Keepin' it Green: Lettuce Burritos!

I picked up my first CSA box of the season yesterday!!  

(Really, it is the second box of the season, but my share partner got the first box last week since I am "sharing a share" this year.) 

Here it is:

CSA Week #2, Wed. June 5th, 2013: 

This is all certified organic produce from Honey Brook Organic Farm.

Bottom row, from left to right: Romaine Lettuce, Snap peas, Strawberries, Dandelion Greens, Arugula, 

Back row: Baby Bok Choy (center back), Boston Lettuce, Red Lettuce, Spinach hidden in the back in a bag and KALE!!

This is a nice, diverse haul with varied goodies.  Yeay! (But no garlic scapes, boo! Hopefully soon!)

Kay, so you have to wash and prep your leafies for proper storage.  

This year, I'm going to try out a "lettuce burrito" style storage wrap and see how long it holds up.  I find that the single layer-type wrap where you add the lettuce to the center of the towel and roll the towel around the lettuce doesn't work that well.  So, I developed the Lettuce Burrito!

I highly recommend you invest in the biggest, best salad spinner you can put your hands on.  I like the big, Oxo spinner for CSA duty.  (I also have the small one from my apartment dwelling city days!)

The big Oxo spinner.  I love her!

To Make Your Very Own Lettuce Burrito:

1. Wash your lettuce leaves.  I just rip off each leaf and rinse it under cold water.  It's surprisingly fast and kinda fun to do it this way, you really connect with your leafies!  Alternately, gently place several leaves in a big bowl of cold water and swish them around.  Let the dirt settle to the bottom and then *lift the leaves out* do NOT "strain" or "drain" the leaves because the dirt from the bottom will just get all over them again :-) Rinse them again if they are still sandy.

2. Place the washed leaves in a single layer in the spinner.  DO NOT OVERFILL.

If you load the spinner with more than one layer, the water from the inner leaves will just spin out onto the outer leaves.  Believe me.

3.  Spin! Fun for kids and adults.  

Use the black button stopper to stop the basket.  This will push even more water out of your greens with some extra centrifugal force.  If the greens still look wet, move them around placing them in a single layer again and re-spin.

4. Place dry leaves on a paper towel and make a Lettuce Burrito!

Hold the lettuce down while you roll it again. 

Keep going until you come to the end of the towel.

Wha-la!  If you use longer paper towels, you can roll up a much bigger burrito.

Now, carefully slide your lettuce burritos into a big zipper bag.  I used the huge, two gallon ones and could fit two burritos in there.  Here are my Romaine Burritos:

Seal the bag and store your lettuce burritos in your fridge.

Eat and enjoy! 

I'll let you guys know how long the lettuces held up with this style of storage.

I burrito-ed the Boston, Red and Romaine lettuces as well as the spinach.

Prayers for Pa

I'm waiting for some things to work out.

Kinda like a warlock making a wish. Yup.

While I'm waiting, let's take a look at some things I've been doing.

Before Mother's Day, I replanted my Norfolk pines, which I probably should have done last year.  They like to be pot-bound and typically need to be transferred about every three years, but, this was the fourth year. So, I was a whole year behind and it showed.  My two Norfolks are about 11 years old now!  I got them in 2003 at Whole Foods in Philly when they were petite little ladies to decorate my apartment for Christmas and I still have them.  I'm guessing they were about a year old when I got them. 

Here's one with the planters I was preparing for Mother's Day:

My 11 year old Norfolk pine with some prepared planters for Mother's Day.

I made pretty planters for Mother's Day again this year.  I like giving a beautiful, reusable planter potted carefully with organic soil and organic, heirloom seeds of edibles to the mothers in my family.  The seeds, latent with life, slowly bursting forth with nourishment upon proper tending seems an apt gift for acknowledging motherhood.  This year I gave (organic, heirloom) Sweet Marjoram to my sister and (organic, heirloom) Lettuce Leaf Basil to my mom and my mother-in-law.  My son's teacher also got one planted with Sweet Marjoram (the rooster planter with the marjoram went to the classroom) since she mothers him so carefully and well during the school day.

Sweet Marjoram and Lettuce Leaf Basil planters for Mother's Day.

Oh, and I did plant some stuff in my gardens.  Here's the plan I used:

Chicken Scratch, I know.

Here's the shed garden.  It took a bit of time to weed it and "recondition" it.  We put almost finished compost into the gardens at the end of the season last year and let it overwinter.  The compost gets rained on, snowed on, freezes, then defrosts again etc. and finishes breaking down any bigger pieces.  In the spring, I weed the gardens and finish breaking up any chunky bits of the beautiful, rich compost by hand.  It's quite fun!

