Greens! Greens are the healthiest food for you! If there was any part of you was slightly interested in developing new healthy habits by signing up for your CSA share this summer, this is your *green opportunity. Greens this summer are not only bountiful, but they are crunchier, more tender and more succulent than most other years because of the mild temperatures and all of the moisture. All of the greens in your box are the real token to healthier eating. Harvesting the beautiful and amazing Swiss Chard!
If I could make a wish for you, it would be that by the end of this Summer Share CSA experience you had more recipe ideas, more inspiration, and more confidence using greens of all kinds to add texture, depth, flavor and health to your culinary life. I wish for you to see your turnip greens, your broccoli green leaves, your kohlrabi leaves and your radish leaves and see added value to your CSA share. The greener your dinner looks by the times it is served at your table, the healthier you will be.
I feel somewhat responsible for this. Truly my job is to just farm vegetables. It is my job to make sure you have a diversified box of healthy, seasonal, organic vegetables every week for 10 or 20 delivery weeks. But in some ways I feel like it is also my job to make sure you eat those vegetables every week. I can’t come into your home and cook them for you, that would be too invasive and impossible. The best I can do is to inspire you to want to eat those vegetables. I want to include recipe ideas every week that feature greens or new and creative ways to cook with greens.
We all know that eating more greens will improve our health, but simply stating this isn’t enough. We need to know more than that we just need to eat them. Learning to love to cook with your broccoli leaves, kohlrabi leaves and turnip greens will also empower you as a person, a cook, and a local and seasonal food eater. You will become one of those MacGiver types in the kitchen learning to sub chard and kohlrabi greens for spinach in any recipe. You’ll become creative and start seeking ways to incorporate greens into every meal, chopping up a little here and a little there in almost everything you prepare to use it up and get it into your family’s bellies as frequently as possible.
I challenge you as not only a CSA member, but as a person. Not for just this summer or the summer, but for always. I challenge you to look at your weekly bunches of collards and swiss chard and kale and to think of them as a golden item in your box. Not as sub-par to the tomato and the sweet corn, but as a compliment to the tomato and the sweet corn. I challenge you to learn to cook with them and to like them. To try, try again even if the recipe you tried wasn’t a hit in your house. Think Green!
Kohlrabi- We harvested white and purple kohlrabi this week. They are both the same on the inside, but they just have different colored skins. Peel your kohlrabi with a pearing knife and chop it up and eat it with dip, grate it into a slaw, or put slices of it into a stir fry. All of your greens will keep best in a plastic bag in the fridge.
French Breakfast Radish- These radishes are red on top and white on bottom. They’re a bit of spring treat. Enjoy your radishes while you have them, as they will be gone and out of style until fall. Radishes wont tolerate the heat coming up.
Hakurai Salad Turnips- These guys are a little meatier than last week. These turnips are meant to be a tender, spring turnip and will vary in texture, flavor and color a bit from your classic Fall Turnip. Even though there are some holes in the greens, use the greens for cooking. 
Worker Bees washing lottsa lettuce!
Garlic Scapes- These little curly Q’s are the garlic plant’s attempt at making seed. Each garlic plant sends out one scape each year in an effor to grow a seed head, these scapes happen to be very flavorful and tender. Chop them up from the cut end up to the lime green nodule and use them like you would fresh garlic. Their flavor isn’t as potent as fresh garlic cloves are, so feel free to use more than what you would normally use for garlic. These are truly a brief seasonal specialty item. I love the garlic scapes!
Cilantro- Yes! Another giving of fresh, wonderful cilantro! It comes at a perfect time when we’re getting all of this lettuce. Taco Salads anyone? We recommend washing your cilantro before you use it. We don’t wash cilantro because it will get slimy quickly once it gets wet. Wash it briefly before you use it.
Strawberries- Another giving of these flavorful, sweet Spring treats. Remember that Strawberries are highly perishable, we recommend eating them up quicly before they spoil on you!
Rainbow Swiss Chard- Small bunches of Swiss Chard this week. The Swiss Chard leaves are so tender and succulent that many of the leaves on the plants were ripped up from the pounding rain, so most of the leaves on the plant were discarded, but we made small bunches for all off of what good leaves we had left. We’re hoping for another nice harvest in a couple weeks. Use the stems as well as the leaves in your cooking! Keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Broccoli or Cauliflower or Sugar Snap Peas- The broccoli, cauliflower and Sugar Snap peas are just starting to come into season. This week was the first pickings of these items, and there wasn’t quite enough of each one to go around, so we split the items up amidst you all at random. There will be more of where these came from next week!
Lettuce x 4- One very large lettuce harvest! We had enough lettuce to give everyone 4 beautiful heads of lettuce! The challenge begins! Salads for every meal! Taco Salads, Lettuce Wraps, 7 Layered Salad! Salads with home-made ranch dressing. Salads with nuts, feta cheese, cheddar cheese, bacon, sunflower seeds, everything! Have salads all around this week!
Braised Turnip Greens with Apples
Layered Salad (I am my mother’s daughther, and for some reason, I still love this classic recipe!)
