CSA for August 17, 2010

I'm very late posting this. I don't have a good excuse; I have an excuse, but it's not great! I didn't get around to this post last night because I got TV - and boy, was I watching it! You have to understand that we haven't really had much TV here at Aagaard Farms; out here in the country there is no cable, no fancy telephone lines. We got what came through the air: CBC until our local affiliate went out of business, CTV, Global in fine weather only, and the French CBC. So, we finally bit the bullet and got satellite TV yesterday. We probably should have waited until the end of the growing season - I stayed up waaaaaaay past my bedtime last night cruising HGTV, The Food Network, Travel Network, History......well, you get the picture! So to all our CSA members, very sorry for my tardiness!

Yesterday marked the first big harvest of Winter Squash! It's kind of a benchmark - it's rather 'fallish' to be harvesting winter squash, and they have done extremely well in this rainy year! We've got some of the biggest sizes we've every had of Hubbard and Marrow, and it's only mid-August! Can't wait for the end of September! In the picture, the looooong green thing is English Green Marrow, the blue/grey monster is Blue Hubbard and there is also some excellent sizes of Golden Hubbard. The pumpkin-looking squash are a Kobocha type called 'Winter Sunshine', and awesome sweet, smooth textured squash you can use as a replacement for pumpkin in pies and other baking, or as a side vegetable (awesome mashed or whipped with a little brown sugar and cinnamon!). There's also a little blue Kobocha called 'Confection' in there as well, the dark green squash with the light green bump on the end is a buttercup and a there's little bit of acorn squash.

Winter squash differ from the summer squashes like zucchini, papaya pear and Patty Pan in that you don't eat the skin or the seeds. As well, they can last in storage for months! There is lots of variety in texture and taste, and lots of options for cooking. The simplest way to enjoy winter squash is baking or roasting. Wash the skin, cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds and bake in the oven at around 350 F - 375 until the skin is easily pierced with a fork. For the big hubbards, that can be up to an hour! To speed the process up, they can be done in the microwave, but we don't think the taste and texture is quite as good. Microwaving can cut the time down by 2/3's - so worth it for busy households. Peel and chunk winter squash for roasting, awesome in the foil packages of veggies on the barbeque, and we've even steamed chunked squash in one of our one-pot steamed vegetarian dinners (takes as long or longer than the potatoes)! The seeds are awesome cleaned and then oveb-roasted - just like pumpkin seeds.

So, not a great basket today. Heavy rain overnight and steady rain through the morning made it very hard to harvest! We are a potato-free zone this week, just impossible to get into the potato field. For some of you, this will give you a chance to use up any potatoes before a fresh batch next week. Everything was muddy, dirty and damp! Get the beans out of the plastic bags as soon as possible - they'll be very prone to dark 'blotches' if left in plastic.

For the FULL SHARES: large bag of Dragon Tongue romano beans, large bag of mixed beans, 4 cobs of corn, 6 cucumbers, bundle of beets, two bundles of carrots, large bag of mesclun mix, one of an assortment of summer squash, a small winter squash, a large winter squash and some onions.

For the PART SHARES: small bag of Dragon Tongue romano beans, large bag mixed beans, 3 cucumbers, bundle of carrots, bundle of Swiss Chard, one of an assortment of summer squash, small bag of mesclun mix, small winter squash, medium winter squash and onion.

Hopefully the weather will become nice and the tomatoes will ripen for next week (fingers crossed, toes crossed, arms crossed - except now we look cranky!). Good eating to everyone!