The Adamah Blog

West Hartford CSA Harvest Notes – Week 20 October 27th

Arugula This stuff is spicy! The sharpness of arugula pares very well with goat cheese and apples. This is particularly convenient because we know you have apples and Adamah will be selling fresh chevre at the market this afternoon! Add a few walnuts and you’ve got yourself a really gourmet salad! You can also saute arugula or make arugula pesto with pine nuts, olive oil and cheese You can also add it into your salad mix to stretch it a little further.

Radishes At the last Adamah staff meeting we all sat around a big bowl of sparklingly pink radishes, munching away while we discussed the upcoming schedule. We hope you have been enjoying these as much as we are! Don’t forget, they are delicious roasted or raw.

Turnips Salad turnips are back and more beautiful than ever!! These are really juicy and sweet. They are amazing raw with salad greens or on their own. They also roast really really well. Try slicing them, tossing olive oil and salt over them and throwing them in the oven. So simple, so delicious and very nutritious. The greens are also very good to eat- saute them or add them to soup.

Cilantro This is kind of a love-hate herb. If you love it, it is quite versatile and especially good in bean dishes. If you hate it, well, you might as well pass it off to a neighbor or friend who feels differently.

Salad Mix Another bumper week for salad mix! It is about to get very cold here and we’re not sure how long we can keep these plants producing so enjoy the big salads while they last! This mix is made up of a variety of baby mustard greens and baby lettuce leaves. Each baby mustard variety has a different flavor and we choose them with the intention of combining the sharper tastes with milder ones. Mizuna, the green leaf with angular leaves is very mild compared to the small, dark green leaves of cress.

GarlicNext week we will be planting the 2012 garlic and we are grateful to have nice quality heads for eating as well.

Onions The onions we have opened up have been in good shape and stored well. We hope your experience has been the same!

Apples The apples will soon freeze on the trees so this may be the last week we distribute them. These should store well in your fridge so don’t worry if you haven’t made it through all the apples we’ve brought yet! Remember, any discoloration or speckles you see are totally and completely edible. The particular blemishes on these apples are kind of banner diseases of organic New England apples. The funguses of the apple skin called fly speck and sooty blotch and are hard to avoid without spraying in our humid summers. They are perfectly healthy to eat and have no flavor so the deliciousness of the apples is not compromised.

Kale We hope that this CSA has got you hooked on kale such that it is as indispensable to your diets as it is to ours. If you haven’t found your love of kale yet, keep trying new things– kale chips, massaged kale salad, cream of kale soup, chopped small in stew, baked into enchiladas etc.

We’ve done a lot of celebrating in the last month.  We…

helped build an incredible Sukkah for Sukkahfest here at Isabella Freedman

made apple cider during an amazingly successful Farm Day

and squeezed in time to fill our harvest bins with veggies throughout all the holidays!

Adamah Fellows, Staff and Alumni Planting Wheat at Isabella Freedman’s Educational Garden

West Hartford CSA Harvest Notes- Week 19 October 18th

Salad Mix Wow, we harvested so much salad mix this week! Our wash tubs were overflowing!  We are really excited imagining all the big bowls of fancy salad you will all be eating.  This mix is made up of a variety of baby mustard greens, baby lettuce leaves and a few spinach leaves. Each baby mustard variety has a different flavor and we choose them with the intention of combining the sharper tastes with milder ones. Mizuna, the green leaf with angular leaves is very mild compared to the small, dark green leaves of cress or the lobed leaves of arugula. If this feels like too much salad for you, try sauteing or braising some of it. The mustard greens would be great in a stir-fry with the bok choi.

Radishes The radish bounty continues! I just ate about eight radishes raw on an empty stomach. In hindsight it might not have been the best idea but they were so juicy and deliciously sharp! We have two varieties this week, pink beauty (the pink ones) and cherriette (the cherry colored ones). Both are excellent raw on salads, as a snack in front of the computer, roasted or sauteed.

Collards We have been so impressed with the way these plants continue to produce.  I hope you’ve been feeling strong from all of the vitamin k, vitamin a, vitamin c, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, protein and other great stuff. One of the great gifts of a CSA is that your share sometimes forces you to each healthy things that, no matter how delicious when cooked well, you might not otherwise choose to eat so much of.

Garlic More garlic!  These heads are nice and dry so they should store fine on your kitchen counter. Davida, one of our Adamah alumni and a native of West Hartford, eats a clove of garlic every day and swears that its’ immune boosting properties can be credited for her lack of colds or illness.

Onions Believe it or not, onions are a great source of calcium. Who needs Tropicana when you keep getting local onions in your CSA share?

Bok Choi These would make an awesome stir-fry together with this week’s radishes, onions, and garlic. It also works well raw and chopped thin for salads. Its nutritious and delicious and one more excellent gift from our Beebe Hill field.

Apples Again, we’ve been driving out to the property of some generous friends to pick apples. If you are tired of chomping down on them raw, try making pie, apple butter, jelly, crisp, juice, cider, hard cider, vinegar, or compote. You can even add them to savory dishes. Any discoloration or speckles you see are totally and completely edible. The particular blemishes on these apples are kind of banner diseases of unsprayed New England apples. The fungi of the apple skin called fly speck and sooty blotch and are hard to avoid without spraying in our humid summers. They are perfectly healthy to eat and have no flavor so the deliciousness of the apples is not compromised.

Mira hoeing this week’s bountiful salad harvest back when it was itty bitty