New this week! Beets and garlic scapes. Oh and spinach too!
What is a garlic scape you might ask? It is the young flower stalk of the garlic plant, which is removed to direct the plant’s energy toward making a big root bulb. But it is also delicious. It can be used just like garlic, though the flavor is milder (but a bit stronger than the green garlic we had before). Pretty much the whole length is tender, though you may want to remove the tip around the flower bud which can be more fibrous. There are a few fun ways to eat them. Here are two:
Grilled (or roasted) garlic scape recipe
By the way, this blog is a good resource for recipes from previous years’ shares as well. If you’re interested, have a look back through the blog from last year and the year before (just keep scrolling down the home page to go back in time :-)…)
Beets! I’m really happy with the first beet harvest. Last year’s beets were a little disappointing so this year I’m pretty excited to offer some pretty decent looking ones right off the bat. Not sure what to do with your beets? I suggest that you simply roast them in the oven first while they are still whole. Then there are a number of things you can do with them. For example, slice or cube them and make a beet salad with blue cheese and nuts for instance.
Here’s a simple how to for roasting beets
By the way, you have a lot of greens in your share today, in case you didn’t notice! First of all, the beet greens are edible and delicious. Quite similar to swiss chard but a little more tender. I’d recommend removing the greens from the root before storing the beets in your fridge. That actually goes for all roots as it helps make the root last longer. You can combine the chard and beet greens if you want a larger mess ‘o greens. You could even through the spinach in there as well for an even larger mess. Cooking times are longest for chard, less for beet greens, and shortest for spinach. So if you are throwing them all in a pot or pan, do them in that order. But you could just use them all together until the chard is done and call it good! Simple!
In other farm news, the farm has a new pair of hands! That’s right, Della, a student at Western Washington University’s School of the Environment, is doing an internship at Cully Neighborhood Farm for the summer. Her first day was Monday and she was a great help. Thanks Della! You’ll be hearing more from/about her real soon.
Have a great week!
Cully Neighborhood Farm 