What’s in store for 2019? Retiring Fruit & Coffee Shares AND Adding Thursday delivery to the Madison Area!

Dear Members,

Packing CSA Vegetable shares

This week we’ll be packing and delivering the final CSA box of the 2018 season.  I (Andrea) still remember sitting at my desk on the night of April 19.  It had snowed over 10 inches that day and I was having a hard time imagining just what we were going to pack in our first CSA box that was just two weeks away.  Fast forward through ramps, asparagus, strawberries, tomatoes, sweet corn, melons, peppers, leeks, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts and here we are in December, wrapping up another bountiful season of delicious vegetables.  Richard and I would like to thank each one of you for allowing us to be your farmers and grow food for you and your families this year.  Growing vegetables for our CSA families is the most meaningful part of what we do and we consider you, our CSA members, to be a very  important part of our farm.

As we look ahead to 2019, we have some updates to share with you about next year.  It’s no secret that CSA memberships, across the country, have been declining over the past 8-9 years.  This has been true for our farm as well, but we do not believe that CSA is a dying model.  Rather, we believe CSA is a very valuable model, for farmers, individuals, and our community.  CSA is unique, it’s not for every farmer and it’s not for every eater.  We’re thankful for our longtime members who have shown us just how important CSA has been in their lives.  We feel privileged to be able to watch so many beautiful CSA kids grow into bigger CSA kids as they become intelligent, beautiful individuals who are having and will have a positive impact in this world.  Over the past twenty-five years we’ve seen the results that come from “eating out of the box.”  Children that learn how to cook and feed themselves.  Adventurous eaters who are willing to try new things and enjoy eating a diverse diet.  Members who visit the farm and form a connection with where their food is grown.  Families who take the time to eat meals together, even in the midst of their busy lives.  Individuals who regain and maintain their health simply by eating more vegetables out of the box.  These are just some of the ways we know CSA can change and impact lives in a positive way.  We’re not giving up on CSA, rather we’re holding on to what we believe is a good thing and we’ll do our best to continue growing for our CSA families, making whatever positive impact we can in our little corner of the world.

Andrea with grower Mas Masumoto, Rick & Kathie (Co-Op Partners)

One of the difficult decisions we have made for the 2019 season is to discontinue offering Fruit & Coffee shares.  Those of you who have enjoyed these shares may be saying “WHAT!!!”  We are grateful for the partnerships we’ve formed with other producers that have allowed us to offer these shares for many years, however as we look at the “big picture” of our business we feel it’s time to retire these shares and focus on what we love the most and do the best, grow vegetables.  Producing fruit is not an easy job and we have a great respect for the excellent growers we’ve had the opportunity to work with.  Farmer Al at Frog Hollow Farms, Mas Masumoto, Gena Nonini at Marian Farms, Rich Johansen, Reusch Century Farm, and the list goes on.  Rick Christianson, our friend and buyer at Co-Op Partners’ Warehouse in Minneapolis, has been our conduit to these many excellent fruit growers.  He’s sourced fruit for us that is special, unique and sometimes in limited supply.  He’s connected us with these growers so we can have personal conversations with them and then pass their stories onto our members.   His job has not been easy and in many ways it continues to become more and more challenging as he deals with changes in the marketplace, challenges with transportation to get the fruit to us, etc.  Fruit is a delicate commodity and maintaining quality can be challenging.  We face quality issues with our own vegetables, that’s the life of farming.  The difference is we have more control over quality with our own products than we do with products we source elsewhere.  We hope our current and past members will continue to support our awesome, talented, skillful fruit producers when you see their fruit at your local co-op or maybe even do a special purchase on line…you know, for those extra special Warren pears.

TJ & Caleb,  Kickapoo Coffee owners.

We’ve also enjoyed our relationship with Kickapoo Coffee and are excited to see their business grow and flourish while they hold tight to their foundational beliefs.  They not only source some of the best quality coffee in the world, but they do it with integrity, fairness and respect for the producers.  They also happen to be pretty darn good at roasting it to perfection.  We’ll certainly continue to start our day with a delicious, rich cup of Kickapoo coffee and we hope you’ll consider doing the same (if you’re a coffee drinker).  They have an awesome subscription service too, so sign up for that and they’ll deliver it right to your door! 

