Baked beans in a squash bowl, side of spinach salad. Perfect winter meal.
Welcome to Week 3, Winter Members!
This week’s shares come to you after/ in the midst of the grand finale of the chicken barn. Last night Noah couldn’t stop saying “I can’t believe it’s done….” He and Sabrina had wrapped up the final carpentry and roost-bar details by late afternoon, and we pulled the barn into position after dark. There was of course a pit-stop next to the barn the whole flock of chicks have been living in, where we bucket-brigaded 120 birds from that rather crowded barn, splitting the flock nicely between the two spaces. If we seem a little dazed or tired, it's just the tail end of that barn marathon; Noah estimates these builds are around 300 person-hours to complete, and when each of those person-hours competes with some other critical farm tasks, it can take a while to get through it all.
But chickens and barns aren’t the only big news…you are here for the winter veggies, after all! In that department, we’re excited to share several new types of greens, introduce the storage cabbage into the mix, and generally set you up for another good veggie-filled week.
Meal ideas: We won’t assume you made turkey for Thanksgiving, but if you did especially if you made the usual size with a fraction of your normal crowd, many of these meals can absorb turkey leftovers in various forms. We’ve been on a kick of beans and lentils lately, and highly recommend serving your favorite chili, baked beans, or a curried lentil soup using any variety of winter squash as your edible bowl. With the dried chilies included in your share (directions for those detailed below), we also recommend making fajitas or (sauté strips of cabbage, carrot, onion, etc, till just tender and toss with a generous spoonful of chili powder for the last minute of cooking. Serve warm in tortillas with beans, reheated leftover turkey, fresh greens, and/ or salsa). Or tacos, with grated cabbage and other greens filling on top of beans, leftover turkey or other meat, maybe pickled radishes as a garnichs. You could cook up a big pot of beans and make chili, using any leftover squash as part of the sauce base (blends well with tomato based chilies, or can totally replace the tomatoes). We used tatsoi last night on a Thai-inspired pizza, by tossing chopped leftover turkey in our peanut sauce with a little extra hot sauce added, spread that over pizza crusts and topped with chopped greens—bake till everything is hot and greens get slightly crisp.
Whatever you eat this week, thank you for being a part of the winter eating adventure! We are finished up the harvest and packing today to get your shares ready by 3:00 pm (please remember they may not be ready before then), and we'll host the pickup time from 3:00-6:00. If that window doesn’t work, the shares will be in the farmstore all of Wednesday as well. If you know you aren’t going to make it to pick up this week, please just send us a message so we can donate your share to a family that can use it.
Many thanks,
Mary, Noah, and Sabrina
What you’ll find in this week’s share:
In the greens bag: ~Spinach. If you are a smaller household and in any way feeling overwhelmed by the greens volume, remember that you can chop and freeze this spinach in ziplock bags to add to scrambled eggs, pasta sauces, whatever else you use it in, for later in the winter when your membership is done. Or really any dish that cooks spinach makes it just sort of melt away, so consider finding a recipe for saag paneer, spanakopita, or just layering it on thick in a lasagna. ~A bag of the winter salad mix (non-spicy).~~A large fluffy head of Tokyo Bekana, a Chinese leaf cabbage. One farmer we follow in Vermont describes this green as “like boc choi and romaine lettuce had a love child.” We use it in place of big leafy lettuces for salads and sandwich greens, or as cooked, a delicate cousin to boc choi—just reduce your stir-fry cooking time a little bit. ~Tatsoi, another member the same family as boc choi, but with some behaviors in common with spinach. This dark-green little rosette works great as a stir-fry just as you would use boc choi, or as a fresh tasty salad green, a topping on hot soups, etc..
In the heavier things bag, you’ll find:
Carrots, still the easiest winter farm snack, and versatile in any cooked dish. This week, consider slicing them into long narrow sticks 1/4 inch wide, for fajitas. Or if you’re getting a pileup in your produce drawer, consider the roasted carrot soup recipe we shared this fall (even ones that are getting a little rubbery will work in that).
Radishes: if you are lukewarm on radishes as a raw snack or salad ingredient (confession: I love growing radishes more than eating them, so I fall in this category), you might have a few weeks’ worth in that produce drawer. If so, try one of these options: cook them—I know it seems weird, but try just slicing them up and adding them to your stir fry, or roasting them along with chunks of other roots in a root roast. It mellows and sweetens them and frankly makes them disappear. Or, especially if you are going to take our advice and consider some tacos, fajitas, etc., in your menu this week, try turning them into a zesty condiment with this spicy pickled radish recipe: https://cookieandkate.com/spicy-quick-pickled-radishes/ . Or, for topping the stir-fries, etc., our rice vinegar radish relish would work too (just grate them, include an optional sprinkle of red pepper flakes and/ or garlic and add enough seasoned rice vinegar to the bowl or jar to cover them, and refrigerate for a few hours or days).
Cabbage: We are excited this year to have some winter storage cabbage tucked away for these cold months. The heads are denser than the summer cabbages you may have tried from market, and a bit firmer. But they’ll still work great grated up for salads and cole slaws, or sautéed in a little butter, salt and pepper as a simple side dish. We encourage them sliced into ribbons as a fajita component, or grated finely as a taco filling. They add an additional crunch to stir-fries or general veggie sautés. Or if your produce drawer in the fridge is really over-full, take the cabbage head straight to a fermentation project, and make a jar or two of sauerkraut.
Delicata Squash: this is one of our favorite, sweetest winter squashes, and one of the more versatile. Simplest cooking method it so slice in half long-ways, scoop out the seeds and bake face-down at 350-ish till soft (ontly takes 20-30 minutes with these smaller squashes, compared to larger types). Since their skin in thinner than most squashes, you can also keep it on, slice those halves into “smiles,” toss them in olive oil and salt, and bake them at 450 into a squashy version of oven fries.
Onion: this may be the last week that includes an onion, as our yields were below what we’d hoped. We wish we had enough to supply the membership several a week all the way through, and hopefully next year we will.
Dried chilies: these are Chimayo and/ or Pueblo chilies, so they are on the milder end of our hot peppers, a lot mellower than the Thai chilies you got the first week. You can break them open and toss whole into a pot of simmering beans, or grind them a blender or coffee grinder to make chili flakes. Or, for a home-made chili powder, take the chilies (break off the stems), 2 teaspoons of whole cumin, 1 tsp of whole coriander if you have it, 1/2 tsp black pepper or peppercorns, and 2 tsp of salt—blend it all in a coffee/ spice grinder, food processor or blender till you have a powder, as use as you would your favorite chili powder.
Optional addition: chose either one bag of potatoes (any variety) or another winter squash or pie pumpkin, to complete your share this week. Since we have plenty of both potatoes and squash right now, we thought we’d give you the choice of which sounds best.