Something new, abundant greens, and how much in a pack? ~
This week there's a great mix of favourite old storage crops, and fresh treats from both the greenhouse and the fields... we've even got something growing in a cooler! We weren't joking about calling this a spring trial, we're learning in leaps and bounds and happy to share it with you all.
While we try to stick to improving the crops we grow... we can't help but try a few new things each year. When we were busy planning, I realized that our sweet potato fridge was sitting unused this spring as we sold out of sweet potatoes very early. It just happens to be the perfect kind of place to grow mushrooms! A small room where we can control the temperature, humidity, and venting so we teamed up with a fellow ecological farmer to inoculate some mushroom bags for us. Fast forward a couple weeks and here we are, able to offer some freshly sprouted mushrooms from our repurposed fridge! Oyster mushrooms have a really lovely meaty texture with a mild flavour making them very versatile. We enjoyed ours in a pasta with fresh green garlic, spinach, parmesan and red onions.
This delivery you can definitely get your fix of greens. The greenhouse is thriving, and we've also got some veggies that endured in the fields through the winter to feed us too. We're harvesting lots and lots of bok choy from the greenhouse, and if you're wondering what a pack is, jump to the next paragraph ;) Green garlic we started planting in March, as we sorted out heads that didn't pass quality control (sprouting or starting to go off) we saved all the good cloves to plant! Now we get to share bunches of these tender delicious stalks. We usually chop off the root, and then chop the rest of the stalks and leaves into our dish, think of it like scallions where you eat the whole thing. For flavour this week we also have cilantro from the fields. We have lots of spinach, some arugula from the greenhouse and even some (mostly red) lettuces from the field. I also found gorgeous "medium" kale - while it's not big enough to bunch, it's not really baby either so medium it will be. I took a picture to give you a better idea we'll bag it up as a treat for salads or cooking as you choose but it's got nice sweetness! If you're looking for more solid crunch, we've got little red radishes and fresh hakuri turnip bunches too! I usually describe the hakuri as a more flavourful (and less spicy) cousin of the radish, we love them for raw munching or in salads. Don't forget the glorious greens both radish and turnips are great for cooking, they can have a strong flavour so be careful not to let them overpower a dish. They also make great pestos.
Finally, what's in a pack? It means we're filling a little green portion basket to a weight target. So last week a "pack" varied from one to four heads of bok choy based on weight of course. We like to keep you fed consistently, so you know how much food to expect. If I said a head each, they would all have to be pretty close to the same size... but since they don't grow that way we pack them up to be equivalent sizes ;) In winter it's easy to use 'lb' or 'kg' but since you wouldn't want a lb of lettuce and not everyone can eat through a lb of bok choy... we use a pack or bag instead but we keep the same weight in them week to week. I try to get a picture of a sample pack to help you know what to expect - but this week for the mushrooms, I don't have any to take a picture of yet so we'll just have to imagine a half pound!
Enjoy the tastiness, Heather
