The Delightful Retro Greenhouse Signs

Does anyone else love the little signs that tell you how much of each produce to take per share at the greenhouse on Saturday mornings? They give the greenhouse an old-fashioned general store feel while still looking thoroughly modern. And they are easy to understand and hard to misinterpret—at least I think so!

I’ve always liked hand-lettered signs (my dad worked as a sign painter for many years, and I’m impressed by anyone who can letter well). The signs on Saturday morning are a perfect example of clear and concise communication, but with an eye toward the aesthetic too.

Kudos to Michael Frazier, Packout Team Leader, for his lovely lettering as well as for his great team leadership. We lucked out having a graphic designer as this team leader.

And while I’m at it, thanks to everyone who has been working on the packout team, both shifts, for the past month. Things have been running very smoothly. It’s a lot of work getting the produce clean and displayed nicely in time for pickup, and then handling the questions and clean up and other chores involved during pickup. Good job, folks!

Carrot (Or, If You Prefer, Beet) Soup

The Enright CSA blog always appreciates submissions from members or anyone else with something to say or a recipe to share. Today we have a guest blog from Amy Hotchkiss Kerby, with a recipe that sounds really delicious:

I just made the most wonderful carrot soup (never had it in my life, but boy I will now) and I thought I would share. I just made this recipe up, and when I looked at recipes for carrot soup online later, I found that some call for curry powder. You can add that if you like it. I do not. So I did not.

CARROT SOUP

2 tsps. olive oil
½ chopped or grated Vidalia onion
½ tsp. garlic, chopped or grated
¼ tsp. ground coriander
¼ tsp. ground cumin (optional)
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
1 ½ cups Campbell’s low sodium chicken broth
1 ½ cups carrots, raw
1 tsp plain, fat-free Greek yogurt
nutmeg, grated on top to taste

Put the olive oil in a pan and heat. Throw in the onion and the garlic. Cook that for a bit. Add the spices (and this is an estimate, so put in what you think you will like.) Cook for 2 minutes. Put in the broth (or water and a bouillon) and the carrots. Cover and cook on high for about 8-10 minutes or until the carrots are tender. Take everything in the pan and whip it in the food processor. I added the teaspoon of Greek yogurt at this time. Pour or spoon the soup into bowls and garnish with a little Greek yogurt. Grate a little nutmeg on top. Eat.

I was very pleasantly surprised. It was fabulous and according to a recipe calculator on the web, it is only about 115 calories per serving. This made 2 servings.

The next day, I wanted more, but I was out of carrots. So I substituted golden beets, and that’s delicious, too!

Enjoy.
Amy Hotchkiss Kerby

If I Could Save Thyme in a Freezer Bag

With apologies to Jim Croce, sometimes we get a lot of herbs in our CSA share (Basil, you know who we’re talking about). There was parsley last week, and thyme’s time is coming. Drying herbs is a tried-and-true method of preservation, but CSA member Suellyn Shupe recently did a little research to find out you can freeze herbs almost as easily as you can other things we get in abundance (that would be you, Beans).

The process is simple and straightforward (and, of course, available on the Internet):

1. Select fresh and tender herbs to freeze. In most cases, you’ll need to remove the leaves from the stem and discard the stem, although sprigs of herbs such as thyme and dill, which do not have thick stems, can be frozen whole.

2. Wash the herbs with just a little water as possible (you can even brush them off with a towel or vegetable brush rather than using any water), to retain as much of their essential oils and flavor as possible. If you do use water, put the herbs in a salad spinner or pat dry gently with paper towels to remove excess water.

3. Now, “to blanch or not to blanch, that is the question.” To blanch herbs, you simply pour boiling water over them in a strainer, but there isn’t any need to blanch herbs—except for basil. Basil leaves turn black in a very short time if they are not blanched. When you do blanch herbs, remove the excess water as in Step 2 afterwards.

4. Place the herbs in separate freezer bags, labeled with type of herb and dated (don’t mix different types of herbs in one bag). Frozen herbs keep for about six months.

A few other notes: You can also chop up the herbs and place them in ice cube trays. Then fill the trays with water and freeze. Label the trays with a permanent marker to show the type of herb and date frozen.

When using your frozen herbs in your cooking to flavor soups, sauces, and so forth, break off the amount you need. Just drop in the frozen herbs and stir them in as they melt. If you want to use them in a salad, just run a little hot water over them to start the thawing process. You can also freeze mints and stevia in ice cube trays and then use the ice cubes directly in your tea.

A caution: Never freeze herbs that have been treated with pesticides or other chemicals.

