CSA Week 10

In your share week 10:

Purple Viking Potatoes
Onion
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Kale
Parsley
Cherry Tomatoes and/or Tomatoes
Cucumber
Carrots or Green Beans

Full shares only

Green Onion
Romaine LettuceNasturtiums

A little bit lighter share today as we transition out of our biggest summer markets and into fall.  We hit everything pretty hard over the last couple of weeks to take advantage of the peak summer harvests, and I figured with school starting back up and summer ending you all might want a chance to catch up on some of the back log.  And I finally gave you a week off of zucchini!

Lots of snacking veggies this week, including kohlrabi.  This is an often underappreciated vegetable, but I love it, and I find that kids usually do too.  It’s the one that everyone says looks like a space alien, and it tastes like a broccoli stem.  To eat it, peel off the tough skin with a knife, and cut off the bottom.  The rest of the bulb can be sliced up and eaten raw with salt (usually the most popular with kids), cubed into a soup or hash, or roasted in the oven.  It’s crunchy and sweet with a cabbagey flavor.  I like it best raw, our crewmember Joy likes it best cooked.  The leaves are also very sweet and tasty, they can be used like cabbage or kale.

Other easy snacks this week are carrots or green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and broccoli.  This would be a good week to whip up a batch of hummous (or baba ganoush if you still have eggplant from last week), pre cut some veggie spears, and eat them throughout the week.  Parsley is back, and it would be great made into tabbouleh with those cucumbers and tomatoes.

This week’s kale is extra sweet and tender, since it is the first pick off our fall planting.  We have to plant the winter kale earlier than we really need it so it can get established enough to keep producing late into fall, but it means that we always have a little too much this time of year.  On the other hand, it’s always nice to have some fresh new leaves, and these would be great for kale salads.

I think this is a new kind of potato for you, but I’ve kind of lost track!  Today’s potatoes are purple vikings, purple on the outside and white on the inside.  Most of our potatoes are buttery and waxy, but these are more earthy and fruity with a fluffier texture.  They are good for roasting, mashing, or baking.

Full shares have green onions today, which have been in short supply this year.  We seem to have good luck with them about every other year, and sometimes (like last year) we are swimming in them.  This year, I haven’t had more than a dozen bunches to harvest at a time.  I don’t know why this is, but I think it might be a seed issue; either way, this has been an off year.  I just planted a good rotation in the greenhouse for your late season shares, but for now full share members can enjoy these beauties.  I eat the whole bunch, both the green parts and the white parts.  They are good raw (add a few to that tabbouleh) or cooked like a bulb onion.  Sometimes I grill them whole, and that’s tasty too!

Full shares also have a bunch of nasturtiums.  Both the leaves and the flowers are edible and have a lovely peppery sweet flavor.  They are great raw or cooked, if you (or your kids) don’t like the spicy flavor, it mellows when it’s cooked.  Last night we chopped up the leaves and flowers and added them to tacos, they’re also great in salad or noodle dishes, and I’ve been told the leaves make a great soup.  Keep these in a plastic bag in the fridge, the leaves will last a little longer than the flowers.