Ohmygato Farm Newsletter: Week #18
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 by adminHello friends,
hope all is well. It’s been really nice to have rain these last few days. I’ve been able to take a break from hauling water for the farm which has given me the chance to look ahead to the impending winter season. personally i’m welcoming the change of season and all the warmth that winter brings. I look forward to the soup making, bread baking and bonfires. The ohmygato farmers and helpers were pretty busy this week forming and planting the fall and winter beds, stacking firewood and we even did some needed trenching for the up and coming rains that threaten to erode our mountain side. We would love to express our gratitude to The Students and Faculty of The Pheonix Charter School, Dave and Dolores for all their hard work of harvesting and planting your fall and winter treats. What you can expect to see in your boxes for the remainder of the season will be. In chronological order: Salad greens, radishes, head lettuces, dino kale, beets, spinach, brocoli, cauliflower, infamous collards, cabbage if they mature in time or savoy cabbage that we’ve had in the ground and waiting to harvest, turnips, scalliions etc.
Tomorrow will be our last work day with our wwoofer’s and they wanted to write a little something for you..
Gaby & Nicko
Nicko & Gaby L2R
Olive & Garlic Sourdough bread baked for last nights dinner. Yumm!
We would love for you to try this recipe out or your own variation of it and let us know how it went.
Squash and Black Bean Stew With Tomatoes and Green Beans Bon Appétit | October 1999
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
2 pounds Kabocha or butternut squash, halved, seeded, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
4 ounces green beans, trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 15- to 16-ounce can black beans, rinsed, drained
1 tablespoon minced seeded jalapeño chili
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until tender and golden, about 7 minutes. Add garlic, chili powder and cumin and stir 1 minute. Add tomatoes with juices; bring to boil. Stir in squash and green beans. Reduce heat; cover and simmer until vegetables are almost tender, about 12 minutes. Stir in black beans and jalapeño. Cover and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes longer. Stir in cilantro. Season with salt and pepper.
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Baked Zucchini Fries with Tomato Coulis Dipping Sauce Cookie | July 2006
Melissa Clark
1 pound ripe tomatoes, peeled, cored, and diced
2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon minced shallot or onion
2 teaspoons fresh basil, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Fries
1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs, beaten
3 medium zucchini, cut lengthwise into 2-inch-long and 1/4-inch-thick pieces (peel first, if desired, and avoid round pattypan squash — the shape does not lend itself to fries)
1. Combine all the coulis ingredients in a blender and pureé. Transfer to a sauté pan and cook over medium heat until fragrant and warmed through, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to the refrigerator to cool.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the bread crumbs, salt, and pepper. Place the flour in another medium bowl and the beaten eggs in a smaller bowl.
4. Dip the zucchini sticks first in the flour until lightly coated, then in the beaten eggs. Roll them in the bread-crumb mixture until well covered.
5. Transfer the zucchini pieces to a nonstick baking sheet and bake until the zucchini is tender but the coating is crisp, about 20 minutes. Let the fries cool slightly before eating. Serve with the coulis as a dipping sauce.
Most of you will find the CSA Questionnaire in your emails. Please go ahead and fill those out and get them back to us via snail mail, email or by printing it out and putting it in your empty box.
We’d like to thank you in advance for taking the time to give us much needed feedback so that we can improve our CSA. We really want to know what you think.
Warm wishes,
Anthony & Sandee
Greetings Everyone! How are you all holding up in the heat of this week? I hope better than our lettuces! The buttercrunch I planted back in July have been through some tough spots, but this week has been extra hard for them. We’ve definitely lost a few and today most of them looked as if they were struggling… relief came at about 7:30 tonight when they perked up and seemed back to normal.
Hello All! I hope you are all happy and healthy. We are more than halfway through the season!! It’s feeling like fall with all of the pumpkins and winter squash ripening on the field. Tomatoes, eggplants and the summer squash are slowing down and I have to say that I will miss them in the coming weeks, but it’s exciting to see all the fall & winter things coming up. The lettuces and salad greens are always a welcome sign near summer’s end, not to mention one of my favorites..spinach.
Hello Farm Friends! We think our internet connection is finally up and running strong . You-Who! This week we had a friend come and visit from San Francisco. His name is Nader and he was my first gardener boss. His company is called Green Hands and it’s an organic operation which prides itself on being a hand tools gardening company. The only gas operated machine used with his service is a lawnmower and all the debri is swept with brooms and then composted. Nader believes in not creating any noise pollution. Harvesting today was such a delight , such a delight to get to the bean bed and find new beans for the weekly harvest. Blue lake and yard long beans. This is the first flush of yard long beans I hope everyone likes zucchini cuz we are adding some fine babies in the box as well as some very odd shaped, but yummy french fingerling potatoes. They’re fantastic when roasted or made into potato salad. People have said that they look like ginger or jerusalem artichokes..nope. These tasty treats are yellow inside and have a slightly sweet flavor that will most likely surprise you. We had a very puny broccoli harvest, so hence the little flowers in your box today. The broccoli just didn’t do that well this year. They were planted in early spring, never produced and then just recently gave florets, but not very much. We left them on thinking that they’d get bigger, but they just started shooting up, so we harvested those today and added them into the mix otherwise they’d just get wasted. We’ve got some pears and apples coming soon thanks to the lovely Herzstein’s and Stutzman’s (fellow members). I was keeping my fingers crossed that we could put the new salad mix in the boxes this week, but that was wishful thinking. Anthony and I had a bet going and I lost. You all got a bunch of tomatoes, which I hope you enjoy as much we have. I’ve been slicing them and putting them on toast with basil, olive oil, salt & pepper. delicious folks. It’s even better on the bread that Anthony makes. Check out the photo down below of his sunflower seed coated loaf. Unbelievable. We sold out of this in the last tuesday market so quickly that it made our heads spin!
