Week 1

Cooking in Season
week 1

Hi. Welcome Members! Over the next few months, we are going to move through the Ohio growing season where we’ll taste the crisp spring through the lettuce and berries, and really feel the summer heat through the tomatoes and sweet corn, finishing up in the fall’s preparation for winter with butternut squash, potatoes, and storable root veggies and apples. It is challenging to try to use things in your basket as they come, but I find that a lot of things that are in season together in the garden also go well together in the kitchen.

Anyway, here are a few things to remember as we start the season:
1. Wash your fruits and veggies. Everything is fresh picked and might still have some dirt on it, but before you eat it, definitely give it all a rinse.
2. Bring back your baskets from the week before. We reuse.
3. Some things such as cabbage and broccoli are so delicious that everything wants to eat it and since we don’t use harsh chemicals, I recommend a cold salt water bath before cooking just to be certain you are bug free.
4. There is still time to move up basket sizes if you would like more produce. We will pro-rate the remainder of the season. Just email me – janeehouston@gmail.com
5. Let me know if you would like eggs or herbs a day or so before pickup day and I will have them ready. Herbs are $2 and eggs are $3. – also, we love to barter! This week we would like to trade your old, leaky garden hoses for eggs or herbs. Our melon patch will thank you.

In your baskets this week, we have the last of the June strawberries. These tiny berries pack big taste, almost like candy, only good for you. Our asparagus is chemical free and delicious. Just bend them in half until they snap and discard the bottom part. Our celery is not blanched and really tastes like… celery. Also, some baskets have fresh lettuce and others have watercress, an “eat wild” sweet green that can be eaten like lettuce.

The veggie of the week is radishes. I love vegetables, but radishes are the one that make me cringe. Jason thinks I am crazy not to eat them fresh and my grandma eats them straight out of the garden with bread and butter, but I can’t stand them fresh unless they are sliced thin and hidden in a salad. So, here is a simple recipe from allrecipes that takes the bite out of them making them into a mild radish flavor that kinda tastes like a potato for those non-radish lovers like me.

20 ounces radishes, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Drizzle of olive oil
1 cube ice
Salt and pepper to taste

1 – preheat the grill for high heat.
2 – place radishes, garlic and ice cube on a double layer of aluminum foil large enough to wrap contents. Drizzle with olive oil (or a dab of butter) and salt and pepper to taste. Tightly wrap foil.
3 – place foil packet on the grill and cook for 20 minutes until radishes are tender.


Hope you all enjoy. See you next week as the beans, new potatoes, and kohlrabi start coming in and more berries turn ripe.

~janeé

Into to CSA 2009

We at High Mill Park are happy to provide some of the freshest fruits and vegetables you can find anywhere! Our CSA is a celebration of food and a gathering of an amazing community, providing local food to local people and bringing taste back to the table.

Before you decide to join, a few things to consider:Do you eat at home at least 3 meals a week? Do you like to cook with fresh vegetables? Are you willing to try new things? Are you able to come out to the farm and pickup your basket once a week or arrange for someone else to pickup for you? Would you like to learn more about where your food comes from, how it grows and be in tune with the seasons of Ohio?

What our CSA is all about:

1) Local - Buying local foods ensures that you are eating the freshest fruits and vegetables around. It also reduces your carbon footprint by avoiding shipping produce from other states. We like to be involved in the community because we are part of the community and local farmers care more about what happens to their local environments.

2)Taste - Nothing tastes better than a fresh peach warmed by the summer sun, or snap peas, picked that morning when the dew was still fresh. We carefully select the varieties we grow based on taste, then we grow them slow, allowing them to mature just when the time is right for the flavor to be at it's fullest. In our baskets, you'll find some unique produce you won't find anywhere else. We also have fresh picked herbs for an extra $2, with all forms of basil, herbal tea mixtures, among others.

3) Pickup - Once a week, we'll have a basket at the farm waiting for you. We try to make baskets up so that people can choose what they like. We welcome members to wander around the gardens or check out how the apples are doing in the orchard. Some members like to pick up their baskets and run, while others tend to linger, watching the chickens scratch around or feeding the pigs crabapples. Pickup day is a time we all look forward to as we enjoy sharing what we grow.

4) Baskets - We stack our baskets full of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. We try to grow everything that our Ohio climate will allow. In our orchard we have apples, pears, peaches, plums (if a late frost doesn't nip them), hazelnuts, gooseberries, a young paw paw, grapes and possibly our cherry trees might start producing this year. Our berry patches have red and black raspberries, strawberries, melons, and a couple sad blueberry plants. Our gardens are bursting with everything from corn to beets to cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes... and everything in between. Check out what's on order and email me suggestions!
Our season starts the last week in June and ends the last week of September with a harvest fest the first Saturday in October.

5) Getting involved - CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and we'd like to do just that. We invite members to come out and try their hand at weeding in the garden or help us irrigate the gardens in spring. We will be offering basic gardening classes for those who'd like to take some knowledge home with them.We also have events out at the park such as our spring seed swap, our zucchini bake off and fall pie bake off all of which are FREE!