And, for more information, go to “How to Preserve Herbs by Freezing,” http://www.ehow.com/how_5202090_preserve-herbs-freezing.html#ixzz1y53lKXwz

Forget the Inner Organs of Beasts and Fowl—Instead, Eat Greens Today

Today is Bloomsday, a literary holiday that celebrates the date on which all the action in James Joyce’s seminal novel Ulysses takes place. As the characters in the book go about their daily business in Dublin, forever moored to June 16, 1904, their paths cross in churchyards and pubs and on the streets of the city. Joyce said one of the reasons he wrote the book, which is full of details about Dublin and its inhabitants, was so that if the town were ever destroyed in a catastrophe, Ulysses could be used as a resource to rebuild the whole city.

Why is it called Ulysses when it’s about a day in Dublin? A lot of people have probably asked that question, and there’s a simple answer: Joyce never did anything simply. The novel is constructed on a framework of the Greek epic poem The Odyssey, which is of course about a long trip home from the Trojan War taken by the hero Ulysses as he returned to his island kingdom of Ithaca, encountering sorceresses, sirens, and storms along the way. Like Ulysses, Leopold Bloom takes a roundabout way home on June 16, and the chapters he wanders through have metaphorical ties to parts of The Odyssey.

The real question you are asking yourself right about now, however, is why the Enright CSA blog is pondering the details of a book that has an unfair reputation for being notoriously difficult to read. Well, that’s simple—it’s a book set in Ireland, and people always celebrate things Irish with the wearin’ o’ the green. It’s just one step farther to celebrate this Bloomsday with the bounty of our gardens—so be sure to participate in the eatin’ o’ the greens today.

And Happy Bloomsday!

Let Us Eat Celtuce

For the last couple of weeks, there has been some celtuce on the share table. You might be asking yourself, what the heck is celtuce? Your Friendly CSA Blog is here to help. Celtuce is a cultivar (cross) of—yes, you guessed it—celery and lettuce. It is also known as celery lettuce or Chinese lettuce; the Chinese themselves call it wosun. They seem to like it a lot, so not surprisingly, one of the most common uses for celtuce is in stir fry. The stems are eaten cooked or raw; the leaves are used in the recipe below, and they can be used for lettuce soup, but they are not generally considered to be of salad quality. (Which is okay, considering how much lettuce we have this week . . .)

Celtuce is a mild-tasting vegetable, so you might want to use some things with a bit more taste in your stir fry to give it some zing. For example, slice and add some of those green onions, radishes, or green garlic along with the celtuce, and add some pan-seared scallops. Serve over cooked pasta. Yum!

Celtuce and Pan-Seared Scallops Stir Fry

Celtuce stem, rinsed, sliced, and blanched*
Celtuce leaves
2 green onions, thinly sliced
Chopped green garlic to taste
1 long radish, thinly sliced
6 scallops, dab dry with paper towels then seasoned with black pepper (and salt if you must)
2 servings of your choice of cooked pasta
2 tablespoons oil

Heat oil in a wok and fry the green onions and green garlic until slightly brown. Remove them from oil in the wok and add them to the blanched celtuce stem; set aside.

Pan sear the scallops on both sides until thoroughly cooked, then remove them from the wok and set aside. With the scallop "juice" remaining in the wok, add the sliced radishes and celtuce leaves to stir fry. When the leaves are cooked (it doesn't take long), toss them and the still somewhat crispy radishes with the celtuce stems, green onions, and garlic. Arrange over cooked pasta, top with scallops, and serve. (Makes two servings.)

*Remove the leaves of the celtuce, then peel the fibrous skin of the stems, and slice thinly. Blanche the sliced stems, drain, and set aside. Rinse the leaves and set aside.

Basic Stir Fry: Another Way to Eat Your Greens

We’ll be getting more greens in this week’s share, and quite a few people have been asking what to do with all these greens. One share member tried the frilly purple mustard mixed with lettuce and sliced radishes for a salad and declared it delicious; mustard is a little bitter, but the buttery lettuces and a sweet vinaigrette offset the bitterness very nicely. You can also add greens to soup, pasta sauces, and even quiches, but a quick and easy stir fry is a particularly nice way to eat your greens.

The following recipe was submitted by Enright CSA member Jeanne Nightingale. She reports it’s delicious, and we plan to try it soon . . . maybe even for supper tonight!


