Single Share
4 Apples
1 Beets, Bunch
1 Cauliflower
1 Garlic
1 Kale
2 Pepper, Red Bell
1 Pie Pumpkin
1 Radishes, Bunch
1 Sweet Potatoes, 1 Lb
Family Share
6 Apples
1 Beets, Bunch
1 Cauliflower
1 Garlic
1 Kale
2 Pepper, Red Bell
1 Pie Pumpkin
1 Radishes, Bunch
1 Sweet Potatoes, 1 Lb
1 Broccoli
1 Carrots, Bunch
1 Eggplant
1 Hot Pepper Butter
1 Leeks, Bunch
1 Turnips, Bunch
Dear Shareholders,
A change in our bank's methods of administering our Cuyahoga County account has occurred.
Starting immediately, all checks for shareholders in the Cleveland area must be made payable to "The NAC" or "New Agrarian Center"
Some of you may be asked to rewrite a recent check. We apologize for the inconvenience.
As you know, City Fresh is a program of the New Agrarian Center. As a program, it has no legal identity of its own. While the bank has allowed us to have checks written to the program for several years, their internal auditor and legal department have decided that an urgent change is necessary. All checks must be made payable to the name of the business on the account as it is reflected in the state filing - for us, that is "The New Agrarian Center" often shortened to just "The NAC"
We are very sorry to trouble you with this late-season change. Thank you so much for being a part of the City Fresh family.
Sincerely,
Nick Swetye
Director of City Fresh
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Here's an idea of what to do with all the wonderful veggies you got at the stop this week. I searched the internet for ideas for Ratatouille to use the eggplant, zucs, onions, garlic, and peppers. I didn't find anything that I really fell in love with, so I created my own from a number of sources. I figured that Ratatouille is a peasant dish, so I could do what I wanted with it in the spirit of cooking from what you have on hand. The only veggie that I bought was Roma tomatoes. I didn't think that the one slicing tomato would be enough. I used the yellow hot pepper instead of the more traditional green and red pepper for 2 reasons; I don't like bell peppers (weird I know) and I am a single share holder and didn't have any, anyway! The herbs I chose based on the recipes that I read on line and what I had growing fresh in the garden. Here is what I did;
My roommate from college, a Yosemite park-ranger extraordinaire, who wrangles bears and gives a mighty-fine tram tour, just shared a new foodie website with me: www.gojee.com.
The kohlrabi dish I created this week was inspired by my sister-in-law's mantra: "everything tastes better if you add butter and cheese." My husband loves eating kohlrabi raw, but I've discovered that folding it into a creamy cheese sauce with lots of pasta is pretty good too!
This past week's share included some pickling cucumbers, a.k.a. "pickles" or just plain "cucumbers." Compared to the typical cucumber you can find year-round in the produce section of your local grocery store, "pickling cucumbers" have thinner skins that make them ideal for soaking up the briny goodness of a basic pickling liquid. They are much shorter and smaller than their English cousins, and also sport numerous bumps or "warts" on their outer skin. But don't let their appearance or their name fool you: pickling cucumbers may be used just like regular cucumbers. You can slice them into salads, grate them for a killer tzatziki, or eat them au naturel.
Well, born of late night computer chats with expert preservationists, I have the simple solution. I have rinsed my berries, chopped out the worst bits and the stems, laid them out evenly distributed on a cookie sheet, and placed them in the freezer for a few hours. Later, I can bag up these frozen nibblets and enjoy smoothies and desserts through the winter.
Actually, honestly, I likely never will as my children gobble up all the kale, fruit & yogurt smoothies I make.
This week's family share included some sprigs of hyssop, a potent herb belonging to the mint family that has been used for culinary and medicinal purposes since the time of the Greeks and Romans. In today's world, though, it's unlikely that you'll find fresh hyssop at your local market, since it's not a common ingredient for modern cooks. I experimented with my bunch of hyssop today by making an herb-infused simple syrup with the leaves, flowers, and stalks. Then, I combined my hyssop syrup with freshly squeezed lemon juice to form the base of a refreshing iced tea.
To use the kale, garlic, and onions I collected in this week's share, I decided to make a big pot of soup. Not the most seasonally appropriate meal, perhaps, but nutritious and filling all the same.
Kale, White Bean, and Garlic Soup
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 cup of chopped onion
- 1 tablespoon of dried Italian Seasoning (optional)
- Salt and Pepper
- 1 bunch of kale, tough stem removed and rough chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, minced
- 12 cups of broth or water (any combination bean, chicken, and/or vegetable broth will do)
- 5 cups of cooked dried white beans (see below) OR 2 cans of white beans, undrained
- 4 plum tomatoes, roughly chopped OR 1 28 oz can of plum tomatoes, chopped
In a large pot, heat the olive oil on medium heat, and cook the onion with the Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper until translucent, for about 5 minutes. Add the kale, and continue cooking, stirring often, for another 5 minutes until the kale is wilted and soft. Add the garlic, and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Next, add 11 cups of broth, 3 cups of beans, and all the tomatoes to the pot, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes, skimming any foam that rises to the surface. Meanwhile, in a blender or food processor, combine the remaining cup of broth and the remaining beans, pulsing until thick and smooth. Add mixture to the pot, and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes. Serve warm with crusty bread.
