Napa Cabbage Slaw

Hello. We're looking forward to Farmer Friday this evening. There was surprise when I got out to the garden. There were still some beets for harvest. They're a little smaller than they were before, and the tops got frosted. But the little ruby red roots will be a great side. I wanted to pass along a napa cabbage cole slaw recipe we had the other day. It was great:

Napa Cabbage Slaw

This is a recipe I made up the other day with a little inspiration from a few cook books. Remember that salads are a great creative way to blend vegetable flavors, textures and colors. They are also where you see the seasons change. Arugula and spinach salads in the spring, lettuce a little later, rich summer salads of tomatoes and cucumbers, back to greens in the fall, then things like slaws late into the winter. Have fun with them, experiment with some new ingredients, play with the dressing. If you use fresh in season vegetables you won’t go wrong.

A quick and easy salad with a little extra body and great fall flavors

One head napa cabbage-diced

3-4 carrots-cut into coins, diced, or grated depending on your tastes

Dressing:

Olive Oil-about ¼ cup

Apple Cider Vinegar-about ¼ cup

Lemon Juice-2-3 tablespoons

Honey-1-2 tablespoons

Garlic-1-3 cloves diced

Salt-to taste

Pepper-to taste

Mix dressing ingredients. Modify as needed. Toss into cabbage and carrots.

This salad goes great with roasted fall vegetables or roast chicken (it’s the salad we had with our Thanksgiving dinner).

William

Farmer Friday is Back and a delicious soup idea

We will be at Catawba Valley Brewery this Friday 5-7pm. Look for us inside because it will be a little chilly.

This week the menu includes:

The wonderful Buttercrunch lettuce

Napa Cabbage-good for slaws, salads, or cooked

Swiss Chard

Kale

Dill

Cilantro

We will have our full selection of pork and chicken. Just last week I made a simple and delicious soup with our chorizo sausage.

Pureed Pumpkin, sweet potato, southwestern soup

Serves 6 with leftovers-scale up or down as needed

Pureed pumpkin- about 4 cups

Pureed Sweet potato- about 4 cups

Chicken Stock-about 4 cups

One onion

1-2 lb chorizo

1-2 cans black beans

Heat pumpkin, stock, and sweet potato.

Saute onion (optional puree onion for a creamier soup)

Cook chorizo

Add onion, chorizo, and black beans to the soup. Salt to taste, serve with fresh diced cilantro and cornbread.

August

Baby vegetable delivery

This week our babies arrived. Jeff Mast of Banner Greenhouses (the large greenhouses you see around mile marker 90 on I-40) brought about 15 trays of swiss chard and 15 trays of various types of kale. Banner Greenhouses uses Integrative Pest Management to grow their plants without synthetic fungicides or pesticides.We look forward to planting the babies and to growing yummy fall greens. I could almost taste them when I walked out into the cool, dry air this morning.

We also have baby vegetables sprouting in our greenhouse. Lettuce has poked its tiny head above the soil, ready to grow, grow, grow. It is almost a challenge to make sure it doesn’t grow too fast for its own good and become stringy. Still hiding under the soil are some cilantro and dill to spice up our food this fall.

Tomato Blight

Our tomato crop is suffering from tomato early blight. This is the same disease that caused the Irish potato famine by destroying the potato crop there. . A blight spore most likely landed on our plants way back in June during one of the frequent rainstorms. The blight is extremely common in tomatoes in the southeast because of our hot and humid weather. In fact, it is almost always of question of when and how bad, not if, your tomatoes will get the fungus. It shows up as blackened leaves starting at the bottom of the plant and working upward. Black lesions also appear on the stem and fruit. There are very limited options in both conventional and organic systems to slow blight. It is not curable, but we can slow its spread with an organically approved copper fungicide spray. We alternate with an organic bacterial spray. We apply it roughly every week and hope to prolong our yummy tomato harvest for several weeks.

Preparing for fall gardens

All week we have been getting ready for the fall garden. Out in the big field at Silver Creek Farm I mowed the cover crop (see last week’s newsletter). After letting it fry down for a few days I hilled up beds and tilled the tops smooth. Now we will wait a few more days before added our organic fertilizer and making a final shallow pass with the tiller. This will leave a smooth, mostly weed free, and fertile bed ready for our transplants.

At Bluebird Farm we added some composted horse manure to our beds and worked that into the top few inches. Then we raked them smooth and put out the irrigation tape. Just last night we were transplanting kale and Swiss chard. Unfortunately, didn’t finish until this morning because it is already getting dark so much earlier! Planting small baby plants is pretty difficult when there is not any moonlight.

