In the CSA Share this Week:

• Head Lettuce
• Marinanta Radicchio
• Sunshine Winter Squash 
• Yellow Potatoes
• Sweet Peppers
• Carrots
• Red Onions
• Purple Mini Daikon Radish
• Curly Parsley

On Rotation:

• Cauliflower

New This Week: Radicchio! Sunshine Squash! Purple Daikon!

• Marinanta Radicchio is the first of our radicchio varieties to come out of the field. Marinanta is highly expressive, and by that I mean she's a shapeshifter. Some of the heads look like tight cabbages; others look like upright torches of light green streaked with pink; and still others form crunchy whorls of twisted leaves. I always think this variety must somehow be a distant cousin to iceberg, given her light green-to-blanched coloration, crispy-crunchy texture, and often squatty stature. You can certainly eat her like iceberg, and depending on whether you want to experience that telltale hint of bitterness that all radicchios have, you can either pre-soak her or not. If you DON'T like bitterness, cut up your head of Marinanta and soak it in cold water for about ten minutes. Then spin dry and use just as you would regular head lettuce. The cold water soak pulls all of those bitter compounds out, leaving you with very tame "winter lettuce." This works for any radicchio variety, so as they come your way during these final few weeks of the season, you can always use that trick to mellow the flavor. You can also cook with radicchio and that will reduce its bitterness. I'm a huge radicchio fan, both from a farming/food production standpoint and as an eater. Radicchio is tough as nails when it comes to weathering the rough weather of late fall and early winter (cold? wet? stormy? snowy? Bring it on, says the radicchio!). A plant that can handle all that, and better yet, THRIVE through all that, earns my deep respect. But my tastebuds and eyeballs love radicchio as well: it has more interesting flavor than lettuce, all the many varieties present a mind-blowing array of colors and shapes and textures, and it dances in a salad bowl with bold dressings, strong cheeses, salty nuts, roasted winter squash, and dried fruits like nothing else.
• Sunshine Squash is a scarlet kabocha. If I had to choose one adjective to describe it, it would be "tropical." Easy to peel, deeply sweet and flavorful, and versatile as all get out, this is one of my top three faves in the winter squash realm. Peel, cube and roast with olive oil and salt. Slice into watermelon-like wedges, veer towards the agrodolce, and never look back. Peel, chunk and pressure cook into delectable squash soup. Make pie. Mash. You can do it all with this one. 
• Purple Mini Daikon is a stunner of a fall radish. All the spice is in the thick rind, which peels easily if you want to keep it mild. The interior is a sweet, crunchy, juicy starburst of lavender surprise. Slice these on your salad and ogle their beauty.

Winter CSA Sign-Ups Begin this Week!

Lots of you have been asking about the Winter CSA. We plan to get sign-ups going this week, so if you are a current CSA member keep an eye out for a direct email from us with details and sign up info. We offer half as many winter shares as summer shares (70 spots versus 140), so we always give our existing summer membership first dibs before opening it up to the wider public. We'll be doing sign-ups through Local Line (the online platform we use for farmstand orders) instead of via our website, so if you haven't registered your CSA Local Line account yet, now's the time! We just sent out a reminder email to our 27 unregistered folks today, so if you get that email you are still not registered with our Local Line platform. :)

Thanks for your year-round support of the farm! We love that these fields can feed so many people 12 months of the year!