CSA Week 9: A good amount of new stuff!
Farm Share Newsletter - July 29, 2023
Housekeeping
This is just a reminder that we will be pausing the CSA for the week of August 7 - August 13 to attend a wedding.
Also, a quick request: If you wouldn't mind peeling off the masking tape on for your box before you return it, it would make washing them much easier! Unfortunately, the way we cycle through the boxes is not conducive to recycling the name tags.
This Week's Share:
Mixed brassica bunch
Moskovich slicing tomato
Spicy garden cress
Bok choy
Head lettuce
Scallions
Shiso
Sooyow nishiki cucumber
Farmer Friends
We had a great time camping in Oregon this past weekend. Our friends had just gotten married and held a post-celebration of sorts at Cottonwood Canyon State Park, comprising thousands of acres of former ranch and grazing land home to a bunch of dessert shrubs and snakes, with a river running through it all.
We met our friends at a farming apprenticeship and the trip brought back good memories of communal living. The majority of our group were farmers or farm adjacent, and when we weren't bathing in the river or reading in the shade, we were cooking and eating fresh farm produce. Elizabeth and I brought a bunch of lettuce heads and some sesame-miso dressing to go with it. (If you decide to make a salad with your lettuce, can we suggest you add your garden cress at the end for a nice, sinus-clearing kick?)
We also brought our first sooyow nishiki cucumber, an extra-sweet Japanese variety. Don't be afraid of its reptilian look. We like to smash the cucumber with the blunt side of a knife until it's in pieces and then plop some chili crisp on top. Drizzle some rice vinegar on there and sprinkle some sesame seeds too and you've got yourself a refreshing salad.
I believe I shared the story of stir-fry mix when we included it in a share a week or two ago. As a refresher: We originally gleaned our mix from beds of greens that we grew for bunches. This year, we dedicated beds just to stir-fry mix greens. Your brassica bunch brings things full circle, as this mix of bitter greens is gleaned from an overgrown stir-fry mix bed. We'll definitely have them for Sunday pick-up. For Wednesday, we might have something else comparable.
Our bok choy is humungous now. Like amaranth, the large, white bok choy is a hit with the nai nais at Columbia City, and we usually try to save it all for them once they start to get their WIC disbursements. But if we wait too much long, they'll start to bolt, so the nai nais will have to share with you. Our scallions are also getting huge — almost leek-sized. We grew way to many scallions this season and are now in full-on fire-sale mode to move them. 20 bunches to a restaurant tomorrow. 100 bunches to a food bank next week. And even then, we'll still have a ways to go. I hope you like green onions, because you'll be getting them again soon.
Tomatoes are here! This week, you'll get a Russian slicing variety called Moskovich, which is an early tomato that tolerates colder temperatures. Try your tomato with shiso. I'll have a recipe for that below.
Member Photo of the Week (Okay, this is from a few weeks ago): Molly's Bean Salad with Amaranth, Green Garlic, Scallions, Dill, Feta, Olives and Toasted Almonds
Remember! We love receiving photos and recipes of what you're eating. Send us a particularly detailed recipe, and we may include a little extra veg in your next box. You can email photos to tiantianfarmwa@gmail.com or drop them in our Discord server.
Recipe: Tomato, Stone Fruit, Tofu, and Shiso Salad
This is an adaptation of a recipe that I saw on Shota Nakajima's Instagram a while back. I can't find that post now, but we made it a few times last year. His recipe calls for mozzarella and peaches, which we don't have right now, so I substituted tofu for the cheese and apricots for the peaches. I think any stone fruit would be fine. We just happen to have a giant flat of seconds apricots that we traded for at Columbia City Farmers Market.
Ingredients
1 slicing tomato, sliced into 2 to 3-inch chunks
An equal amount of stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums would all work, I think), cut comparably to the tomato
Half a block of that standard boxed tofu, cut comparably to the tomato
3 shiso leaves, chopped into little pieces
1 glug of olive oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 pinch of salt
Steps
Put tomato chunks in a large mixing bowl. Add salt. Add tofu and stone fruit. Add olive oil, soy sauce, red wine vinegar, and toasted sesame oil. Carefully mix with hand. Garnish with shiso. Serve on plate.
'Til next week,
Steven