Several Things

A message from Nancy Sullivan:

Several things




We had a very generous donation of canning jars and related items to the CSA, just in time to fire up our stoves and get busy! But- you have to share the bounty later on- kind of a "pay it forward" effort.



Here's the idea: any member can take a case of a dozen jars; mix and match if you want, half pint, half quart, etc.



After you use them to can salsa, spaghetti sauce, jam, whatever, label and donate one jar back to the CSA. At the final fall celebratory dinner we will have a raffle with these donated items as the centerpiece! All proceeds will go back to the CSA, while we get to share in your culinary genius!



We'll have a box set aside for the final products at pack out each week.





Second item



Basil coming out of our ears- what to do with it? Make pesto and freeze it, of course. Many people already know this trick, but it is easy to make it and then freeze it in ice trays. When frozen, pop out the green cubes and put them in a freezer bag*. Easy to take out just one or two as needed later in the season. It seems to keep well for many months.



*Note -always use thick freezer bags, not thin sealable sandwich bags. Things definitely get less freezer burn, etc., in the heavy duty bags.



Good basic pesto recipe from "Simply Recipes" website



Ingredients



* 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed

* 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Romano cheese

* 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

* 1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts

* 3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced

* Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste



* Special equipment needed: A food processor



Method



1 Combine the basil in with the pine nuts, pulse a few times in a food processor. (If you are using walnuts instead of pine nuts and they are not already chopped, pulse them a few times first, before adding the basil.) Add the garlic, pulse a few times more.



2 Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream while the food processor is on. Stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula. Add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended. Add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.



Makes 1 cup.





Cucumbers- One of my favorite really simple summer recipes...



peel, thinly slice one or two cukes



mix together:

3 tablespoons cider vinegar, equal amt. water

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 tablespoon salt, some freshly ground black pepper

1 small onion, sliced into thin rings

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill (if you like dill)



add cukes, marinate in fridge. Add ice cubes to the bowl before serving to keep the slices super crunchy; use slotted spoon to drain and serve.

Zucchini and Okra, Oh my!

Microwave Zucchini  Casserole 

4 cups zucchini cut in chunks

Medium union, thinly sliced

4 eggs, beaten

1½ cups shredded cheddar cheese.

Small bell pepper, red or green, seeded and chopped

½ teaspoon salt

Dash pepper 

Place zucchini and onion in 8” pie plate. Cover with plastic wrap, turning one edge back slightly to vent. Microwave on high 10 minutes. 

In large bowl, mix together eggs, cheese, peppers, salt, and pepper. Add zucchini and onions. Grease pie plate in which veggies were cooked. Pour mixture into dish, cover with plastic wrap. Microwave 8 to 10 minutes; do not vent the plastic this time. If you don’t have a rotating tray in your microwave, rotate plate ½ turn after 6 minutes. 

This turns out more like a pizza than an actual casserole or even a quiche—you can cut and pick up a wedge to eat it. Delicious!

Smothered Okra 

4 quarts fresh sliced okra

3 large yellow onions, chopped

2 large green peppers, chopped

2 16 oz cans whole tomatoes

      (or substitute an equal amount of skinned and cored fresh tomatoes)

1 cup vegetable oil

Salt and cayenne pepper to taste

¾ cup water or chicken broth 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. 

In a large roasting pot or ovenproof dish, alternately layer the okra, onions, bell peppers, crushed tomatoes and juice, sprinkling salt and cayenne over each layer, until all the vegetables are in the pot. Pour the oil and water or broth over all, cover the pot, and place it in the oven. Cook for 30 minutes, stir, and turn the oven temperature down to 350 degrees. Cover the pot again and continue to cook for 2 to 2 ½ more hours, stirring the pot every one half hour to hour. 

It makes a lot, but you can halve the recipe, or if you cool the leftovers completely, they freeze well.

Making Salsa with Maddie

This week's Children's Garden included making fresh salsa from the veggies grown in our garden.   Maddie walks us through the steps involved:

Checking out the different veggies that will be in the salsa!

Garlic fresh from the garden!

Maddie peels the garlic to get it ready for the salsa.

Tomatillos are a little different from tomatoes.  David taught us that some are sweet and some are sour.

Mom helps with the tough cutting.

All of the fantastic, fresh veggies are cut and ready to go.

We put the veggies into the processor.

Start with the all veggies but the tomatoes; we'll add them last.

Now it's time for the tomatoes!

YUM!

We were also treated to a song by David.  Look forward to hearing that in the coming days!

Great Publicity!

I found this great little article in Cincinnati Magazine this month!  Thanks, Nancy Sullivan, for giving some great quotes.

Benefit Concert

Here are all of the pictures that Julie Hotchkiss shared with me from the benefit concert.  I wasn't able to get all of them into the newsletter last week, so here they are for everyone to see!

Oil Spill Confessions

Share member Amy Stross contributed this article for the newsletter. If you would like to contribute, email me at eandriacco@gmail.com. You can post the text in the body of the email or share from google documents!

