Some Like it Hot...

We will be dreaming of those 90 degree days in February. But we are Clevelanders.  We have a right to complain about the weather... right? 

Yes= $7.49

No= $4.05

Share Contents and Kitchen Tips for Week 7!

Peaches are making their first wee appearances this week, which means we're well into mid-summer crops. We'll see those again for weeks to come.

In the shares this week:

Single:

Onion

Tomato

Cucumber
Garlic

Peach

Peppers

Yellow squash

Carrots, bunch
Lettuce, 1 head

Potatoes, 1 lb

Kale, bunch

Family adds:

Raspberries

Zucchini

Cantaloupe

Kitchen Tips:

You may have noticed that zucchini season has arrived. Summer squash produces rather prolifically and while its mild taste is a delight, if you're a grower, or have friends that grow it, your kitchen can become a bit overwhelmed.

Garrison Keillor says that July is the only time country folks lock their car doors in the church parking lot, lest someone sneak in and put squash on their seat. Barbara Kingsolver shares this tale along with anecdotes about checking and re-checking that her home's never-locked doors are well secured in the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. There's no messing around when it comes to helpful neighbors trying to dispose of their extras. Unchecked, zucchini and yellow squash will grow to arm's length, but the skin is softest on immature fruit. It's so delicate that fingernails will easily catch on the waxy coating during stacking. It's something we watch for carefully. 

In most of Europe, the French term courgette rather than the Italian zucchini is more often used. In South Africa, it is know as baby marrow, which honestly creeps me out a little bit.

A good source of vitamins C & B-6, summer squash is an incredibly versatile, low-calorie food. When the fruits are still immature, the skin will be pliable. Sometimes the patty pans we get require peeling and some seeding, but early in the season, they're fine to chop as is. Sauteed lightly with butter or olive oil, with or without fresh herbs, squash is a delightful summer side dish. When eggplant and tomatoes start rolling into my City Fresh share, we like to layer these together with tomato sauce as a ratatouille, which we like to serve over rice.

Stir fry is always a go-to for maximizing vegetable usage or not knowing what to prepare for dinner. During the winter, zucchini is the number one ingredient we miss for Stir Fry Night. Similarly, soups and stews use lots of different vegetables and the tomato-based minestrone is a favorite at our house (which also utilizes some of those heads of cabbage we get). Served with crusty bread and salad, soups are pretty simple to throw together and make lots of leftovers for lunches. They're also freezable, so we can enjoy our courgette during the winter months.

Shredded summer squash can be baked in breads and cakes, which I like to do to trick my kids into fully adoring it. Shredded it can also be mixed with egg and bread crumbs to make squash pancakes, like potato pancakes. By adding Italian spices and Parmesan, I've found that this mush is a lot like a tater tot if baked in a mini muffin tin then dipped in ketchup or fresh aioli. These were a big hit at our summer parties last year. Friends of mine with fancy spiralizers make spiral tempura-like, batter-dipped squash fries. Children like the shape and the springiness.

As with almost any vegetable, when all else fails, covering it with cheese and butters works excellently. I like to shred a bit for omelets or frittata or add to quesadillas with chard and dip in salsa. We've also added it to lasagna and enchiladas. I've found that I can pretty much hide squash in anything.

Have a great week!

Peace and veggies,

Anna Kiss

Scientific Test Results: Five-Color Swiss Chard

At the stop on July 16, the group of Coventry volunteers spent a great deal of time trying to determine whether the different shades of five-color Swiss chard could be determined by taste. To this end, we conducted a blind taste-test, asking participants to try to identify which color was which by taste alone without prior taste-testing to note any significant differences.

In each test, three participants were required: the Taster, the Tester, and the Secretary. The Taster would close his or her eyes and await the placement of Swiss chard stem in his/her mouth. Their eyes would remain closed throughout the testing. The Tester administered the chard stems. The Secretary noted what the Taster said about each piece.

Initially, we identified four basic colors of chard (though there are said to be five): pink, red, yellow, and white (these were originally noted as pink, redish, yellow, and whiteish in our testing form).

Each Taster (there were four in the blind portion of the tasting), identified clear differences between the different stems and made their own associations with what these differences implied about color. For instance, to two Tasters, one of the stalks reminded them of beets, so they indicated that this implied the color of the stem to be similar to beets, thus red. Similarly, Tasters noting a comparably milder taste, associated that flavor with the white stalk, conflating less flavor with less color. These comparisons were accurate part of the time - those who tasted beets were correct in guessing red - but not completely - the yellow stem was also noted to have a beet-like flavor, but was not, in fact, a corresponding color. Similarly, the white stem was often noted for a milder taste, but the yellow was much stronger in flavor, not corresponding to its relative lack of color. The tasters did not always agree about the exact flavor of the stems themselves, though for the most part, all tastes came from the same stems. Only one stem was replaced completely for a new Taster - the yellow.

