I chose this week to do a member diary, because I thought it would be a quiet and calm week after my teaching semester had ended, a week with plenty of time for cooking. But somehow I always think that, and I’m always wrong. This week my new class started, I had meetings and site visits everyday and many evenings.
That means that his diary ends up being what the CSA usually is in my house…something that has to be flexible and quick, something that is sometimes a chore, but often ends up making for the few moments of calm and pleasure in my running-around life. You will also get to watch the fun game that we play: how to use the random food items that we have collected in our house and turn them into something at least edible if not delicious. At this point, this is one of my favorite games, and I am so accustomed to cooking from a CSA share that have a really hard time figuring out what to do otherwise. You just go to a grocery store and look for things you want? Bizarre. After belonging to a CSA for 4 years, I find that rather overwhelming.
MimoMex provides us with an ample supply of lemongrass. At our house, the kitties cant get enough of the stuff so we gladly scoop up the extras left behind. However, we wanted to post a few uses and recipes, hopefully inspiring you to take yours home and use it. Please note, a lot of the recipes call for use of the bulb; MimoMex harvests the leaves which can easily be used in place of the bulb.
Last night was one of the best and most rewarding meals I’ve ever made. Knowing that 50% of my ingredients came from a local farm made me so happy and this farm share has changed my life! I was never much of a cooker so this is a huge step for me!
Southside CSA Veggie Share: red leaf lettuce. kale. celery. zucchini. spanish onions. red onion. leek. rosemary. mint. lemongrass
Week 5: Jecca Barry & Jay Dunn
A bit about my eating habits — I’m a vegetarian with strong vegan tendencies. My exeption to the vegan rule is the eggs from the CSA. The way I see it…if the chickens have names, they’re probably pretty happy…so the eggs are ‘happy eggs’. (more…)
It’s a rainy Sunday here in Williamsburg and Earth Day in McCarren Park has been postponed until next Sunday (May2). Here on the Southside, we were up early but in no mood to venture outside into the wet streets. (Not to mention that our favorite brunches in the hood don’t start until 11am at the earliest…) Well, good thing we too have kitchen skills. Have to say, not much is better than homemade brunch featuring Yo’s secret recipe for the fluffiest pancakes ever topped with Maple Syrup. Usually associated with Vermont or Canada, Maple Syrup is also a product of New York State. However, local maple syrup can be pretty difficult to find in the City. Our local bodega carries organic syrup but its from a factory in Vermont. Thanks to one of our fab members, we have been hooked up with the fine people at Circle C Maple Farm and now there is a plethora of New York Maple Syrup to be found on the Southside.
making maple frosting for carrot bread. pic by ComeUndone @ flickr.com
The Maple Share isn’t really a “share” in the traditional sense of the word. There will not be weekly deliveries of Maple Syrup since the season for Maple Syrup comes once a year (and is usually the first sign of Spring). Our farmers will be delivering the syrup the first week of our 2010 season and members can pick it up at either the first or second distribution. The idea is to buy up your year’s supply of syrup and reap the sweet yumminess of NY maple all year long. Not just for pancakes, Maple Syrup can work as an essential ingredient for many savory meals and sweet treats. Everything from a sugar substitute to a flavoring for a craft beer or vinagrette, Maple Syrup is all over the place.
pic by CircleCMaple @ flickr.com
This mild Spring the weather has been great for us city folk, but it has been pretty lame for the Maple harvesters. Early buds are nice for our streets, but budding trees mean the end of maple season. This year’s end has arrived about 4 to 6 weeks early this year, seriously cutting the harvest short. Here are some good articles about the situation [via our maple Farmers twitter feed]:
This particular quote stuck with me. “Everything has to do with the weather, just like in any other kind of agriculture,” Pete added. “You can’t control the weather, and that’s the whole trick of farming.” I have been a member of a CSA for 8 years now, having my eating habits dictated by the yields of the field. Bouncing from years of early spinach and bountiful tomatoes to ones when the weather didn’t cooperate with my favorite recipes. Our maple farmers have been making syrup for their family for years now. 2010 is the first time that they had sold outside the family, thinking Circle C was ready to produce more and hook up with some NYC CSAs. However, Mother Nature was not quite cooperative this Spring, as far as maple sap is concerned. The first sugaring came in early March with a steady flow of sap. But then it got too warm; Most NE maple syrup producers had a short season. In Central New York it was over by April 9th. Circle C came in with a grand total of 33 gallons of syrup this season. They had 2 more sugaring events on their calendar. According to the newspaper, Maple News, a maple producer in Vermont who typically produces 300 gallons a year, was only able to produce 60 gallons.
