that I’ve collected from CSA members in the last week or so. Unfortunately the timing on two of these is a little off, since they contain mostly summer veggies like tomatoes and zucchini. However, if you happen to still have any of these ingredients hanging around, either from your CSA share or from your garden, I highly recommend trying out one or all of these recipes.
I’m off tomorrow on a short trip back to Vermont so I won’t be seeing all of you at pick-up this week, but I hope everyone has a wonderful first week of October! Enjoy those veggies.
– Maddie
Submitted by Jessica Hersh
Prepare the eggplant, zucchini, and yellow squash as follows: wash, trim, and cut into small bite-sized pieces. Peel the onion and dice it. Peel the garlic and cut into thin slices. Put the oil, sugar, and balsamic vinegar into a heavy-bottomed pot and heat over medium high until bubbly. Add the eggplant and onion and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking and burning. Add the rest of the vegetables (including tomatoes and garlic.) Add capers. Stir well, turn heat down to low and cover the pot.
If the mix seems very dry add half a cup of water – you want to allow this dish to stew for hours without drying out. Cook over low heat for at least 2 hours, checking water content and stirring every 10 minutes or so. When the dish is fully cooked, all the vegetables should be very soft and falling apart and it should be thick, not soupy. At this point, remove it from the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot or allow to cool and serve cold. You can eat this as a salad, a side dish, an omelet filling, tossed with pasta, topping a frittata, as a dip for chips or bread, as a crostini topping, a sandwich filling, or just a dip-the-spoon in snack.
Enjoy!
Curried Apple and Potato Kugel
Submitted by Jessica Hersh
Preheat oven to 375°F. Wash the potatoes and apples well and peel the onions. Grate them all, starting with onions and rotating (this will keep the potatoes from oxidizing and turning brown.) Mix the shredded vegetables and fruit together with the flour, eggs, curry powder, and salt. Put the oil in a baking dish (Pyrex works great for this) and put in the hot oven for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and put the kugel mix in the hot oil in the pan. Spread evenly then bake for 45 minutes to an hour until the edges and top are nicely browned. Cut into pieces and serve hot. This is great plain or topped with plain yogurt.
Submitted by Kate Martin
Saute onion and garlic in butter and olive oil. Add spices, tomato paste, salt, pepper and tomatoes. Cook for 10 minutes. Add broth. Cover slightly and simmer 30 minutes more. Puree in a blender, food processor, or using an immersion blender. This recipe freezes great and is a perfect dish to pull out on a cool fall evening.