Not one Taster guessed the correct color 100% of the time. Two Tasters were able to guess the correct color 50% of the time, however.

Given the fluctuations of flavor identified by varying participants - including two tasters sampling without closed eyes - it seems that the color variations do impact the flavor of chard. The data is decidedly inconclusive, however. It is possible that the stems offered different flavors based not on color, but on where in the stem it was tasted and on the unique stalk itself. Thus, a yellow and a pink might taste similarly in one bunch, but differently from another. It is possible that variations might be affected by maturity, soil composition, exposure to air, light, or water, or other unknowable factors.

In conclusion, Five Color Swiss Chard is tasty.

Survey Results for Week 5!

I neglected to publish the results of Week Five's Donation Jar Survey Results and almost forgot to take a photo of the question itself as a mighty storm blew in just at 7 pm. The volunteers managed to tear down the stop and load up leftovers in a record 7 minutes flat, just as the rain started. In the library where we do our cash out, I discovered the question sheet crumpled up in my pocket. And here it is.

Opinion on the matter of regular cucumbers versus pickling cucumbers was split rather evenly with regular cukes edging out pickles by a thin 3-to-2 margin. Voting was also limited, but we expect that the more fascinating questions urge more interest. 

Don't forget you can submit questions of your own! The more hilarious, the better! Post here in the comments with your suggestions! Questions must be yes/no and short enough to read while in line. 

Share Contents and Kitchen Tips for Week 6!

Thank you all for your patience with us at the close of last week following 7 inches of rain in a one week period. Roads were washed out and some fields were under a foot or more of water. All things considered, we still ended up with some good shares thanks to our hard working farmers. And here are the shares for this week:

Single:

Heirloom Tomato

Potatoes, 2 Lbs

Onion

Mini Cukes, 1 Lb

Beets, Bunch

Swiss Chard, Bunch

Assorted Herbs

Garlic

Kohlrabi

Family adds:
Raspberries, Blackberries, or Jam, Pint

Variety of Medium and Hot Peppers

3 Patty Pan Squash

Green Beans, 1/2 Lb

Large Cabbage

Notice that we have emerged from the season of greens and into the mid summer crops. Watermelons and peaches will be on their way in a week or two.

Kitchen Notes:

For this week's spotlight, we'd like to talk about the colorful history of the tomato. One of the world's most important food crops, it wasn't until the 1820s that American's regarded tomatoes as safe to eat, and not until the 1870s that the breeding work of Alexander Livingston made the plant commercially viable in the modern sense.

In the 1950s, more breeding work was done to create the "perfect" grocery store tomato that would ripen uniformly red, including the area around the stem, which had prior retained the green ring we so often see only on heirloom varieties. The variety that had this all-red trait, however, lacked the flavor, nutrient density, and sugar of the older varieties.

Today's chalky, flavorless grocery store tomatoes are the product of the commercial practice of picking the tomatoes when they are still green, which allows machines to do the work without bruising them. These green tomatoes are then stored until ready for delivery, and placed in a gas chamber flooded with ethylene gas, which artificially turns the fruits soft and red. It sounds absurd, but enough of us seem to buy them that it makes sense to keep doing it. I wonder how many kids growing up today have never eaten a real tomato?

Botanically, the tomato is a member of the Solanum genus, along with the potato and eggplant. It was developed as a food plant in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia as early as 1,000 BCE, and was first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish invasion of the Americas in the 1520s.

There was a great deal of concern and confusion over the tomato when it arrived in Europe, and the debate lasted for nearly 300 years. Many feared the tomatoes were toxic, because their closest European relatives, the night shades, include a series of hallucinogenic and potentially deadly plants such as Angel's Trumpet, Mandrake, Henbane, and Belladonna. It was believed that witches used night shades in many of their rituals, including the evocation of werewolves. The botanical name we know today was given to tomatoes by these superstitious renaissance botanists - lycopersicum, literally translated as Wolf Apple.

I know a good tomato certainly makes me howl at the moon.

The tomatoes we often have as part of our City Fresh shares have their own wonderful story. When the Old Order Amish clan known as the Swartzentrubers arrived in Ashland, Ohio, they were part of a slow-moving migration that arrived in Ohio in 1809 and farmed alongside the Native Americans who still called our region home. They brought with them tomato seeds among others, and we were told last season that the slightly pink variety that appears in our shares is the direct descendent of that line of tomatoes.

Joe Miller was the last farmer still growing that variety. He was one of our best farmers, the first to go organic among the Swartzentrubers, and the first of the Amish farmers to start supplying City Fresh back in 2006. He taught the other members of the community who were willing to take the organic risk and join the City Fresh Farmer Network.