Basic Stir Fried Rice with Greens and Veggies

2 cups cold precooked rice (I prefer basmati or red rice)
2 eggs beaten
2 tsp sesame oil
2 Tbs peanut oil
1 cup onions coarsely chopped
2 cups or more chopped vegetables or meat (fresh greens, corn kernels, diced cucumber, peas, pea pods, chicken, ham, whatever)
1 tsp chili oil and/or soy sauce
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat wok or large frying pan over high heat until it’s hot. Add oil, and when it’s slightly smoking, add onions, salt, and pepper, and stir fry for 2 minutes. Combine eggs with sesame oil. Add to the wok and stir fry another minute. Add the rice and continue to stir fry for 3 minutes. Finally add the greens, vegetable, and/or meat along with the chili oil, and stir fry for 5 more minutes. Turn on to a warm platter, or serve cold as a rice salad.

Reviewing Enright Ridge CSA Saturday Morning Pickup Protocol

We’ve gotten off to a good start with the 2012 season at the Enright Ridge CSA, but we continue to get questions about pickup hours and how to pick up shares late. It seemed like a good idea to clarify how the pickup works a little more.

Pickup hours are from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. There are people here earlier than 10:00 am, but they are very busy cleaning, sorting, counting, and weighing the produce so it is ready to be divided up among share holders each Saturday morning. If you get to the greenhouse a little early, please wait until 10 o’clock—or when the packout crew says it’s okay to start getting your share.

There are always people to assist you if you have questions about the share for the week. We also try to label each basket with the name of the produce and how much each share should take. The list that is published in the weekly newsletter represents our best guess at what will be in the share, since we finish putting that together a day or so before harvest, and things can change.

We ask that everyone finish picking up their shares by 12 noon so the packout team can clean up the greenhouse and head home to enjoy the rest of their Saturday. It takes a lot longer to clean up if people keep wandering in late to gather their shares, and we really have to control access to the greenhouse from 12:00 noon to about 12:30, so that it is just the packout crew in there then, putting away the leftovers, mopping the floors, and cleaning the tables. Therefore we ask that if you think there is any chance you won’t make it to the greenhouse by about 11:45 so that you can have your share packed up by 12 o’clock, please, please, please let packout know by 8:00 pm the evening before (packout@enright-csa.org).

If you do this and then things change and you can get to the greenhouse earlier, that’s fine . . . we have no problem with that at all. If the packout team has already packed up your share, you can just pick it up and be on your way; if they have not, you can collect your share yourself. It’s much easier for us to deal with folks who ask for their share to be packed up and then turn up early than it is when someone doesn’t let us know to pack up their share and then turns up late.

One other thing—if you share a share with someone, please designate one of the shareholders to pick up the entire share, and then you can divide it among yourselves. Or, you are welcome to all come to the greenhouse together on Saturday morning and work out the division there. What we can’t have is several people coming to get their share of a share separately; it’s pretty much impossible to divide four items between three people fairly, for example, so please don’t ask the packout team to play Solomon and cut that poor head of lettuce down the middle.

Finally, if you have any questions or comments on the packout procedures and protocol, please leave a comment at the bottom of this entry. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Kale Chips

Kale (obviously!)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper

Preheat oven to 300.
Wash kale, and tear into small pieces. Toss the kale in the olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread well covered kale onto a cookie sheet in a thin layer (do not overlap the kale) Cook for about 15 minutes, shaking pan once during cooking to make sure the chips don't stick to the cookie sheet. Makes about 4 servings.

Experiment with different spices and herbs!

Understanding Your Greens

In the cooler weeks at the beginning and end of the growing season at Enright Ridge CSA, we see a lot of greens, some of which are strange and unknown to most folks. Mizuna (also called "vitamin greens), yukina, purple mustard greens, beet greens, even kale and collards. How can you tell them apart? And what can you do with them?

Well, here's the secret: greens are greens. If you have a way you like to prepare greens, you can use it for mustard or kale or yukina or most other "cooking greens" (to distinguish them from salad greens). A traditional way to cook greens is to boil them for a while (sometimes quite a while) with some salt pork, and they are good that way, but you can also wash them well and steam them in the water left on them after washing until they are tender--no more than 5 to 7 minutes for most greens--then add a little vinegar and crumbled bacon, and they are pretty darn tasty that way, too.

You can add washed and chopped greens to soup, pasta sauce, or even a quiche. They taste good and they are good for you. If you really want some junk food, though, give kale chips a try. Even if you don't think you like greens, you might just like them this way.

KALE CHIPS
These crispy veggies are a great alternative to chips and taste great with dips or spreads. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Place kale pieces in a bowl and drizzle with vinegar and olive oil. Turn leaves a couple of times to coat, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Arrange leaves in a single layer on large baking sheets. Bake until crisp, about 20 to 35 minutes, tossing halfway through cooking time and turning the heat down if they get brown before they get crisp. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.