Badger Rock Farm Veggie Share Newsletter - Week #7

YOUR WEEKLY FARM UPDATE:

Back when it was raining endlessly, I wondered if there would come a time when the faucet turned off, and the oven turned on. That is indeed what has happened, and it has become interesting keeping everything watered. I've even caught myself hoping for rain...something I couldn't have imagined doing just a few short weeks ago. Funny how things like that work. The great news is that, as long as they stay watered (which, so far, they have), the plants are just loving this warm weather, and they are doing a lot of growing. I am very happy to be able to offer you something besides just leafy greens this week. Enjoy!

WHAT'S IN YOUR BOX:

Familiar Items: Head Lettuce and Salad Mix.

What's New This Week:

Kale – Kale is one of my favorite leafy greens, and it has a reputation for being very good-for-you too. You can steam it by slicing up the leaves and stems, placing them in your steam basket, and steaming for approx 5 minutes (until the leaves take on a bright green hue, you don't want to overcook them). Or, you can saute it. Here is a recipe recommended by the Food Network's Bobby Flay:

Sauteed Kale

¾ pound young kale, stems & leaves coarsely chopped

1 ½ tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, finely sliced

¼ cup vegetable stock or water

salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and cook until soft, but not colored. Raise heat to high, add the stock and kale and toss to combine. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Remove cover and continue to cook, stirring until all the liquid has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add vinegar. Serves 2.

Snap Peas – I can hardly describe how excited I was to glance over at the pea vines (that have been planted since March) and see that they had become, seemingly overnight, loaded with peas! Finally! My favorite way to eat them is raw, one right after the other :-). Steaming them is my second favorite way to prepare them. Simply place the peas in your steam basket, place over boiling water and steam until they are just tender (but still with a bit of crunch...approx 1 – 1 ½ minutes).

Carrots – The carrots have loved this warm weather, and have done a lot of growing over the past week or so. I am happy to finally be able to include them in your veggie shares this week!

1 bunch carrots, scrubbed and grated
1/2 bunch dill, chopped
3-8 spring onions, chopped
yogurt on it's own or mixed with a bit of sour cream
splash of vinegar
salt & pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients. You can get creative if you like by adding a bit of mustard, a few raisins, a few nuts or some other grated vegetables. Also, you can spice it up by adding vinaigrette or a flavored olive oil instead of the yogurt.

Dill – I know you've gotten a lot of dill in your shares already. This is just enough to use with the carrot recipe, if you'd like.

Badger Rock Farm Veggie Share Newsletter - Week #6

YOUR WEEKLY FARM UPDATE:

What a switch from working hard to keep things warm, to working hard to keep them watered and alive! I will be very happy when I get all of my drip-hoses laid out, so that I can take advantage of our gravity feed irrigation system. Mother Nature had been helping me out by showering now and again, but this last week turned off the water and turned on the cooker. Many of the veggies like that a lot (as long as I keep them watered). The tomato plants are growing fast, as are the squash and many others. The lettuce's opinion of high heat is not nearly as friendly, but it will just keep getting reseeded so that we have a (hopefully) constant supply. I hope that each of you are enjoying this summer weather, and doing a better job at avoiding sunburn than I did this week :-D!


What's In Your Box


Salad Mix -- This week, the salad mix contains a variety of lettuces, beet greens, chard and sorrel. Herbs are mint, savory, thyme, chervil, cilantro and dill. The edible flowers include Johnny-Jump-Ups, Sweet William dianthus, and some brassica and chervil blooms. 


Swiss Chard -- Here is a recipe for this week's helping of chard:


2 tbps olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch chard, stalks discarded (or, set aside for use in another recipe) with the leaves cut into wide ribbons
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper to taste


Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Stir in the garlic and cook until it is tender and aromatic (approx 2 minutes). Add the chard and balsamic vinegar; cook and stir until the chard is wilted and tender (approx 5 minutes). Season with salt & pepper and serve.


