Salad Dressings from Karley's Demonstration at the Farmers Market

Balsamic Sorghum Vinaigrette
Combine equal parts Balsamic vinegar and sorghum with two parts extra virgin olive oil.
Shake until emulsified and serve.

Serving suggestion: Dress a green salad topped with thinly sliced beets and onions

Red Wine Vinaigrette with rosemary and garlic
Combine one part red wine vinegar with two parts extra virgin olive oil.
Add chopped herbs and garlic, if desired. Shake until emulsified and serve.

Serving suggestion: Toss with chopped tomato, cucumber, and onion. Refrigerate for half an hour before serving to let flavors combine.

Creamy and Sweet Lemon Vinaigrette
Combine equal parts lemon juice and sweetener; shake until sweetener dissolves.
Add equal parts of sour scream or yogurt and extra virgin olive oil.
Shake until thoroughly combined and serve. Keep refrigerated.

Serving Suggestion: Dress a mixed greens salad

Lovely Lettuce

While popular and familiar, iceburg lettuce, by itself, makes for a pallid salad. Unless, of course, it's a wedge salad with blue cheese and bacon dressing garnished with sliced green onions and cranberries.

Romain and butterhead type lettuces are far more nutritionally dense than iceburg, which is mostly water. Lettuce leaf stalks have more fiber than the leaves, where vitamins and minerals are concentrated. 

Lettuce stored as a full head maintains quality longer than if prewashed and cut. Damaged or cut leaves release an enzyme that causes the degradation of Vitamin C and discoloration.

If storing cut leaves, dry thoroughly with a spinner or by gently tumbling in a clean towel. Store wrapped in a damp paper or dish towel in a sealed plastic bag or container.

 

The tight, blanched inner leaves of a head of Romaine or butterhead lettuce make crunchy, delightful scoops for egg, tuna, and chicken salad or dips like guacamole and chunky salsa.

We're used to eating salads as a small primer to the main dish, but fresh lettuce is so delicious and beautiful, you really can showcase it as a main dinner event.

A giant bed of lettuce can be the base of a “taco” salad. Pile on browned ground beef seasoned with cumin and chili powder, cooked brown rice, chopped green onions, cilantro, and salsa. If you're feeling indulgent, be generous with the sour cream and cheese; otherwise trying substituting Greek yogurt for the sour cream. Crumble some tortilla chips on top and dig in!

Another favorite main dish salad at our farm is a dish that my mother taught me, and her mother taught her. Buttercrunch is my favorite to use for this salad, but any fresh lettuce will do. Mix one part honey or sugar with one part lemon juice. Toss the lettuce with a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil and some salt. Pour the sweetened lemon juice over the salad and server with chopped boiled eggs. I have found bacon to be an excellent addition to this salad, but then there are few things that don't taste better with bacon! Served with a thick slice of whole wheat toast, this sweet and savory salad makes for an excellent light dinner at the end of a hot day spent planting okra and corn.

Make a vegan-friendly, but still robust and filling, salad by using chickpeas. I highly recommend buying (and then cooking) dried chickpeas, as they taste much better and have no added sodium, but canned will do in a pinch. In a blender, combine half the chickpeas with some water, a lot of curry powder, generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and fresh or powdered garlic. Process until smooth. Salt to taste. Toss the rest of the chickpeas in this curry chickpea dressing and pile the combination onto a mounded plate of lettuce. A ripe avocado makes a great addition to the dressing or topping the salad.

Whether you're working to improve or maintain your health, including salads as a major part of a few meals per week will help you towards your goal. With a little culinary creativity, there's no way you'll get bored with green salads before the spring lettuce bolts and makes way for summer tomatoes.

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 2 Shares

You'll find the same mix of fresh produce as last week, with the addition of some other goodies, like baby carrots and hardneck garlic scapes.


You can just chop up those greens, heat up some coconut or extra virgin olive oil, and toss everything in a saute pan. Add some grated or finely chopped fresh ginger, soy sauce, and a little black pepper for a simple, fast dish with lots of flavor. Serve with fast-cooking Basmati rice, quinoa, or pearl couscous to round out the meal and have dinner ready in under 30 minutes! (Take that Rachael Ray!)

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 One of my favorite things to do with chard is add it to tomato sauce. Add the chopped greens just a few minutes before serving. It pairs very well with the acidity and tang of the tomatoes.

I use chard and kale ribs in place of celery to add crunch in pretty much everything, from deviled eggs to tuna salad.

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A favorite go-to fast meal here on the farm is to make a giant salad for dinner. I'll top it with a couple boiled eggs, some chopped bacon, and dress it with a sweet lemon dressing. The dressing isn't terribly healthy; lemon juice to sugar at a 1:1 ration with a healthy drizzle of olive oil. But oh my GOODNESS it's delicious... and I figure if you're having salad for dinner, you can afford to splurge on the dressing. My mother taught me that recipe, and her mother taught her.


Part of the fun of CSA and seasonal eating is thoroughly enjoying produce when it's available. We just straight up refuse to buy lettuce in the store (SO inferior), so when it's not in the garden, we don't eat salads. But when the lettuce looks as beautiful as it does now, we eat it for lunch, snacks, and dinner, and sometimes even breakfast.

Soon enough it'll be 100 degrees and tomato season; the lettuce will have bolted and be bitter. Enjoy these beautiful greens while they're here! Experiment, and you never know when you'll taste your new favorite food!