Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Hey its Winter Squash season!  Yahoo!  Each share will be getting their entire allotment of winter squash today.  We planted more varieties this year and less quantity than last year but it’s still a nice little bunch of autumn-heralding sweetness.  While the greens have waned and there are no more salad greens, we are glad to be able to provide you with yet another magnificent box of end-of-season-variety.  Oh, also, I have to apologize about an error on last weeks box insert.  I referred to the Serrano Peppers as Habenero Peppers, so last week and this week you are receiving Serrano Peppers, which area very hot pepper.  The Habenero Peppers might be ready next week. Even though there is only one more box left after this, please know that you will be able to order through the virtual farm stand if you would like to continue to receive our produce. There will be limited amounts but we will continue as long as the weather permits.  There are no recipes today but we would really appreciate you filling out the feedback form and returning it to us when you pick up your final box next week.

Enjoy,

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Can you believe it?  Only two more boxes and the season will be over! Crazy! How can it be mid-September already!?  For those who are as sad as we are that the season is ending, the good news is that we expect to continue doing the Virtual Farm Stand for a short time after the CSA is over, so you will be able to order limited amounts and types of produce as long as the weather holds.  The recipes are all about salsa and spread today.  We have some hot peppers for you this week. Please be careful as these are very hot. It is recommended that you wear gloves when cutting them up since the oils in them can burn your hands.

Enjoy,

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Have you ever opened your fridge door and looked at what you have and just been completely unable to decide what to make?  Well be prepared, because there is so much variety in today’s box that you might be paralyzed with indecision.  I’m a bit at a loss as to what to give you for recipes… I mean really, what can’t you make with a box like this. The sky is the limit!  Last year when I faced this type of indecision I just grabbed a bit of everything and made a gigantic vat of soup, ate some for dinner and lunch the next day and froze the rest for winter.  BUT the saving grace in today’s box is our featured item GREEN BEANS!  Whooowhooo!  First beans of the season and so you have to make these for dinner tonight it’s just a given.

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  You know, one of the more fun aspects of being a farmer is that sometimes a crop will just jump out and surprise you.  Like this week we suddenly had cucumbers!  First there were none, and then suddenly there were a bunch all fully ripe staring us in the face!  It’s kind of magical in a way…  We have A LOT of squash and basil for you this week. The method that we have been using to prune the Basil has done its job by making this wonderful edition to our lives incredibly prolific.  So its pesto time!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Summer squash is here!  We are happy to report the summer squash plants are in full gear, no longer just idling along.  And what happy little squashes they are, sweet and good-natured!  We’ve had some great changes in the garden this week.  The zinnias started blooming and we are starting to see tomatoes forming on the vines!  The tomato plants seem thrilled to be alive and appear to be doubling in size nightly.  And in anticipation of the abundance of crops we hope to continue to have, we encourage anyone interested to sign up for the Food Preservation Workshop on the 31^st.

We also have one favor to ask of you all.  We need everyone to take a few minutes to do a little hokey-pokey magic dance during the upcoming full moon in order to make sure we do not become victims of the GH PLAGUE that is occurring all around the region now.  I’m not going to actually write out the word for the GH’s (just as a sort of precaution), but I will tell you that they can be described as “a hopping insect” the name of which sort of rhymes with “show-stopper.”  We have done some biological pest-control mitigation but we don’t think that asking everyone to do the hokey-pokey is an excessive precautionary measure.  Thank you!!!!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Variety, variety, variety!  That is what this week’s box is all about. We are still waiting patiently for the true hot weather items but in the meantime we’ve got a fantastic array of crops for you.  One thing is that we have more garlic that it ready. Yahoo!  You can use this fresh or dry it and it should last most of the way through the winter.  We have kept the Minutina separate from the lettuce mix this time. You can mix it into your lettuce mix if you want to add “flair” to your salad (so I’ve heard), but I would think that it would also be GREAT chopped up with Beets, balsamic and goat chevre or gorgonzola (please see the recipe from last week).

