Lots of new items are making their way into the share this week: winter squash, shallots, beet greens, and mustard greens.
winter squash – “red kuri” is the variety, grown organically by Grow Portland at the Oregon Food Bank site. Red kuri (and winter squash in general) is delicious roasted: cut the squash in half, scrape out the seeds, rub flesh with butter or oil (and salt & other seasonings if you like), place on a rimmed baking sheet for 40-45 minutes in a 400 degree oven. Roast until you can insert a knife or fork easily into the flesh. This variety has a bit of a nutty flavor when cooked and you can eat the skin as well! Once roasted you can eat as is (with any toppings you like), mash into puree and use in other recipes, freeze it, etc. Here’s a recipe for red kuri squash soup that uses the shallots and hot peppers (you could use the jalapenos).
shallots – are related to onions and have a sweet, mild flavor for cooking. They can be used in place of onions in cooking, but can also be used raw (e.g. salad dressing) as they have less of a sharp bite than raw onions. Here’s a simple shallot salad dressing recipe.
beet greens – are the leaves of beets of course! These came from thinning our last beet planting, making room for the beets we left in the ground to size up. I swear you will get some nice sized beets before the end of the CSA! In the meantime, enjoy these lovely greens. I like to say they are sort of midway between swiss chard and spinach in terms of their tenderness, meaning they take less time to cook than chard and more than spinach. Try adding them in at the end to a vegetable saute or soup.
mustard greens – are a cooking green with a distinct flavor. Try with lentils or sausage. Or both (recipe here). This recipe uses up some carrots as well, and you could sub potatoes from last week for the sweet potatoes.
carrots – “napoli” – some small and some medium/large this week. Thursday folks you will probably get mostly small carrots.
jalapeno – if you’re building up a bunch of jalapenos on your counter, try making hot sauce. Here’s a recipe for fermented hot sauce, though you could just make it without the fermentation process if that part scares you away.
tomatoes – the amounts are dwindling as the weather cools. Next week may be the last week for tomatoes… sigh. It’s been a great year tomatoes, thank you!
sweet peppers – If you are building up an excess of these, one option is to freeze them. No blanching necessary – just cut them up and stick them in freezer bags.
lettuce
That’s it folks! Until next week, enjoy the vegetable challenge.
Cully Neighborhood Farm 