Our latest CSA vegetable delivery arrived this rainy afternoon. I narrowly escaped getting poured on while picking up these beauties! The box this week contains more summer squash, which we love. In the corner you can also see a little white cipollini onion peaking out. Something new this week is the Holy Basil seen in the second photo in the top row. I often see Thai recipes calling for Holy Basil, but have never actually seen it before. It is quite fragrant, but in a different way than the Italian basil with which I am more familiar. Another completely new veggie to me is the bunch of radish seed pods shown in the third picture on top. Harmony Valley recommends using them in a stir fry, but I may need to find a different use for them as, some of you are aware, my stove top is out of commission. I'm not sure it's possible to stir fry on a grill. Online research suggests adding them to salads, or using them for pickling, which could be interesting. In contrast, the carrots are a very familiar sight. This bunch has it's leafy green tops still attached and it wasn't until last year that I realized that these could be used in the kitchen too. Last year I made carrot top iced tea, based on a suggestion in the HVF newsletter. I'm not sure what their fate will be this time around.
The bottom row starts out with the beautiful, and dreadfully mis-named, amaranth greens. These were the cause of one of the first true food adventures that Nick and I had during our first year as CSA members. See what we've used them for in the past here, here, and here. The rest of the line up should be quite familiar to everybody. We've received more broccoli, some fresh, meaning not dried, garlic and a lovely head of sweetheart cabbage.
In addition to the veggies pictured above, we also received baby bok choi, cucumbers, green and yellow beans (hurray!), and a bag of saute mix to play with over the next two weeks.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to the Farm! We so appreciate all your hard work to bring us such amazing food.
2 comments:
Love hearing about your exotic veggies! I promise to post tomorrow with descriptions of our #5 and #6, which I picked up today.
My big bummer moment was discovering that the wax beans below the top layer were moldy! And not just a little bit moldy, they were completely encased and soggy. Yuck. If I had just shoved them in the drawer and looked at them later, I might have thought that I was at fault, but I was planning on blanching and freezing them since we struggle to eat everything as it is.
I'm trying to decide how I should approach the farm with the issue, if at all? Should I just say it in a "wanted you to know" way? Or a complaint? I feel almost like it was deliberate, because the beans on top were much fresher.
Jaime, I would definitely let your farm know about the mold on your wax beans. If it were me, I'd approach in in a "wanted you to know" way vs. a complaint, as some of the circumstances surrounding the packing and delivery of the boxes are out of the farm's control (such as weather: hot days = fast molding). Also, if I were your farm, I would want to know about this. Ultimately perishable foods are tricky and from time to time there will be spoilage, but the farm should use this information as constructive feedback to determine what, if anything, they can change within their delivery system to minimize these occurrences.
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