2009 Season
W
elcome to the East Williamsburg CSA! You’ve signed on for some really great locally grown produce and more, plus the opportunity to participate in a locally grown food community. Here’s hoping to help you navigate through the season and maximize your experience and your shares. Please don’t not get intimidated when I say things can get out of hand, as it’s not that overwhelming! It’s just a matter of being prepared and doing a bit of planning. I’m just trying to help you avoid some of the hiccups that can happen when you sign on to a CSA. We want you to fully enjoy the experience! So let’s get started ;)Generally the season starts off manageable, or so you think {grin} and builds as the harvest gets into full swing. It can be easy to get behind early on, especially with produce you aren’t as familiar with. And as the season builds, you can get a bit flustered, especially if this is your first go ‘round. But don’t worry! There are a few easy things you can do ahead of time to help keep things smooth throughout the season and perhaps beyond. The next few pages will just contain some simple things you can do to help you maximize your CSA shares and help you be prepared for the season as it goes on. Advance prep, supplies, storage information, recipes, etc all make for a more enjoyable season. You will also receive a few Produce Primers throughout the season on upcoming produce information on storage and recipes. The first Produce Primer will be emailed during this upcoming weekend.
Preparing For
& Managing a
CSA Season
Planning Ahead:
• Kitchen prep, supplies etc • CSA distribution supplies • What to expect produce wise • Recipe sites, books, etc
Coming Soon!
The Produce Primer:
Part 1
• The first few weeks of produce (anticipated)
• Storage information • Recipes
Planning Ahead: Kitchen Prep
O
k, the first and best thing you can do is . . . CLEAN YOUR FRIDGE!!!Seriously. Give it a good clean out and organize it. You start off on a much better foot if you are fridge prepared. Look at the produce list at the Hearty Roots website to see what you will need to be storing, much of it in your fridge. A clean start really helps. You never know how busy you could end up week to week, so it’s just easier to have the fridge ready for the weekly harvest. You may want to clean your freezer also, especially if you have a fruit and/or chicken share, or will want to make meals that you can freeze leftovers from (soups, stews, produce/bean meals, TV dinners, etc). You basically want to start maximizing your cold storage space. Believe me, you do.
Next best thing is to look at your storage containers and your storage space outside of your fridge. Do you have enough bags (re-used plastic or otherwise), containers, etc for storing the produce properly? And do you have enough containers (prefer glass!) for storing leftovers and preserving? Do you have counter space and windowsills and/or large bowls/baskets for storing fruit and produce that is better out of the fridge? Some things can wait until later in the season and those will be noted in the Produce Primer.
And yet another next best thing! Kitchen time management. Plan on spending time in your kitchen. Really, plan is the operative word. Later, I’ll give you an idea as to what to expect throughout the season as far as what you will be receiving at distribution. It’s good to have an idea upfront what you will be receiving every week and what changes as the distribution goes one throughout the season. As we hit different parts of the season, things change, but some don’t that much, so you want to have meal ideas and recipes handy to fully enjoy the changes through the season and to also explore more options with the produce you receive more often. It helps you take full advantage of everything you receive each week, plan to use them in the order they need so you don’t have some of the more tender produce go bad on you, and to expand your meal options by exploring new recipes for some of the more staple produce of the distributions. And while that may sound time intensive, it’s really not. You just need to make a bit of time to think about your distribution and what you want to do with it and then make the time to realize it. There are many, many sources for recipes that are not time intensive and they fully maximize the produce in your share. I’ve included some resources at the end.
Planning Ahead:
Kitchen Storage Supplies
• Salad greens storage: You will be receiving salad greens pretty much weekly judging by past distributions. Suggested: Salad Spinner, Cotton towels (I like the natural cotton flour sack towels. (example only http://www.americanchairstore.com/floursacktowels.html ) or paper towels and large zip locks or covered glass container.
• Bulk of the refrigerator produce and fruit storage: Plastic bags (reused is best, save, save, save!) or cloth, net bags. Optional: Extra large glass or enamel rectangular bins with lids. For berries (those of you with fruit shares), you may want to save those plastic clamshell
containers greens come in (if that’s how you buy them) to transport the berries home from distribution and for storing.
• Potatoes, onions and garlic: Burlap or cloth bags, vented enamel storage containers with lids or other vented storage, wire baskets, etc.
• Counter fruits and other produce best on counter: Shallow baskets, bowls and colanders • A supply of freezer zip bags to freeze things that can go flat and stack in various amounts, from snack size to gallon. Gallon and 2 gallon freezer bags are also handy in the freezer for storing produce waste from prep cooking. Carrot tops, onion ends/skin, celery tops, potato peels, carrot peels etc. Just put them in the gallon/2 gallon bag in your freezer. Use them the next time you make stock or need to boil up a small to med pot of “enhanced” liquid for a dish.
Optional
• Canning jars in 1/2 pint, pint, and/or quart sizes for freezing, refrigerating, and/or canning leftovers, extras.
• Other containers for freezing meals, produce. I prefer glass and buy Pyrex, etc, second hand or on sale.