pic by CircleCMaple @ flickr.com
For our farmers this translated into a lot of $$ put into preparing for a big season, only to barely harvest a fraction of the expectation. In preparation Joe @ Circle C had hand built a new, larger evaporator for the season. He and his wife, with their snowshoes tied, tapped 725 trees in two feet of snow; 525 more than last year! At the end, they had three more holding tanks waiting to be used, each waiting for 250 gallons of sap.
pic by CircleCMaple @ flickr.com
This year they kept the fire going with all wood and no oil. Unfortunately a pan was burnt during the very last sugaring as the fire got too hot. Despite a crazy sugaring season, Joe & Cathy are already planning for next year and are off to get more supplies and meeting with other producers soon at the 44th annual Vermont Maple Festival.
For those of you who are looking to reduce your carbon footprint, locally harvested and produced Maple syrup is a great way to reduce your consumption of non-local sugarcane based products. Maple can replace sugar in lots of recipes and can make a real impact in your footprint size. Maple syrup could be utilized more in our local diets and menus. Check out some yummy ways to cook with Maple Syrup.
This year for the first time EVER at Southside we are offering the fruitylicious Berry Share. For 13 weeks this summer from July to September Grieg Farm will be picking blackberries, blueberries and red and yellow raspberries first thing in the morning and delivering them to our CSA in the afternoon. That’s right folks – they will be oh but a few hours old.
Last year we got a few deliveries of berries, but whenever they reared their little berry heads, we were all super excited. SO excited in fact that we thought a whole share devote to berries would be just the ticket in 2010.
We will be running a workshop on jam making and canning which will easily swallow half your entire berry share. We will also receive a whole bunch of recipes for pies, sauces, ice creams, cocktails and other berry madness from you lot. Here are a few to get your salivary glands going…
Jellies and Jams
Ahh – the Guardian, lots of proper English recipes. Here’s one for no nonsense Jam making. And for those of you who just down right laugh at the thought of making Jam (aka, Jelly, but we’ll wean you off that term) the NY Times has kindly put together a stress free Raspberry Jam article – it apparently takes 30 mins. Totally worth a go and quite frankly if i can do it, you certainly can.
Cocktails - you can never go wrong with muddling cocktails with a variety of fresh herbs into hard-laced brown sugar and ice cubes. Cocktail Hacker have some Mojito variations with Blueberries – my kind of hackers!
Greig Farm is located on 100 acres of rolling farmland in Red Hook, NY. It is a second generation family farm growing quality fresh fruit and making it directly available to the public for the past 68 years. It has been open to the public for pick your own fruits and vegetables for more than 60 years and this is its second time working with a CSA. They do not use systemic chemicals and chose natural predators over the chemical solution whenever possible.
My kitchen can never get enough jalapenos, however, i heard a lot of gasps when people saw that there were 16 jalapenos in this week’s share. But you shouldn’t be having any fear to step up from using jalapenos as a small part of a dish to being a main component of a meal.
[Need some inspiration, check out this blow by blow blog post from the B Side Blog of her Jalapeno Cocktail Hour which includes jalapeño cornbread, jalapeño poppers, a shrimp and jalapeño salad, jalapeño-cucumber margaritas (with a candied jalapeño garnish), and a shrimp and jalapeño ceviche. Giving me some ideas for the approaching holiday weekend...]
Here are some of my favorite uses; let us know how you use your sixteen peppers…
COCKTAILs:
(it is a holiday weekend after all…)
Wanna have the best Labor Day brunch or bbq EVER? Make sure to infuse some vodka or tequila with jalapenos and make some cocktails with kick.
Get some holiday “favors” together; homemade jams always make Thanksgiving grand and amazing holiday gifts. So many jam combos with fruit and jalapenos out there!
