This weeks selections included:
Tomatoes, onions, green pepper, trombocinni squash, eggplant, oregano, cherry tomatoes, and peaches.
It looks like tomatoe sauce week! Nothing compares to the flavor of a homemade spaghetti sauce. My kids love to churn the sauce press we have which takes out the skins. You can also dip the tomatoes in boiling water to blanch them and then remove the peels but in a pinch I don’t mind a tomatoe sauce with the peel.
4 cups tomatoes — peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1 medium red or white onion — minced
1 1/2 teaspoons basil (fresh if possible) or you could use extra oregano
1 teaspoon sugar
1 can tomato paste — (6 oz) Helps thicken the sauce- you could also use just the tomatoes and cook it down on the stove top
4 garlic cloves — crushed
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1 dash red pepper
A few seconds were available for separate pick up: tomatoes and peaches. When we have seconds or produce that does not meet a great standard, we will offer it separately. We eat a lot of the imperfections around here. They are still wonderful but deteriorate quickly. Tomatoes have been difficult this year. With the heavy rains, most have been splitting. They are still great when you cut away the bad. They are also great to cook with. Organic fruit is another item that perfection is difficult to come by. I am quite fine eating a peach that has a bad spot in it knowing that it was not sprayed with pesticides. I just cut away the damage. For some though, this is undesirable and we don’t want the seconds to cloud the appearance of the box. Please help yourself to any extras that are sitting in the twinkie that you would like.
We have moved into a low spot for CSA boxes. Hopefully it won’t last long. The purpose of a CSA is to share the growing season with you. You get the satisfaction of being connected to the farm in a way that is not possible if just purchasing by the pound. I have talked with so many produce farms that are struggling this year. It has been a difficult growing season. There were a few months in late spring, early summer that the rains kept everyone out of the field. It was not possible to keep planting and the weeds grew and grew. Now we are seeing the back side of that difficult time in that things should be coming in strong but the seeds were delayed getting in the ground. We are left with the longer term crops that were planted early and are now maturing. We have been planting for a strong fall season in hopes to share in great abundance with you then. Thank you for your patience. It is good to share frustration with others yet we rest assured that the thankfulness for the gift of the good food we do have is there.
Next week during class we will have a follow up on meat processing at the processing facility: A whole pig, cow, lamb? Meat cuts.
Please RSVP if you will be joining us. Some classes warrant a minimum class size to carry on. It is important that I know who to contact if a problem arises.
