Week 9 Vegetable Share Ideas

cherry tomatoes
toss with pasta and pecorino romano

beets
classic salad with goat cheese

chard
creamed chard 

radishes
cucumber-radish salad

carrots
carrot souffle

potatoes
roasted with smashed garlic & lemon 

scallions
with eggs

cut greens
with guanciale and tomato

radicchio
grill it and toss with balsamic 

cucumbers
indispensable in veggie wraps

zucchini
zucchini pancakes

tomatoes
tomato-mozzarella salad

cabbage
search okonomiyaki

lettuce
avocado caesar, please

Week 8 Vegetables

CHERRY TOMATOES
roasted tomato sauce for pasta

SUMMER SQUASH
shred & saute and serve under a fried egg

JERSEY WAKEFIELD CABBAGE
try David Liebovitz's wasabi slaw

CARROTS
in carrot-coriander humus

CHARD
baked along with blanched beet tops in a frittata

BASIL
make foccacia

CUT GREENS
heavenly with plenty of balsamic vinaigrette

BELL PEPPER
in gazpacho

POTATOES
the weather's cooler this week--make a gratin

CUCUMBERS
eat them plain fora quick snack

BEETS
beet chips with roasted garlic dipping sauce

ITALIAN PARSLEY
everywhere

RED FIRE LETTUCE
with shallot vinaigrette

TOMATOES
tomato bisque!

Storing Summer Vegetables

You paid good money for that food. Now you want to make the most of it, right? Here's how we keep summer vegetables fresh at our house. 

Don't store tomatoes in the fridge! We try to harvest tomatoes at varying states of readiness so they ripen for you throughout the week. Put them in a paper bag and keep them on the counter: it keeps fruit flies and other insects away while allowing the tomatoes to breathe.

Everything else we can think of should go into refrigeration right away. Separate any roots from their leaves as soon as you get them home. The poor things think they're still trying to grow, and the longer you leave the tops on carrots, beets, radishes, or whatever, the more the quality of the roots will suffer. So give them a quick whack with a knife before you send them off into the fridge, OK?

Fruit flies. If you eat fresh food, you've probably got them this summer, and so much the worse if you're composting. When they said you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar, they obviously weren't talking about fruit flies. Totally more flies with vinegar.

Cover a paper cup (or a recycled yogurt container, etc.) with saran wrap and punch little holes in the plastic with a fork. Don't make too many holes. If the plastic wrap isn't sticking well, use a rubber band.

We add a banana to the vinegar to really get 'em. 

Week 7 CSA Share Ideas

Text too small to read? Here's what we're doing with our CSA share this week at Bluestem Farm: 

CUCUMBERS how bout cilantro-chile salad?

SUMMER SQUASH try zucchini fridge pickles

CHERRY TOMATOES broil and smear them on bread

RED LEAF LETTUCE try something lemony

CARROTS roast them with honey & coriander

POTATOES pink potato vichyssoise

KALE with cherry tomatoes in quiche

TOMATOES might be time for gazpacho

EARLY WONDER BEETS shredded raw with dill & balsamic

ARUGULA we're loving arugula smoothies

CHARD with too much garlic, fish sauce & a squeeze of lemon

ITALIAN PARSLEY a little here, a little there

BASIL with grilled zucchini, please

Bluestem Farm Ginger-Beet Soda

This is a recipe for the soda I make for farm concerts. People rave about it and my son thinks it's a special treat—little does he know it's a superfood. Commercially produced sodas pump bubbles into the liquid. The bubbles in this naturally fermented soda are made when (remember van Leeuwenhoek from high school biology?) “cavorting wee beasties” eat the sugar in your soda and exhale carbon dioxide.  

4 or 5 medium beets
2” chunk of whole ginger
2 or 3 apples
½ cup regular sugar, plus more for the starter if you're making a ginger bug
a starter culture (see below)

A.    The Ginger Bug Way
This is the way to go if you don't have another starter culture (such as a kombucha SCOBY or water kefir grains) around the house already. We have starter cultures to share from time to time if you want to give them a try.

Grate 2 tablespoons ginger and add it to a quart mason jar with 2 tablespoons water and 2 tablespoons sugar. This is the ginger bug. Each day for a week, you're going to feed the ginger bug by adding 2 tablespoons water and sugar. When it's bubbly, after a week or so, pour 1 cup strained ginger bug liquid into a new ½ gallon mason jar. 

