Share 15 - week of Sept 9th
In the share this week:
1.2 lb red slicer tomatoes
1 bunch cilantro
1 small garlic
1 butternut squash
1 bunch carrots
1 green bell pepper
2 jalapeno peppers
1 lb mixed onions
1 bag or bunch greens
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
Finally we have tomatoes and cilantro together! We are so pleased with this planting of cilantro. I know it's a lot to be giving it for a third week in a row, but it is just so perfect and wonderful. We use a lot of fresh cilantro in our house right now, but if you find that you aren't using it up, you can always freeze some. Just blend it into a paste with olive oil, pack into a Ziploc bag and freeze flat. You can then break off a chunk when you need it for salsas, soups, or to make a killer paste with some garlic for fish. Those would make amazing fish tacos in fact.
We did give you everything you need to make a nice pico de gallo this week, so maybe you'll use a good bit of your cilantro in this!
We are onto a new planting of carrots and these are looking quite nice so we are bunching them with their greens this week. After this week, it will be awhile before we have carrots again. Our four beds of fall carrots are looking quite nice and we are going through to give them a second weeding this week so they can really start to take off. The sun and warmer temperatures this week are coming at a good time to help some of the summer crops continue to ripen up and the fall crops to put on good growth. We are just planting the very last lettuces for the season this week. These will mature in about 5-6 weeks and give us salad mix for the end of the season. We also seeded our overwintering onions last week - the last greenhouse seeding of the year. We had planned to do 16 flats (each 72 cells), but ended up with 20 total since we had more seed left over. I've been so impressed by the overwintered onions and how well they cure and store compared to our spring planted ones. We may end up just going with the majority overwintered storage onions, along with some fresh sweet and long red onions next year. Our spring planted crop of yellow onions was fairly disappointing this year, I think mostly due to the wet conditions early this summer.
OOh, I just remembered another very delicious recipe you could use your cilantro! It was one of our favorite dishes at a local brew pub up in Madison, WI called 'The Great Dane'. Definitely go check them out if you are ever up that way. Anyway, they had this Inner Warmth Peanut Stew on the menu that is fabulous. I've put the recipe up on the blog here: https://www.rainsandsun.com/single-post/2015/11/23/inner-warmth-peanut-stew. The squash you are getting in your share is around 2 lbs so it should work out pretty well with this recipe, but you could go a little lighter on some of the ingredients. Don't worry about it being too precise, you can really fudge this recipe.
All right, that's all for now! Hope you have a great week :)