I asked for your smiling, post-berry-picking faces, and you obliged! Thank you, I think we all need some positive community vibes right now. This lovely face belongs to Caryl Henry Alexander. You can find more u-pick photos in a debut post of our new CBF's Clagett Farm Facebook Group. If you sent me one, you can tag yourselves, and if you want to add your own, you can do that too!
Announcements
The Dupont CSA pick-up is back to it's normal time slot--5:30pm to 7:30pm. Jared is Carrie's last-minute substitute this evening, though, so be patient and flexible with him since he hasn't been to that alley and might be in a slightly different location.
It's a big share this week! Get your chef's hat on, it's going to be fun!
Strawberry u-pick has ended. We're glad that every CSA member who wanted to sign up was able to get a slot, and we had ripe strawberries all the way to the end. If you feel like you missed out, let us know.
In the past month, we've donated 1,978 pounds of vegetables to two nearby food pantries--SHABACH in Landover MD, and Behold I Come Quickly in Clinton MD. That's a whopping 47% of our total harvest! In addition to that, we have 18 CSA members who are getting their shares at half price because they have very limited incomes, and 1 former volunteer who is ill and in a nursing home, and we deliver his share to him for free. Phew!
Want to know some interesting facts about plant and animal families? You have come to the right place! Here is a link for a fun trivia game about plant and animal families made by Amelia Vaughn. (The game is free but the web site will ask you to create an account, so feel free to use a junk email address.)
This week's share
1 bag lettuce
1 bunch green onions
1 head Napa cabbage (aka Chinese cabbage)
1 bunch garlic scapes
2-3 zucchinis
2-3 hakurei turnips
Choose a bag of either kale or collards
Coming soon
Kohlrabi next week
More cucumbers soon
Garlic scapes one more week, then garlic bulbs every week after that
We have our eyes on a bed of carrots that should be ready soon
Continuing next week: kale, collards and zucchini
Recipes
Here's a recipe for Black Pepper Tofu with Chinese Cabbage (we made some adjustments from someone else's recipe and left out all the photos and ads that are so irritating when you're trying to read the instructions).
Napa cabbage is big and can sometimes feel intimidating in your fridge. If that's happening to you, take a moment to wash it, chop it up and put it in a container. Suddenly it looks more like a salad ingredient or an easy veggie to toss in a stir fry.
This is a great week to practice your stir fry skills. You can toss in the cabbage, greens, scapes, scallions, zucchini, turnips, and anything else you've got crammed in your vegetable drawer. Here's a beginner's guide to stir fry, in case that's helpful. The most important hints are to chop the heavy things (zucchini and turnips) into small, uniform pieces so they cook more quickly, and add them first before the lighter ingredients (cabbage, scallions, scapes). There's lots of great ideas for stir fry sauces out there, so if you get stuck in a rut, try changing your sauce.
Speaking of new flavors for your stir fry, here's one from Epicurious.com--Cabbage Stir Fry with Coconut and Lemon
We're going to save our ideas for zucchini for another week. In the meantime, use up all the ones you can think of now, and send us your favorites. Time to get out the grill, and turn those stir fry sauces into marinades!
Thanks for being your wonderful selves, and have a great week,
The Clagett Farm Team