Week 16 Veggie List & Ideas

Returning Strawberry Baskets to LEF for Reuse

This is the 16^th week of our CSA’s 16^th season. That means Live Earth Farm has been providing farm shares to subscribers since 1995! Although we’ve only been members for 3 years, I’ve known Live Earth Farm since about 1999, the first year that Farmer Tom and Constance asked me to play music at their Summer Solstice Celebration, an annual party in the fields for members. One of my favorite parts of this Celebration is the U-Pick strawberries. In fact, the deliciousness of the strawberries, year after year, is what finally convinced Bruce and me to become members.
We are delighted by how consistently delicious their farm-fresh produce tastes. If you’re in Santa Cruz county or the Bay Area, you can still join for the rest of the season or check LEF out at Farmers Markets. You’ll be supporting a wonderful family farm that treats their workers respectfully and sponsors hands-on educational programs for kids. And you'll be treating yourself to healthful, local, organic foods. Here’s to another 16 years and then some, LEF!

With the bounty of green beans expected this week, I thought I’d experiment with a healthy version of the bean casserole that Mom used to make with cream of mushroom soup and canned crunchy onions. If you live in the US, I’ll bet you know the one. Some people even consider this a Thanksgiving tradition, with frozen beans of course!

I ordered extra raspberries and blackberries because I took an excellent jam making class with Happy Girl Kitchens (hosted by Live Earth Farm) a couple of weeks ago. Although the jam recipes will take a bit of finessing to scale down to home-cooking proportions, the recipe of fresh berries in light honey sauce is intriguing, and very scale-able. I’ll post the recipe if I have success.

This week’s veggies:

Arugula

Carrots

Collard greens

Green beans (lots!)

Leeks

Lettuce

Green onions

Potatoes

French breakfast radishes

Summer squash

Strawberries

Blackberries

Red & Golden Raspberries

Leftovers:  carrots, a few radishes, lettuce, collard greens, basil, cooked cannelini beans, celery, green onion, and tomatoes from store

Ideas:

Salad: lettuce, carrot, radish, tomatoes

Simply steam: green beans, summer squash, maybe with basil?

Potato-leek soup: experiment without butter

High protein squash soup

Toasted carrots (with wheat germ)

Carrot pancakes

“Real” bean casserole

Quick Asian-style collard greens

Cannelini bean salads

Preserved berries in honey or wine sauce