In Your Share (Aug 24th edition)

Lots of big beautiful eggplant in your share this week! Our longstanding favorite is Orient Express. The drawing on the left that shareholder and artist Allison Bollman did for us shows off its slender shape and sumptuous deep purple color. In addition to being quite beautiful, it is also a very tasty and productive japanese type. This year we tried a few other eggplant including one called Applegreen. It is an open pollinated globe type that has a lovely lime green color, thin skin & really nice flavor. At last count there were almost 20 recipes for eggplant and lots more for your other veggies too at Cook With What You Have. CSA members will find the password to the site in your email – enjoy your 24/7 access to recipe inspiration!

This week your share may include…

• Basil: Over the years we’ve grown many different varieties and some of the larger leaf types are more productive, but none has the tenderness and eating quality of this true Genovese type.
• Carrots: Such a great summer snacks!
• Chard: This particular strain of Rainbow chard has so many incredible colors – orange, pink, red, yellow and everything in between. Take a moment to enjoy the visual feast before you sauté it down and make something scrumptious.
• Sweet Corn: So many of the new hybrid super sweet corn varieties are just too sweet for my taste. I really like this variety because it is really tender and sweet, but has some good old-fashioned corn flavor too.
• Cucumbers: Sweet & tasty slicers
• Eggplant: Some of these japanese eggplant are almost big enough to make eggplant parmesan! There are also a few green heirloom globe eggplant in the mix.
• Fennel: Big beautiful bulbs are tasty in salad or sautéed.
• Anaheim Peppers: These are traditionally used for chile rellenos. They usually have just a mild amount of heat, but occasionally they’re hot so I’d advise tasting them first if you’re wary of too much heat.
• Potatoes: Versatile yellow potatoes – good for roasting, home fries or potato salad.
• Summer Squash: Nice mix of green & yellow zucchini, crookneck and patty pan.
• Tomatoes: The Stupice & other early varieties are coming on strong. We should have increasing numbers of slicers & heirloom tomatoes in the share over the next few weeks too!

Coming soon… Sweet Italian Peppers!