Sorrel -- After being harvested heavily for the first veggie shares, the sorrel has had time to recover and is once again turning out delicious, lemony-flavored leaves. Here is a recipe for a sorrel cream sauce that is good with chicken fish or pork:


Sorrel Cream Sauce

1/2 pound of sorrel

2 cup of light cream

1 teaspoon of butter

4 egg yolks

5 cups of chicken broth

Saute sorrel in the butter until wilted. Set it aside. Heat the chicken broth to a boil and lightly beat together the egg yolks and cream. Remove the broth from the heat and add the egg mixture, stirring with a whisk. Cook until slightly thickened, stirring constantly, either over very low heat or over hot water. Definitely do not allow mixture to boil! Remove the mixture from the heat, add the sorrel and set in cracked ice to cool, stirring often. Salt and pepper to taste and refrigerate. 

Head Lettuce – A fan of cooler weather, we'll see what the lettuce heads think of 94 degrees. For now, though, they are still doing well and looking good!

Sage -- An herb whose aroma always reminds me of Thanksgiving (and stuffing!!), sage brings a delicious flavor to summertime recipes as well. You can also dry sage, to preserve it for later use. 

Sage Biscuits

2 cups self-rising flour

1 1/2 tsp fresh, diced sage

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 cup milk (or buttermilk)

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan. Whisk sage into the flour. Using a large dinner fork, stir in the mayonnaise and milk until combined. Do not overmix. Divide batter evenly into muffin cups and bake in the preheated oven for 12 - 15 min. until golden. Note: Do not mix up the biscuits too far in advance in order to retain the leavening powder. This batter can also work great as a topping for pot pies (in place of the rolled crust).

Dill -- Dill is doing its best to stage a complete takeover of my garden! It enjoys seeding itself wherever it sees fit. I can't complain. Few things remind me of summer as does dill's unique aroma. Bees also love dill's flowers, which is why dill seed is frequently included with the "beneficial insect mixes" that I've ordered before. 

1 lb Salad Macaroni

6 whole eggs 

2 cups mayonnaise 

1 tbsp mustard 

1 bunch fresh dill (aprrox 0.75 oz) 

Salt & Pepper to taste

Boil pasta. Drain and rinse it with cold water. Put pasta in a large serving bowl. Boil eggs by covering them with water in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the water comes to a boil then lower heat to a simmer for about 10-12 minutes. Remove the eggs from the water with a spoon and run cold water over them to cool. Then peel eggs and cut into pieces. Add to pasta.

Mix mayonnaise, mustard and dill. Mix into the pasta and egg mixture. Refrigerate until chilled.

Hyssop – Hyssop is an ancient herb in the mint family that is mentioned in numerous places within the Bible. It can be used in soups, stews, or chopped into a salad to give it a refreshing flavor. Its flowers are also a favorite of honeybees, and they function to attract them to the garden. As a rule, it is good to remember that hyssop is strongly flavored. When in doubt, be sparing on the volume of it that you use. Taste your recipe frequently to avoid overpowering it with hyssop's characteristic flavor. Hyssop leaves can be preserved by drying them.

Glazed Carrots with Hyssop

Approx 1 lb carrots, scraped and thinly sliced 

1 cup chicken stock 

1 tbsp honey 

1 tbsp unsalted butter 

1 tbsp finely chopped fresh hyssop leaves 

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

In a saucepan, combine the carrots, stock, honey, butter, salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cover and cook over low heat until the carrots are tender and the liquid is a syrupy glaze (approx 20 min or so). Be careful that it does not burn. Toss the carrots with hyssop and serve immediately.

 

Badger Rock Farm Veggie Share Newsletter - Week #5

YOUR WEEKLY FARM UPDATE:

What a beautiful-weather week it has been! Perfect for ushering in the longest day of the year and the summer season. The plants in the garden are soaking up the sunshine and growing fast. These lovely days have allowed for some real catching up from the flood's delays and I am happy to report that all of the major crops have been transplanted out into the ground. As they put on size, it remains a time of enjoying spring's bounty (which includes largely greens and herbs), while looking ahead to summer's abundance.

