Thankful for a Locavore Thanksgiving

It's the day after Thanksgiving--some call it Black Friday, but I like Buy Nothing Day better. I see in the news that OccupyXmas is also encouraging people to indulge in nonshopping activities today. That sounds good to me; I put away my rain barrel for the season, rode my bike to the library, and I might even rake some leaves.

We had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat last night, and it included a few Enright CSA tomatoes that had turned slowly from green to red, plus some sweet peppers in the salad. And some things that were preserved or kept from pickups earlier in the season made it to the table, too, including pickled squash, which was delicious if I do say so myself; eggplant that had been roasted, the pulp frozen, and then made into baba ganoush; a few sweet potatoes that had kept well in the crisper drawer; and some zucchini I'd shredded and frozen months ago that made its way into a spice cake. I'm interested to know--if anyone is reading the blog still--what Enright-grown items made it to your Thanksgiving dinner. Let me know!

It was great to have so much locally grown food on the table for Thanksgiving dinner--I know I appreciate the food from the farm more than I do anything that comes from the supermarket. I also went down to Findlay Market for the first time in awhile on the day before Thanksgiving (I had only stayed away because of the prodigious amount of food we'd been getting from the farm, so I'll be going back more regularly now in the winter). I was happy to see it was quite busy at Market, and a few merchants I talked to said it had been fairly busy all week in the run up to Thanksgiving. We're lucky to have Findlay Market remain a thriving alternative to big grocery chains, so this winter, while the Enright CSA is on hiatus, I encourage members who might not go to Market too frequently to make a trip down. There are locally produced items all through the winter, even if the fresh stuff does mostly come from far away during the colder months.

So, there are plenty of leftovers, and tonight we'll have another Thanksgiving dinner that can't be beat, as Arlo would say. Happy Thanksgiving!

Autumn, Thanksgiving, and What I Ate

This photo shows what was left after a broiled "salad" of tomatoes and pesto from the Enright CSA, layered with some fresh mozzarella. It looked so pretty when I was finished, I thought I should take a photo of it. I'm pretty sure there's a Kandinsky at the Cleveland Art Museum that looks a lot like it . . .

The salad was adapted from a recipe from fellow CSA member Carolanne Frame; she used fresh basil in her recipe but I used pesto instead. It's easy to do, just slice tomatoes and mozarella and layer with basil or pesto, then broil until the cheese gets bubbly. Then drizzle over a little vinaigrette (or just basalmic vinegar and olive oil), and it's a great salad for a cold winter's day.

Even though it's getting colder, we're still enjoying some fresh produce. I made a great pepper soup today, with the fire toned down just a bit with brown rice and sour cream. We've also had some "porridges" of turnip, potato, squash, and beets, and I'm using some eggplants I roasted and froze (just the pulp) to make baba ganoush for Thanksgiving. I've also used some of those frozen cubes of pesto to make pesto bread, which was very delicious.

And, a grand experiment--there is sauerkraut bubbling away in the root cellar. I have a very vague memory of my grandmother and great aunt having a barrel where sauerkraut fermented down in the basement, so if this works, maybe I'll get a barrel.

We'll have a bit of produce from the CSA for Thanksgiving--a few more of those peppers and a couple of late-turning tomatoes in the salad; some sweet potatoes that still look good made into a casserole; the baba ganoush with eggplant and a little garlic that's still left. Then, as winter settles in, we'll have to go to the freezer and the root cellar for the green beans, pear butter, and pickles. Maybe not all at the same meal . . .

Oh, and here's what the broiled tomato-mozarella caprese salad looked like before it was eaten--before it was broiled, too.

Imago Master Plan Needs Volunteers

Folks, now that the busy part of the season is behind us, you may be wondering what to do with the free time you've gained. I know there are some winter garden and greenhouse tasks, but there are also some opportunities to help at Imago. They have completed their master plan and are organizing some volunteer work days to build and repair trails and other projects. Imago is a great neighbor and partner to the Ecovillage and the CSA--donating land at the end of Terry Street, sharing volunteer resources, opening the Earth Center for our potlucks and meetings and promoting the CSA. I'm personally glad for an opportunity to give back for all that support.

There will be a day, probably after the holidays, when a group works on cleaning, painting, sealing and beautifying the building. I'll be sure to share the date when it gets scheduled. In the meantime, there are some volunteer days coming up, posted on Imago's website:
http://www.imagoearth.org/home/volunteer.html
I hope to see some of you around.

Jennifer Belisle

Enright CSA keeps busy in the off season

There is snow out there this morning. I see it on my neighbor’s roof, and on my back porch rails. Hard to believe it was 72 degrees on Tuesday, isn’t it? Well, it’s November in Cincinnati, so you never know what the weather might bring.

We do know what tomorrow will bring, though. It’s supposed to warm up again, at least into the 60s, and the work continues at the greenhouse. There will be a “Learn and Do” Composting Class on Saturday, November 12 at 10:00 am, and participants are needed to bring nitrogen sources from Enright to the Terry Street composting center. If you still need hours, this is a great way to get some in and learn about composting, too.

If you can’t make it on Saturday, there are also bags of leaves that need to be organized in neat windrows and, if you have leaves in your yard and can bag them up and bring them to the composting site, they would be appreciated, too.

