It reached 35F this morning at the farm this morning; historically we receive our first frost around November 15th.  Hopefully we'll have a few more weeks to enjoy our late summer season  items like yellow squash, cucumbers, tomatoes etc. before a frost puts an end to these tender crops.  Incidentally, the saucer looking item in our CSA shares this week were patty pan squash, aka known as scallop or flying saucer squash.

One of the nice things about farming in SE Texas is that the fall season provides some real nice variety in what we can grow. So while the summer veggies, may be close to ending, the cooler weather crops will hopefully continue to flourish. This week coming up we will be providing our second deliveries of broccoli and cauliflower along with our first delivery of beets.

Broccoli gets a bad rap for being a soggy, tasteless vegetable. So with everyone receiving some broccoli in your shares this week consider taking a different approach and roast it so that is a tad caramelized.  I have provided two recipes below, both are pretty basic.

Sweet Potatoes and Broccoli Pictured Above.
Roasting Recipes for both provided further below.

           

Desire Some Local Pork?  No we're not talking politics here! We're talking the real deal, as in oink oink! Yep. we've got some piggies that are ready for processing. Don't worry if you don't want a whole pig, you can have quarter or half as well. If interested just let me know by email and we can visit. On a similar note, we will be providing details about our upcoming pork/poultry program in the near future. (For those that have already contacted me, we will be in touch with this coming week.) 

  

Whole Foods Houston?  WDF is now a "bona fide Whole Food produce vendor."    The WF locations that we are currently servicing are the following:

• Kirby
• Bellaire
• Woodway
• Montrose 

 

Fall CSA Program    This week coming up, our shares should include green beans, baby salad greens, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, and more. Our first delivery was four weeks ago, but not to worry as we still have share openings available and registration prices are prorated accordingly each week. Thus you can still join and pay for just the deliveries that remain in the program.  (Ordering Cut off's are Sunday's at midnight.) So to receive a delivery for this coming week, you need to register by tomorrow, Sunday night.) Items expected to be harvested within the Fall program include Cherry Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Green beans, Kale, Arugula , Basil, Peppers , Eggplant, Salad mix, Summer Squash, Dill, Zucchini, Bunching Onions, Winter Squash, Carrots, Beets, Micro Greens, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Spinach and more.. For more info and registration visit this link    Fall CSA Program & Registration

For a short registration tutorial, consider reviewing the  instructions located at the bottom of this update.  

      

Like To Participate In Our CSA, But Will Be Gone Some This Fall? Consider our Alternating Week Share and/or splitting a share with a friend/relative. An easy way to split is for you take the whole share one week and defer it to your partner another week. Just include their email address when you register. Sorry, we don't have provisions for splitting credit card payments.

Woodlands Home Delivery For You? For those of you living in zip codes 77380,77381,77382,77384 consider, at a slightly higher coast, trying our home delivery service. Delivery days are Thursday's, normally after 3 pm.  Just go to the CSA link at   Fall CSA Program & Registration  and select the Woodlands Home Delivery tab.

CSA Referral Program? We are providing a referral program whereby you can get credit for CSA subscription, referred by you, paid between now and Sunday evening 10/28/19. The credit can be in a form of future CSA program purchases or as cash back.

 

Details

• This program is good for paid CSA registrations until this coming Sunday midnight, 10/28/12.
• Referrals are for new customers only.
• Customers can not refer themselves.
• Customers referred must give the referrers full name and email at time of purchase. If this information is not available at time of purchase, the referred customer can email the information to csa@woodduckfarm.com with-in seven days.
• The referrer will receive an email from Wood Duck Farm informing them of their credit and thanking them for their referral.

Referrals will receive the following Credit/Cash Back

• Paid Full Shares: a $30 credit per referral
• Paid Partial Shares: a $20 credit per referral
• Paid Alternating Week Shares: a $20 credit per referral

These credits apply for Paid Woodlands Home Delivery Shares as well.

 

Should you have any questions, please contact me via email or by telephone.

 

Farm Dinner Set For Saturday December 1st. We've heard about how great Justin Turner is as a chef and now we're ecstatic that he will be joining us in hosting another one of our farm dinners. It will likely be a little chilly by then, so we will probably begin early afternoon. For those that will like to stay into the evening, a nice campfire may be inviting. This will be an adult oriented event. More details to come.   

 

 

(MORE INFO FURTHER BELOW, INCLUDING A RECIPE OR TWO) 

   

 Thanks for reading, 

  

Van   

Cell 713 876 8645

www.woodduckfarm.com

csa@woodduckfarm.com

 

PS If you have moved or not interested in receiving our updates, please click the "unsubscribe" link above to "option out" of any future emails.

