Dear Common Thread CSA Members,

After all that rain, now it's too dry and we are pulling out our much unused irrigation pipes to get some water to many thirsty plants.  It's also quite hot this week so we moved all of our mostly-dried-down garlic from the very hot greenhouse to the cooler barn.  Then we started bringing in our earliest variety of onions to start drying down.  We're also busy this week mowing down cover crops, putting row cover on our carrots to keep out carrot rust fly, transplanting late beets, lettuce and broccoli, and weeding carrots.  

Congratulations to Jasmine and Dan, CSA members who were recently married! They used Common Thread flowers on the tables (in picture above) and they served "some amazing salads of radicchio, lacinato kale and snap peas and the world's largest platter of roasted beets." 

Green beans are in!  We have lots of pick your own beans out there, including green and wax beans.  My number one favorite way to eat green beans is to just go out into the field and eat them straight from the plants.  But I also really like them sauteed in olive oil with garlic and then seasoned with tamari. Dilly beans are also tasty:

Refrigerator Dilly Beans, from the Minnesota Food Assocation

2 cups of green beans
1 cup vinegar
1 cup water
2 ½ tablespoons of sugar
2 cloves of garlic OR 3 tablespoons of minced garlic scapes
1 ½ teaspoons of kosher salt
½ of a medium onion, sliced thinly
2 sprigs of fresh dill
½ teaspoon of whole black peppercorns
¼ to 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you want them) - you
can also add a whole dried chili if you have one.

You don't need any canning supplies for this project. You don't even need special
jars. I reused a jar from store-bought sauerkraut for mine. Use whatever you have
on hand, as long as it's glass and has a lid. 

 

Make your brine. This is the longest part of this process (and it only takes a few minutes!) so do this first. Add your water, vinegar, salt, sugar, and garlic (which you've minced) to a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Once it is boiling, turn it off and set it aside to cool down to room temperature.
 

Trim the beans. You want them all to fit in your jar with about an inch at the top
so the brine covers them completely. You can trim both ends, or just the stem end. I think the pointy blossom end of beans are pretty, so I leave them. It's up to you.
 

Blanch the beans. Bring a saucepan of water to a full boil, then dump the beans in
and boil them for thirty seconds. Drain them, and quickly add them to a bowl of
iced water to shock them and stop the cooking process. You want your beans to be
brightly colored and still crisp.
 

Drain the beans and set them aside. Add your onions, dill, red pepper flakes,
and peppercorns to your jars.

Now add your beans to the jars. They look prettiest standing upright, but don't
worry about being perfect. The easiest way is to lay the jar on its side, or hold it
horizontally, and place the beans inside.

Go ahead and pour your brine in once it has reached room temperature. Fill
the jar to 1/2 inch below the top of the jar, and put the lid on. Place the jar of dilly
beans in the fridge, and let them sit for at least two days before eating them.

They'll keep for up to six months in the fridge, but I'll bet you foldable money that
you won't have them around nearly that long!

Red Long of Tropea Onions are a beautiful long thin red onion that comes from Tropea in Italy.  They are especially tasty grilled or roasted, probably because they

 are thin so have a lot of edge to get both soft and crispy.  

The green peppers are ready - we have the standard green bell and have also grown a few others as well including banana, purple, and cubanelle.  They are great for fresh eating, grilling, roasting, salsa and more.  The colored (ripe) peppers will hopefully be ready in a few weeks.

We're excited that the first tomatoes are in!  I had trouble deciding whether to have a roasted eggplant and zucchini sandwich for lunch or a good old fashioned tomato sandwich the last couple days and ended up with an open face sandwich of each.  We've made our first salsa after almost a year of salsa in jars.  So good!

Wendy and Asher