In Your Share (March 5th edition)

We have SUMMER SHARES for sale!! You can sign up or get more info HERE.

It’s been everything from snowing to 60 degrees and sunny this week. That’s spring in Oregon – nothing if not unpredictable. Luckily Eric was at Grand Island with me on Sunday when the sun was shining and he took some great photos of our beautiful winter crops that you can see below.

You can download your Recipe Packet here.  These are written by my friend Katherine Deumling at Cook With What You Have. She’s going to continue to provide them through the rest of the winter share so let me know what you think?

This week your share may include…

  • Carrots: The carrots are very sweet, but at this point the carrot rust fly has done quite a bit of damage to them. We store the carrots in the ground because we think that the flavor and freshness are superior to those stored in the cooler. However, the longer they are in the ground, the more damage the carrot rust fly can do. That said, even though they don’t look very good they still taste great!
  • Dried Fava Beans: This is the first time we’ve grown favas all the way to maturity. They’re quite common across the mediterranean region and into the Middle East. Thanks Katherine for contributing some great recipes.
  • Kale Raab: This Winterbor kale is one of the first to begin flowering and it makes for tasty little broccolini like buds. Definitely cook the intensely ruffled leaves and sweet stalk in the Brazilian soup from your recipe packet – as good or better than collards! The leaves of this variety also make great Kale Chips.  
  • Leeks: These King Richard leeks make a wonderful potato leek soup or just saute the tender stems with some greens – winter comfort food!
  • Parsnips: Lovely in the Winter Couscous.
  • Purple Sprouting Broccoli: It is SO exciting to have this in the share!! We are picking Rudolf, an early variety, which the catalog says should be ready by Christmas. Can’t believe everything you read I guess, but it definitely does mature earlier than the regular purple sprouting and we appreciate that. In addition to the little head of broccoli all the leaves and stems on the plant are sweet and tasty so enjoy those too.  
  • Popcorn: We love this Early Pink variety. If you have a microwave you can put the whole cob in a brown paper bag and microwave it 1 min at a time for up to 3min. Most of the kernals will be popped off at that point so pour it in a bowl with some butter and salt & yum! BE CAREFUL – more than 4 consecutive minutes in the microwave  can cause the cobs to catch on fire!! Otherwise, take the kernals off the cob and make perfect popcorn the old fashioned way. 1 cob makes about 2 cups when it is popped. And if you have a sweet tooth there is a Caramel Corn recipe in your packet : )
  • Potatoes: Nice red potatoes this week.

Coming soon… Many variations on the rapini & brocolini theme!