In the CSA Share this Week:
- Curly Parsley
- French Fingerling Potatoes
- Sweet Corn
- Carrots
- Cucumbers
- Red Onion
- Green Beans
- Tomatoes
- Zucchini
- Hot Peppers (Jalapeño & Serrano)
On Rotation:
- Eggplant
Surprise! I'm sending out a newsletter after all this week due to a last minute change of plans. It's now highly likely that there will be NO NEWSLETTER NEXT WEEK, but I'm guessing you all are figuring out what to do with sweet corn and tomatoes without too much help from me :).
As we head into late summer, certain seasonal shifts are underway: shorter days and chilly nights are slowing down growth in the lettuce field, hence the pause in head lettue this week. Cucumber and summer squash yields are down dramatically while eggplant and sweet peppers are revving up. All of our storage onions are out of the field - just in time ahead of this week's rain, making way for our first fall cover crops. The winter squash are fully sized up and turning a bright medley of fall colors on the vine, with harvest just a few weeks away. Fennel is at its best (fat and juicy and mild), the green beans are abundant (much to my crew's chagrin due to countless hours scooching down the bean rows on their knees lately), and our field of fall and winter Brassicas is filling in rapidly in vivid stripes of deep green and blue. We have one toe in Autumn, but the other foot is still firmly planted in summer: blueberries! blackberries! and the best strawberries I've tasted all season coming out of the u-pick patch. This crescendo moment of produce is one worth reveling in.
The arrival of fresh albacore at the dock, combined with this week's CSA share, has you perfectly poised to make Nicoise Salad: potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, red onion, fresh tuna.....
Or try this simple recipe for French Potato Salad using your pretty rose-hued French Fingerlings, parsley, red onions and green beans.
I love it when I look at my plate and marvel aloud: all this came from our backyard! Always with that one caveat, "except the olive oil" :). But thanks to climate change we might eventually be harvesting our own Valley Flora olives - not a bad silver lining!
