HAPPY HARVEST September 7, 2012
CSA members choose 8 from the following harvest items:
pie pumpkins! Each week we will offer one of the beautiful winter squash varieties that we grew for you! You don’t need to make pie to enjoy these pumpkins. Bake and puree and make squash soup. Substitute into any recipe that calls for pumpkin or butternut squash. And they make lovely little jack-o-lanterns.
garlic–see my tips below on freezing garlic. Preserve the harvest!
potatoes (white Kennebec, heirloom)
tomatoesmix of reds, heirlooms and romas
jalapenos
basil (sweet or red)
thai basil (use like sweet basil or as a green vegetable in a sautee)
bell peppers, and pimentos and italian long pepperslikely plenty of reds
sweet potato greenssauteed green vegetable
chard
Chinese Cabbage? this week or next
UPICK THIS WEEK
green beansprobably pretty tough by now, but go check em out if you like
flowerszinnias, pick a bouquet, get em while they last
herb gardenlooking good: sage, parsley, chives, oregano, sorrell
LOOK FORWARD TO THESE CROPS IN SEPTEMBER:
butternut squash
acorn squash
sweet potatoes
Chinese cabbage, a lettuce type
cucumbers, a late crop of em by next week, we hope
loose leaf lettuce (we hope!)
TIPS FOR PRESERVING GARLIC
Did you know…you can freeze garlic! I puree garlic cloves, put it in very small jars and fill with olive oil, leaving 1/2 inch room at the top.Use small containers, because it should only be kept in the frig for 2-3 weeks. Use the flavored oil as well. OR make a garlic log–puree garlic and add just a little olive oil to hold it together, drop it in a piece of parchment paper and squeeze it into a log. Put it in a ziploc and freeze, keep it handy, like the door of the freezer and just slice off a frozen piece as you need it.It will melt in the pan and be instant pureed garlic, ready to sautee. I also like to peel a bulb or two at one time and puree it, so that I can keep pureed garlic in the frig for easy use. Then the frozen batches are for winter time, when I don’t have bulbs left.
This is the time to stock up on garlic! Farm-cured local organic garlic is a special treat. This is hard-neck garlic and more fragrant than the industrial farm soft-neck garlic. Also, this year our garlic harvest was ready too early, so most of it split from the bulbs. That meant we couldn’t sell the portion of the crop that we grew for the Common Market. So I have surplus this year, and have been offering it at a sale rate. Time to stock up! Its been $7/lb, instead of $10/lb ($11 in the store), and CSA portions have been three bulbs instead of the usual 2.This is the year for a great deal on great tasting garlic.