Now that we have that announcement behind us, lets get back to vegetables!  At the end of the day, growing vegetables is what we love to do and we want to continue to invest our time, energy and resources in doing the best job that we can while continuing to learn and improve each year.  We will be offering a similar line-up of vegetable share options for the 2019 growing season and have decided to hold our pricing steady with our 2018 prices for next year. 

We are also excited to have room in our week to offer a weekday delivery option for the Madison area.  This is something we’ve been considering doing for the past few years, but it just hasn’t felt right and honestly, we just weren’t sure where or how we’d squeeze it into the week!  Our decision to discontinue packing fruit shares has opened up more labor hours and space in the packing shed on Wednesdays to allow us to pack boxes for a Thursday delivery into Madison.  This Thursday delivery route will hopefully open up some opportunities we haven’t previously been able to explore with our Saturday route.  In particular we’re hoping to add some business and workplace delivery locations.  This route is still under construction, and we’d value your input!  If you have a suggestion for a business location we might be a good fit for, please let us know as soon as possible so we can reach out to them.  We’ll also be offering several residential delivery sites.  If you’re interested in the possibility of hosting a CSA pick up site, please let us know so we can consider your location as we put together the route. 

In closing, we want to wish everyone a joyful and peaceful winter season.  We will be working with focused determination to prepare for another growing season and we look forward to being your farmers in 2019!

Sincerely,

Richard & Andrea

December 13, 2018 - This Week's Box Contents, Featuring Cipollini Onions

Cooking With This Week's Box

Red & Yellow Onions: Cabbage & Mushroom Lasagna; Sesame Noodles with Seasonal Variations; Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping; Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette;  Breakfast Hot Dish

Italian Garlic: Pasta Salad with Roasted Carrots and Sunflower Seed Dressing; Cabbage & Mushroom Lasagna; Simple Kohlrabi with Pistachios and Sage; Sesame Noodles with Seasonal Variations

Covington Sweet Potatoes: Breakfast Hot Dish; Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie

Carrots: Pasta Salad with Roasted Carrots and Sunflower Seed Dressing; Sesame Noodles with Seasonal Variations; Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping

Celeriac: Cabbage & Mushroom Lasagna; Celeriac and Apple Soup with Tarragon; Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping

Festival Squash OR Butternut Squash: Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette; Vegan Stuffed Acorn (sub Festival) Squash

Beauty Heart Radish: Sesame Noodles with Seasonal Variations

Red Savoy Cabbage: Cabbage & Mushroom Lasagna

  

Kohlrabi: Simple Kohlrabi with Pistachios and Sage

  

Red Beets: Spiced Beet Salad with Citrus Ginger Dressing

Red Cipollini Onions: Balsamic Roasted Cipollini Onions (see below)

Gold Turnips: Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping; Sesame Noodles with Seasonal Variations

This is it, our final box of the season.  This week’s box is packed full of storage vegetables that will keep well into the next month.  Take a moment to read this week’s newsletter to find out how to best store each item.  Lets start this week’s cooking with the Red Cipollini Onions which are this week’s featured vegetable.  This is a special onion that is at its best, in my opinion, when roasted.  My simple recipe for Balsamic Roasted Cipollini Onions (see below) is my favorite way to prepare these onions and is a great dish to serve alongside buttered noodles, grilled steak or roast chicken.  I featured this recipe way back in 2007, but it’s still a keeper!

I found this recipe for Pasta Salad with Roasted Carrots and Sunflower Seed Dressing.  It’s simple, but interesting and will be good for a light lunch or a holiday potluck.

Celeriac and Apple Soup with Tarragon
photo by Linda Xiao, food52

On the same website, Smitten Kitchen, I found this recipe for Cabbage & Mushroom Lasagna.  The recipe uses thin slices of potato as the “lasagna” noodle layer.  I’m going to substitute thin slices of celeriac instead.  If you don’t use all your celeriac for this recipe, consider making this simple Celeriac and Apple Soup with Tarragon.