Joe moved to New York last year, and took with him his tomatoes, but before he left, he delivered just a handful to his brother-in-law, Joseph Yoder, just up the road. Joseph carefully saved the seeds and planted his field this year so that the genetic line of this wonderful heirloom tomato could be saved. So far, he's having lots of success.

As for how to cook with tomatoes - I recommend that you don't cook them at all, actually. No sense in heating up your kitchen. One of my favorite parts of summer is the fresh tomato sandwich. Put a thick tomato slice between some bread, add a few leaves of basil and a bit of fresh mozzarella cheese. Call it dinner on one of these hot, dog days of summer.

Warm Regards,

Nick

Share Contents and Kitchen Notes for Week 5

This week, we stand at the precipice. Early Summer crops are slowly phasing out and we will be moving into mid summer crops. Some of you have already enjoyed tomatoes, which should make their first appearance in the Single Shares next week as the plants begin to produce more and more. We will also see the arrival of peaches in a week or two, as well as early apples not too far off.

This week's shares include:

Single
Onion
Pickling Cukes, 1.5 Lbs
Kale, Bunch
Lettuce
Zucchini
Cabbage
Garlic
Cilantro, Bunch
Kohlrabi

Family adds an additional Onion, Head of Lettuce, and Kohlrabi as well as:
Patty Pan Squash
Tomato
Yellow Squash
Raspberries, Pint
Bok Choy

Notes from the Kitchen

This week, we'd like to talk a little bit about Garlic. Most of us have enjoyed our scapes, the flower stalk of the garlic, from the early shares. Now, just a few weeks later, the benefits of removing
the flower stalk can be had. Larger bulbs and fuller flavor, as well as increased numbers of micronutrients are the main benefits.

Garlic's history dates back to the beginnings of recorded history, and certainly stretches back far before. The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids consumed large quantities of garlic to maintain their energy levels and health. It was crushed and added to wine to stave off disease during the renaissance, and was used to prevent gangrene by soldiers in World Wars I and II. It also keeps away vampires. :)

Cooking with garlic couldn't be simpler. I pretty much put garlic in every main dish I eat. Take a clove from the bulb for each person I am serving, remove the papery husks (easiest by squashing them with the side of the knife and then peeling the husk away), and then either dicing it into tiny pieces or leaving it whole but giving it a good squeeze to break the cells and release all the juices. I then toss it into some hot olive oil in a skillet along with my diced onion. Saute over medium heat until the garlic browns and the onions become translucent. Then its time to add whatever else. This week, a splash of olive oil, three cloves of garlic and half of my onion, then I'll add half of my head of cabbage and reduce to medium-low heat and cover. Then I'll start a pot of water to boil. Add some egg noodles or perhaps a quinoa pasta (for those staying away from gluten). The cabbage should be browning when my pasta is ready to strain. Good old fashioned cabbage and noodles. Maybe I'll add some curry or red pepper flakes for a bit of spice, or if I'm feeling frisky, I'll throw in some cinnamon and cardamom to shock my wife.

There are of course, other things you can do with garlic. In Brasil, where I lived for a year, several cloves were added to the black bean soup that everyone, no matter how rich or poor, ate for lunch every single day. They swore that it was the key to fighting off gas, and I don't think I ever farted that entire year. And I ate a LOT of beans.

I also like to add garlic to balsamic vinegar and olive oil for a salad dressing. If I have a nasty cold coming on, I'll swallow two or three cloves whole (chewing them is awfully spicy). It cuts my colds
in half I've found. A friend once made a tea from pressed garlic and added it to his neti pot to fight a cold or flu. He swears it worked and will do it again.

The key to garlic's wonderful flavor and medicinal properties is at least partially in its concentration of hydrogen sulfide. It's the same as the byproduct of oil refining or what you smell when you visit
a hot spring - in high concentrations, it smells like rotten eggs. The body actually produces a little hydrogen sulfide on its own by recombining various chemicals from the food we eat and the air we
breathe. Researchers from the University of Alabama Birmingham added garlic juice to human red blood cells, and the effect was an immediate release of hydrogen sulfide.

Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol, research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine recently injected hydrogen sulfide into mice and then induced a heart attack. The effect was a complete prevention of damage to the heart. Pretty serious stuff.

Garlic has numerous other confirmed health benefits. It can prevent heart disease by reducing Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), and reducing blood pressure. Several studies have shown it to have cancer fighting powers as well, especially colon, liver, and pancreatic cancers. Garlic has also been shown to kill cancer cells outright in test tubes according to the University of Maryland. And men with enlarged prostates, you'll be relieved from some of the pressure by eating a diet that includes garlic.

One important side effect of garlic that should be mentioned is that it acts as a blood thinner, and should not be eaten before surgery. It will strengthen any other blood thinning medications you might take as well, such as aspirin or other prescription thinners.

