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Category: 2023

  • Mushroom Broccoli “Scampi”

    This is a vegetarian version of classic shrimp scampi. I used delicious mushrooms from Hazel Dell and sprouting broccoli to stand in for shrimp but stuck with the familiar-wine, butter, garlic sauce. (CSA members can add a mushroom share to their subscriptions.)

    I added sprouting broccoli because all the shrimp scampi recipes called for a pound to a pound and a half of shrimp and I only had a half a pound of mushrooms so I added about 1 pound of broccoli. You could use all mushrooms, asparagus or kohlrabi here too, adjust the amounts called for with what you like and what you have.

    This was a really fast meal to pull together. It was done faster than I could boil water and cook pasta.

    Mushroom Broccoli ‘Scampi’ generously adapted from a NYT recipe, my changes are in parentheses

    2 tablespoons unsalted butter
    2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
    1 shallot, thinly sliced (didn’t use)
    1½ pounds cremini or button mushrooms (I used 1/2 pound of mixed lions main and shitake mushrooms and about a pound of sprouting broccoli)
    4 garlic cloves, finely chopped (I used garlic scapes)
    ½ cup dry white wine (I always use vermouth in recipes calling for white wine, its shelf stable and neutral, unlike lots of white wine)
    ½ cup vegetable stock or water (I used stock)
    Pepper and salt
    ¼ teaspoon red-pepper flakes
    ½ cup parsley leaves (I used spinach more like 2 cups)
    3 to 4 tablespoons lemon juice

    Heat a large skillet over medium melt the butter and oil, then add the garlic, stirring until softened slightly, about 1 minute. Add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are soft but still plump, 3 to 5 minutes.

    Add the broccoli and wine and stock or water.

    Let that cook for 3-5 minutes and add the spinach or parsley. You don’t want to cook the spinach or parsley too much, just wilt it. Then add the lemon juice a little at a time, taste before you add more, you don’t want it too lemony, taste for salt too.

    Add the red pepper if you are using it. You can eat this with any grain or bread or pasta.

    We ate it with pasta. I used 1/2 pound of pasta for the above amounts and it would feed 4 people IMO. The leftovers make a delicious pasta salad.

    Lots of vegetable options this week. Summer is here!

    Mo

  • CSA Week 5

    Hello CSA Members!

    We’re in week 5 of CSA. How time flies! It’s been sweet getting to know you all this last month, and I’m looking forward to many more months to come. Welcome to all our new members who just signed up.

    We have some exciting additions to this week’s share.

    Most of you have tried kohlrabi before; it has a wonderful crisp texture and tastes like the sweet stem of broccoli.

    Celtuce is a type of lettuce grown for its stem, not its leaves. Ask us at pickup for some recipe ideas!

    Here is what we hope to bring you this week:

    kohlrabi

    REGULAR SHARE
    1 – Herb Choice
    2 – Spring Onions (Hooray!)
    3 – Rhubarb, Broccoli, or Kohlrabi
    4 – Fennel, Turnips, or Celtuce
    5 – Greens Choice: Kale, Collards, Bok Choi or Chard
    6 – Spinach

    LARGE SHARE ADDITIONS
    Two choices from Zone 3
    Two choices from Zone 4
    Two Choices from Zone 5
    Double Spinach

    FRUIT SHARE
    Will start later this season (July)

  • CSA Week 4

    Hello CSA Members!

    Welcome to week 4 of CSA.

    Here is what we hope to bring you this week:

    REGULAR SHARE
    Herb Choice
    Garlic Scapes or (Secret!)
    Rhubarb or Lettuce or “Harvest Manager’s Choice”
    Asparagus
    Spinach
    Greens Choice (Bok Choi, Kale, Collards)

    LARGE SHARE ADDITIONS
    Double Bok Choi
    Double Spinach
    Sprouting Broccoli

    FRUIT SHARE
    Will start later this season (July)

  • Easy Grilled Bok Choy

    Olive oil, salt and pepper is my go to method for cooking most vegetables. Sometimes I grill, sometimes I sauté or blanch or broil.  Today I grilled.

    Easy as 1-2-3. Takes about 10 minutes.

    Coat vegetables in olive oil and season them with salt and pepper. Often times I add oil or butter with either garlic or onions in a separate pan for a simple sauce to finish the dish. I had some green garlic so I added that today.

    Grill on a medium hot grill for 4 or 5 minutes each side. The green garlic and butter ‘sauce’ is in the little pan on the upper left.

    Yum. That char on the edges is so good with the garlic butter and crunchy bok choy.