We’ve got a plethora of potatoes and peppers so this recipe seems like a good one to rock out (& clear up some needed kitchen space after csa pick-up! lol) Jalapeno & Potato Casserole by White Trash Cookbook.
If you haven’t tried out the beans at the McCarren Park GreenMarket, you are missing out! They are the goods. Anasazi Beans with Jalapeno Bacon by Cowgirl’s Country Life
SALSAs:
i rarely look beyond my recipe collection for salsa recipes, having been so so so satisfied by my cookbooks (Zarela’s Veracruz and red, hot, & green) but here is some good stuff i dug up from cyber-space…
Yeah plums! How happy are we that this is the time our farmers markets are filled with seasonal stone fruit. Love love love that sweet tart combo of the ripe sugar plums. Die for the mellow flavor of the yellow plums. Can’t wait to fill my belly with every type of NY state plum.
Anyways, one of the joys of the fruit share is FRESH fruit, but it is also one of the biggest challenges. Ripe fruit equals supreme sweetness and equal messiness and it doesn’t wait…when it is ready to be eaten, well, it best be eaten.
Now while we all can’t wait for Naomi to cruise over with one of her amazing plum tarts (hint hint), I overloaded a little on the sweet this past week with a Ginger-Peach-Blackberry Buckle (riffed off this recipe) and am craving a little savory with my plums. Last year on a whim I made a fab little plum sauce and am ready to experiment with some more savory plum recipes.Truth be told, what I really want to do is bust out some plum wine. Plans are fermenting…..hopefully I get the nerve up to try and bottle some up before the season ends.
Below is a bevy of plum inspiration. Please send us your ideas, recipe tips, and plum perfect pictures.
plum sauce (made from local yellow plums)
Savory Plum Recipes
Chakapuli. A traditional Georgian lamb stew made with plums and herbs (parsley, mint, dill & cilantro). Looks like a great sauce that would work well with on tofu too.
By now you have most likely rocked some delish hot tea with your mint. (nothing is much easier than adding hot water, eh?; and not much is more comforting than fresh mint tea after getting drenched in a downpour…). While mint is a lively/natural addition to teas (and chocolate), it also goes really well in more savory dishes like chilled rice, tabbouleh, and couscous salads. In fact, in Greek and Lebanese cuisines, mint has been traditionally used in both sweet and savory dishes.
Storing mint is rather easy, although it wilt quickly if not done “right”. A bunch of mint can be stored in the fridge for about a week. Best results come from keeping it stems down in a glass of water with a plastic bag covering the leaves, changing the water every couple of days.
In celebration of mint, which we should be getting on a regular basis as part of our share, here are some other ways to get your mint on; Let us know your favorite uses/recipes for mint.
SAVORY MINT DISHES
So, with a lot of the savory dishes, meat becomes a main part of the recipe. To that effect, we will be posting lots of meat stuff (no offense veg heads) but i recommend trying them meatless. Lots of the recipes are great fodder vegan/vegetarian adaptations. (and please send us pics and hints for any adaptations you might try)
At a bbq this past week, a csa friend rocked this marinated eggplant dish with mint that was my favorite dish of the night. Naomi fiddled with the recipe, baking rather than frying the eggplant. A divine dish, which will find its way onto my table many times this season.
Savory Mint Pesto: Found this out in the internet world. Sounds yummy and i am a sucker for new types of pestos…
This sounds like an interesting new lasagna flavor combo (from a brit blog, natch); Lemon, Lamb & Mint Lasagna
Lamb, Mint, Feta with Leeks & Scallions. This recipe combines a lot of csa goodies. Served with flatbread sounds like a great dish for a picnic at the beach
Blueberry Mint Cupcakes by Coconut & Lime (another of my go-to blogs for amazing foodie fun). The mint is steeped in the milk in the cupcakes….i heart steeping herbs in milk for flavor fun. (try basil infused whipped cream or marscapone on top of berry pie. super yums)
Mint Gelato by Coconut & Lime. (seriously, if you love cooking, cruise this blog for great ideas and flavor combos) Great way to use mint and those pastured eggs.
Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Scroll down) This recipe uses fresh mint and an extract. You could probably make your own extract too if you’ve got a mint plant in your garden and are harvesting tons
I was never much of a cooker so this is a huge step for me!
