CSA Week 12

Eating Kentucky Proud . . .

To follow up with earlier mention of the Eat Local Challenge, we bring to your attention two events bouncing around the Bluegrass area this week. The Governor and First Lady of Kentucky hosted a Kentucky Proud dinner at the Governor’s Mansion last week and issued a challenge to the attendees. For the next thirty days, they challenged individuals to eat at least one locally produced food each day; families to source and cook at least one KY Proud meal at home each week; and business owners and institutional decision makers to source Kentucky produced items for their employee cafeterias, their board meeting luncheons, and their student populations. Representatives from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s KY Proud program were on hand to help link folks with local foods. View Savoring Kentucky for a first hand account of the evening.

Also this week, Good Foods Market & Café in Lexington is challenging local folks to put their money where their mouths are and help stimulate local economic growth by taking the second, national Eat Local Challenge this August. You can pick up a packet in the Southland Drive store near the produce department and then commit to eating four out of five meals with local food – roughly 80 percent of your diet. For a CSA member, this should be easy since your household is filled already with locally produced items.

Good Foods is hosting a kick-off event for the challenge this coming Saturday, Aug 1st from 11am – 2pm. For more info phone or visit Good Foods at 859-278-1813.

In Your Share . . .
Shares may vary depending on your share size and day of your harvest. Each share may not have every item listed below.

Half Runner Green Beans – organic
Remember from earlier in the month that you need to remove the strings before cooking.

Stringless Green Beans – organic
Enjoy one more week of the stringless variety of green beans. This type is great for green bean salads or a quicker side vegetable since they have no strings to pull before cooking.

Cauliflower – organic

Sweet Corn

Slicing Cucumber

Eggplant

Fresh Herb – Sweet Basil - organic

Leeks – organic
We continue to harvest the baby leeks. Since we can pull them using the green tops, but cannot dig bulb onions in rainy weather, we included them in this week’s share. Enjoy leeks with potatoes in a frittata or use in the ratatouille in place of onions. Related to onions, leeks have a mild flavor and sweeten when cooked. Store refrigerated, they will keep for 2 weeks. Find a recipe on the Elmwood blog 8-20-07.

Okra – organic
Store your okra in the refrigerator before preparing. You can pan fry, oven roast, or stew with tomatoes for Cajun style.

Green Bell Pepper
Use with your squashes and eggplant for ratatouille or use with tomatoes and cucumber for cool gazpacho!

Potatoes – organic
This week’s potato is a red skinned, white flesh variety called Sangre or a red skin, streaky red and white flesh variety called Cranberry All Red. Both are good for baking or boiling and will hold their shape for salads. Remember to store these new potatoes refrigerated covered from light to prevent the skins from greening.

Yellow Summer Squash

Tomatoes, Red – organic

Green Zucchini

Watermelon
The dark green melons should have a red flesh and are said to be seedless. The striped skin melons have a yellow flesh, and you should have one or the other. The robust shares should have one of each. We grow mostly the icebox size round small melons as we can’t fit the large ones into the CSA box and most folks prefer a smaller size. Seedless re melons will have small white seeds that are edible and from time to time they will have regular black seeds like a traditional watermelon. The yellow melons we grow do have seeds. Some of this season’s melons may have a little hollow spot in the middle – we see this in rainy years and we see it more in the yellow ones. Enjoy!

Recipes to Enjoy . . .

Roasted Ratatouille Salad
Serves 6 as a side dish, can be adapted to fit the amount of veggies on hand, recipe adapted from an internet blog site for grilled vegetable ratatouille

1 large eggplant cut into 1 1/2" thick chunks (peeled or not depending on preference)
2 onions, loosely chopped into ½" thick slices
2 zucchini, cut into 1” thick chunks
2 yellow squash, cut into 1” thick chunks
2 bell peppers, seeded, cut into 1” pieces
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 medium tomatoes, cut into 1” chunks
1-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 garlic cloves minced
1 small bunch basil leaves, ripped in half
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Arrange all the vegetables (tomatoes are optional to roast or use fresh) on a large baking sheet. Lightly drizzle with olive oil, and toss to coat thoroughly. Sprinkle with salt. Oven roast in one layer in oven, turning once for approximately 30 minutes at 400°. (Can be roasted on outdoor grill).

Allow vegetables to cool slightly. Add to bowl with tomatoes. Toss vegetables with 2-3 tablespoons olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, basil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm or at room temperature, garnished with extra basil leaves.

Mexican Squash
Thanks to a friend of the farm for sharing this delicious Esmeralda Maynes recipe, serves 8

¼ C favorite cooking oil
5 to 6 medium yellow squash or zucchini, sliced
4 ears corn, kernels removed
1 medium onion, chopped
2 to 4 jalapeno chilies, seeded and chopped
1 T garlic powder
1 T butter
¾ tsp salt

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add squash, corn, onion, chilies and garlic powder. Cook 12 minutes, or until tender, stirring frequently. Add butter and salt.

Ratatouille’s Ratatouille
recipe from the movie as created by Deb at SmittenKitchen.com, thanks to a CSA member for suggesting the connection!

1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1 cup tomato puree
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small eggplant
1 smallish zucchini
1 smallish yellow squash
1 longish red bell pepper
Few sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
Few tablespoons soft goat cheese, for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Pour tomato puree into bottom of an oval baking dish, approximately 10-inch long. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in one tablespoon of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper.

Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. As carefully as you can, trim the ends off the red pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube.

On a mandoline, adjustable-blade slicer, or with a very sharp knife, cut the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper into very thin slices, approximately 1/16-inch thick. Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables. You may have a handful leftover that do not fit.

Drizzle the remaining tablespoon olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs with your fingertips, running them down the stem. Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.
Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside. (Tricky, I know, but the hardest thing about this.) Bake for approximately 45 to 55 minutes, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.
Serve with a dab of soft goat cheese on top, alone, or with some crusty French bread, atop polenta, couscous, or your choice of grain. Visit Smitten Kitchen for wonderful photos to help your assembly.