    This is a great side dish for just about anything you are having. I really like this with grain or rice bowls or just some grilled fish. It’s so versatile. I love bok choy! Hope you are enjoying yours!

     

     

     

     

  • Rhubarb Custard Pie

    This is a very easy delicious pie to make that keeps well for a day or two in the refrigerator and is a tasty way to use the rhubarb you will be getting in your CSA share this week.

    You can use a store bought pie crust or make your own, or honestly leave the pie crust out and have a custard rhubarb dessert that you could scoop into bowls.

    Rhubarb Custard Pie Ingredients.

    Preheat oven to 350F

    • 1 unbaked 9 inch pie shell
    • 3 cups (about one pound) rhubarb cut into 1 inch pieces
    • 3 eggs
    • 1/2 cup sugar
    • 2 T flour
    • 1/2 teas salt
    • 2 T butter
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 1 cup milk, half and half or cream depending how rich you want it. I used 1/2 and 1/2 this time. I have never used all cream.

    Beat eggs, sugar, salt, flour, and vanilla in a bowl then add milk or cream or 1/2 and 1/2, whatever you are using.  Put Rhubarb on the pie shell and dot with butter, then pour custard over it.  Bake 1 hr 15min in a pre-heated 350F oven until the center of the pie is just set and doesn’t jiggle. It will continue to cook when you take it out a little so a little under done is ok.

    Here is my pie in the oven baked about 1/2 through. The edges are just starting to set.

    The rhubarb floats to the top but is snuggled in the custard. A lovely pie IMO.

    Rhubarb season is fleeting so have some fun with it while it’s here.

    Have a great week.

    Mo

  • CSA Week 3

    Hello CSA Members!

    Welcome to week 3 of CSA! We’re excited to bring you some new veggies into the mix this week.  And here’s hoping for great weather during pickups!

    Here is what we hope to bring you for Week 3 of our CSA:

    REGULAR SHARE
    Herb Choice
    Allium Choice
    Rhubarb
    Asparagus
    Kale
    Bok Choi

    LARGE SHARE ADDITIONS
    Double Bok Choi
    Lettuce
    Turnips
    Parsley

    FRUIT SHARE
    Will start later this season (July)

  • Garlic Chives vs Onion Chives

    Every week we try to provide an herb choice with your CSA share. I think that herbs are an easy way to elevate a so-so dish to a ‘wow’ dish, so I really love that herbs are included in our CSA shares.

    This week two of the herb choices are garlic chives and the more common onion chives.

    In the photo below garlic chives are on the left. They are larger and have flat leaves and taste mildly of garlic and onions. The onion chives are on the right and are tube shaped and hollow and have a mild onion flavor and are very tender.

    Garlic chives can be eaten raw but also hold up to cooking and are very similar in texture to leeks when they are cooked-kind of melting into a dish. Onion chives are almost always used fresh and raw and are bright and have a slight ‘snap’ when you bite them.

    Lots of Asian dishes use garlic chives, they are great tossed last minute in soups or any sauteed meat, egg or vegetable dish.

    I grilled some asparagus the other day and heated up some butter with garlic chives while the asparagus was cooking.

    This simple side dish was totally the star of our meal.

    If you haven’t tried garlic chives maybe grab some this week and give them a try and let us know how you like them.

    Have a great week and I’ll see you at pickup.

    Mo

     

  • CSA Week 2

    Hello CSA Members!

    Last week was an awesome kick-off to our CSA season! Seeing continuing members, meeting new members, and working with our fabulous workshare volunteers was sweet and exciting. This week, we welcome our biweekly B members to the mix!

    It looks like a cloudy week ahead, but we’ll be out there with your veggies, rain or shine.

    Here is what we hope to bring you for Week 2 of our CSA:

    REGULAR SHARE
    Herb CHOICE or Pea Shoots
    Green Garlic
    Walking Onions
    Asparagus
    Collard Greens
    Bok Choi

    LARGE SHARE ADDITIONS
    Extra Bok Choi
    Rhubarb
    Turnips
    Lettuce

    FRUIT SHARE
    None – Will start later this season.

     

  • 20th Season at Red Wagon!

    Amy and Wyatt circa 2004
    Amy and Wyatt our first season. Look at those baby faces!

    We are entering our 20th season here at Red Wagon Farm! I don’t think I could have imagined that we’d be where we are now way back when we started our first season in 2004. I tell everybody that farming and gardening are all about trial and error. We’ve made a lot of errors! But Wyatt and I have always tried to learn from our farming mistakes so we can get better each season.

