Travelling with greens and using all those stems

This week you'll find a sun-tea bag in the shares with three types of mint and red clover. If you like a strong tea, add a couple bags of green or black tea with the contents of the bag to a quart jar and leave it in the direct sun for a couple hours. Use a larger jar for a more dilute flavor. Sweetened with honey, this makes for a delicious and refreshing drink on a hot day.


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 Lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce. Buttercrunch is really putting on a nice show this spring, and the colors are really starting to pop.






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The greens bunches are getting huge. We're eating them in everything, from scrambled eggs to pasta dishes.

I know a lot of you are traveling this summer. If you're wondering how to use the greens in a car-friendly dish, try making a nut butter salad:

Chop the greens up in fine ribbons, like in the Greens Crash Course. In a blender or food processor, combine raw cashews, a liberal amount of curry powder, healthy drizzle of apple cider vinegar (ACV), lemon juice, and some salt and pepper with enough water to form a thick sauce. Add more cumin if you feel like it. Toss with the chopped greens and let everything meld for an hour.

Other combinations to try:
cooked chickpeas, curry, garlic, onion, ACV, healthy oil (nut free)
peanut butter, soy sauce, ginger, honey or sorghum, ACV, healthy oil

These dishes are fine for a few hours without refrigeration. They make great summer potluck salads, in addition to healthy road food.
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What about all those colorful stems? Don't throw them in the compost bin just yet!

The stems are crunchy and have way more flavor than celery, so you can chop them up and use them anywhere you'd use raw celery:

deviled eggs
tuna, egg, chicken, pasta, potato, etc salad
inside wraps
sprinkled on top of green salads
baked into quiche or a fritatta
delivery vehicle for creamy herb dips
crou d'etat platters

Chopped up stems looks like confetti!

If you like spicy foods, try these Siracha fridge pickles.

Spring Color

For many people, the stars of the garden are of course the flashy tomatoes, rambling cucumbers, towering okra, and dazzling spectrum of flowers, but you don't have to wait until June for color and taste to come pouring out of your soil. 

Greens are often maligned as boring and bland, perhaps because many people have only ever encountered them out of a can, which is no way to meet any vegetable. The traditional method of cooking a mess of greens is to boil them for hours with pork fat. While sopping up potlickins with homemade cornbread is indeed delightful, greens are very versatile and can be used in a multitude of dishes.

Turnip greens, mustard greens, cabbage, and kale are the most commonly encountered greens in the grocery store. Kale has recently been enjoying celebrity status in foodie culture—with good reason. High in vitamins and minerals, kale and the other greens can be an important part of maintaining good health through healthy eating habits.

Swiss chard, closely related to and resembling beet greens, has also been featured in many cooking shows and blogs. The large glossy leaves are tender with a mild flavor. Use them raw in place of a tortilla in chicken or egg salad wraps. Chard stalks come in a stunning array of florescent colors. I finely chop the tender stalks to sprinkle over my deviled eggs or salad like edible confetti. 

Add a nutritional punch to almost any savory dish by throwing in some chopped greens. From scrambled eggs, quiche, and fritatta, to chicken, egg, and potato salad, soups, and stir fry, there is little for dinner or lunch that can't be improved by adding greens. 

Mild greens can be shredded or julienned and added raw. More pungent greens can be used in small amounts or cooked lightly to mellow their flavor. A big mess of mixed greens cooked for 15 minutes in just a little water and coconut oil, dressed with cider vinegar and a drizzle of honey, seasoned with salt and pepper, is a fine addition to rice and beans for an easy and nutritious simple meal.

Add sensational diversity to your bowl of lettuce and elevate the salad to a work of culinary art. Combine curly, frilly leaves that hold a dressing well with leaves that have a big crunchy stalk. Throw in speckled leaves, purple leaves, dark green spinach and the blanched chartreuse inner leaves of a head of romaine lettuce, and you'll forget that you're even working with “greens”. Top off the salad with slices of a white and pink 'Chioggia' beet and a 'Purple Dragon' carrot, and you'll have a creation worthy of the finest dining establishments.

Cold hardy and easy to grow, greens will heartily welcome spring to your garden and can even be grown in pots on a sunny porch. The kale and arugula I planted last week germinated in less than 24 hours! Sprinkle seeds over soil you've prepare for a seed bed and cover lightly with soil. We use lightweight row cover directly on the soil to speed germination. The plants will push up the row cover as they grow, and it will afford some protection from pests.

About the time the summer bugs start having their heyday with your greens, the cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes will be gearing up. Chard and kale left in the ground through the summer will rebound when fall's cool-off begins, so you can get two harvest seasons from one planting.

Wild Garden Seed is a small seed company that improves and develops varieties for direct-to-consumer growers, which includes home gardens. Their lettuce varieties 'Joker' and 'Freedom Mix' are the most stunning lettuces I have encountered. From 'Purple Peacock Sprouting Broccoli' to 'Scarlet Ohno' turnip, the color and taste of their varieties are superior to anything you've ever bought from the grocery store. A few of their varieties are offered through FedCo Seed Company, as well.

The world of greens is vastly more expansive than the shelves of Food Lion or Wal-Mart would lead you to believe. Grown without toxic sprays, harvested fresh, and prepared lovingly, these leaves can support good health while providing beauty to be appreciated around the table with family and friends.

