Fall Share Week 6 (I think)

Apologies for not getting a newsletter in your bags today. My (Katherine's) computer was having issues and I couldn't write one. It seems to have been some sort of poltergeist rather than standard technical difficulties. Anyway, all is fixed now, so I thought I'd jump straight to the blog to tell you about this week's bag.

What's in it (*Full share only):

Kale
Kohlrabi
Salad mix (with baby lettuce, spinach, tat soi and arugula)
Hakurei turnips
Kabocha squash
Carmen sweet peppers
*Beets (baby size)
*Bok choi

What to do with it:

Most of these things are familiar to you all by now. The beets are new, and they seem to be a specific variety for tall greens, which is nice if you like beet greens, but you might not know how to use them. Since they are in the same family as spinach and chard, you can pretty much treat them the same way - steaming, stir-frying, gently sauteing. We've put spinach and chard on pizza before with excellent results. The beets themselves can be roasted or boiled, but roasting seems to allow for optimum sweetness while boiling lets some of the good stuff get away (in our humble opinions). You can peel beets before roasting, but you don't have to. Just drizzle some olive oil on, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or so. Use the fork test (piercing easily) to be sure.

The Carmen sweet peppers are still rolling in, red as can be. If you can't use them immediately, slice them and freeze them (no blanching required). We like them in everything lately, including salads and stir-fries and dirty rice. Since they're quite sweet, you can just eat them as a snack as well. Try it with your kids and see what they think. Elliot is rather a fan.

If you're into cole slaw, try a recipe substituting grated kohlrabi and turnips for the cabbage. If you have carrots handy, grate them, too. We are currently very enamored with the flavor of raw kohlrabi, though we've also had great success mashing it with potatoes and stir-frying it. It retains a nice crunch when cooked.

And, as it turns out (if you were paying attention last week), kale does make a nice frittata. Ours turned out to be a high ratio of greens (like almost a whole bunch of kale that we had to use) to about 6 eggs, and we didn't use any cheese, though you certainly could. Imagine what you could create with a little Swiss or Gorgonzola. Yummy. Anyway, we were able to get breakfast and lunch out of a one-pan meal, which is always a bonus.

I stretched some lentil soup last week by putting some mashed kabocha squash in it. It sounds crazy, but it was really good. Even though the flesh is sweet, it's okay to pair it with something savory. Experiment for yourselves and see what you think.

Hope to be back to paper next week. Enjoy!