Dear Common Thread Winter CSA Share Members, 

The third winter share box is ready tomorrow, Tuesday, December 10.  The pick up times are 2-7 pm at the farm and 4-7 pm in Dewitt.  The vegetable list is on our website on the what's in page.  

Please remember to return your waxed boxes!  Please also take care not to tear the flaps when opening the box or breaking it down.  They cost us more than $2 each and we hope to reuse them a number of times.

It got down to 0 degrees here around Thanksgiving, so it was interesting to see which crops were harvestable given different types of protection.  The leeks and brussel sprouts, which we have always harvested into January just fine without covers, were freeze damaged but the chard and lettuce under low plastic covers made it even though we think of them as less hardy. Between the cold temperatures and what we already harvested for these first three winter share boxes, we've cleared out the majority of the fresh crops from the field but we still have a lot of storage crops in the coolers and a few greens that we hope to be able to harvest for some of the remaining boxes. 

This week, we have French Fingerling Potatoes, which are an heirloom potato that are small, moist/waxy, and have great flavor.  They are great for roasting, soups, and stews.  After seeing "salt potatoes" at the farmers market, I've been cooking whole small potatoes in salt water (not as much salt as salt potato recipes call for though, more like 2-3 Tbs for a medium saucepan).  Our kids eat them like candy.  Us too.   

We have a number of different roots this week that could be a little tricky to tell apart.  The scarlet turnips look a bit like beets, but are a bright, not a dark red, and have white flesh.  They are great sliced thin for salads or veggie plates, and can also be cooked with other roots.  The misato rose radishes are white or pink with green shoulders on the outside and are white to pink/purple on the inside and can be grated or sliced into salads or cooked.  The rutabagas look somewhat similar but are more yellow, inside and out, with purple shoulders.

We have two types of carrots this week.  There are storage carrots that are great all purpose carrots and we also have fresh harvested baby carrots from the field that are especially good for fresh eating.

We're handing out a big squash this week.  We'll be putting out Neck Pumpkins and Long Island Cheese Pumpkins, both tan colored big squash that are great for pies and baking. They are quite dense and can be quite large, so I usually cook and puree the whole squash and freeze half of it in pint containers for later use and use the other half right away for pies, bread, pancakes, waffles etc.  

We were lucky to be invited to a dinner at Circa, the local foods restaurant in Cazenovia, with the Colgate "Food" Class who spent time out at the farm this semester.  We offered some vegetables for the meal and it was delicious to taste what Alicyn, the chef and owner, did with them.  We don't have specific recipes, but thought it would be interesting to share what Alicyn did with the box of mixed vegetables we dropped off:

• Potato leek soup - not pureed, but with small chunks of potato and leek and garnished with wisps of fried crispy leeks and potatos
• Salad with shredded raw cabbage and rutabaga, topped with slices of roasted baby beets (the small beets that about half of you are getting in this box) and goat cheese
• Braised Ingalside Meadows beef and grilled tofu served with potatoes mashed with carrots and parsnips (which was very sweet, presumably from the winter sweetened roots)