Strong to the finich because you eat your spinach!
For the first time in what feels like a very, very long time, it is starting to feel a bit like summer. The warm breeze blows against the sweat on our brow and makes us feel cool, the sound of the neighbors mowing their lawn, the lightening bugs, and the thunderstorms. With the first day of Summer coming up this Friday, I think I’m finally convinced that winter is gone and that Summer has the strong hold. Monday morning crew ready for harvest!
With the Midwestern growing season now in full swing, we have much to be thankful for. While we still have plenty of time to wait for our tomatoes to grow taller and begin to blossom and bear fruit. It will feel like centuries before our peppers will grow fruit and turn colors and still several weeks before the sweet corn begins to tassel. Even the potatoes are just now emerging from beneath the mulch. And what will we eat when there aren’t even green beans yet?
The rainy, lush, and now warm Spring is offering plenty of greens. Yes, I said GREENS! You know you signed up for a CSA share because you wanted to eat more greens, feel healthier and try new foods. Here is your big chance! This box is loaded with greens! Spring is a time for cleansing out and cleaning up after all those starchy and heavy foods you ate this winter. I did just a little research to inspire you to eat your greens and feel good about it, so I don’t sound so much like your mother scolding you to eat your greens!
From THIS website. Greens are nature’s scrub brushes, cleaning out toxins, loosening up mucus and cleansing our blood and respiratory systems. They are arguably one of the most important foods we can eat for good health. Unfortunately, they’re also the most common food missing from the American diet.
“Dark, leafy greens are nutritional powerhouses,” says Joshua Rosenthal, MScED and founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. “They deliver high amounts of immune-boosting vitamins, skin-glowing minerals and cancer-fighting phytonutrients, not to mention fiber and even protein.”
Some of the proven and apparent benefits of consuming dark leafy greens include:
“What a lot of people don’t know is the vitamins in leafy green vegetables are fat-soluble. To avoid missing out on all the valuable vitamins and nutrients they should be eaten with a healthy fat source,” says Elizabeth Finch, holistic health coach. “Try olive oil, coconut oil or avocado.” Greens come in just about every flavor, from sweet to bitter and peppery to earthy, which means there is a powerful leafy green out there for every set of taste buds.
Weeding onions on Thursday morning
French Breakfast Radish: We were wondering if the French really eat these for Breakfast? What do you think? One of Worker Shares, Joe, thinks “Probably not on a regular basis”.
Cherry Bell Radish: These are the rosy red, round balls that look like clown noses. Remember that the greens on your radishes are edible!
Curly Green Kale: Such perfect looking gale this week! This is some of the healthiest stuff we will ship you this summer. Learn to love kale if you can. I promise a long and rewarding relationship. Kale keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge. Have you ever had Kale chips? See the recipe below!
Collards: A southern cooking green that grows wonderfully in the cool, midwestern north. Collards are in the same family as kale, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. A mild flavored and nutritious green! Keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Cilantro: Beautiful and fragrant! The cilantro is looking spectacular this week with no blemishes or yellow leaves. Taco salad anyone?
Spinach: One last giving of spinach before this cool weather loving green goes out of season until fall. We all love spinach with everything, but we’ll have to embrace our other greens until the cool weather returns in September and October.
Lettuce X 2: It is high tide for lettuce on the farm. The lettuce is still very tender and wonderful this time of year. We were harvesting green and red buttercups, green romaines and your regular red-leaf lettuce. So much wonderful lettuce. Keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge. A little extra cleaning effort is needed to clean the lettuce leaf by leaf once you’ve cut the end off.
Arugula: One last giving of the peppery arugula as well this Spring. The leaves are looking a little more rough now that the warm weather is here. They’re still wonderful incorporated into a large salad or wilted down into your favorite greens dishes. Arugula and feta cheese go really well togehter some walnuts and your favorite balsamic dressing.
Broccoli Florettes: Our broccoli this Spring is a sorry excuse for a broccoli harvest. Our broccoli plants were all starting to bolt long before they were supposed to. We think this happened because right after they were transplanted out, they were hit with a few hard frosts just shortly after transplant. Also, they sat in very cold soil after transplant, needing to wait until warmer weather came around before they could resume growth. The added stress after transplant caused them to bolt. So we’re just harveting small florettes off of them now. We’re so sorry to see this happen. We have 3 more successions of broccoli coming on this Spring/Summer that we have much higher hopes for. We’re sorry for the small giving of florettes, but this is the best we have for now.
