In the share this week:
1 lb green beans
1+ lb mixed slicer tomatoes
1 lb red onions
1 small garlic
2 sweet italian peppers
1 bunch radishes
1 bag salad mix
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
Our family had a very nice trip last week during our CSA break. We went up to Michigan to visit with Steve's brother and family. All of the kids had a blast playing together and we got to meet a nephew born last September. We were even able to have a perfect beach day at a state park on Lake Michigan. The water was warm enough to swim, and we met up with grad school friends that grew up in the area and happened to be in town at the same time. Pure bliss! It's always hard for me to leave the farm in the midst of the growing season, and I never really stop thinking about it while I'm away, but stepping back for a few days is really important for my mental and physical health. We are also incredibly lucky to have such an awesome farm crew that kept everything running while we were gone. This week I'm happy to be back on the farm, working to get lots of fall crops in the ground to fill out the second half of our season. Here's what we're planting this week: radicchio, turnips, radishes, arugula, kale, watermelon radishes, and lettuces. The crops we've put in over the last few weeks (napa cabbage, kohlrabi, beets, carrots, green onions) are establishing and looking good! Fingers crossed for a productive fall.
We have a couple of new items in the share this week: sweet italian peppers and yellow onions. The sweet peppers are a long italian variety that I really love. They have a thinner wall than most bell peppers and are quite tasty. I think they are deliciously sweet, but some folks have said that they occasionally get just a bit of heat from the red ones. You'll have to let me know what you think. The yellow onions are the first of our storage onions that you'll be seeing a good bit of over the second half of the season. This variety dries down really well, stores better than our others and is very tasty. Radishes aren't new this season, but it's been awhile since we've had them in shares. I've never tried planting them in July before, but we had some beds with a failed third cucumber planting and I thought we'd give a quick radish planting a try in the heart of summer. Well, it looks like it was pretty successful! We harvested a lot of beautiful bunches yesterday. I haven't tried any just yet, but I'm guessing they will be decently spicy since their heat level generally corresponds to the temperatures outside. It feels a bit magical to be harvesting radishes in August!
You could make a really wonderful salad this week with many of your share ingredients: salad mix, radishes, sweet peppers, tomatoes, and onions. If you want to do something a little different though, you could roast up your sweet peppers, radishes and green beans (substituted for the peas in the recipe below). I would probably throw in some onion or garlic to the roasting tray too:
Or cook up your peppers with tomatoes, onions and garlic in a peperonata:
It seems like you will probably have no trouble using up these lovely summer veggies this week! Have a good one :)