Please join us for the Common Thread CSA End of Season Potluck on Sunday, October 5 at 5 pm. It's a chance to sit down to a meal together, celebrate the season, appreciate the bounty that the farm has offered us, and try tasty new dishes. The apprentices will be wrapping up their time here soon, so it is also a chance to thank them for all their work growing food this year. We will do a farm tour at 4 pm. At 5 pm, there will be pumpkins for decorating and/or carving and tables laid out for a nice potluck meal in the barn. If any musicians amongst you would like to play some music that would be very welcome, please let us know. RSVP is helpful. Hope to see many of you there!
We have had many questions about winter shares - we are planning winter shares and we hope to email the form out in the next couple of days and put it on our website. It will be a biweekly box of storage crops such as potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, winter squash and cabbage as well as some hardy greens like kale and spinach. More info to come.
We are happy that the Colgate "Food" Class has joined us to volunteer for another semester. It's great to have interesting and curious new folks to work with in the fields and we're very grateful for their help. We're also glad to have Jenna Walczak and Schuyler Lemal-Brown working part time on the farm this fall.
We're finally done with the rush of planting but this past week we have been rushing to pull in the winter squash and cover sensitive crops ahead of the frost. We were worried we'd get a frost on Sunday night but luckily it didn't happen, since we weren't ready. The next likely frost is Thursday and we're pretty sure we'll be ready for that one. We've also been busy planting cover crops (mostly oats and peas, and rye and vetch) onto the fields that are done producing crops for the year.
The fall crops are starting to come in! Celery grown in our climate is different from what you get in the grocery store - not as tender and watery but with much more flavor. It's great in soups. The inner stalks are tender enough for ants-on-a-log.
The leeks are ready! Leeks are most well known as a key ingredient of potato-leek soup but they can be used in many different types of dishes. Leeks can be substituted for onions in a lot of recipes and are great stir fried, roasted and in quiche.
Our fall cauliflower is looking lovely. It takes a lot of space so we have a limited amount but hopefully everyone who wants to will get a taste.
Cauliflower Curry
Adapted from Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven
Many vegetables could be added to this basic recipe, a small eggplant or zucchini sliced up or leaves of spinach or chard.
1 head cauliflower broken into small florets
1 potato diced
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 ½ cups chopped onion
4 slices ginger
1 tsp salt
2 tsp curry powder or:
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp turmeric
¼ tsp allspice
½ tsp ground fennel
1 Tbsp minced garlic
½ cup water
12 oz can crushed tomatoes or 1½ lbs fresh tomatoes chopped
Place potato in a medium sauce pan, cover with water, bring to a boil and cook until tender. Drain and set aside, reserving the water for later. Meanwhile heat the oil in a large, deep skillet. Add onion, ginger, salt, curry powder or curry spices, and garlic. Sautee over medium-low heat stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. Stir in ½ cup of the reserved water and the cauliflower and cook covered over medium heat for 10 minutes or until the cauliflower is tender. Stir in the tomatoes, potatoes and cover again, simmering over low heat for 10-15 minutes. Serve over rice with chutneys, yogurt, raisins, toasted cashews or other condiments.
We have so many colored peppers right now! We've had trouble getting peppers to ripen without rotting in the past but we've found several varieties that come through well, including a couple new ones this year that we're excited about. Our standby is "Carmen", a red corno-de-toro type. "Flavorburst" is also great, a huge, tasty yellow bell pepper. New for us this year are "Aura" and "Glow", smaller orange and yellow peppers that are very nice looking, and "Lipstick" is a smaller red pepper. In addition to green bells, we also have some other"green" peppers (eaten unripe) that include purple peppers, cubanelles, hungarian wax peppers, and banana peppers.
Asher likes to scorch eggplant and ripe peppers directly over the flame of the gas stove. You carefully move them around with a pair of tongs until they are pretty much blackened all over. This can get a bit messy, especially with the eggplant, as the fruits release some juice as they cook. Let them cool and then you can remove the scorched skin from the perfectly cooked flesh. Roasted peppers are so yummy, it's hard to know where to begin in suggesting how to use them--how about adding a little olive oil and vinegar and using them to adorn a green salad? Or adding it to your tomato and cheese sandwich? The eggplant is perfect for making babaganoush and will have a wonderful smoky flavor.