 

 

 I put these together in a previous farm update, but thought them worth being re-visited.  

 

Recipes Taken From the Food Network

Recipe #1)    Cut one large bunch of broccoli into 3-inch spears, toss with 3 smashed cloves garlic, a pinch of red pepper flakes and 3 tablespoons sesame oil. Spread the spears on a baking sheet and roast at 450 degrees for 15 minutes. Top the spears with a handful of sliced scallions and 2 teaspoons soy sauce.

 

 

 

Recipe #2) Below, is a more detailed approach. It is similar but it incorporates a little Parmesan cheese and lemon.

 

The Best Broccoli of Your Life

November 10, 2008 | By Adam Roberts | 152 Comments

You know you've done something right with broccoli when the person you made it for describes it to someone else the next day as "better than biting into a steak."

 

Those were Craig's words and they were a marked change from the first words he uttered about the broccoli, before he bit in: "You made broccoli for dinner? Broccoli and sweet potatoes?"

 

Then he did bite in and his eyes lit up. "Oh my God," he said. "This is the best broccoli I've ever had in my life." Later he said: "If parents made this broccoli for their kids, kids wouldn't hate broccoli. They'd beg for it." 

 

So what did I do to the broccoli to make it taste so good?

I can't take any credit. The credit goes to that formidable force in my foodie life; namely, The Barefoot Contessa. From the very beginning, when I used to go to book stores and copy recipes out of her books on little index cards that I kept in my pocket, Ina Garten's recipes have proved to be that perfect combination of simple yet sophisticated; she maximizes flavors in ways that are both ingenious and incredibly replicable. Anyone can do an Ina recipe yet when you taste the finished product, it doesn't taste that way; it tastes like it was made by a pro.

 

I'm going to have a hard time this week not posting all of the recipes from her new book, Back To Basics. In the past few days alone, I've made her roasted pears with blue cheese and walnuts; her roasted sweet potato wedges (which I wrote about in the previous post); and from her "Parties!" book, her butternut squash soup and her roasted pork loin. As you can tell from these recipe titles, The Barefoot Contessa loves roasting.

 

Specifically, she loves roasting vegetables at a high temperature until they caramelize. That's the basic premise of most of her vegetable recipes in most of her cookbooks and that's precisely what makes her broccoli recipe the best you've ever had.

 

Normally, broccoli gets squishy when you cook it. Not this broccoli; it develops an amazing brown crust in spots. Then you toss it with lemon juice, lemon zest, and Parmesan cheese and you're in heaven.

 

Seriously, this recipe is so easy I can recite it without looking at the book. (Ok, I'm lying, I'm about to open the book just to double check....)

 

You preheat the oven to 425.

Take 4 to 5 pounds of broccoli (I just got two large bunches), cut into florets (but relatively big ones.) Here's the key that she doesn't mention in the recipe: dry them THOROUGHLY. That is, if you wash them. I saw an episode of Julia Child cooking with Jacques Pepin once when Pepin revealed he doesn't wash a chicken before putting it in a hot oven: "The heat kills all the germs," he said in his French accent. "If bacteria could survive that oven, it deserves to kill me." By that logic, then, I didn't wash my broccoli; I wanted it to get crispy and brown. If you're nervous, though, just wash and dry it obsessively.

 

Now, it's easy. Put the broccoli on a cookie sheet. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. (She says 5 Tbs olive oil, 1 1/2 tsps kosher salt, 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper, but I just eyeballed it.) Now add 4 garlic cloves that are peeled and sliced and toss them in too.

Roast in the oven 20 to 25 minutes, until "crisp-tender and the tips of some of the florets are browned."

I shook the pan around a bit as it went, but not sure that's necessary.

When it's done, take it out of the oven-and here's where it gets really good-zest a lemon over the broccoli, squeeze the lemon juice over the broccoli, add 1.5 Tbs more olive oil, 3 Tbs toasted pine nuts (I left those out), and 1/3 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. She also has you add 2 Tbs julienned fresh basil, but I left that out too.

You won't miss it: the magic combo of the crispy broccoli, the garlic, the lemon and the cheese will make this the best broccoli of your life. I guarantee it; you will go ga-ga over it. I'm so ga-ga over it that I would seriously consider a trip right now to the store just so I could make this for lunch. Broccoli for lunch? After trying this, you'll never want to eat anything else for breakfast, lunch or dinner ever again.