BGF NEWS - August 2, 2022 - VOL. XLVIII, NO. 9

In this week’s box:

Basil: Sweet

Beets: Cylindra

Cherry Tomatoes: Jubilee Mix (see list below)

Cucumber: asst
Head Lettuce: asst

Roselle
Shallots- Ambition (tan) &/or Camelot (purple)

Summer Squash: asst

and at least one of the following: (please see **NOTE after "A Little Detail..." below)
Beans: Provider (green) & Carson (yellow) Mix

Cantaloupe: Minnesota Midget
Cauliflower: Snow Crown or Song

Eggplant: Orient Express, Asian Delight or Listada de Gandia
Okra: Bowling Red and Candlefire

Tomatoes-Slicers: asst. (see list below)

Herb It! option: Nunum Basil, bronze fennel, thyme
Jam It! option: Salted Caramel Pear Butter & Cherry Jam
Spice It Up! option: Nunum Salt

Bread Share: Korean Milk Bread or 7-Grain Buns

Featured Recipes:  

Beets with Shallot Vinaigrette

Summer Squash Pizza

Grilled Zucchini Ribbons with Pesto and White Beans

Tomato Basil Vinaigrette

Roselle Pesto

What’s up on the farm?

Precipitation in the past week: 0.00"

So, who's up for pre-cooked vegetables this week? Whew! This is not the weather we look forward to, but it does happen most every year. It's always extra frustrating when paired with a lack of rain, but we are extra thankful for our irrigation system when it happens. 

There are some fun new things heading into the boxes this week including the first of the tomatoes, shallots, mini cantaloupes and roselle. While I'm sure the majority of our members are most excited about the tomatoes, the roselle is one of my favorites! 

For those of you unfamiliar, it is an edible member of the hibiscus family and the leaves have a tart, lemony flavor. It is delicious added to pesto and in combination with other greens. I really like it added to lettuce on my sandwiches. Give it a try and see what you think. As for the cantaloupes, they truly are minis, as in 1-2 servings but they are also the best tasting cantaloupes I've ever had so we hope you enjoy the little treat. 

Speaking of melons, the deer have been partying in the melon patch this week. I don't know what inspired them, but they wreaked havoc with a number of the vines, shredding them down to nothing. Sigh. Don't worry, they didn't ruin the whole patch, but it's still aggravating.

So besides planning a deer roast (just kidding) what have we been up to this week? We harvested all the shallots and hung them to cure. The ones you are getting today are the small ones that still had green-tops. So you can use the bulbs as shallots and the tops as scallions. 

We also harvested all the Adirondak Red potatoes. We were quite pleased with the size and number that we found as red potatoes haven't produced as well for us in the past. We brought in about 360 pounds today. We'll start digging the other varieties soon.

And now it's time to start talking about the most important subject, TOMATOES! We are finally at the start of the season so it's time for the official introductions. Slicing tomatoes are on the "perhaps list" so not everyone will see them this week, but we promise they are coming soon! 

The smaller varieties tend to ripen first and we think we might have enough for everyone to get their first taste this week, so we'll start with those. As you can see, we raise a variety of colors of tomatoes, so color isn't your best indication of ripeness, touch is. A ripe tomato should yield to a gentle squeeze of your fingertips. If it feels hard, it's probably not quite ripe. Just leave it out on your counter for a day or 2 and try again.

 Here are the tomatoes that go into our "Jubilee Cherry Tomato Mix" also referred to as snacking tomatoes:

Black Cherry: Beautiful black cherry tomato with rich flavor.

Black Strawberry: Psychedelic, purple & red swirled cherry tomato.

Blush: yellow fruit with orange blush when fully ripe. Very low acid, meaty, and super sweet.

Bronze Torch: Green-striped red mini roma 

Gold Spark: sweet, yellow, bite-sized mini roma

Golden Rave: Small 1–2 oz yellow, plum shaped tomatoes with good tomato flavor. 

Honeydrop: sweet, fruity, yellow bite-sized tomatoes

Juliet: Small 1 – 2 oz red mini-roma, perfect flavor and shape for slicing onto pizza or salad.

Orange Paruche: 1" glowing orange globes that are sweet and flavorful.

Sunrise Bumblebee:  Bite sized swirls of red and orange, inside the fruit and out with a sweet, fruity taste, 

Sweetie: Bite-sized, sweet red cherry tomato

Tommy Toe: Large round red cherry with big tomato flavor

And now our slicing  tomatoes (all except Granadero & Marmalade are heirlooms):

Azoycha: Lemon-yellow medium-sized fruits with sweet, yet rich flavor.
Cosmonaut Volkov: medium-large red slicer with a full-rich flavor
Dagma's Perfection: Medium-sized, slightly flattened, pale-yellow fruits with delicate, light red striping.
Dr. Wychee Yellow: Large orange tomato with meaty, rich tasting flavor.
Granadero: Red plum tomato with thick-walled fruit; ideal for fresh tomato sauces, salsas, and salads
Green Zebra: Small, 2 1/2" olive yellow with green stripes and a sweet zingy flavor
John Baer: meaty red heirloom slicer
Marmalade: round, orange fruits with sweet tomato flavor
Matina: Red, golf-ball sized fruits with big, well-balanced flavor
Paul Robeson: Large, brick-red fruits with dark green shoulders. Has a sweet, rich, smoky flavor.
Pantano Romanesco: A large, deep red Roman heirloom. The flesh is very rich, flavorful & juicy.
Redfield Beauty: 3”– 4” flat pink fruits with excellent, full flavor.
Rutgers: large, red with excellent flavor for fresh eating or canning
White Queen: Medium-sized, smooth white-skinned tomato with sweet, juicy flesh, low acid.
Wisconsin 55: A flavorful medium-sized variety that is juicy, firm and ideal for slicing, cooking, and salads

Crew Corner: Joelle

Hello from Joelle! This is my second year at BGF and I have been learning a lot more about vegetables under the tutelage of my oldest sister Danielle. One of my favorite things to harvest is strawberries- and the season is way too short for my taste!
Because of my love for science…I also very much enjoy studying all the bugs and various wildlife wandering across my path in different areas around the farm…field mice…not so much!  Although they are creepy, and an unpleasant aspect of the farm, it is still fun to look at ticks close-up with my new pocket microscope! I also enjoyed looking at a ladybug that I found who had a hole in her back…I could see down inside. That was fascinating!
If you by chance find a little nature in your CSA box-give it a look over and then consider releasing it in your own yard or a city park.

A little detail on your produce this week:

Basil hates the cold and will turn black with exposure. Keep long stemmed basil in a glass/vase of water on your counter top (out of direct sunlight). Stems that are too short (trimmings/tops) should be placed in a plastic bag, with a dry paper towel. Then put inside of a paper bag (for insulation) and put in the warmest part of your refrigerator (usually the door) or on the top shelf towards the front.

Beans: Fresh beans are an easy "store." Just leave them in their plastic bag and keep them in the produce drawer. Can last up to 2 weeks.

Beets- Cut off greens, leaving an inch of stem. Refrigerate the unwashed greens in a closed plastic bag and use with your chard mix as beets and chard are closely related. Store the beet roots, unwashed, with the rootlets (or “tails”) attached, in a plastic bag in the crisper bin of your refrigerator. They will keep for several weeks, but their sweetness diminishes with time. Just before cooking, scrub beets well and remove any scraggly leaves and rootlets. If your recipe calls for raw beets, peel them with a knife or vegetable peeler, then grate or cut according to your needs baby/young beets usually don't need to be peeled.

Broccoli & Cauliflower: Wrap loosely in a plastic bag and keep it in the vegetable bin of your refrigerator for up to a week. Immediately before cooking, soak head down, in cold, salted water (1 teaspoon salt to a 8 cups of water) for 5 minutes. Any [organic] critters will float to the top where you can rescue them or allow them to suffer a salty death. (Note: If you soak broccoli or cauliflower in salt water before storing, it will become too rubbery and wilted to enjoy.)

Cabbage: Store dry, unwashed cabbage in the refrigerator, preferably in the vegetable bin. The outer leaves may eventually get floppy or yellowish, but you can remove and discard them to reveal fresh inner leaves. Cabbage can keep for more than a month. Once it’s cut, seal it in a plastic bag and continue to refrigerate for several weeks. Rinse the cabbage under cold running water just before use. Peel away a few of the outer leaves, then cut the cabbage according to your needs with a big, sharp knife, and then chop, sliver, or grate. Our favorite way to eat raw cabbage is as a "walking salad" which is to simply spread peanut butter over a leaf of cabbage, sprinkle with your favorite dried fruit, roll it up into a tube and enjoy. This is a kid-pleaser for sure!

Cantaloupe: If your cantaloupe seems a bit short of ripe, keep it at room temperature for a few days or until there is a sweet smell coming from the stem end. Once the melon ripens, store it in the refrigerator. It is best not to cut a cantaloupe until you are ready to eat it. If you need to return cut melon to the refrigerator, do not remove the seeds from the remaining sections as they keep the flesh from drying out. Use within 3-5 days.

Cucumber: Store unwashed cucumbers in a sealed plastic bag in the vegetable crisper bin for about a week. Keep cucumbers tucked far away from tomatoes, apples, and citrus—these give off ethylene gas that accelerates cucumber deterioration. You can do a lot of fancy things to the skin of a cucumber, but when it is young, fresh (and unwaxed), it really only needs to be thoroughly washed. However, if the skin seems tough or bitter you can remove it; if the seeds are bulky, slice the cucumber lengthwise and scoop them out.

Eggplant: prefers to be kept at about 50° F, which is warmer than most refrigerators and cooler than most kitchen counters. Wrap unwashed eggplant in a towel (not in plastic) to absorb any moisture and keep it in the vegetable bin of your refrigerator. Used within a week, it should still be fresh and mild. Many people like to peel, salt, and drain their eggplant to draw out any bitter flavor; however, bitterness develops only in eggplant that has been stored for a while, so with farm-fresh specimens this is generally not necessary. Many recipes call for salting in order to make the vegetable less watery and more absorbent—much like draining tofu. Salting is not an essential step, but it can greatly enhance the taste and texture of your dish and is well worth the extra effort.

Green top onions/shallots: not the pencil-thin scallions, but nearly grown (though not-yet-cured) onions are an early summer treat. Keep sweet mild onions in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for a week or two, but beware the fatal moisture accumulation that causes them to spoil. To prolong their storage, wrap in a paper or cloth towel before storing in plastic. Also, don't just toss the tops, several years ago a CSA member taught us a great recipe to use them! See recipe below.

Okra: These lovely, dark red, horn-shaped vegetables are a warm weather treat. Extremely cold sensitive, store in their plastic bag in the warmest part of your fridge, or place the plastic bag in a small paper sack and store in the crisper drawer and use within the week. Traditional southerners will cut into rounds, bread in cornmeal and fry, but our favorite version is our dear friend Annie's method, "All I do is rinse off the pods and lay them in a saucepan with a little water in the bottom. Ten to fifteen minutes is all it takes...twenty if the pods are really big and "woody" feeling. I put salt on them and eat as finger food. It reminds me of young sweet corn."

Summer Squash/Zucchini: Refrigerate unwashed zucchini and summer squash for up to a week and a half in a perforated plastic bag or in a sealed plastic container lined with a kitchen towel. These do not need to be peeled to use, just slice them up and go!

Tomatoes: always store whole tomatoes at room temperature, out of direct sunlight. Once cut, store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

A few other details: All of your GREENS will keep best if stored in a plastic bag, with the top folded over and placed in the produce drawer of your refrigerator.  

** NOTE: You will notice over the course of the season that some box contents listed above say "Perhaps one of the following..."  These are items that we can’t harvest in sufficient quantities for the whole CSA to receive at one time.  We do track who gets what and we will do our best to ensure that everyone eventually receives each item.  On some items this may take several weeks, so please be patient.

Is a weekly newsletter not enough for you? Do you want to read more about our life on the farm and see more pictures? Follow us on Facebook at Blue Gate Farm or on Instagram at bluegatefarmfresh. CSA members can also connect with other BGF members to share recipes or ask questions on our FB community page at Blue Gate Farm Community.

That's about it for now.

If you have any questions or comments, be sure to let us know.

Best from the farm,

Jill & Sean (and the whole BGF crew)

Luci & Sky