Mince the beets, ginger, and apples—leave the cores and seeds and skins in there. A food processor is handy for this. Then boil the fruit & vegetables in 1 quart water for 15 minutes, strain off the liquid, and let it cool to room temperature. Press and squeeze the pulp to get as much juice as you can.  Combine this cool, intensely colored liquid with the sugar and culture (either ginger bug or kefir or kombucha) in the ½ gallon mason jar. Top it off with a little cool water to fill the jar.

At this point, you can either drink it as-is, or seal the soda in bottles to make it fizzy. You can buy swing-top bottles and sterilize and cap them, or put new metal caps on old (sterilized) beer bottles with a bottle capper. Did I mention your bottles need to be sterilized? Leave the bottles out overnight and then move them to the fridge. Open carefully! They're very fizzy.

B.    The Kefir or Kombucha Way
If you have already got some sort of starter culture around, it’s way easier to use it rather than to make a ginger bug as described above. 

Leaving the SCOBY or kefir grains behind, take a quart of prepared kefir or kombucha. and add it to a half-gallon jar.  

Mince the beets, ginger, and apples—leave the cores and seeds and skins in there. A food processor is handy for this. Then boil the fruit & vegetables in 1 quart water for 15 minutes, strain off the liquid, and let it cool to room temperature. Press and squeeze the pulp to get as much juice as you can. Combine this cool, intensely colored liquid with the sugar and culture (either ginger bug or kefir or kombucha) in the ½ gallon mason jar. Top it off with a little cool water to fill the jar.

At this point, you can either drink it as-is, or seal the soda in bottles to make it fizzy. You can buy swing-top bottles and sterilize and cap them, or put new metal caps on old (sterilized) beer bottles with a bottle capper. Did I mention your bottles need to be sterilized? Leave the bottles out overnight and then move them to the fridge. Open carefully! They're very fizzy.

Week 6 CSA Recipe Round-Up

This week's recipe roundup brought to you by that American treasure, the The New York Times. Week 6 of our summer CSA program, citified! 

Spicy Tunisian carrot frittata: http://nyti.ms/1mVaCZ6
Fennel-tomato condiment for fish, or whatever: http://nyti.ms/1pwyqnL 
Grilled sausage, grilled fennel. Who cares if it's cold! It is your duty to cook outside: http://nyti.ms/1rvJqnL

Week 5 Vegetable Shares

We were so happy to see all the beautiful food in our members' shares this week. You can find all the ideas we're referring to on Bluestemfarmers Pinterest boards. A quick search of the web will probably get you there, too. What were you going to try with your vegetables this week?  

Here are a few more ideas we want to pull off:

Ice cream with beets, mascarpone and orange zest. Think we’ll skip the poppy seeds. How bout you? http://bit.ly/1A2W7wk
Here’s what we mean to do with those pretty potatoes: http://bit.ly/1pcVQku
Candied baby carrots: http://bit.ly/1jTXmJd

What to Do With Week Four Food?

We got dreaming of what we're going to do with the week 4 vegetable share we keep for our household. Our family (two adults and a three-year-old) will have no problem eating all these vegetables this week, with trips back to the garden for more greens. 

I bet you have some great ideas, too. Feel free to leave comments with your thoughts! (Whatever was wrong before seems to be fixed now.)

In case the text is too small to read in the photo above, here it is in plain text: 

cabbage
- cole slaw
- sauerkraut
- kimchi 
- braised with bacon

kale 
- raw salads
- stir fries
- green smoothies
- kale chips

carrots
- Moroccan carrot salad
- carrot soup
- juice 

beets
- roasted in oil 
- sliced thinly in salads 
- borscht (warm or chilled)

lettuce
- juice it
- salads of course
- chilled soup
- grilled lettuce

parsley
- gremolata
- tabbouleh
- as garnish

arugula 
- raw salads
- smoothies

summer squash 
- grated in patties
- zucchini bread
- sauteed 
- grilled 

broccoli
- raw salads 
- sauteed
- in quiche

basil
- yellow tomato basil jam
- with fresh mozzarella
- pesto

cucumbers
- tabbouleh 
- raita
- fridge pickles

radishes
- raw salads
- fridge pickles
- with chevre and bread

fennel
- sliced thinly in salads
- grilled 
- in fennel vichyssoise

chard
- raw salads
- in stir fries (add lemon) 
- green smoothies

Never Waste a Vegetable

To see what it was like for our CSA members, our family recently started portioning out a whole CSA share for ourselves, rather than treating the garden as our extended household refrigerator like we usually do. We found that, first of all, there's a knack to getting all that food into the fridge, and second, the abundance of greens this time of year means getting creative about fresh food triage. 