Another CSA project that is heating up right now is our efforts to create a dedicated Enright Ridge CSA website to help communicate better with our members. Our Technology Committee is also meeting at 10:00 am at the greenhouse to discuss getting a basic website up and running. We’ll keep you posted on the progress. If anyone out there knows more about websites and HTML code than us (which would not be hard) and needs some hours, please let us know at farm@pricehill.org. We can use all the help we can get--we can make arrangements for hours worked to apply to this season or next season, whatever works best for you.

As the winter proceeds, you can check the Enright CSA Facebook page or this blog for occasional updates on off-season projects. We’re also currently tabulating the information we collected from the surveys, and we’ll get some of those results posted, too.


On a completely unrelated subject, did anyone see that moon last night? Shinin’ like a bright new dime, it encouraged rustication on the back porch even thought it was darn chilly. I didn't think to get my camera out, though; this photo of the moon is courtesy of my Uncle Charlie. Hope you had a little CSA garlic left to ward off the werewolves.

The Last Packout of 2011

There was a bounty of vegetables and greens at the last Enright CSA packout of the season on Saturday, November 5. In fact, there was so much food in the last distribution that it was hard to even pick up bags laden with cabbage, beets, winter squash, turnips, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and more. Special thanks to folks who worked packout that morning--besides the abundance of harvest to process, it was also quite chilly, so it was a challenge to get everything ready for pickup. Of course, working hard is a great way to warm up on a chilly morning.


And it was worth it to see everyone happily loading up on fresh, locally grown vegetables, including some that will keep for awhile--those root vegetables and winter squash in particular. You can try preserving some of that cabbage as sauerkraut, too. There are only two ingredients in sauerkraut--cabbage and noniodized salt. The only other thing you need is patience, as you first grate the cabbage and then wait for it to ferment, skimming off the scum that forms on top every few days.


Did I say "scum"? Yes, growing and preserving your own food is not always pretty, but I hope the rest of the Enright CSA members agree with me that it is well worth it to get to eat food whose history you know--you know where it was grown, who grew it, how it got to you (not travelling far), and what it has "in" it. It's been a great season, and we're already planning for 2012. Until spring, we can enjoy those frozen green beans, preserved pickles, fermented cabbage, and other food we learned to store when it was in abundance this summer and fall.

The End Is Near

No, we’re not going all apocalyptic on you, it’s just the end of the 2011 growing season at the Enright Ridge Community Supported Agriculture Urban Farm Project. (Good thing we don’t use the whole name all the time.) The Enright CSA greenhouse got a little winterization attention last Saturday, with a good-sized crew patching the plastic on the roof and replacing the glass in the side of the greenhouse along the walkway. It was work that needed to be done before it got much colder and wetter, and as it happened, we had a nice sunny and almost warm day to get the work done. Who knew you needed gymnastic skills to be a farmer, but Charles could have represented the U.S. team well at the Olympics, based on his balance beam skills high inside the greenhouse. Thanks to everybody who came out and helped with the work.

I understand people are keeping busy at home, too, figuring out ways to preserve some of the bountiful harvest we've received the last couple of weeks. I have some chili simmering in the crockpot as we speak that used up the last few red tomatoes (though those green ones are pinking up), a slew of peppers, and—to my chagrin—what were the last two eggplants. I'll miss eggplants a lot. Really!

There’s one more pickup, this Saturday, November 5. We’ll be seeing more cool weather crops, greens and root vegetables, with a few more tomatoes and peppers to make us remember summer, too. We’d also like to remind you one more time to bring back your completed surveys—they really help us plan for next year.

Late Harvest Meals Get Creative

We had root vegetable chowder for dinner the other evening, and it was delicious. I didn’t make it—Mike did—and he made some interesting combinations that I might not have considered, but it definitely worked. It was a chunky, gruelly (and I mean that in the best possible way) concoction of potatoes and onions, with a sweet potato and one stray beet that got overlooked, and not only did it taste great, it was a beautiful golden color, too. Unfortunately, he didn’t write down what he put in it, exactly, but it proves that sometimes you can get great results when you make it up as you go along.

I unearthed something similar I did at the end of the season last year. I liked it so much that I did write down what I’d put in it so I could make it again. I call it a “Late Harvest Frittata,” so if you have an interesting assortment of vegetables in the next week or so, you might give it a try. Or you can try Mike’s method, and give cooking without a net a shot. All of our vegetables taste so good, how can you go wrong, no matter what you do with them.

Late Harvest Frittata

1 or 2 small eggplants, peeled and diced
2 or 3 sweet peppers, seeded and sliced
4 to 6 small tomatoes, green or red or a combination, diced
Any other vegetables or greens that look good (if you use potatoes, you might want to dice and boil them first)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
¼ cup grated asiago cheese
6 large eggs
3-4 Tbsps. olive oil
pinch of crushed red pepper
salt and black pepper to taste
4 strips of bacon, fried and crumbled (optional)

Heat the oil in a large iron (or otherwise ovenproof) skillet over high heat. Sauté the garlic until starts to brown, then add the eggplant and sauté for about 5 minutes, until it is soft and brown. Add the tomatoes, peppers, and any other vegetables and cook for another 3 or 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, beat the eggs and add the asiago cheese, red pepper, and salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to broil, then reduce the heat on the burner under the skillet to medium low and add the egg mixture. Mix the vegetables and the eggs together in the skillet, cover, and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, until the egg just starts to set but the center is still fairly soft. Take off the lid, sprinkle the bacon on top and broil in the oven until it finishes cooking—about 2 minutes. Cool the frittata in the pan for a few minutes, then cut in slices and serve.