Today we woke up to a downright chilly morning. Our thermometer even suggested it was below 60, maybe 59.5! The cool morning, and working at Bluebird Farm where it is shady until about 10 am, fooled us into not putting sunscreen on. We realized at about 4 pm when we were both turning an uncomfortable shade of pink-oops!

While we were busy burning our selves we were planting a variety of fall crops. We wanted to plant them about a week or two ago, but with the weather still so hot and dry decided it would have been a wasted effort. Most fall crops really prefer it quite cool, and all seeds need to stay moist. It is almost impossible to germinate lettuce when it is 90 and hasn’t rained for two weeks! But, now they are in the ground: lettuce mix, arugula, beets, and radishes. We hope for cooperative weather and a tasty fall crop. We hope to get some good harvests from the fall crops before the end of the CSA in end of September. Much of the fall crops will produce then and keep producing in October and November.

Mediterranean Salsa

Fresh flavor! This is a great salsa, salad or pita stuffing.

1 medium cucumber, diced

2 large tomatoes, diced

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 jalapeno pepper, finely diced, remove as much of the spicy ribs and seeds as needed

1 bell pepper, diced

1 bunch parsley, finely diced

2/3 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

2 cloves garlic, pressed

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup pitted kalamata olives

Juice from 1-2 fresh lemons

Combine all ingredients and toss well. Let marinate at room temperature for at least 15 minutes.

May Newsletter

I started writing this newsletter under a leafy umbrella waiting out a few raindrops from a fickle little raincloud. I had just settled into the hammock in the shade for the first time this year. But those raindrops kept coming, and I am grateful for warm, gentle showers. I am especially thankful for the gentle showers that bring back the grass in the pastures without shredding the garden with wind and hail!

Our sheep love their grass!

The animals appreciate the showers too- no flies, nice cool grazing weather. After the hot April weather many of our laying hens decided to go “broody.” A broody hen’s wings droop and they cackle as they walk about with fluffed feathers, all while thinking about a private nest. We have about a dozen American and European heritage breeds of laying hens for the beautiful array of eggs you see at the markets- Barred Rocks, Marans, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Buff Orpingtons, White Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, New Hampshire Reds, Americanas, Lakenvelders, and Golden Campines- all beautiful breeds that thrive outdoors. Two Maran hens showed so much dedication to the nesting idea that we took them up to a private little chicken house where they could sit on a nest of a dozen eggs each without being disturbed. Just 21 days later and the hens have hatched out their little chicks. The fuzzy little ones follow their moms around as the hens cluck and scratch for food. After a break from laying, the laying hens have begun laying again (hooray) and I hope that future spells of hot weather won’t shut down everyone’s laying capabilities.

A mama hen and her day old chicks

As the nights continue to warm, it becomes Swiss chard season. With its beautiful stems of yellow, red, and green the Swiss chard lights up the garden as well as the kitchen. Swiss chard is a great substitute for spinach- it has a great flavor and is packed with nutrients. Chop and sauté the stems with onions and then add the chopped greens and cook like you would spinach. Another great addition to the vegetable fare is Bok Choy. This vegetable is also a beauty in the garden and it’s the ultimate stir-fry vegetable! Large, white stems add a sweet, juicy crunch to any meal. Cook with garlic, grated ginger, mushrooms, carrots, snap peas. Stir-fry the stems for 5 minutes, add the chopped leaves and wilt the leaves for 2 minutes.

Late spring greens-poc choi and cabbages

Warm weather also brings out the insect world. There is no better way to meet the six legged denizens of the world than by weeding a large vegetable field. After several hours on your hands and knees you begin to see the insect world around you. I have noticed, for example, that the lady bugs prefer hanging out on one particular weed over others. It makes me feel a little guilty ripping out their favorite habitat. Finding and destroying other bugs; however, brings no sense of guilt. Our worst so far this year is the Colorado potato beetle. The strikingly striped adults began appearing about a month ago. Since then we have surveyed the potatoes at least every three days to find all the adults, eggs, and larva and squish them. Save the potatoes! Using organic methods sometimes requires the laborious work of hand squishing something like potato beetles, but in the meantime we are able to enjoy all the benefits of friendly insects like predatory wasps and lady bugs that eat the aphids.

See you at the markets!

Up close and personal with a future stir-fry

Coming soon-summer crops like zucchini!

