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From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
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Volume Two, Issue Thirteen
Sunday - August 8, 2010
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Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning August 9th. We hope to keep you up to date with the happenings at our farm,
along with providing
you with some of our favorite recipes and other
information we think you might find of interest. If you know of someone
who might be interested in receiving our newsletter, you can forward it to them by using the forward link at the end of this newsletter. |
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This Week at Magicland Farms - August 9th to August 14th
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This week we will have bi-color and white corn. Our famous Mirai sweet corn is now ready (for more info on Mirai corn see miraicorn.com.) We will also have heirloom and cherry tomatoes, green
beans, beets, cucumbers, ice box and large watermelon, red and Yukon Gold potatoes,
freshly pulled sweet onions, zucchini, green tomatoes, carrots
and more.
Also, in our craft room you
can find handmade jewelry, art, gourd crafts, knitting, rosaries and more!
We accept both the Bridge Card and Project Fresh. |
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From The Kitchen |
| For the last couple of weeks, I have been looking for a recipe using summer squash since I have never cooked with it and we have a lot :) I found several recipes on the internet and ended up using a bit of each recipe to create an easy summertime veggie skillet.
Summertime Veggie Skillet
1 tablespoon olive oil 1/4 chopped onion 1/2 cup chopped bell pepper 1 garlic clove, chopped 4 cups sliced summer squash 1 1/4 cup fresh corn fresh basil, chopped 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning 1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese 1 1/2 cups SunSugar cherry tomatoes
Heat oil in skillet. Add onion, bell pepper and garlic to hot oil. Stir until cooked (when onions are soft).
Add the summer squash, corn, and Italian seasoning. Cook over medium heat until the squash is cooked but not mushy, stirring frequently.
Once the vegetables are ready, add cherry tomatoes. Sprinkle cheese and basil over vegetables. Cover skillet to melt cheese. When cheese is melted, serve.
My notes:
- This recipe is extremely versatile. Use whatever vegetables you want: zucchini, our little red tomatoes (sliced), small red potatoes (sliced) or whatever else you choose.
- I used mozzarella cheese since I was using Italian seasoning. However, cojack or swiss cheese would also probably work well especially if you use some other seasoning mix.
- As you can see in the photo of the dish in our photo album, it needed some other colors, there was too much yellow. Next time I make this I plan on adding some red tomatoes, and zucchini to balance the yellow of the summer squash and the sweet corn.
Enjoy!
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Specials In The Spotlight |
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No specials this week. Check back next week.
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Questions Our Customers Are Asking |
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In this section, we usually answer the most commonly asked questions by customers at the stand and via email. If you have any questions, email us and we'll do our best to answer.
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The Boss's Corner
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Well, this week is the start of our Mirai Sweet Corn. Mirai is destined to be famous. It not only is exceptionally sweet but is
also exceptionally tender and flavorful-which definitely isn't true for the old
type of supersweets. While Mirai is a
brand new corn, it was developed through traditional natural breeding and not developed
using GMO (Genetically Modified) techniques. Last year we test planted it and
test marketed it and it came through both tests with A+'s! The only complaint, by a few customers, was
that it was too sweet! Well, if you
think so just let it age by not eating it for a couple of days after you
purchase it. This year we made 9
different plantings of the Mirai type, including a planting of white Mirai and
Yellow Mirai-the rest (7) are bi-color Mirai.
To find out more about Mirai you can listen to WGN AM radio (720) and/or
go to www.miraicorn.com and www.twingardenfarms.com. By the way, we also have many more plantings
of regular sweet corn coming. This week
we have the delicious white corn called Sugar Pearl. Sugar Pearl
is the white corn Silver Queen wished it tasted like! This brings up a mystery. We have grown Silver Queen, off and on, the
past 10 years and we have come to the conclusion it isn't the same corn that it
was 20 and 30 years ago. We feel it is
bred differently from the original Silver Queen. This has occurred with other old corn
varieties-apparently the seed growers sometimes use short cut techniques to
save money. One documented case is the
original Supersweet called Illinichief.
