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From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
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Volume Two, Issue Sixteen
Sunday - August 29, 2010
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Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning August 30th. 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 30th to September 5th
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| This week we will have the famous Mirai
Bi-Color and all Yellow Sweet Corn! Also, all white Sugar Pearl sweet corn, a wide variety of
heirloom, slicing and canning tomatoes, acorn, butternut, buttercup and spaghetti squash, green
and yellow beans, beets, watermelon, red and Yukon Gold potatoes, sugar (pie)
pumpkins, popcorn on the ear, sweet onions, 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. |
| From The Kitchen |
| A customer brought me a couple of recipes this week; both looked good but I only had the ingredients for one of them. We had this recipe last Friday and I thought it was excellent. I also liked the fact that it is the type of recipe that you can vary according to the ingredients you have on hand.
Southern Tomato Pie Recipe
From
Woman's Day |
August 1, 2010
1 refrigerated pie crust (from a 15-oz box of 2) 1 cup mayonnaise 8 oz Cheddar, shredded (2 cups) 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper 1/4 cup sliced scallions 1 1/3 lb ripe plum tomatoes (8 to 10 medium-size), sliced
1. Place one oven rack in bottom position. Heat oven to 350ºF.
2. Line a 9-in. pie plate with crust. Crimp edges with a fork. Prick bottom and sides of dough in several places with a fork.
3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until crust looks slightly puffed and dry.
4. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, stir together mayonnaise, 1 1/4 cups of the cheese and the pepper.
5. Sprinkle bottom of partially baked crust with 1/2 cup of the remaining cheese.
Top with 1/4 of the tomatoes (about 12 or 13 slices). Sprinkle with 1
Tbsp of the scallions. Spoon 1/3 cup of the mayonnaise mixture on top
in dollops. Continue to layer tomatoes, scallions and mayonnaise
mixture to make 3 more layers. Sprinkle top with remaining 1/4 cup
cheese.
6. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until crust
is golden and juices are bubbling. Remove to rack to cool at least 10
minutes before cutting into wedges.
My notes:
- I did change a couple of the ingredients. I used Cojack cheese instead of the Cheddar. We didn't have scallions and although I suppose you could use a small amount of onions as a substitute, I don't like onions so I skipped this :)
- We used our Roma tomatoes which are very meaty and held up very well during the cooking process.
- Since I don't think you can ever have enough melted cheese on something, I added an additional cup of cheese for the topping.
- Make sure you let it rest 10 minutes before cutting. The slices held together very well instead of running all over the plate.
- While making this dish, I thought about the variations that you could
make. One would be to use pizza sauce, mozzarella and fresh basil, kind
of a deep dish pizza. Also to the original recipe, you could add chopped ham or
bacon in the layers to make a more hearty dish.
- I would imagine you could use regular tomatoes or even the heirlooms for this. However, you might want to slice them ahead of time and let some of the juices drain before assembling the pie.
- Normally I would make my pie crust instead of buying the crust but time is precious right now so I opted for buying one. I would imagine that you could use your favorite pie crust recipe and it would work well for this.
Enjoy!
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Specials In The Spotlight |
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Canning Tomatoes: $8 a 1/2 bushel or $15 a bushel.
Roma Tomatoes: $10 a 1/2 bushel
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The Boss's Corner
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While we reached our peak of sweet corn harvest a week or
two ago, we still have 8 patches that aren't yet ready for picking. Starting tomorrow, we will start picking a new
patch-an all yellow Mirai. Like the
bi-color Mirai, it is supposed to be very sweet, tender and flavorful. Since we haven't tasted it, we only know this
from other sources. However, we are
fairly confident it will be excellent tasting sweet corn. In addition to the yellow Mirai, we will have
the same bi-color Mirai we had on Saturday-only it will be a bit more mature
(DEFINITELY NOT TOO MATURE THOUGH)-on Saturday we had trouble finding corn that
was mature enough for picking, as some of you probably found out. We also will start picking this week a new patch
of Sugar Pearl-a delicious white corn.
