July 5th, 2023
What’s in your share?
Sugar Snap Peas
Snow Peas*
Carrots
Salad Mix*
Zucchini*
Cucumber
Kale
Casual lunch this Sunday. If you feel adventurous and artsy, try making maki rolls yourself. Make sure to buy sushi rice and follow the cooking instructions- it has everything to do with how the rolls hold themselves together. I used a mandoline to julienne the carrots and cucumbers.
*Snow Peas - are entirely edible, minus the “string” on the side. They are great raw and we think the simpler the recipe, the better it showcases the pea’s flavor. Cooking snow peas will diminish the crunch and soften the pod. We love them in simple stir fries, roasted, or cut super thin into 1/4 inch slices and tossed with toasted sesame oil and sesame seeds. We don’t grow a ton of these, so enjoy them while they are here!
STORAGE: Peas like to be kept in moist conditions, but not wet. They will keep in the paper bag we gave you for a couple days in the fridge, but if you plan to keep them for longer, transfer them to a plastic bag or closed container. They also freeze well and are great for stir fries in the off-season.
Tomato madness is about to begin. Everyone who works on the farm has been enjoying the first modest harvest of cherries, but they will start showing up in shares potentially as early as next week.
*Zucchini - is slowly making it’s debut! We are just starting to harvest; the first round of fruit usually has a tapered blossom end, but they taste great. If you know how zucchini grows, you know you’ll be getting your fair share of zucchini this season, so we’ll try to provide some fun recipes to try as we harvest more. Zucchini (and cucumbers) are the only crops we harvest every day because they can overgrow quickly and become undesirable for cooking.
Pepper and cucumber tunnel. With the dry weather, aphid pressure has been intense! There’s not much we can do about aphids; they reproduce rapidly and cling to the underside of leaves which makes shaking them off almost futile. They don’t eat much, but they create a black resin that is sticky and messy, so plants with delicate leaves are the most vulnerable. Luckily these peppers are pretty hardy. We’re now starting to see TONS of ladybugs and their larvae all over the peppers, who eat hundreds of aphids a day. Ladybugs are the best way to get rid of aphids, so we kind of wait around for them to start showing up and do their thing. Here is a video of a ladybug larvae eating aphids. (Not very gross, but if you’re not into that kind of thing, no need to watch.)
STORAGE: Zucchini keeps best in the fridge. We like to dampen a tea towel (or paper towel) and wrap the zucchini, keeping it in the crisper drawer. It should last over a week.
*Salad Mix - isn’t new to any of you, but it’s worth talking about. Lettuce loves cool weather, and it can be difficult to grow in the summer months. We’ve received overwhelming feedback that our salad mix is something folks want weekly, so we will have it as often as possible. We don’t grow “baby greens”- we find harvesting, weeding, and cleaning that style of salad mix is tedious and makes us cranky. Instead, we pick out actual head lettuce varieties and plant them at closer spacing; harvesting above the growth point so that the individual leaves are cut as opposed to the whole head. This also allows each plant to grow back, so we usually cut each bed twice. You may notice that the color of the leaves has changed from the first week. The mix consists of the same varieties, but the climate does change the lettuce. Hot, dry weather often makes the colors less prominent, while cool weather increases their sugar content and makes the colors more vibrant. We eat our salad mix for almost every meal, so we are constantly paying attention to quality and make note of the seasonal changes.
Recipes to try
Snow Peas with Butter and Lemon
Pasta Salad with Feta and Snow Peas
(This is kind of a lengthy video, but its worth watching if you’ve never rolled maki. It’s honestly much simpler than it looks; we do it all the time in under an hour. I don’t use a bamboo mat if the nori is on the outside, so you may be able to get away without one!)