Illinichief is no longer grown but Illini XtraSweet which is claimed to
be basically the same corn is. The problem
is that it doesn't taste the same. The
original Illinichief, apparently, was too expensive to produce so techniques
were developed to make it cheaper to get the seed. I remember eating the original Illinichief
and also Illini XtraSweet. Illini XtraSweet is no Illinichief-trust me
here!
In a few newsletters back I mentioned about coyote taking
care of our ground hog population explosion. Well, I guess it wasn't the
coyotes but rather the fox (the four legged types). My daughter Bernadette examined the tracks
and she came to that conclusion-fox and coyote leave similar tracks so it was a
perfectly honest mistake by moi. I guess
I automatically figured the tracks were coyote since in years past coyote were
quite numerous on the farm. This year, though,
we haven't seen coyote but rather several big, healthy fox-in fact I saw one
myself! It was huge and for an instant I
thought it was a fat coyote!
Our large watermelon are starting to ripen, which is about 2
weeks earlier than normal. Yesterday, as
I was finishing up the last piece of a +20 pound Crimson Sweet melon I was
thinking to myself-"You know, I really, really love them watermelons. The only thing better than a watermelon
picked at its prime and eaten right out in the field is one that had a couple
of hours of aging in a fridge before it is cut!" Everybody in the house -except
Annemarie-love our sweet, sweet watermelons. It looks like we will have a
bountiful harvest of large watermelons right into September, however our supply
of ice box watermelons will start to taper off by the end of August. While the bulk of our large melons will be
Crimson Sweet, which I have grown for over 30 years and are always fantastic
eating if picked right, we will soon also have Desert King (yellow fleshed
melons) and Moon and Stars (an heirloom watermelon) in a few days. These melons are new to us and we are anxious
to see how you (as well as moi and the family) like them.
Notice that grassy area with a wood fence just to the north
of the parking lot? We planted the grass
(primarily Kentucky Blue), interspersed with tall corn clumps(which, with a
little help, will magically turn into corn shocks in the fall), and made the fence so this area would be an
interesting pumpkin patch sales area. All types of pumpkins are doing
great-giant, jack-o-lantern and sugar. Already there are several 200+ pound pumpkins in the field. However, these pumpkins won't likely get much
bigger since they are starting to ripen. Nonetheless, we still might get some pumpkins over 300 pounds since the
vines are producing more giant pumpkins! Right now we plan on harvesting some pumpkins the week before Labor Day.
We have had several people asking about our acorn
squash. We hope to start spot picking
them later this week. Keep in mind that
winter squash has an enzyme that turns starch into sugar after it is
picked. What this means is that it is
sweeter a week or two after picking than when it is first picked. This is just the opposite of way the corn
behaves. As soon as sweet corn leaves
the stalk, the sugar in the kernels start changing into starch and in just a
few days the sugar is all gone and all you have left is a starchy taste. With Mirai corn this process is slowed so
that it still tastes good even after three days after it was picked.
This week looks like it will again be very warm and
humid. However, it looks like a change
is coming the week of August 16. A
large, cool high is expected to drop down from north of Alaska
into the Rocky Mountains and then spread southeast. It looks like the whole country east of the Rockies
will cool down substantially. More on
this in the next newsletter...
Nashle!
Tom
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This Week's Photo Album |
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This year we are doing our photos for the newsletter a bit differently. Due to space
constraints on our newsletter hosting service and concern for those of you on a
dialup connection, we are going to host them on Drop.io (a web based file sharing
service). Every week you will get a link to a photo album that shows the photos
that go along with the newsletter. Simply click on the link below and it will take
you to the photos. Clicking on a photo will yield a larger image along with a description
of the photo.
This Week's Photos - 08/08/2010
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We appreciate your business and hope to see you this week at Magicland Farms.
Sincerely,
Tom and Annemarie Fox
Magicland Farms |
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