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Dear Common Thread CSA Members,
September is the month for the NOFA- NY (Northeast Organic Farmers Association of New York) Locavore Challenge! Here is more information.
Welcome Fall CSA members to Week 1 for fall CSA members, and week 14 for full season members! It is a bountiful time of year with the summer crops still hanging on for a bit while the fall crops are starting to come in. We finally got a little bit of warmth recently and we have experienced an abundance of tomatoes, yay! We have seen that some cold nights are coming up soon though and we are bracing for the possibility of frost coming sooner than we like. Fortunately most of our tomatoes are in protective structures, so they should make it through the first several frosts, although their ripening will slow with cooler weather.
I finally had enough tomatoes to make tomato sauce tonight! I made an easy, delicious sauce by sauteing a few onions, adding red peppers, then several diced up tomatoes, oregano and salt, a big spoonful of honey, and a can of tomato paste to thicken it up. I never pass up the chance to eat eggplant with my pasta and sauce, so I also sliced up some eggplant and zucchini, dipped it in a mix of egg and milk and then corn flour (the gluten free option, wheat flour also works), and fried it in a little olive oil on the stove until I could stick a fork in it easily. Yum!
We have edamame available for pick your own at the farm! These edible soybeans are easy to cook and delicious, and our kids love them! The pods need to be picked just a little fat (with sized up soybeans inside). We boil them for 10 minutes in salted water (we add about a tablespoon of salt) and they are ready to eat. Just bite into the side of a pod and a few plump, soft, slightly salty, delicious soybeans will pop into your mouth.
We hope the cantelopes have been okay - it's not been a good year for them since they like heat. I've had some yummy sweet ones and some not so sweet so I'm sure you all have also had a mixed bag. CSA Member Meg Worley had an interesting suggestion for cantelopes that aren't sweet - she sauteed some red peppers and then added the diced cantelopes, cooking them on high heat for a short period of time, just to sear the edges but not to cook through. Then she mixed it with other vegetables and herbs to make a mediterranian salad, which she said was delicious.
This is a good time of year to put up some vegetables for the winter! I enjoyed the LocalHarvest newsletter editor's take on stocking up this week. Here is an excerpt:
All summer, but especially in August and September, I go to the market with my freezer in mind. If I'm buying eggplants, say, I might buy two for the aforementioned meal and two to freeze. For those who enjoy farm-fresh food but don't care to can or dehydrate food, freezing is a great option. It's quick and easy, and can be done in small batches. Not a lot of freezer space? Then choose just a few of summer's treats to take with you into the winter. Here are a few things I'm hoping to have in my freezer by summer's end.
Berries: Couldn't be easier - just put them in quart-sized freezer bags and lay flat in the freezer. Great for smoothies and muffins.
Eggplant: Roasted eggplant freezes well, in slices or whole fruit. We make baba ghanoush with ours in the winter, as the texture breaks down a bit in the freezer.
Bell peppers: Easy as berries - just quarter them, remove seeds and put in freezer bags for use in winter chili, pizza, eggs, etc. Or roast them and then freeze - beautiful.
Tomatoes: These can also just be quartered and put in freezer bags for use in winter chili, soups, and sauces. You can remove the skins before freezing if you like. It's a little extra work, but not hard, and makes a smoother final product. A third, and most succulent, option is to roast them and then use in quiches, on pizza, in soups, wherever a sweet, slightly acidic kick would be welcome.
Winter squash: Halve, roast, scoop out of shell, and freeze. We put it in quart sized yogurt containers and use to make squash soup all winter long.
The beautiful thing about all of these projects is that if you prep a little extra produce when making summer meals, you can set yourself up for beautiful winter meals with very little extra work.
Yours in the field, Wendy and Asher
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