That's all for this week. Enjoy your shares, and please be patient as we approach mid summer's fruits.

Warm Regards,
Nick

Meet a Volunteer - Anna Kiss!

 As part of a regular column, we're conducting short interviews with our volunteers to help shareholders get to know the faces behind the table who make Coventry City Fresh work by donating their time and energy (and often some cash) to a cause they believe in.

Tell us a bit about yourself.  

Eggplant Moustache

My name is Anna Kiss. Kiss is my middle name, technically. I was named after the song "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, I've lived in Cleveland Heights for 9 years with my husband and sons, aged 10 & 8. I'm a big dabbler and do a little bit of everything. I like to garden, knit, make art, write, and not get killed by freak accidents. My favorite community-building activity is drinking wine on area front porches during the summer. 

What do you do with City Fresh?

What don't I do with City Fresh? I have managed the Coventry stop for three years. It involves creating literature, gathering orders, scheduling volunteers, keeping up a really good relationship with the library staff who let us use their space, meeting with other City Fresh managers, setting up, running, & taking down the stop, storing our stuff during the winter, painting signs, working with spreadsheets, marketing our stop, composting the scraps, placing the orders, and keeping all of it straight.

Just this season, I've started doing a minor paid-gig for City Fresh in addition to managing the stop. I do whatever Nick (the director of City Fresh & The New Agrarian Center) tells me to. Mostly that's driving around gathering cash-outs from the other east side fresh stops.

I also take lots of photos of myself with vegetables.

Daikon unicorn

How long have you been a volunteer?

I think I've been volunteering for five years. I can't remember though. The years have gotten really fuzzy with small children. I think 2008 was the first year at Coventry Park. I loved the community vibe of the fresh stop, where the moms would hang out and chat while our kids climbed the mulberry tree or played on the playground. After awhile, I started restocking the tables while I waited for my boys to finish wearing themselves out. That turned into helping sign people in, which in turn the next year resulted in helping to co-manage the stop with Tracie when the previous manager, Lotte, moved away. When Tracie moved on, I took over the reigns entirely.  

Were you a shareholder before that? How long?

I was a shareholder at the original Cleveland Heights stop on Noble Road. I had heard about City Fresh the year before from the Cleveland-area "crunchy" moms online, but didn't want to make the trek to Lakewood every week. I was very excited when they added so many new stops the next year (2007).  

What keeps you coming back year after year?

Turnips the size of your head

I love City Fresh for so many reasons. First, local, sustainably grown food is so important to changing the dominant paradigm. Investing in our food heritage is good for our bodies, good for our communities, and good for the planet. Secondly, City Fresh's unique social justice mission is bar-none. Bringing local foods to limited-income food deserts makes this a stand-alone Community Supported Agriculture group. It's not just getting extremely affordable great food. It's extremely ethical affordable great food. We run trucks on used vegetable oil and are powered by a huge group of dedicated volunteers! What could be better?

Lastly, it's about community. I adore our core group. I have been lucky to grow really close to most of them. We share meals and special occasions together now. Last year, I officiated the wedding of two of our volunteers and attended the birth (as a doula) of another couple of volunteers. In addition, there are the shareholders. We've watched shareholder's children grow, we crack jokes with them when they check in, and they are so so patient with me when I'm frustrated or making mean faces! Building community in my area was how I got started with City Fresh, and it's the number one thing I'll miss if I leave. 

What’s your day job?

Like I said, I'm a dabbler. I work for City Fresh, clean houses, moonlight as a doula, unschool my children, make art, knit trees, and take a photo every day.  

What’s your favorite vegetable?

Romanesque. It's like broccoli and looks like a fractal. It's amazing. Prepared as an Indian cauliflower dish - as my husband made it the one time we had it in our shares - tastes divine. I hate cauliflower. Love love love romanesco broccoli. 

Got a recipe to share?

In mid-late July, my fridge gets a little overwhelmed. To get through all the eggplant, tomatoes, herbs, and peppers, I chop a little bit each day and add them to eggs with cheese to make a breakfast burrito. I wrap it all up in a tortilla (homemade or Whole Foods' organic homestyle variety) and eat for brunch with a cup of coffee.

My boys when they were wee.

Also, if we get okra, my Favorite Dish in the History of the World is Sookhi Bhindi from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking.

Week 4 Survey Results

Due to a hasty set-up in a rainstorm, there was no donation jar survey for week 3. 

For Week Four, the volunteers struggled to make our question interesting and not-too-controversial (a strong-willed and opinionated volunteer base makes for fascinating though not always polite conversation). Finally we settled on something we all can agree on and the results proved this to be true. 

With a record $25 to $0 in favor, Coventry City Fresh shareholders overwhelmingly concur that City Fresh is better than produce from the grocery store (even if the summer heat turns our broccoli a little yellow sometimes). Well done!