    We started out by selling veggies at various farmers’ markets, having a farm stand in Lafayette, and selling our veggies to local restaurants. We waited a few years to start our CSA because Wyatt and I wanted to be confident that we could actually give our members a full season’s worth of veggies. So far we’ve never fallen short! Sometimes we’ve given out small shares for a few weeks due to challenges like hail storms or the flood in 2013. But we’ve always been able to make up for it with extra produce later in the season. We have a handful of CSA members who’ve been with us ever since our first year in 2007. We are so grateful to those members for their support all these years! It’s also been so nice to get to know them and see their families grow.

    Cherry tomatoes
    Red Wagon’s signature mix of cherry tomatoes.

    We are always trying new varieties for each type of vegetable we grow–even things like zucchini and lettuce. Wyatt spends many days each winter pouring over the seed catalogs to pick out new varieties to grow the next season. He looks for varieties to try that might have great flavor, or better disease resistance, or different days to maturity. One of my proudest successes is our mix of cherry tomatoes. When people tell us our cherry tomatoes taste like candy, I tell them that’s two decades worth of us trying different varieties to find the best tasting ones!

    Javier and his daughters
    Javier occasionally gets to bring his little helpers to the farm with him when they have a day off school.

    Wyatt and I have had a lot of help to get Red Wagon this far. My best guess is that we’ve had about 800 employees over the years. A few of those people have stayed at Red Wagon for many years. I can’t even remember how long Javier as been at Red Wagon. It has to be 13 or 14 years! Javier grew up on his family farm in Mexico and I tell people that Javier can do anything! He does a lot of the large-scale work at the farm like plowing the fields in the spring, hilling the potatoes in the summer, or using the tractor to cultivate the winter squash. He also spends a lot of time fixing the farm equipment. There are a lot of pieces of machinery that need maintenance and repairs here!

    Mo's wedding meal
    Here’s Mo making our wedding dinner!

    Mo has also been at Red Wagon for a long time. It has to be close to 15 years. The easiest way to describe Mo is that she loves to feed people! She started out by working in the fields at Red Wagon. She’s managed the CSA pickup at our farm on N 63rd Street ever since our first year of having a pickup here in 2012. She’s also been writing our recipe blog for 10 or 12 years. I love the meals that Mo creates for her blog posts. She makes approachable dishes with a “use what you have” attitude. Her recipes often give directions that say things like “use whatever greens you got this week in your CSA share”. Her photos give you a great idea of all the steps you’ll take to prepare your meal. (Although I confess that Wyatt is the one who actually cooks all those meals in our house. I just do the eating!) Plus the flavors practically pour out of her photos! When Wyatt and I got married I asked Mo if she would make our wedding dinner. I think that sums up how much I love Mo’s cooking!

    Kai with bouquet
    Kai is able to keep smiling through almost whatever chaos the farm brings for the day!

    Kai hasn’t been at Red Wagon quite as long–this is her fifth season. Many of you know her from being our CSA manager for three years. She started bringing her baby, Ash, to work with her last summer just a few weeks after he was born. It wasn’t practical to load him into the CSA truck with her every afternoon so she started orchestrating things at the farm from her post in the “barn” at our new location at Thomas Open Space in Lafayette. Her “we’ll make it happen!” attitude is what makes it so our veggies get out the door and to your CSA pickup each day.

    We’re so happy to be starting another season at Red Wagon and we’re looking forward to feeding all of your families for another season!

    With gratitude,
    Amy

     

  • Welcome 2023 CSA Memebers!

    Welcome new and returning CSA members. If you are a returning member, a million thanks for your continued support. I was looking at the Member List and was so happy to see so many people I know. If you’re new, thank you for your trust. I look forward to getting to know you.

    I have been writing the Farm Blog- ideas and recipes, for a long, long time. Most of my posts are straightforward and easy to follow recipes. There are also storage tips and preparation. Check them all out here in the archive.

    My over arching goal is to teach and inspire you to be flexible with your weekly CSA share with recipes that appeal to you; be it recipe ideas from this site or any book or source that inspires you.

    I try to only include what you got in your CSA share that week because I know a lot of what you are getting is new to some of you and you might need a few ideas to use the unfamiliar vegetables.

    I know lots of you are really accomplished cooks and bakers. Please let me know what you are making with your CSA, inspire me!

    I’ll be at the 63rd Street Farm pickup on Wednesdays and Thomas Open Space on Thursday’s, come and say “Hi”.

    2023 CSA here we come. I can feel it already this is going to be a good year. See you at pickup.

    Mo