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Ahh….the beauty of early-mid-season harvest.   How about those Turnips, huh? Have you tried them raw yet, just like candy I say!  Well, I hope you kept your Squash Blossom recipes from last week because boy do we have blossoms for you now.  You can turn your kitchen into a gourmet restaurant with the presence of these blossoms.  I’ve added another recipe below but I think they’d be great toasted and then put in an omelet or a frittata.  If you did not keep your recipes from last week let me know and I’ll e-mail them to you.  So, we have an abundance of blossoms but the squashes themselves are playing hard to get…  So we have “Hint of Summer Squash” this week as they work themselves up to full production mode.   Also, just to let you all know sometimes we have to divide things up over time between half and full shares.  For example, much earlier this season the full shareholders got Rhubarb and this week the ½ shares are getting Rhubarb.  If you aren’t getting something in your box this time around be assured that we will have some for you later in the season.  We also have a few tart cherries for you.  I actually like these just raw, but they are a bit tart for most people.  So, being as there aren’t really enough to make a whole pie, we recommend you make a sauce that could be used for ice cream, angle food cake or just by the spoonful.   Half share holders (or full shareholders if they still have their Rhubarb from several weeks ago) could possibly make a cherry rhubarb pie.  That sound good to me!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Well, here it comes… Things are really starting to produce now, as indicated by the massive amount of Turnips you are all getting this week.  Actually, one reason that you are getting this quantity is because we don’t have the farm stand open yet, and so those poor little extra Turnips wouldn’t have had any place to go if not in your CSA box.  And next week there will be Summer Squash!  Yep the growth rate on everything has really kicked in in the last couple of weeks, a sure sign of mid-summer abundance upon us. We have a couple of very special treats in the box today, Squash Blossoms and Garlic!  Now there aren’t a huge number of Squash Blossoms as yet but we will try and include them whenever we can.  The Garlic is an early succession that kind of got forgotten about last year but apparently still felt something for us and produced nicely.

Enjoy!

Tracy

Here are a few tips on how to store, and enjoy the produce you receive each week:

Double bag your Basil, or put the bag in a Tupperware container, to prevent it from turning brown in the fridge.

Tarragon is a great herb to use with Chicken.  Place a few sprigs in the body cavity and some under the skin and then  roast.

Arugula is a spicy salad green, delicious raw by itself or added to other salad greens.  It can also be wilted as a side dish or garnish.

Turnips can be boiled, steamed or sautéed or eaten raw.  I cut them in ¼ in slices or ¼ the smaller ones.  Larger ones can be cut into 1/8ths. Sauté them in a small amount of oil for a couple minutes, then add water and steam for a few more minutes, until fork tender (the amount of time depends on the size).   In my book, you can never go wrong with adding butter, salt and pepper.

Leafy greens are prolific throughout the early CSA pick-up season.  If you begin to tire of them you can always slice them, throw them in a ziplock bag , squeeze the air out and then put them in the freezer.  These can be added to soups during winter months.

Braising Mix:  Chop the greens, heat oil or butter in the pan to very hot then add the greens per cooking times:

• Collards (bagged separately): 10-20min
• Escarole: 5-10min
• Swiss Chard: 5-10min
• Spinach: a few seconds to a few minutes
• Curly Endive: 3 minutes

While cooking your Braising Mix or any greens you could add any of the following combinations for flavor:

• Fennel, onion and butter
• Bacon and goat cheese
• Olive oil and lemon
• Chili Flakes and crushed Peanuts
• Toasted Sesame Seeds, minced Ginger, minced Garlic, then after cooking drizzle with Toasted Sesame Oil.

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  It’s Stunning Box Four this week!  And wow, who would have thought that the Turnips would have gone bananas before the Basil? Although, the Basil is blessing us mightily at the moment.   Another blessing is that we did NOT get decimated by the hail on Monday. Whew and Hallelujah!  We were prepared and had virtually everything covered with floating row cover.  I had just taken the row cover off of the Winter and Summer Squash, since it was unhappily straining against it.  My mistake…  But Jillian and I ran out there and braved the hailstones to place the row cover back over the squash.  Being slightly battered is a small price to pay to save our precious Patty Pans, is it not?  Thank goodness we were here otherwise those squashes would look like Swiss Cheese about now (as does some of the Spinach in your Braising mix today)!  And you know I just have to ask, is that Escarole not sublime?!

Enjoy!

Tracy