Share 4 - week of June 9th
In the share this week:
1 bunch beets
1 head cabbage
1 head napa cabbage
2 kohlrabi bulbs
1 bunch green onions
2 little gem lettuces
1 bag sugar snap peas
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
We finished up an exciting project this morning while a few raindrops fell. We've been wanting to have a better system for drying all the onions we grow and this winter I had Sarah take the lead on designing a rack for this purpose. She came up with an awesome design that used lots of materials we already had around the farm (old pallets and other small lengths of wood we had left over from our house construction). We've made a bunch of individual frames covered with old deer fence and these will fit into the rack for drying. The frames will greatly cut down on the number of touches we have on the onions and we're hoping the rack design will give everything plenty of airflow for good curing. Once the onions are cured, it will be easy to move those frames to a shady area to process them for storage. We're excited to see how it all works in practice! I will definitely share some pictures and updates once we start harvesting onions in earnest. Right now we have the overwintered yellow onions out of the field and curing. It will be another month or so before the spring planted ones are ready to dry. Fingers crossed that the sweet onions start sizing up some more so we can start to give fresh bunches of those next week!
The share this week is cabbage heavy! Our spring brassica plantings have done really well and we have another week of lovely spring green cabbage for you, along with some napa cabbage as well. The regular cabbage will keep in your fridge for several weeks to a month, if you want to prioritize using other veggies first :) The napa cabbage is a little more perishable. If you haven't used this vegetable before, it's really versatile and delicious! The leaves are softer and perfect for using chopped up in salads. The flavor is rather mild, so it really goes well in lots of dishes.
If you'd like to try it in a salad, it would pair well with some roasted beets in something like this:
Both types of cabbage are really nice in a stir-fry and those sugar snaps are just perfect for this sort of dish. This recipe gives some good ideas for flavors and a mix of veggies that work well for this.
One of the foundations of cooking and preparing seasonal vegetables is having versatile recipes that can incorporate lots of different types of veggies. Stir-fry is absolutely one of these! Once you have some sauce and flavor combinations that you like, you'll find that many different veg can party together in this dish. Other top versatile recipes for me: curry, grain bowls, soups, frittata, and lots more! Do you have a go-to recipe that is super versatile? We'd love to share it with the group!
Hope you all have a great week!