In Your Share (May 22nd edition)

Welcome to Week 2 of our 2017 Summer CSA share! Hope you enjoyed your green garlic, red potatoes, hot peppers and all the rest from last time. We’ll have more of those plus a few new things in your basket this week like… baby bags of pea shoots – yum! These great little greens have a mild sugar snap pea flavor and are tender enough for salad but also hold up well when sautéed or stir fried.  We are also excited about our sweet onion scapes! The overwintering walla walla onions are starting to flower which means they shoot up a hollow, crunchy, sweet, onion-y, stalk that we can harvest and you can eat. Try it roasted, or on the BBQ or just chop up and cook like you would a regular onion.

Amazing recipes for everything in your share are available to members at Cook With What You Have. If you joined our Summer CSA you will find your password in the member email. Enjoy 24/7 access to recipe inspiration!

This week your share may include…

  • Flageolet Vert French Dry Beans: Our friends at Uprising Seeds convinced us to try this variety a few years ago and we’ve been loving it ever since. From their description… “as William Woys Weaver so aptly states, for elegant and sophisticated cooking (think cassoulet, crostini, risotto…), flageolets are intensely creamy, hold their shape when cooked, and cook quickly.” Seed catalogs are famous for their hyperbole, but in this case it’s true : )
  • Overwintering Cauliflower: Such a lovely addition to the summer share! These are challenging to grow in some ways – baby transplants must must survive the heat, weeds and bugs of summer in August then the freezing cold of winter. The good news is that once they make it into spring they are ahead of most weeds, pests and diseases : ) It takes a special variety – and we’re always up for trying any new (and old) ones we can get our hands on. Happily this year they were quite successful so there should be plenty to enjoy!
  • Cayenne Peppers: These traditional dried peppers are spicy, but not insanely hot. This is the variety most often used for red pepper flakes and DIY flakes are easy – just make sure you wear gloves or wash your hands carefully after chopping all the peppers. You can also toss whole peppers into soups and stews – a simple way to add some spice to whatever you have on the stovetop or in the crockpot.
  • Green Garlic: No reason to wait for months to enjoy garlic when we can dig it now! The white part on the bottom that will eventually form the bulb is the most tender. Chop it up and sauté the same way you’d use regular garlic cloves. The upper green part isn’t as tender, but still has great garlic flavor and makes really good pesto!
  • Sweet Onion Scapes: The sweet, crunchy, onion-y stems of the walla walla onion flower. Use like you would a green onion – good raw or cooked.
  • Pea Shoots: These have a nice mild pea flavor and the leaves, stems & tendrils are all quite tender.
  • Red Potatoes: Yum : )

Coming soon… Garlic Scapes!