CSA Weeks ??? September 5

I don’t know about you but these last few weeks for me have just flown by.  Between vacation and the start of school it has been pretty crazy, but a very fun crazy.  I hope you didn’t miss my little chatter too much.  The gardens are charging ahead full force, and we are ushering in another season, this time the fall crops of squash and pumpkins.  At this point, as long as there is no hard freeze, the shares will keep coming through the month of September for certain. 

This week’s share contained some old stand bys like carrots, potatoes, garlic, basil and kale.  There were a few new things.  The big one this week was spaghetti squash.  I was never a fan of spaghetti squash because we either ate it like spaghetti with marinara sauce or like squash with brown sugar and butter.  But I have found that my preferred way is to eat it with just butter, salt and pepper.  Just cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake at 350 until the squash can be pulled out like spaghetti.  When done add the butter, salt and pepper to taste.  If you don’t get to eating it right away, it keeps very well just on the counter.  For a faster way, cut it in half, take out seeds, place it in a large bowl with some water in the bottom, cover with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 10 min. 

Also this week, we offered Haralson apples.  Haralson is an older great all purpose apple.  While they are not large, overly sweet or white like many new varieties they make a great all purpose apple for apple dumplings, pie and fresh eating.  Despite the scare of an early bloom spiked with a late freeze, our apples came out unscathed.  Many orchards in the area wound up with an excellent crop of apples this year, unlike many orchards to the east and south of the twin cities.  The only down fall to a tree loaded with apples is that their size is a bit smaller than usual.  Hopefully next year we will get them thinned better and increase the size of the apples.

Some of you also received an interesting onion variety, Torpedo Red.  This red onion is an Italian variety with strong red color and elongated shape.  Use them like any other onion variety. 

And again, there were tomatoes.  A mixed bag of cherry tomatoes and another bag that contained purple Russians (moms favorite), carbon (a round purple variety) Dr Wyche’s orange and maybe a few random red tomatoes. 

Like everything, determining how many tomatoes to offer is kind of a challenge.  If people only eat them raw, then it is easy to get too many.  However, if you want to make a batch of marinara sauce, then it takes quite a few.  With that being said, this week if the tomatoes are plentiful, you can opt to get a larger quantity.  It will not a be a huge amount for making salsa, but something more substantial if you wanted to cook with it.

Have a great week!