In the CSA Share this Week:

• Sweet Corn (the final harvest!)
• Leeks (the first harvest!)
• Sweet Peppers
• Poblano Peppers
• Napa Cabbage
• Tomatoes

On Rotation:

• Zucchini
• Eggplant
  
• Tomatillos
• Lettuce
• Rainbow Chard

We're setting you up with some of the key ingredients for a little Mexican feast this week: sweet corn, mild Poblano chiles to make homemade chile rellenos or stuffed Poblanos, and tomatillos to make a batch of roasted Salsa Verde (which is deeeeeelish on top of both!). The stuffed Poblano recipe is a vegan one, but you can easily sub in a different protein and regular cheese if you prefer to go non-vegan. If you still have your hot peppers from last week in the fridge and an onion on hand (red or Walla Walla will work great), you'll just need to drum up a little cilantro, lime and garlic for your salsa verde. In our household, I make a huge batch of salsa verde every Fall and can it by the quart, so zealous is the fan club around here. It livens up our burrito bowls year-round. 

I've never laid eyes on Poblanos quite so large as the ones we plucked off the plants this week, so they might require an XL slab of cheese when you stuff them for your rellenos. :) Poblanos are the traditional chile used for chile rellenos, picked when they are green and fresh. If you let a Poblano ripen to chocolatey-red and then dry it, it's known as an Ancho chile, which has a sweet, smokey, complex flavor with a little spice. We've always grown them on a smaller scale for the farmstand, but decided to scale up production to supply our CSA this year because they're such a beautiful pepper.

Napa cabbage and leeks are also new this week, and both are harbingers of Fall. If you look up napa cabbage recipes online, mostly you'll get recipes for cooked or stir-fried napa. All good, but for some reason I always lean into raw napa salad recipes like this instead, and love to throw in sliced sweet pepper for extra color and seasonal flair. It's such a light, tender, mild cabbage with just the right amount of mid-rib crunch. Napa is also the foundation of traditional Korean kimchi.

Leeks are one of the hardiest crops we grow, and they get the prize for living the longest life of any annual vegetable on the farm. We seed them in early February in the greenhouse, they get planted outside in mid-April, and they spend all summer slowly sizing up in the field until our first variety is ready for harvest in early September. We'll be pulling our early and mid-season varieties throughout the Fall until we're left with only our big, girthy winter leeks, which can last until April. They withstand every kind of weather - snowstorms and hail beatings - stolid and steadfast. But what do you do with a leek? My simple answer is that you can do anything with a leek that you would do with a cooked onion. The are in the same family of Allia as onions and will impart a similar flavor profile to any dish. If you're new to them, here's a great how-to on cleaning, cutting and cooking leeks.

Enjoy this shift into Fall food, the long evening shadows, and this lovely little rain!