What's In Your Bag?

Week Nine July 26-28   

Farm Fresh Eggs or Jisa Cheese 

Dakota Bread from Great Harvest Bread Co., Omaha, NE  

Cabbage from Princeton Produce, Martell, NE

Tuesday/Thursday customers Onions.  Wednesday customers Leeks.

Three pounds of peaches from Beckner Orchards, Wellington, MO

Two pounds of potatoes from Johnson Farms, Fremont, NE

Two zucchini from Pekarek's Produce, Dwight, NE or Wenninghoff Farms , Omaha, NE

Please note that produce is subject to change due to weather or unavoidable events.

Featured Farmers

Jisa Cheese  in Brainard, Nebraska is owned by Dave and Bonnie Jisa.  The Dairy milks over 300 Holsteins and provides an excellent assortment of fine cheese not only for your CSA bags but also for the Tomato, Tomato store.  Jisa was originally a dairy that specialized only in milk, but the idea to build a cheese factory came about when milk prices dropped and small dairies across the midwest and Great Plains struggled to stay afloat.  At this time, Dave had the idea to create a business around cheese.  This idea drove Dave to begin working with the University of Nebraska and learn the art of making fine cheese.

Jisa's Farmstead Cheese became a reality in the spring of 2005 at the 6,000 square foot plant, which is located one-half mile north of the Jisa Dairy Farm.  The Grade A whole milk produced from the family dairy is used to make the cheese. 

Did You Know...

What are Leeks...?  As a young kid I always thought the name was a bit mysterious and forbidding.  My mother would talk of cooking leeks in potato soup and I would immediately turn my nose up at the very mention of them.  For some reason or other I had it in my head that these were the things that killed George Washington (needless to say...as my education progressed, I discovered that it was leeches and not leeks).  Anyway...suffice to say...leeks are a wonderful addition to any meal.  They look somewhat like giant scallions, but with wide flat leaves rather than thin, hollow stalks.  Unlike scallions, leeks are prized for the white portion (the tough, leafy greeen portion generally gets tossed).  Leeks are delicious slow cooked in soups or stews and can also be grilled or fried over high heat. 

To prepare leeks, remove the the dark green, tough outer leaves.  I bend them back gently and snip them off with kitchen scissors, cutting all the way down to where the leaf color becomes more of a pale green.  Cut the leeks down the center lengthwise, taking care not to pierce all the way through and leaving them connected at the root.  This will help keep the leek intact while you rinse it.  It's very, very important to wash leeks thoroughly in cold running water, taking care to get rid of all the grit and dirt that's collected between the tightly layered leaves.  Use whole or slice.

A little bit of facts on Peach history (with apologies to Cliff Clavin).

Although its botanical name, Prunus persica, suggests the peach is native to Persia, it actually originated in China where it has been cultivated since the early days of Chinese culture. Peaches were mentioned in Chinese writings as far back as the tenth century B.C. and were a favored fruit of emperors.

Its English name derives from the Latin plural of persicum malum, meaning Persian apple. In Middle English, it melded into peche, much closer to what we call it today.

The Persians brought the peach from China and passed it on to the Romans. The peach was brought to America by Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century and eventually made it to England and France in the seventeenth century, where it was a popular albeit rare treat. In Queen Victoria's day, no meal was complete without a fresh peach presented in a fancy cotton napkin.

Various American Indian tribes are credited with migrating the peach tree across the United States, taking seeds along with them and planting as they roved the country.

Although Thomas Jefferson had peach trees at Monticello, United States farmers did not begin commercial production until the nineteenth century in Maryland, Delaware, Georgia and finally Virginia. Although the Southern states lead in commercial production of peaches, they are also grown in California, Michigan, and Colorado.

Today, peaches are the second largest commercial fruit crop in the States, second only to apples. Italy, China and Greece are major producers of peaches outside of the United States.
 

Related Recipes

Peach Tart (provided to us by one of your fellow CSA members)

Ingredients