at last – CSA season! i’m participating through stillman’s farm for the second year in a row. last year we found the full share a bit too big, so we’re going with a half share this year. it should be plenty, since we put in a little raised garden, too.
this week’s share contained:
- strawberries
- golden beets
- arugula
- red radishes
- butter lettuce
- kale
- chard
- light green summer squash (i forget what they called them)
i’ve got a lot of chard and kale to get through… any suggestions? i’m not fond of greens sauteed in oil; i’m in the market for something with more zest (acidic or with a lot of spices).
also pictured below is rhubarb, which wasn’t part of my box share. i picked that up at city feed. unfortunately i kind of blew the planning… we decimated the strawberry supply before everything even made it into the fridge. it wasn’t until i washed the rhubarb that i realized i could have made a strawberry rhubarb tart! ah well.
prior to getting a CSA box share through stillman’s, i did so through the food project. they were great too, but i switched because all of the shares were sold out when i finally got around to renewing. if you aren’t familiar with the food project, i suggest checking them out, and donating if you can. they do great work bringing kids from various backgrounds together to learn about sustainable agriculture. additionally, they donate more than 100,000 pounds of food annually to local shelters. providing beautiful local produce to folks who are really struggling is just about the most righteous thing i can think of.
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Stillman’s
1205 Barre Rd
New Braintree, MA 01531
508.867.7193
http://www.stillmansfarm.com
How do you feel about sour cream? I love this:
1/2 small clove of garlic, peeled
1/3 cup low-fat sour cream
2 pounds of red Swiss chard
Press the garlic and combine with the sour cream. Season with salt and pepper as desired. Set aside to combine flavors at room temp.
Prepare the chard – chop and cook for about 15 min and combine with the garlic cream. This dish turns out pink with the red chard! But tasty! Got it from the Healthy 1 2 3 Cookbook.
this sounds good… i might give it a try using lebanese yogurt instead (it’s quite sour and already in my refrigerator). my chard is yellow, so perhaps it will look as if i’ve added turmeric… i can impress my mom without the turmeric flavor. heh – i am a fairfield child.
thanks for the idea!
These fruits and vegetables so beautifully photographed almost make me weep for spring.
For a glut of chard I make my friend Mikes Spanakopita – he follows the standard course but chops in plenty of mint, uses two kinds of fetta – one sharp and salty – one creamy and sweet and then grates lots of nutmeg in between the layers of filo. He also scrunches up the filo to make a high crust and bakes it twice to make sure the pastry on the bottom is crisped through – no sog in his spana.
sounds divine! i’ve never worked with filo/phyllo/fillo though, and i’m a little intimidated. in lieu of a day to play around with it, i wonder if doing something similar with frozen sheets of puff pastry would be an overly blasphemous cheat…?
any idea how to identify the different varieties of feta? are they named differently?
Filo is THE most forgiving pastry to work with but you probably could use puff – I never thought of that – I guess with the filo because you can actually work with the individual layers you can grate nutmeg or grind pepper between the sheets and scrunch and pile it up into a real pastry drama. (Then have the pleasure of cutting through all the crispness – akin to knocking down a tower of blocks, house of cards etc). On the feta I’m not sure if the brand names would be the same in the US – we have something generically called Danish feta which is creamy and then Bulgarian or the Greek Dodoni for the sharper and saltier one, You could also use a chevre for the creamy one if you were feeling indulgent…
maybe i need to get over the fear… you make it sound so easy, and there’s nothing quite like those crisp sheets. i’m kind of afraid i’ll turn into a baklava addict!
danish vs. bulgarian/greek is something to start with, for sure! i tend to like things less salty, so i want to find the danish feta anyway for general use!
Ha baklava addict – who isn’t one?
I love your blog (especially for the great photos)! My only concern is that you don’t publish full posts in the RSS feed anymore. Any chance of enabling full posts again? (Would be so great!)
sorry about that – i was just tinkering with settings. i changed it back!
These are beautiful. I bought strawberries at Stillman’s booth at the Copley farmer’s market on Tuesday. I wanted to buy beets, but I chickened out at the last moment and went for the berries.
Any chance you’d unhide the third picture on flickr? I’d love to add it to my favorites.
hmm… you can’t favorite when you’re on a guest pass, even if you’re logged in? i’m trying to not flood my flickr stream with food photos (it’s too late, i know), so only making a few of them visible. i should probably just create a new account for this blog. sigh.
No, you can’t favorite or comment on any photo on the guest pass. I understand why you don’t want to flood your stream with photos, so no worries. Just thought this one was so colorful!
(Sorry for the new comment, but I can’t figure out how to reply to your reply…)
i just added permissions for friends and family… give it a try.
re: the reply thing, if you had replied to your original post, it would have stacked underneath my reply. not totally intuitive.
Yep, that works. I just added it to my favorites. Thanks!
he he, your so popular!
and you’re the only one here who knows how good the sandwiches are!