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 What's in the box this week?
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Greetings!
Happy St.
Patrick's Day! We've got two delicious, vitamin-packed green treats for you in
this week's box, Hass avocados and Hayward kiwis. Let them sit on your kitchen counter
at room temperature until they "give" a little under finger pressure, then
enjoy or store in the refrigerator.
We hope you
all had a wonderful time at last Sunday's Blossom Festival. It was a big
success, with 85 adults and more than 20 children in attendance. After a
springtime snack of grilled bruschetta topped with fava beans and Cowgirl Creamery fromage blanc, Farmer Al took everyone out into the orchard for an
informative, flower-filled tour of Frog Hollow's cherry, apricot, plum, peach,
nectarine and pear trees. Dr. Gordon Frankie, a specialist on native wild bees
and pollinators, and his student Marissa Ponder spoke about the research
they're doing at Frog Hollow Farm.
Dr.
Frankie, in conjunction with the staff at Frog Hollow, is in the process of
establishing eight gardenscapes around the farm to provide nesting habitats and
plant food sources for local native wild bees, alongside the domestic honeybee
hives already in residence. Because no chemical pesticides are used on the
farm, mechanical tillage is minimal, and hedgerows and other biodiverse
vegetation are already in place, Frog Hollow is a perfect place to establish a
year-round population of native bees. The plan includes the establishment of a
large "bee garden" filled with a wide variety of bee-friendly, nectar-producing
plants, along with 7 other linear gardenscapes. The gardens will be planned to
reflect an overlapping flowering sequence month by month, so the bees will have
reliable, on-site food sources throughout the year.
Unlike
honeybees, native bees are not hive builders. They make their nests either in
the ground or within pre-existing cavities, such as rocks, caves, hollow plant
stems or dead trees. So, dirt berms and adobe and rock walls will be built
around the farm to encourage nesting.
Dr. Frankie and Marissa Ponder did a great job explaining their work,
and answered a lot of thoughtful and curious questions from their interested
audience of both grown-ups and kids. We'll be keeping you posted on their
important work here!
Of course,
it wouldn't be a Frog Hollow party without a delicious meal from Mary Jo Thoresen and Curt Clingman, and this one was no
exception. Curt and Mary Jo delighted everyone with a spring celebration
buffet, including
asparagus-citrus
salad, long-cooked Riverdog Farm winter greens with spring onions, braised
Marin Sun Farm lamb with green garlic, "end of winter" lentil, vegetable, and
cannellini bean stew, a salad of crisp Little Gem lettuces in a Frog Hollow
Farm dried-fruit vinaigrette, and the pièce
de résistance, plum-blossom ice cream with
pound cake and Frog Hollow Farm plum sauce.
If you couldn't join us last Sunday but want to see more, two of our guests at the Blossom Festival have already posted up photos on their respective blogs, which you can find here and here.
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Next Week's Box: On Tuesday, March 23 you'll receive Frog Hollow Farm's spring Holiday CSA box!
The Holiday box gives us a chance to share many of Becky Courchesne's fantastic kitchen treats with you.
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Recipe of the Week
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Apples
& Oranges Muffins
Health food
stores that sell flours in bulk will often carry whole-wheat pastry flour,
which makes for lighter, less dense baked goods than regular whole wheat flour.
You can also look for the "white whole wheat flour" sold by Hodgson Mills and
King Arthur, which is made from a light-colored strain of wheat that's milder
in flavor than typical American red wheat.
1 1/3 cups
flour, either all-purpose white flour, whole-wheat pastry flour, or white whole
wheat flour
2 tsp
baking powder
½ tsp
baking soda
1/4 cup
sugar
a generous
grating of fresh nutmeg
1 orange or
2 mandarins, rind grated and juice squeezed
1/3 cup
milk
3 tbsp
melted butter
1 egg
1 apple,
cored and chopped
For the
topping:
2 tsp sugar
½ tsp
cinnamon
Preheat
oven to 400F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan or line with paper baking cups.
In a large
bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a measuring cup, whisk together
juice, milk, melted butter, and egg. Add to dry ingredients and stir gently
until just mixed. Stir in grated rind and apples.
Spoon
batter into muffin cups (you might not use all 12 cups). Stir together sugar
and cinnamon and sprinkle over each muffin. Bake 20 minutes, until golden
brown. Best served hot or warm.
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