Like the corn we had the last few days, it seems likely that most of the
corn we pick this week will be troubled by corn earworm. Corn earworm is not the same caterpillar as
the eastern corn borer, although both caterpillars turn into similar (though
not identical) night flying moths, which then lay eggs on corn plants--borers
on leaves; earworms on silk. These eggs
hatch and turn into tiny caterpillars and then feed on corn and the cycle
repeats itself. While their life cycles
are a bit more complicated than this, this is basically what happens. One of
the main differences between corn earworms and corn borers is that corn borers
are hardy, which is the reason they are used for ice fishing. Corn earworms don't normally overwinter so
they are blown up from the south (where they are often swarming there and are
also called cotton bollworm) on strong south winds. Also, corn earworm lay their eggs on the corn
silk and that is why they are normally only found on the tip of the corn. The good news now is that it appears that in
another week there probably won't be as much corn earworm damage as is
happening now since the moth flights are easing up.
We are now picking acorn, butternut, buttercup and spaghetti
squash. We were told by customers that our
acorn they tried are very sweet. Actually this is surprising since squash has an enzyme which changes the
starch into a sugar over several weeks so squash a couple of weeks after
picking should be sweeter than freshly picked squash. This might mean that the squash this year
will be sweeter than normal. Again this
year we have an excellent supply of winter squash and we are selling it at very
reasonable prices. Most of our acorn
squash is only 50 cents each. We also
have 50 cent butternut and buttercup but since these tend to run larger in size,
most of these are 75 cents each.
Winter squash is definitely one of the healthiest foods
around. The Nutrition Data organization
gives it a 5 star rating, which is their highest rating, for optimum nutrition
health. Their comments follow: "This
food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good
source of Vitamin A, Thiamin, Vitamin B6 and Magnesium, and a very good source
of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese." Also, it seems squash is an excellent food
for those troubled by diabetes. For more
information click on Nutrition Info on Winter Squash.
I am often asked (when I happen to be around the market, which is more frequent
in the fall than the middle of summer): How do you cook acorn, butternut and
buttercup squash? Well this is the way
we do it. Cut the squash in half and
remove the seeds. Place the squash, skin
side UP, on a cookie sheet that is covered with aluminum foil for easy
clean-up. Put a ¼ inch of water in the
pan and cook it in a 350 oven for 45 to 100 minutes depending upon size of
squash and the number of squash you are cooking. To serve, either cut the squash in pieces and
serve or scoop the delicious flesh out. I put butter, salt and pepper on it but
Annemarie and some others in the family only put salt and pepper on it. Neither Annemarie or moi add sugar but a few
in the family do sprinkle on some brown sugar.
By the way, while I still prefer our Crimson Sweet
watermelon, I do like both Moon and Stars and the yellow Desert King. The Moon and Stars may even top Crimson Sweet
in flavor but it doesn't seem as crisp. The yellow fleshed Desert King seems to taste more like a honeydew
melon-at least its heart-than a watermelon. But I do like a good honeydew so I did enjoy the Desert King. Our melons are still ripening well and should
have them for at least a couple of weeks. We picked many melons this year that were over 35 pounds. However, our long time record for Crimson
Sweet still stands-56 pounds. This melon
was grown near the top of a sandy hill in ground so dry the only thing that
flourished before was a few Prickly Pear cactus; we call it cactus hill. The funny thing about this is that the place
we picked most of the really big watermelon this year was in the very sandiest
of soil in our watermelon patch-I knew from way back watermelons love sandy soil
but this is ridiculous! One other
interesting point. Our neighbor to the
east of our farm, tried watermelon one year after I talked to him about
watermelons loving sandy soul (his soil was very sandy) and he told me they
didn't do well at all. I never figured
out why...
Nashle!
Tom
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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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