Quiche recipe

Quiche is one of my favorite recipes to highlight the flavors of fresh eggs and greens. It is also easy, relatively quick, and delicious. This recipe is adapted from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Crust:

Tart Pastry (one nine-inch tart)

This well-balanced, basic recipe produces a firm, crisp crust with the taste of butter. You can sweeten it slightly, if you wish, by adding 1 ½ tablespoons of sugar to the flour. The tart pastry will not get tough if you handle it a lot and you can mix it in a food processor.

1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ pound cold butter, in small pieces
1 egg yolk (save the white for the quiche)
2 tablespoons ice water

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. Cut in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal or tiny peas. Whisk the egg yolk and water together in another bowl, add the flower mixture, and blend until the pastry is smooth and holds together in a ball. It can be mixed in a food processor; process first the flour, salt, and butter quickly together, then add the egg yolk and water through the funnel and process until the dough balls up around the blade.

Pat the dough into a pie pan or springform with your hands. Pull pieces of the dough from the ball and press them over the bottom and sides of the pan, using the heel of your hand. The dough should be thick enough to hold the filling, but be careful that it is not too thick around the bottom edge or the finished tart will seem coarse.

Prick the bottom with a fork and bak2e it unfilled for 12 minutes in a preheated 425 F oven. If you used a springform pan, do not remove the sides until you serve the tart.

Fresh Greens and Onion Quiche
(Serves six)

½ pound fresh greens (spinach, chard, stir-fry mix, radish greens, or any other fresh cooking green you have on hand)
4 eggs
1 egg white from tart pastry
2 cups light cream or milk (if you use milk whole milk works best although I have made it with 2%)
½ tsp salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 ¼ cups grated swiss, cheddar or other hard cheese
1 partially baked Tart Pastry from the first recipe
Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Dice onion and sauté in olive oil or butter. While the onions are cooking wash and chop greens. When the onion is almost done (when it starts to turn transparent) add the greens and put a lid on the pan to help it steam. Cook the greens until they are soft.

Sprinkle ½ of the cheese over the bottom of the tart shell. Place the onions and greens into the tart shell. Combine the eggs, egg white, cream (or milk), salt, and spices in a bowl and beat thoroughly. Ladle the mixture over the greens and onions. Sprinkle the remainder of the cheese over the top of the egg mixture.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425 F; then lower the heat to 350 F and bake for 30 minutes more, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve in wedges hot or cold.

Play around with other flavors and fillings as substitutes for the onion and greens mixture. I used this same quiche recipe for a summer tomato and basil quiche. You can also make it a bacon and onion quiche. Really you are only limited by what is in your fridge and your imagination.

Enjoy!

Chicken recipes

Pastured Chicken Recipes

These simple recipes will fill your house with the great smells of aromatic herbs. Leftover chicken can be used for other dinner dishes or shredded for chicken salad. The pan juices are wonderful served plain or poured into a soup pot to make the most delicious chicken broth. Recipes are from The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook, by Shannon Hayes.




Herb-Roasted Chicken
Serves 3-4
1-2 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Herb Rub (see below)
1 whole chicken, approximately 3-4 pounds

Preheat oven to 350˚F.

Rinse the chicken, and pat it dry with paper towels. Dice the garlic and mix into the olive oil. Brush or rub the garlic and olive all over the chicken. Sprinkle and rub the Herb Rub over the chicken. Roast the chicken in a roasting pan for about 20 minutes per pound, about 1 hour and 20 minutes for a 3.5 pound bird. Check the meat for doneness by cutting a tiny slice of the meat and look at the color of the juices. The chicken is cooked when the juices run clear. Remove the chicken, cover loosely with foil, and let rest for 10 minutes.
The breast usually cooks more quickly than the thighs. If you find the breast meat done before the thighs, place a small piece of foil over the breast and continue cooking.

Herb Rub
1 tablespoon sea salt or coarse salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon thyme
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon oregano
Mix together and store extra in an airtight container.

Delicious Chicken Broth
The best chicken broth is made from flavorful chicken! Use it as a base for delicious soups. Freezes well and defrosts easily on the stovetop.
2 medium carrots, chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped into quarters
1 bay leaf
4 quarts water
1 leftover chicken carcass and pan drippings

Place all ingredients in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer the broth for a minimum of 6 hours- the longer the broth simmers the richer it will be. Strain the liquid, discarding the vegetables. The meat on the carcass can be picked off and returned to the broth or used for a chicken and rice dish. Place broth in a container, cover tightly, and refrigerate. When it is chilled, skim the fat from the surface.