Additional Notes:
I cut the green tops off the garlic and onions, and am reserving them for a vegetarian stock.
For a heartier soup, add some cooked sausage during the final five minutes of simmering. Crumbled spicy Italian sausage complements the kale-white bean combination quite nicely, and makes it easier for me to convince my husband to eat his daily allotment of green vegetables!
If you have any garlic scape pesto on hand, add a dollop to your bowl of soup for an additional garlicky punch.
On the side, serve crostini topped with goat cheese and your City Fresh hot pepper butter.
Cooking Dried Beans:
I use Mark Bittman’s “Quick-Soak” Method for cooking dried beans from his massive compendium How to Cook Everything. It works for almost every kind of bean imaginable except the following varieties: lentils, split peas, peeled and split beans. Although I adore using canned beans when I need to throw together a quick meal, buying beans from the bulk bins is an economical, eco-friendly practice. And I've found that cooking beans is a satisfying culinary exercise, in which a little labor yields stunning results.
Here's the recipe I used to cook the dried beans for my kale and garlic soup:
1 pound of dried Great Northern Beans
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
¼ tsp black peppercorns
s
alt and freshly ground pepper.
Rinse the beans, discarding shriveled, discolored bits and any pebbles or stray matter.
Put the beans, bay leaf, rosemary, and peppercorns in a large pot and cover with cold water by about 2 to 3 inches. Bring the pot to a boil, and let it boil, uncovered, for about 2 minutes. Then, cover the pot with a tightly fitting lid, turn off the heat, and let the beans soak for 2 hours. Don’t peek!
After two hours, taste a bean. If tender, make sure that the beans are covered by about an inch of water, and add salt and pepper to taste. If not tender, cover the beans with 2 inches of water, and hold off on the s&p.
Next, b
ring the pot to a boil, and adjust the heat so that the beans bubble gently. Cover partially and cook, stirring occasionally, checking the beans for doneness every 10 or 15 minutes, and adding more water if necessary. Once the beans are tender, add the salt and pepper. Stop cooking when the beans taste the way you like them. Use your cooked beans in any recipe that calls for canned beans, and save the cooking liquid to add flavor to soups and stocks.
After counting veggies at distribution, we began set up of the stop. Folks new to City Fresh and those old hats all joined in gladly. It's like summer has truly begun!
We readied ourselves for record numbers of shareholders!
I like to add mint to iced tea, ordinarily, but with Toni's garlic scape and mint pesto recipe, I may have to branch out.
Green onions are a great addition to salads, stir fries, chicken, fish, rice... I could go on and on.
Garlic scapes! I have these growing in my garden as well. One suggestion was to make a risotto, which sounds delightful. There's a recipe here.
Toni and O - who will be heading up food samplings and demonstrations for us this summer - used some of the scapes from my garden to prepare this amazing garlic scape and mint pesto. Theirs was vegan, but it can be made with Parmesan instead of nutritional yeast as well. Toni posted the recipe on our Facebook page:Garlic Scape – Mint Pesto (vegan and not) - wk 1 food sample
1 bunch garlic scapes
~12 mint leaves ( or to taste)
handful of walnuts (or nuts of your choice)
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast or a bit more Parmesan cheese, in which case decrease salt.
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
olive oil/water to blend
Mix all ingredients in a food processor... (use water to start then finish with oil for a “lighter” pesto, or use all oil for a “richer” more unctuous pesto)
In the moments without long lines of shareholders, I was able to take goofy photos of huckleberry jam. This is made by Amish women. There's no need to tour Amish country when Amish country comes directly to you!
One of our volunteers, Chauncey, told me today that huckleberries are a cross between raspberries and blackberries, but this is not the case (though loganberries, boysenberries, and tayberries all are). Huckleberries actually look like blueberries, but have larger seeds in greater numbers than do blueberries. They are the state fruit of Idaho. In the 1830s, the phrase, "a huckleberry to a persimmon," was popular, apparently used as a metaphor demonstrating an unfavorable comparison between things. Knowing that Chauncey is a big Simpsons fan, I'm sure he'll appreciate this bit of trivia from the huckleberry Wiki entry:Huckleberries featured in an episode of The Simpsons, in which school bully Nelson Muntz is overheard by Principal Skinner uncharacteristically telling fellow classmates: "The thing about huckleberries is, once you've had fresh, you'll never go back to canned..."