Here are our thoughts on the matter: 

1. Prep ahead. To get everything in the fridge, we found we needed to...

• make a salad with the lettuce (and some of the radishes and carrots) and have it that night for dinner
• break the radish and carrot tops off and either a) compost them or b) get going with some carrot-top pesto and radish greens soup.
• prepare a raw kale salad (recipe here)
• wash, spin, and chop the beet greens and chard. Together, they cooked down to a medium bowl. We find that when they're prepared like this, we are much more likely to add them to eggs, rice dishes, and whatever else we're eating. 
• wrap the basil (unwashed) in a tea towel and store it in the bottom drawer. Basil is probably the most tender green we grow, and will turn black if it gets too damp or cold.   
• make a green smoothie the next morning with the arugula

2. Good tools are your friend. This time of year, we wouldn't want to do without...

a salad spinner
We strive to clean all the food here at the farm, but you might find some grit in your vegetables if you don't clean them off well. A salad spinner is great for this. They're easy to find at thrift stores. 

glass bowls

We like to store prepped and cooked greens in glass bowls so we don't forget about them. Mason jars and regular tupperware also get the job done. 

3. These days our pantry is well-stocked with...

citrus & vinegars
A dash of something sour really makes the flavor of greens come alive. 

good fats like lard and olive oil
Fat carries flavor, so be sure you don't skimp on it when you prepare greens. CSA members can get our pasture-raised lard (both leaf lard and regular lard) as part of your pork share. Pork and greens are so great together. If you've never tried southern-style greens, simmered with a smoked pork hock, I tell you friend. I tell you. 

foods high in umami
'Umami' is a taste, like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It's a Japanese word most often translated as 'savoriness'. Especially high umami foods like anchovies, Parmesan, and celery go great with greens.

We welcome comments! How do you make the most of your vegetable share? 

CSA Member Recipe Ideas

This week, we're featuring what our members are doing with their CSA shares. Special thanks to Dawn, Janice, and Judy for sharing these wonderful ideas! 

Pressure-Canning Greens

Dawn from Petoskey shared the above idea for pressure-canning greens. This is a great way to store greens for winter. If you mean to do this and do not have experience pressure-canning low acid foods, Mary would love to talk over the process with you before you give it a try. 

Raw Kale Salad

Janice from Gaylord suggested this recipe to us, and since then several members have remarked on how much they love raw kale salads. So delicious. Why didn't we know?

Swiss Chard with Poached Egg Salad
This variation on the salad one comes to us via Judy in Petoskey. Full recipe here.

Nutrition Facts: Week 3 CSA Vegetables

Please note that small shares (including every-other-week shares) receive all the above except cabbage, summer squash, parsley, and radishes.   

cabbage
rich in cancer-inhibiting glucosinolates 

bok choi

high vitamin A protects your cells from free radicals

summer squash

good source of potassium, an electrolyte that also helps build muscle and proteins

parsley
really high iron content; off-the-chart antioxidants

kale

per calorie, kale has more iron than beef and more calcium than milk

chard

rich in folate for healthy circulation and neurological development of unborn babies

cut greens

high in antioxidants, folate, vitamins A and C, iron and fiber

carrots

famously high vitamin A for good eyesight

radishes

good levels of anti-cancer isothiocyanates and antioxidant vitamin C

basil

vitamin K, vitamin A, manganese, and magnesium

lettuce

fiber for lower cholesterol and good blood sugar levels

beets

unique source of antioxidants, good liver tonic and blood cleanser

Week 2 CSA Recipe: Kale Chips

Kale Chips

That’s right: snack food that’s a nutritional 10.

one bunch of kale

two cookie sheets

olive oil

topping options: salt, Parmesan, or nutritional yeast

Preheat the oven to 275.

Rinse and de-vein one bunch of kale, and dry it thoroughly—a salad spinner is great for this. Toss the chopped leaves in a little olive oil, or spritz them with a mister, add a little salt, and spread them out on two cookie sheets. 

If you let the leaves touch each other, they will never get crisp, so be sure not to crowd the pans. Because they will continue to look slick and wet even when they’re done, you will need to touch the kale chips after ten minutes or so to stir them and test for doneness.

Bake until the kale is crispy, for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Week 2 CSA Shares

Presenting week 2 of Bluestem Farm's CSA program. 

Regular shares get 2 lettuce heads, kale, chard, radish, cut greens, beets, bok choi, baby carrots, broccoli, and basil. (A regular share is pictured above.) 

Small shares get 2 lettuce heads, kale, chard, radish, cut greens, beets, and bok choi.