In the share this week:
1.5 lbs slicer tomatoes
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 bunch rainbow carrots
1 lb red onions
1 green zucchini
1 lb eggplant
1 pepper mix bag
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
It looks like we have some milder weather headed our way later this week! Honestly, I thought it was going to be brutally hot this afternoon, but it ended up not being too bad, with a few clouds in the sky and some nice breezes too. I'm hoping to get some cilantro seeded tomorrow if it doesn't rain in the morning before I can get to it. I always try to find a window of milder temperatures to seed cilantro so that we can have it fresh while the tomatoes are still coming on. I absolutely love fresh salsa with cilantro, but it's tough to have it at the same time as tomatoes because it's a cool weather crop. Maybe it is just meant to have later in the season when you are bringing in the last of the tomatoes, they aren't quite as nice as the early tomatoes and you use them to make a big batch of salsa before they go bad :)
The tomatoes this week are really lovely and are coming on strong! We are excited to be giving you both slicer and cherry tomatoes. You should get a mix of 2-4 different types of slicers - either standard red or some of our heritage varieties (Ginfizz, Cherokee Carbon, and Strawberry Fields are our heritage varieties this year). The cherry tomatoes will either be all red (cherry bomb), all orange (citrine) or a mix of both types! I was thinking this share is just really perfect for making a pot of ratatouille since you are also getting some beautiful eggplant, zucchini, peppers and onions as well. The exact amounts of ingredients can definitely be fudged a bit with a recipe like this. I would honestly just throw in all of your veggies - even the carrots!
Or if you'd rather have the carrots stand alone, you could make something beautiful and delicious like this roasted rainbow carrots side dish:
The rainbow carrots are a lot of fun! The mix we planted includes yellow, white, purple and orange carrots. These varieties are a little more variable than orange carrots, so your bunch may include some 'fun' carrots with legs, or an interesting mix of small and large carrots, but we are doing our best to make sure there is a good mix of color in the bunches. We always weigh the bunches out too, so even if your carrots are smaller, you'll be getting more of them in a bunch. I took the picture above when we were harvesting the orange carrots last week. We use a broadfork with 12 inch tines to loosen the soil so we can pull the carrots without damaging their greens. We really love it when we lift the broadfork and see a row of beautiful carrots like those pictured :)
Hope you all have a great week!