Week 4 CSA

Expect greens, greens, and more greens. And the last of the garlic scapes!

If you're like us, you've got more jars of jellies in your pantry than you know what to do with. Try combining the jelly with peanut butter (or cashew or almond butter), add a little water to loosen, apple cider vinegar and lemon to taste, add a couple good squirts of Bragg's amino acids, and a healthy drizzle of extra virgin olive oil in your blender and process it until it's smooth. It makes for a sweet, creamy dressing that will impress your friends and use up those homemade jellies!

You'll also be receiving a head of cabbage from Eddie Ray in Smithville. They're organically grown and a great size for a small family or couple. If you'd like to make kraut, let us know, and we'd be happy to provide you with beautiful cabbage from our farmer friends.

The season's first cabbages marks kraut making time! Homemade sauerkraut is nothing like the mushy stuff in a can from the store. Store-bought kraut has been heated to make it shelf stable, which completely destroys all the health benefits of this fermented food.

Fermentation, which makes nutrients easier to absorb during digestion, occurs when sugars in food are broken down, resulting in lactic acid, which lowers the pH (raising the acidity) of food below the growth range of dangerous bacteria, preserving the food and all its nutrients without refrigeration.

Lactic fermented foods add good bacteria to your stomach. An entire ecosystem of bacteria inside each of us is responsible for actually breaking down food we eat into forms that can be absorbed by our bodies.

Fermented foods help balance your body's pH. The good bacteria absolutely vital for digestive health cannot thrive in an acidified environment. A standard Westernized diet high in animal proteins, processed fats, and sugars leaves our bodies chronically acidified.

Fermentation can be carried out on your kitchen counter. All it requires is finely shredding your cabbage or other vegetables and packing them down with salt in a ceramic or glass vessel to release the juices, which mix with the salt to create a brine that covers the vegetables. Cover and let the vessel sit a few days to a few months, until it acquires the flavor you desire. 

Properly prepared, fermented foods are as delicious as they are nutritious. Local author, Sandor Katz, is internationally known for his fermentation skills and knowledge. His book, Wild Fermentation: the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture food, is a great introduction to fermentation. It's available at the Liberty Library in the old high school building in Liberty.

Week 3 shares

Salads, salads, and stir-fry! TWO heads of lettuce, in addition to the last of the Asian greens, some very spicy mustards bunched with the season's last watercress, leeks, onions, carrots, and GARLIC SCAPES! These succulent treats will probably only be around for another share or two, so be sure to get creative and savor them!





There are lots of recipes available online suggesting creative uses for scapes.


Here's one for Northern Bean and Garlic Scape Dip (and the website I lifted the picture from)

Garlic Scape Pesto

And a collection of recipes

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 Today we have a couple gluten-intolerant Wwoofers over, so I made a big bowl of egg salad and served it on top of the "farmer food" lettuce... which is what we call the stuff that's too ugly to put in your shares! It still makes a beautiful salad.

Don't forget to use the ribs from you greens to add a fun crunch to stuff like egg salad.

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 This is the first year we've harvested the tops of the bolting chard. I think I'm in love. They're so tender and delicious, and to boot, they cook up really quickly in a stir-fry.

When in doubt, chop it up, throw it in a pan with some rice, try some seasonings like soy, ginger, and garlic or cumin, coriander, and a little curry powder, and you've got yourself a quick, healthy, flavorful meal. Experiment with adding exotic ingredients like coconut milk simmered with lemongrass to keep it exciting!

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You'll find a variety of little edible flowers and herbs. The light purple poofs of small flowers are chive blossoms, the yellow are kale flowers, white flowers are arugula, and the dark purple is sage. Sprinkle them over a big pile of lettuce for a salad prettier than a picture!

1st Week Share

The first shares this year include lettuce, Asian greens, kale, chard, mustards, mint, fresh herbs, garlic scapes, leeks, and giant Egyptian Walking onions. Use the white part of the onion like you would a regular bulb onion and the green part like a scallion. The curly parts at the top are more spicy than the rest of the onion. Leeks are a little sweeter and less pungent. They're great in stirfry, eggs... and everything else, really. Garlic scapes are one of the joys of CSA eating, as you'll never find them in the grocery store. They have the flavor of raw garlic and the texture of a fresh green bean. Use them raw, in soups and stews, or in sautes and stirfry.



If you're not sure how to use all those greens, you can always just chop them up and toss them with your lettuce to make a robust, colorful salad. Or add them to a stirfry with the garlic scapes and onions, then season with ginger, a little honey, and some soy sauce.


One of CSA members asked us, "Where are all the holes in your greens?!" Well, you'll find them aplenty in the Asian greens.






 
 Here are some links about how to use fresh herbs: Oregano and Thyme, Mint, and this Guide to Fresh Herbs. Included this week are oregano, thyme, and a chive blossoms. Just sprinkle the blossoms over your fresh salads. They have a mildly sweet flavor followed by that familiar chive pungency.

Try putting a sprig of mint in your water glass for a light, refreshing flavor. By far though, my favorite way to use mint is in mojitos...


For more ideas and recipes, visit our Greens Guide. Experiment and enjoy!