Before:

My Swiss chard (left) and sage (center) overwintered. 

Just look at all those weeds and tree sh** that fell into the garden!

After a while, I got it to look like this:

Ready to be planted.

On May 9th, I put in (organic, heirloom) cilantro, parsley and a few nasturtiums I had left from last year.  I'm sure the groundhog will eat my cilantro again, but that's OK.  She likes it!

Beware the Elven Archer of Haddonfield:

He Who Guards the Gardens is ever watchful.

Ah ha! A groundhog! Get him!

And the garden is safe once again.

More overwintered chard:

A video of Pa .  This airplane was awesome.

Prayers for Pa!

I might be offline for a bit, so, if you leave a comment, know it is appreciated!

Berry Wranglin'!

Well, it's May! Time to wrangle up some berries down on the farm.

 Just look at those bright red darlings!

Here I am at the farm.  You really shouldn't watch this video.  Nope!
YouTube isn't behaving right now and won't let me upload the thumbnail but click on that link and it'll take you there.  But you shouldn't.

Anyhoo, ya'll know how to pick some berries, right? No?  NO IDEA? Well, here's how:

'Cause I know nobody's got no clue at all how to pick a damn berry.  What was I thinkin'?
 Had to annotate it some to make it a little more excitin' like.

After we picked 'em, we got ta eatin' 'em in style.




Then, we stopped by Katona Farms (just down the road a touch) to get us some asparagusses.

Yup.

 They had thin, medium and thick asparaguys for all your asparaguy needs.

Asparaguys.

And I made a farm kitty friend!

I think I'll make some easy strawberry jam with those berries now.

Hasta pronto!

Box O' the Bounty: CSAs!

If you want this...

You gotta get yourself a share! 

If you want fresh, organic (or nearly organic) produce for the entire growing season (around here it is June through November) and you can't (or don't want to) grow your own produce, it's not too late to join a CSA this year!  CSA= Community Supported Agriculture.  For more information on CSAs, check out my overview of CSAs including programs in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area here.   All of those have convenient delivery sites (as in you don't have to drive to the actual farm to pick up the box, the farm delivers the boxes to a pick-up location).  If you are able to drive to the farm itself, though, there are more options--farms that offer a CSA program with pick-up at the farm itself.  (Farms that offer a delivered shares program often also offer on-farm pick up).

Farm Additions Since Some Good News:
1. Several local NJ farms with CSA programs are chronicled here.

This is a really nice article on several additional local CSAs came out last month in South Jersey Magazine, check it out!  It describes more NJ farms that offer CSAs (including Honey Brook) many with on-farm pick up, and provides some interesting background on the CSA program in general.  One farm not mentioned is Fern Brook Farm, and though they do not have any delivered boxes, they do have on-farm pick-up in Chesterfield, NJ (same town as Honey Brook!) but it looks like they are sold out for this season (2013).

2. Wimer's Organics Farm
This is an organic, Lancaster, PA based, cooperative farm that has delivered, boxed shares in many locations in the Pennsylvania 'burbs and Philly proper.  It offers biweekly shares (this is a great thing, trust me!), egg and yogurt shares (if you are interested in that) and "summer" and "fall" shares to split the growing season as this would be the whole season for other CSAs.  The "summer" season is 18 weeks, and the "fall" season is 12 weeks.  The whole growing season is 30 weeks if you roll like that.

If you are in NJ, Honey Brook Organic Farm (the CSA I belong to) still has some shares left (delivered boxed shares) and I'm sure some of the other farms still have shares as well.  They have a large range of delivery sites, so you may be surprised to find a convenient location near you!  

Squirrels eat all my tomatoes, beans, and other good stuff, so I NEED that CSA!!

For gorgeous pictures of what you get in a typical CSA box at Honey Brook Farm at the height of the season, check out this post: September's Bounty (2012).

The precious CSA pumpkin!

Anyway, stay tuned to Vegan Fazool for CSA action starting again in a few weeks...it's almost here!  

Here are some highlights from the 2012 season:

May, 2012, The First Box and Glazed Hakurei Turnip Salad

June, 2012, Box #2 of the season...

Yum!

Oh, and this pie, we LOVE this pie:

Green Leek Pie from June, 2012

Jeweled Jars of CSA Marinara from October, 2012

The Fresh Garlic alone is worth the CSA! And Garlic Scapes!

And the TOMATOES!!

Oh my word!

And positively giant scallions from weeks #3 and 4 of 2012! 

YUM. I LOVE SCALLIONS.

The peak of the season looks something like this:

Lordy!  This box is from October, 2012. 

