CSA News for the Week of July 18th

This Week's Vegetable Harvest:

• Green Beans
• Sweet Corn*
• Zucchini/Summer Squash
• Italian or Curly Parsley
• Cucumbers
• Savoy Cabbage
• Walla Walla Onions
• New Potatoes or Green Peppers

*not from our farm. See Notes from the Farm Kitchen for more info.

.

This Week's Fruit Share:

• Apricots
• Blueberries
• Sweet Cherries
• Mix of Yellow & Purple Plums

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

Apricots can be enjoyed fresh, but they also really shine in baked goods such as tarts, coffee cakes and cobblers. Apricots, peaches and plums are all beginning to ripen in abundance now. (Mick says we'll have some peaches starting next week!) Apricots can be stored on the counter if you are planning to eat them soon. They will be nice and soft and golden when ripe. Once they are ripe, they can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Savoy cabbage is much like the more traditional green cabbage only its leaves are crinkled and curly. I think savoy cabbage is one of the most beautiful vegetables we grow. It can be used fresh (as in coleslaw) or cooked. Store in the refrigerator in a plastic bag and it will keep for weeks.

We've included sweet corn from Didier Farm, a neighboring (non-organic) farm, in this week's share. Our own sweet corn crop is coming along nicely despite last week's storm. We expect to begin harvesting in a couple of weeks but thought you might enjoy this little taste of summer in the meantime.
.

 Here's Matt in the sweet corn field. The first corn planting started to tassle earlier this week.

.

.
And here's Nadia trellising tomato plants in one of our hoophouses. Despite the heat there's plenty of work that must be done around the farm. Trellising tomatoes has been one of the main jobs, but we've also been digging potatoes, weeding beets and sweet corn and moving irrigation pipes from one field to the next in order to keep up with the moisture needs of our thirsty crops. It's really dry out there!

One nice thing about the heat is that we've got lots of beautiful tomato fruits in the hoophouses that will soon start start to turn red. There hasn't been much action yet, but every year there seems to be one precocious tomato that ripens well before the rest of the pack. Here is this year's early bird. Isn't it a beautiful thing to behold?!

We'll let it sit on the counter for another day or two before we slice it, sprinkle it with salt and gobble it up. We'll savor it knowing that we might not have another red one for a couple of weeks. I hope you're all as eager as I am!

.

This Week's Recipes
If you've ever been in my kitchen you know that I love cookbooks. While I don't have anything close to a record-breaking collection, I do have several shelves full of them. Somewhere along the line I picked up a book called The Too Hot to Cook Book by Miriam Ungerer. If ever there was a week to pluck that little book off the shelf, this is it! Ms. Ungerer's book was published in 1966, long before the local food movement was born. Proving that she was a food writer slightly ahead of her time, she writes in the forward to her book that she fears "...we are possibly the last generation to know the true flavor of foods that have not been mechanically tampered with" and she exhorts her reader to "savor the fleeting flavors of summer eating to the fullest." Contrary to what you might imagine based on the title of her book, Ungerer doesn't advocate abandoning the use of the stovetop alltogther during the warmest part of the year. In fact, she urges us to dispense with those "tiresome" aspics (Any of you taken a chilled fish aspic to a picnic lately?!) and to spend time in the kitchen (including in front of the stove) preparing simple meals that celebrate summer produce. I think her recipe for cucumber soup, found below, is a recipe that does just that. I hope you enjoy it and some of the other recipes this week.

• Vietnamese Noodle Salad with Crunchy Cabbage
• Chilled Cucumber Soup
• Broiled Zucchini & Potatoes with Parmesan Crust
• Quinoa with Grilled Zucchini, Garbanzo Beans & Cumin
• Apricots, Yogurt & Honey

This week I'm happy to share with you two recipes from Chef Melissa Koehnen of Park Grill and Blue Plate Catering in Chicago. Chef Koehnen is among a group of Blue Plate employees and friends who are participating in our CSA program for the first time this year. Welcome to all of you!

• Sesame Green Beans & Sweet Onions
• Cucumber Yogurt Veggie Dip

Next Week's Harvest (our best guess): green peppers, carrots, peaches, plums, cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, Swiss chard, tomatillos, basil, thyme and more!