WHAT'S IN YOUR BOX:

Salad Mix with Edible Johnny Jump-Up & Sweet William Flowers – In this week's salad mix, there are several types of lettuce, spinach, chard, beet greens and sorrel. The herbs included are dill, cilantro, mint, thyme and chervil. The flowers are Johnny Jump-Ups and Sweet Williams. I hope that you enjoy it!

Swiss Chard – A close relative of the beet, chard is one of my favorite leafy vegetables that is able to be harvested all summer-long (as long as I win the competition for it with the grasshoppers....). You can enjoy it raw, in a salad (there are some leaves in your salad mix this week), or cooked. When cooking, take care not to keep it on the heat for too long, as it can overcook easily (been there, done that :-). Here is a recipe to try:

Sauteed Chard with Parmesan

2 tbsp butter 2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp minced garlic

1/2 small red onion, diced

1 bunch Swiss chard

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, or to taste

2 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese

salt to taste (optional)

Cut the stems and center ribs out of the chard and chop them. Separately chop the leaves. Melt the butter in a skillet with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and onion and cook them for approx 30 seconds, or until fragrant. Add the chard stems and the white wine. Simmer until the stems begin to soften (approx 5 min). Stir in the chard leaves, and cook until just wilted. Finally, stir in lemon juice and Parmesan cheese; season to taste with salt.

Green Garlic – This is the green garlic's last hurrah for this season. I hope that you enjoy it. Still to come later this season are mature garlic heads. Here is a new idea for how to use your green garlic:

Green Garlic Vinaigrette

3 oz. green garlic, trimmed & chopped

3 tbsp chopped cilantro 

3 tbsp white wine vinegar 

2 tbsp water 

½ cup oil Salt & pepper to taste

Blend the green garlic and cilantro first, then add the vinegar and water and blend again. With the blender still running, slowly add the oil until the mixture is well blended. Enjoy on salad, over a meat dish, or over anything else that sounds good to you!

Head Lettuce – The veggie of the season for our cool, overcast spring, head lettuce is still going strong. Enjoy it cut into a salad, on a sandwich, or even wilted:

Wilted Lettuce 

5 slices of bacon 

2 tbsp red wine vinegar 

1 tbsp lemon juice 

1 tsp white sugar 

1/2 tsp black pepper 

1 head leaf lettuce - rinsed, dried and torn into bite-size pieces 

6 green onions, sliced thin. Include tops (you can substitute green garlic here, for a more garlicy, rather than oniony flavor)

Cook bacon over medium heat. Remove it from the skillet, crumble and set aside. To the bacon drippings remaining in the skillet, add the vinegar, sugar, lemon juice and the black pepper. Stir mixture until heated through. In a large bowl, combine the lettuce and green onions (or green garlic!). Add the warm bacon dripping 'dressing' and toss evenly to coat the lettuce. Sprinkle this dish with bacon and then serve.

Thyme – A truly versatile herb, you can sprinkle thyme on many dishes to give them a bit of extra zing. You can add a bit to your vinaigrette, sprinkle it over potatoes, add it to soup stocks, or meat marinades, place it under the skin of a chicken before roasting, add it to your scrambled eggs, dry it (after its dry, crumble the leaves from the stems), or even freeze it for later use.

Spinach – The first round of spinach would like to offer us one more helping before giving way to summer's heat. There will be more spinach to come, but this is it from the first seeding. That must mean that it's finally hot outside, right :-D?

Spinach & Strawberries

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 ½ tsp poppy seeds

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup olive oil 

1/8 cup distilled white vinegar

1/8 tsp paprika 

1/8 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 ½ tsp minced onion 

2 cups fresh spinach, torn into bite-size pieces 

½ quart strawberries, sliced 

1/8 cup slivered almonds

In a bowl, whisk together the sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sugar, olive oil, vinegar, paprika, Worcestershire sauce and onion. Chill for one hour. In another bowl, combine the spinach, strawberries and almonds. Pour the dressing over the salad, and toss. Refrigerate 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

Cilantro – This sowing of cilantro has decided that it is too hot for its taste and it is trying very hard to bolt. I wanted to include some in this week's share though, so you could use it in the Green Garlic Vinaigrette recipe, if you wanted to.