Oh, and don't forget THE BEST potatoes in the world come from your CSA:

Oh. My.  These are the only things worth putting my oven on for in August!

Get ready, folks!  The growing season is upon us.

Sign up for your CSA right now! :-)

Seeds and Seasons

It's time...for Garden Fazool!

Here is this year's new seed selection from my fave seed purveyor, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds:

 Ragged Jack Kale, Lettuce Leaf Basil, Borage, Tina James' Magic Primrose, Tall Orange Sun(flowers), 

Red Romaine Lettuce the *free gift* Grandpa's Home Hot Peppers and Sweet Marjoram.

Kinda excited for borage! It's so pretty when it comes in. 

Grandpa's Home...we miss you Grandpa Jim!  I'll plant some hot peppers in your memory this year.

Here's another reason to love Baker Creek.  They actually mailed me back $2 since they ended up being out of the sunflowers my son picked (sonflowers, haha) out after I had already ordered and paid for them.  I love that they just sent cash.  Old school!

I have to do some planning and see what's going to go where this year.  Then I have to plant it! :-) It seems late, but it's still totally fine if you haven't started your garden yet.  Just get to the earlier season items in the next week or two and you'll be fine.

To see what happens to seeds after you plant them, here are all of my gardening posts from the last two seasons!

Last Season, 2012:
April, 2012: Overall garden plan and early plantings and The Hell Strip*
*I highly recommend that fencing, worked great at keeping kids and dogs out
May, 2012: Mother's Day Planters (Oh, and here's who was nibbling on my runner beans!)
June/July 2012 (well, really the last day of June, so almost July): An amazing explosion of buds and bounty!  It's hard to imagine that is just two short months away...
August, 2012: A GIANT sunflower in the picture mid-post. OMG. We planted those seeds this year! Gosh, last summer was SO super hot.  Hoping (hoping!) for a more temperate summer this year (even a few degrees cooler makes such a difference).
There weren't that many gardening posts last year because I was focused on my CSA box!

Two ago, 2011:
April, 2011: Found this guy on the side of my (then new) house! It's lovage! I love lovage!
May, 2011: I did a LOT of work that month to prepare some new gardening areas around my house. I grew some stuff from seed, dug a new garden and planned out the plantings.  Then, I planted the starters in the new "rainbow" garden, then I dug another garden (that year it had tomatoes) and planted that, too.  There was action and trouble, and a thorough exploration of everything that was growing in my front yard.

June, 2011:  June is amazing.  Every year!

July, 2011: July was over the top!
August, 2011: The month of the Monster Fig!

What are you guys growing this year?

Sauerkraut Surprise!

Has anyone been wondering what happened to the sauerkraut I made from scratch in November?

Wonder no more!  Here is a three part video series that will satisfy all your curiosities:

And if you want to know how to pack (or re-pack) your kraut using a re-purposed 15L/4 Gallon icing bucket (that I got for FREE from the bakery department at the Cherry Hill Wegmans, I just asked for one :-) some regular ol' aluminum foil, and large freezer bags filled with water, check out these two vids:

And here is the original post describing how to make your own sauerkraut.

Enjoy!

Smooth as Silk...Champagne Mangoes: prep and recipes!

Champagne Mangoes (aka Ataulfo mangoes) are here, guys! They are in from Mexico and I get them at my local Whole Foods.  They arrive in April and are only around for a few weeks, so go get some!  It's usually about $13 for a case (18) mangoes at WF.

Champagne mangoes have silky, smooth flesh and are not fibrous at all (like other types of mangoes).  They are sweet and rich in flavor making them perfect for eating.  They blend up as smooth as silk, too.  I prefer them as my "ice cubes" when I make blends (known to the rest of the world as "smoothies," *shudder*).

Here is a video tutorial on how to cut and clean your Champagne Mangoes. It was a one-take deal that I did this morning.

Freeze those babies!

I used them this morning in my green blend.
Here's the blend recipe:

The Wake, Bake and Blend, Blend!
(Thanks for the name, Jon!)

Makes about one serving:

1 pitted date, chopped
1 tsp. organic hemp seeds
(I used 1T per serving and it was a little too rich and nutty tasting for me)
About 1/2 cup frozen mango chunks
1 big handful of raw, organic spinach leaves
1 cup organic soy milk or other non-dairy milk 
juice of one fresh, organic orange

Put that in your blender (or Vitamix or Blendtech) and blend away.

Yum!

They also make a GREAT salsa!

Champagne Mango Salsa! 
(That link also has more info on the mangoes and on slicing, etc.)

Enjoy the weekend and this weather, everyone!