• Water and pressure canning supplies • Pressure Cooker
• Food dehydrator • Vacuum seal system
Enamel refrigerator pan. They come with lids and without, with a couple of vent holes on each side, or not. Great in the refrigerator and out. I slide them under a freestanding cabinet when storing potatoes and onions in the vented ones. They also stack nicely beside a cabinet.
Planning Ahead:
CSA Distribution
Supplies
The absolute must have supplies throughout the season:
• Tote bags. One decent sized tote will work for the first couple/few weeks, but soon after, you’ll probably do better with 2. As the distribution gets heavier, weight distribution between 2 totes helps a lot along with the added bag space. It also makes your tender and/or soft
produce less likely to get damaged on your way home.
• Used plastic bags. Especially handy for salad greens and muddy damp root veggies. Also good for keeping tender produce stacked on top of the heavier produce in your tote bag. • Cloth, nylon and/or netting bags in smaller sizes in place of plastic bags.
Optional
• Cart. A small to med cart comes in very handy as the season gets in full swing and the produce gets heavier. It becomes even handier if you also have bought into some of the other shares like fruit and chicken. Some distributions you could be taking home a dozen apples, a melon, large head of cabbage,
potatoes, onions, well, you get the picture! And then add in a chicken or 2 . . .
Now Available!
We have our own
totes this year! They will be
available for sale at the first
distribution on June 6th.
More details to follow!
SPRING
• Arugula
• Baby Lettuce Mix • Baby White Turnips • Beets • Bok Choy • Broccoli • Kale • Mizuna • Pea shoots • Radicchio • Radishes • Spinach SUMMER • Basil • Bell Peppers • Broccoli Rabe • Carrots • Swiss Chard • Cherry tomatoes • Cucumbers • Eggplant • Fennel • Heirloom tomatoes • Hot Peppers • Leaf lettuce • Musk Melons • Mustard Greens • Potatoes • Red tomatoes • Summer squash • Sweet Corn • Watermelon FALL • Brussles Sprouts • Cabbage • Cauliflower • Collard Greens • Italian Parsley • Kohlrabi • Leeks • Onions • Parnsips • Potatoes • Pumpkins • Sweet Potatoes • Turnips • Winter Squash
Planning Ahead: What to expect produce wise
L
ast season we saw salad greens, chard and kale quite frequently (I want to say almost weekly). It’s a good idea to plan on having salads early in the week and at least one Kale or Chard dish. If I wasn’t planning to use them as a main or side, I would add them to other dishes that I thought they would be a good addition to. Beets and turnips were also plentiful throughout the season. We also go through periods with plentiful summer squash, eggplant, sweet peppers, and cucumbers. I found that having many different recipes for each handy in advance, gave me the opportunity to try a lot of new things and also made it easier to make use of my full share even when I was swamped with other things, like, um, work! I got in the habit of setting aside (or book marking in books/on the computer) several recipes that sounded interesting since I knew I would have more than one the opportunity to use a particular veggie. As I try the recipes, I save them in separate binder so I don’t have toremember where a particular recipe came from next time around. Lazy Sunday mornings are a good time to cruise around looking for new and fun recipes to try.
Here’s the list of what was planned at Hearty Roots Farm. Please note, there is no guarantee that any particular one will be part your Farm Share.
Planning Ahead:
Recipe sites,
books, etc
Cookbooks:
• The Art of Simple Food Alice Waters • Chez Panisse Fruit Alice Waters
• Chez Panisse Vegetables Alice Waters • Greens Glorious Greens Johnna Albi • The Sustainable Kitchen Stu Stein
• The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook Shannon Hayes • Eggs Michel Roux
• The Good Egg Marie Simmons
• 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains Andrea Chesman • The Big Book of Soups and Stews Maryana Vollstedt
• The Pat Conroy Cookbook Pat Conroy • Preserving Summer’s Bounty Rondale Press
• Putting Food By Fourth Edition Greene, Hertzberg & Vaughan • Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning Chelsea Green Publishing
Other areas to explore:
• The Ball Blue Book of Preserving
• The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
• Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois • The King Aurthur Flour Baker’s Companion
• The Book of Yogurt Sonia Uvezian • Home Cheese Making Ricki Carroll
• Charcuterie Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn
• Miss Vickie’s Big Book of Pressure Cooker Recipes Vickie Smith • Seed to Seed Suzanne Ashworth
Local Clam Chowder with CSA potatoes, leeks, turnips, onions, celeriac, local clams and upstate pastured bacon
Websites
& Blogs:
• http://www.mariquita.com/recipes/index.html • http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com • http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/health/series/recipes_for_health • http://www.thesustainablekitchen.com/skblog • http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes • http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating • http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/index.html •http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor • http://www.whfoods.com/recipestoc.php • http://www.cooksillustrated.com/default.asp • http://www.foodandwine.com • http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com • http://simplyrecipes.com • http://steamykitchen.comMore info to come!
You’ll be receiving Produce Primers a few times during the season about what you can expect to receive in your shares, how to store everything, recipes and other ideas to make the most of your season. The first Produce Primer is coming very soon!
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me (Gail) at