Oil Spill Confessions
A Tale of My Owning Up

by Amy Stross

“It was only a matter of time before those evil people committed a really heinous act on our sacred Earth,” I told myself about those executives at BP, while feeling powerless to do anything about the oil spill tragedy. The thought of an ecosystem lost - made up of billions of innocent marine and aviary lives of which we had come to take for granted, and whose impacts on planetary homeostasis we haven’t yet fathomed - was unconscionable.

I felt a heavy sadness that alternated with anger as I searched for someone to blame. How could this be? I wondered. After a long few weeks of depression oscillating with anger, I came to an ironic realization: I was the culprit; I had finally gotten caught red-handed. Eventually, an addict must admit she has a problem: “My name is Amy, and I’m an oil-aholic.” I try to live intentionally - working from home, combining car trips, growing a lot of my food, cooking much of my food from scratch, and heck, getting fresh veggies from the CSA that were produced less than 4 miles from my house, among other things - what more could I possibly do to reduce my oil reliance and consumption that would fit into my budget and time constraints?

I realized the only way I was going to get myself out of this funk of self-blame and despair was to do something. One Saturday morning, as I was picking up my share at the greenhouse, it hit me: Look at all these petroleum-guilty plastic bags I’m scooping up this produce in, as if they’re the only option to keep my veggies moist and my cute canvas bags dry!

A few years ago I had heard of cloth bags for produce and began using them. I found small cloth bags around the house that I had collected from various things - a bed sheet set came in one, shoes came in a few others, etc. They’re pretty easy to use - moisten the bags with water, fill with produce, and place in the refrigerator crisper drawer. Every 3 days or so re-moisten the bags. Somewhere along the line I had gotten lazy and had gone back to plastic bags. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a few plastic bags in the rotation, and I’ll continue using them until they wear out, but I’m back on track with cloth bags. If you’re interested in purchasing these types of bags, be sure to find ones with sustainably-produced cloth such as hemp or linen, or organic cotton, since conventional cotton farming is notorious for its pesticide and water consumption, and you’ll need the extra large variety to fit in all of the CSA goodies. If you’re crafty, try making some of your own out of old rags or clothes. They’ll get dirty and it will seem odd at first. They may even develop some tomato battle-wound stains, but guess what? They wash and reuse just the same.

So by now you might be saying ‘so your answer to the oil spill is to use cute little cloth produce bags instead of plastic?’ How simplistic and naive! And yet, every action, every decision has the power to set a whole bunch of things in motion that we might not have anticipated. Just look at the thousands of actions and decisions that led us to being an oil-dependent nation, to unsafe offshore drilling practices, and finally, to that fateful day of the spill.

Recently, my husband, Vince, and I splurged and bought ourselves bike helmets and took an inaugural road-ride over to the greenhouse for a share pick-up. It was pretty exhausting on my rusty old rickety bike, but I felt quite empowered, and quite motivated to learn how to give it a tune-up. And much to my surprise, I felt safe and that the drivers gave me adequate space.

I’d like my everyday decisions to reflect my values, and I’m noticing more and more small ways I can work toward my own oil independence. Even if the oil spill has been stopped, it won’t be the last of unnecessary acts of violence and it seems like we’re only buying time until this finite resource runs out anyway.

Have you experienced feelings of despair regarding the oil spill? If so, have you found ways to cope or reduce your dependence? Please write me at amy [at] strosspub [dot] com with your thoughts and ideas.

Pictures from around the greenhouse!

In addition to our wonderful veggies, there are some beautiful flowers growing around the greenhouse. Beautifying Price Hill one flower at a time!!

What wonderful things are you making with your tomatoes? Don't forget that tomatoes are acidic, which means you can safely can them using a pot of boiling water as opposed to a pressure canner!

With a variety of peppers on the way, I know I am excited about making salsas. What about you? What's your favorite use of peppers?

I'm not a huge fan of eggplant, but I wanted to use all the ones we have been getting through the CSA. I did some reading online and created the following recipe for Eggplant Burgers:

2 large eggplant

1 onion

1 green pepper

2 carrots

other various fresh veggies that you have on hand

1/2 a cup of egg-replacement or 2 eggs

bread crumbs, corn meal, or a combination of the two

Start by cooking the eggplant. I roasted it at 350, but you can cut it into squares and boil or steam it. You can cook it any way that you would like, the important thing is that it is cooked all the way through and soft.

Take the insides of the eggplant (the cubes if you cooked it that way or, if you roasted it, scoop the cooked "meat" out of the skin) and throw them in your food processor and blend until smooth. Add your fresh veggies and pulse a few times until your veggies are chopped small and mixed well with the eggplant. Toss the eggplant veggie mixture in a bowl and mix in the eggs/egg replacement and stir until well-mixed. Add your bread crumbs until you reach the consistency that you desire. Shape the mixture into patties and pan fry or bake! Enjoy!

These burgers freeze very well!

CSA Newsletter

In an attempt to save paper and make the newsletter easier to read online, it is now a blog. Let me know what you think about it. There will be an entry at least every Saturday, but more likely there will be several throughout the week. Anyone is more than welcome to contribute, just email me at eandriacco@gmail.com and I'll post it here!