Week #17!
In Your Share This Week
- Beets
- Cabbage
- Carrots
- Chard
- Onions
- Winter Squash
Crop Highlights
Baby Beets: Some beets are bulky and some beets are bitty, and this week we’re handing out the little ones. They take longer to weigh, but less time to cook! Best to boil these blessed baby beets and then blend some batter for beet brownies!
Cabbage (Ruby Perfection): These deep purple cabbages are small but very dense. When eaten raw, they are slightly spicy, and the thick leaves add a nice crunch to salads. You can also cook them into stir fries (I like adding red cabbage to curries) or pickle them. A very beautiful and diverse cabbage, I like to think that Ruby Perfection is greatly admired by all of the other cabbages in the cabbage kingdom. Some of the ones we’re distributing this week have little speckles on their leaves, but this is only cosmetic, so use away!
Squash (Delicata): Like watermelons and cucumbers, squash are cucurbits, and there are so many different and delicious varieties of winter squash. Delicata is one of the more well known, and for good reason: it’s sweet, easy to cook, and has a thinner skin than other types of squash, so you can leave it on and gobble it right up. Quarter it, scoop out the seeds, stuff it or don’t stuff it, bake it, and enjoy!
If you want ideas that go beyond beet brownies, or a more specific way to satiate yourself with squash, check out Katherine’s rockin’ recipes:
http://www.cookwithwhatyouhave.com/sauvie-island-organics-recipes-tips/
Around the Farm
Tuesdays are a big restaurant pack-out day at the farm, and Jen (above) and Jesse are always bustling about the packhouse, playing cooler tetris and packing up assortments of our tasty veggies. Our Wednesday deliveries are usually the heftiest ones, with our two drivers (who include Nate, Zack, myself, and Jerry, Jen and Jesse when needed) each making about 14 stops during the high season. Since he took on the position of restaurant account manager three seasons ago, Jesse (below) has done a wonderful job maintaining and developing our relationship with restaurants and stores with whom we have shared values and mutual appreciation.
If you ever see Zack driving around NW and SW Portland on a Wednesday, be sure to wave hello! The two of us are happy to be involved in SIO’s distribution to both restaurant and CSA; meeting people who want to know their farmer and who are cooking and enjoying the food we help grow is gratifying beyond compare. Here’s Zack himself, loading up the truck for Tuesday’s CSA:
