CSA Week 3:
CSA Newsletter - June 12, 2024
Logistics:
Mark your calendars! We are taking a week off from July 2 to July 8 for travel. We’ll be overseas that week with limited internet access. No boxes that week. Don’t worry! We will still deliver 20 boxes this season, as promised.
This Week’s Share (From L to R, top to bottom … I totally botched the labeling last week. But I have double checked this week):
Chrysanthemum greens
Garlic scapes
Bok choy
Hakurei turnips
Oak fire mustards
Snow peas
Celtuce
Every year we learn of a few new cuisines for which chrysanthemum greens are significant. In Mandarin they are called tong hao. Japanese: shungiku. Korean: ssukgat. Vietnamese: cải cúc. I am sure there are many, many more translations. Send them to me and I’ll share them next time! We like eating them in soup (read: hot pot). They are also tasty as an herbacious salad.
In the annals of bonus vegetables, last week brought us fava greens. This week, we have garlic scapes, the flowering stem of hard-neck garlic plants. They have a strong, fresh garlic taste. Use them in place of green onions or garlic!
We grow a reliably large and stemmy variety of bok choy known as joi choi. I have found them to be a great stir-fry, or a cabbage substitution.
We overestimated how many turnips we had in the field and, through a grant we have with PPC, sold 150 bundles to the Vashon Island Food Bank. (More on that later). Thus, we had to do a some re-bundling and your turnip bundles are not as large as we’d like them to be this week. Apologies.
Mustards again! And snow peas too! I believe that within the next couple weeks, we will have enough snap peas to put in your boxes.
Celtuce is a portmanteau of celery and lettuce, although it does not really taste like either to me. It’s known as wo sun in Mandarin, and it’s creeping up on my list of favorite vegetables. The stem is what it’s grown for. Peel back the stringy outer layer to reveal its crisp heart. Read below for a quick stir-fry recipe. The leaves are edible too, though I would cook them to soften their natural bitterness.
Drive
Elizabeth caught the farming bug after an extended stay at a friend’s family’s orchard. I got into farming through Elizabeth, and a love for great restaurants. So when we started farming in 2021, nothing made me happier than seeing “Tian Tian Farm” on a restaurant menu. That is, until we started selling directly to Asian grandmothers at the Columbia City Farmers Market (last year’s members might remember nai nai season — we’ll say more when it rolls around again). This season I am finding new joy in harvesting for food banks, including Hopelink - Bellevue, Asian Counseling and Referral Services, and the Vashon Island Food Bank. It’s a refreshingly different rhythm (big bulk orders as opposed to a-little-bit-of-this-a-little-bit-of-that), and I like the thought of our produce going to people who can’t access the farmers market.
Recipe - Steam-Fried Celtuce
Ingredients:
Two stalks of celtuce
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp soy sauce
¼ cup water
1 tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine (subs: white wine vinegar, rice vinegar)
1 tbsp neutral cooking oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions:
Remove leaves from celtuce (save for soup or stir fry). Peel tough exterior from stem. Julienne stem.
Heat oil on medium-high heat.
Add garlic, stir-fry until fragrant. Don’t burn garlic.
Add celtuce, salt and pepper. Stir fry for 10-15 seconds.
Add soy sauce, water, and vinegar. Keep stir frying until liquid evaporates. Serve hot with white rice or whatever feels right.
‘Til next time,
Steven