CSA Week Thirteen

News from the field:

Fall is coming. This basket reflects that transition. We still have a lot of the sweet yellow goodness of summer – sweet corn, sun golds, crookneck squash. But the cool weather friends – salad turnips, cooking greens, are back. Fall is good for eating (and cooking), but I am not ready to let go of summer quite yet.

In the Basket:

Summer’s goodness: Sweet corn and sun golds

Salad fixins: Mesclun, romaine lettuce, radishes. Pasta with mesclun recipe on the back.

Mustard greens - These are a spunky, nutritious cooking green. Try them sautéed with walnuts and lemon juice. Make a pasta salad with chopped tomatoes, pine nuts, goat cheese, pasta and mustard greens tossed with a little olive oil. Or cook them southern style and serve with beans and rice.

Salad turnips - These are the Asian variety of turnips that we grow for raw eating. You may remember them from the spring. (They don’t like hot weather). They’re flavorful, crunchy and wet. Try them sliced thin in salad or chunked and dipped in Annie’s Goddess dressing. You do not need to peel them. The greens are edible, nutritious and delicious. I like to saute the greens and then season them with tamari, lemon juice and cayenne pepper.

Crookneck squash - I like the flavor of these best of all the squashes we grow. Perfectly squashy, sweet, almost corn-y.

Red onion and white onion - Both of these are sweet and mild enough to eat raw in salad or on a sandwich. The white onion is probably the sweeter of the two, and the red more richly oniony.

Beets - You can grated raw beets into salads or use them to garnish soups. Beets also roast well – though if you roast them in the same pan as other veggies they will turn the other veggies red. I like beets best boiled, with the peel on, till fork tender. I then plunge them into cold water, slip the peel off, slice and eat warm (or reheated in a pan) with butter.