June 15 Newletter (first of the summer share)

Welcome to Passage Creek Farm’s Summer CSA

This is the first week of our summer share, and welcome to all of you who are new customers. We hope you enjoy this exercise in seasonal eating! We’re happy to report that the rain has let up somewhat, enough that we were able to plant our basil and okra last week. Those were the last plants that needed to get out of the greenhouse, so now we’re on to weeding and mulching. Theoretically we would have been able to do more of the mulching by now, but the weather hasn’t cooperated. So we’ll be extra busy the next few weeks.
Harvesting will take up more of our time as well, since we are selling three days a week now (Saturday at the Woodstock Rite-Aid and Wednesday and Sunday at Fort Valley Nursery). Our spring crops are flagging, but our summer crops are coming in. We’ve probably reached the end of the snap peas, but we picked some baby squash yesterday and that means we’ll be deluged within two weeks. We’ve picked the scallions pretty heavily, but we’ve got actual onions and leeks on the way. The cucumbers are blooming, and we’ve got small tomatoes on the vine. We should be rolling in veggies pretty soon!

This Week (*full share only): NOTE: Contents may vary throughout the week

Romaine Lettuce
Napa Cabbage
Swiss Chard
Scallions
Purplette Onions*
Kohlrabi*
Baby squash and zucchini*
Herb share: purple basil (tastes very much like the green basil you’re used to)

What to do with it:
The little round zucchinis are called Eight Ball, and they taste just like the regular kind. We like to slice them into rounds and fry them (totally indulgent, but delicious). There are several squash and zucchini recipes on our website, including Todd’s Pasta Primavera and the Zucchini-Okra Frittata (you can omit the okra, since it’s not in your bag yet).
Romaine lettuce is the Caesar salad lettuce, and there’s a great Caesar dressing on our website. Swiss chard is our most favorite green. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s versatile, too. You can put chopped chard into soup, using a simple broth and maybe some white beans or lentils. Cooked greens are great additions to scrambled eggs and omelets as well. We love sautéed chard with onions, garlic, and mushrooms served over grits, quinoa or rice. If we’ve thought ahead enough to pull some kind of meat out of the freezer, we sometimes add sausage or ground turkey.
Kohlrabi is new for a lot of folks. It’s a brassica, meaning it’s related to broccoli and cabbage. You eat the bulb but not the greens, or at least we do. You can use the greens for soup stock, but they’re very strong and flavor and texture, so we usually just compost them. You don’t necessarily have to peel the bulbs, but if you eat it raw (as for crudités), you probably won’t want the skin on. If you’re stir-frying, the skin is fine to leave on. You can also grate the bulb into salad or coleslaw. If you’re making mashed potatoes, boil some kohlrabi to mash into the potatoes. Todd recently put some grated kohlrabi (raw) into a hot-style pasta salad, and it was delicious.
As for scallions and the purplette onions, they’re both mild, so you can put them in anything. Salad dressing, stir-fry, pasta, eggs, pretty much anything but dessert. Enjoy!

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