 

I love finding interesting ways to eat root vegetables throughout the winter, including ideas for salads.  I’m excited to try this recipe for Spiced Beet Salad with Citrus Ginger Dressing.  In this recipe the beets are tossed in a citrus vinaigrette that is seasoned with coriander, mustard seeds, red pepper flakes and turmeric.  Once roasted, the beets are served topped with a dollop of yogurt, a drizzle of the dressing, mint and pistachios.

Buy a few extra pistachios so you can try this recipe for Simple Kohlrabi with Pistachios and Sage.  This kohlrabi tastes so sweet and delicious when roasted and this simple recipe will be easy to pull off with little time to invest.  Serve it with rice or alongside poached salmon or even just a simple fried egg.

If you’re looking for a recipe that can handle variations in ingredients and still be delicious, this recipe for Sesame Noodles with Seasonal Variations is a good one to try.  I featured this recipe in the newsletter several years ago and it’s a good one.  The recipe is written to include storage turnips as well as carrots, but you could also include beauty heart radishes and/or kohlrabi if that’s what you have available.

If you didn’t have a chance to make the recipe for Chicken Pot Pie with Biscuit Topping that we featured in our last newsletter, be sure to save it and give it a try this winter.  It’s a great way to incorporate a lot of different root vegetables into a meal including turnips, celeriac, carrots, and any other root you want to include!

Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette

This week some boxes will receive butternut squash and others will receive festival squash.  If you receive the butternut squash, or have some remaining from a previous delivery, consider making this Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette.  We featured this recipe on our blog last winter.  You’ll have to scroll to the bottom of the blog post.  This is a delicious creation that takes a little time to make, but is really quite easy.  If you receive the festival squash, consider making this recipe for Vegan Stuffed Acorn (sub Festival) Squash.  The squash are filled with a mixture of quinoa, cranberries, apples and pecans. 

We’re one vegetable away from cooking everything in this week’s box.  We’re down to sweet potatoes and I have one sweet and one savory suggestion.  I couldn’t resist this recipe for Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie and for all you Midwesterners…Breakfast Hot Dish featuring sweet potatoes!

Friends, I’m signing off for a little winter rest.  I hope you have fun cooking up creative winter meals and I look forward to meeting you back here in this space again next spring as we start another season of delicious, seasonal eating!  Happy Holidays! –Chef Andrea

Vegetable Feature: Red Cipollini Onions

As you unpack the contents of this week’s box, don’t think the beautiful red onions packed in a brown paper bag are just another red onion.  These are a special onion that have a more flattened shape and are known for their higher natural sugar content in comparison to other storage onions.  Cipollini onions are at their best when slowly roasted to develop these natural sugars, leaving them silky, soft and so sweet they’ll melt in your mouth. 

This is not an onion you want to chop up— it’s one to be featured whole in soups, side dishes, roasted alongside beef, pork or chicken, or on kebobs. Roasted cipollini onions can be served as a side dish on their own— flavored with balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, marinade, or simply tossed with olive oil or butter and salt and pepper. While I think this onion is best roasted, you can also boil or braise them. They add flavor and color when braised in the cooking liquid of pot roast or pork roast along with other root vegetables. Smaller cipollini onions can also be added to soups or stews.

As with any other onion, the papery skin needs to be removed prior to cooking.  They are kind of challenging to peel by hand without peeling off an outer layer of onion flesh.  There is a trick to making them easier to peel. The first step is to trim the stem and root ends with a paring knife. Next, pour boiling water over them and let them set for 5-10 minutes. This helps loosen the skin and you should be able to slip it off easily. Now the onions are ready to be used as you wish. 

Balsamic Roasted Cipollini Onions

Yield:  4-6 servings

1 pound cipollini onions

¼ cup balsamic vinegar, or as needed

2 tbsp butter

Salt, to taste

Ground black pepper, to taste

1.  Preheat oven to 375°-400° F. 
2. Prepare onions by trimming both ends and removing the skin.  In a baking dish, toss onions with vinegar, salt and pepper. Cover and put in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes or until start to become tender. 
3. Remove cover and add butter.  Allow the butter to melt, then toss it in with the onions and bake, uncovered, until onions are tender and the liquid has reduced.  You may need to add more vinegar if the liquid has reduced and the onions are not yet done baking.  Serve hot.

Recipe by Chef Andrea Yoder