The Real Winter Squash: Blue Hubbard

Blue Hubbard Squash in pieces

 Our first Winter CSA pick up included potatoes, radishes, collards, carrots, fennel, bok choy, leeks, cilantro, and what I had been waiting nearly a year for... a Blue Hubbard squash. I forgot to photograph it whole, so here it is on the left, split in two and another slice taken from the top. These amazingly ugly squashes are unbelievably tasty. Last year I used them for pie and equally delicious soup. In Germany in the winter we would have lots of kerbis (meaning gourd) soups and other dishes through the Fall. Kerbis oil and seeds are used as condiments. The one thing you'll never see is kerbis pie. Funny. They just don't eat the same type of desserts as we do.

Roast until soft in oven

What they are missing !


You cook Blue Hubbard like Butternut or other winter squashes. Cut them in chunks, scrape out the seeds, and roast the pieces in the oven at 350F for 45 minutes or so. They'll be totally soft and you scrape the skin off to mash the remains. 

Puree and add ingredients

 Once you have something like this, it can be pureed with spices, cream, and eggs for pie. Or changed into some other savory dish.


Did you know that most commercial pumpkin for pumpkin pie - the kind you buy in a can - is butternut squash? It's interesting to me that you'll find quite a lot of people who say they don't like squash, or particularly butternut squash, but will eat it as pie.  Of course, the sugar and cream probably influences that.

wonderful Blue Hubbard Squash pie

 But Butternut squash soup tastes nothing quite like Blue Hubbard. I'm hoping for at least one more squash this season.

Which isn't to say that Butternut isn't great for soups. I have two wonderful recipes for it. One combines the squash with ginger for a smooth soup that balances those wonderful flavors. The other keeps chunks of squash in with pork, creating a chunky Fall stew for a tasty pairing.


One Blue Hubbard is enough for two deep dish pies and several small ramekins. Looks good, eh?

Dried squash seeds

My great find this year is dried seeds. Of course, I'm constantly looking for ways to use my new dehydrator. I dried apples and raw almonds in the last few weeks. The almonds are soaked overnight and then dried for 24 hours. This keeps them a bloated, crispy feel that's hard to describe and absolutely addictive.


I figured the seeds might well work the same. I soaked them for about 6 hours, dried for about 12 hours. I sprinkled on some cinnamon at the start, too. The result were puffy seeds with a paper-like outer coating that was similar to rice paper in consistency.

The kernel is a green yummy morsel

The outer white part is fibrous and a bit chewy, but the seed on the inside has a wonderful delicate taste of pumpkin.

In Germany I would buy raw kerbis seeds for my yogurt. These were dark green seeds, and I could never quite make out really where they came from. I've never seen a green squash seed. But taste testing our new dried seeds, my son and I realized there was a separate kernel inside the white coating which was giving the fabulous flavor. Sure enough, with some effort you can pull off the white coating to reveal a green seed. It's a bit difficult, and you can see my finger nail marks on the green seed here, but hey, you get the idea. I do wonder how they strip off the outer coating commercially now. Hmm....

Winter CSA Wrap-Up

The last of our greens!

Today is the last pick up of our Winter CSA that began shortly before Thanksgiving. What a blast it has been! As I discussed in the previous article on How to Choose a CSA, there really are a lot of considerations to make. Our Winter CSA subscription was an experiment and an adventure -- we wanted to see just what you would get across five Winter months. Elain and Everblossom Farm did not disappoint.

In mid-January, with all the cold and snow in Pennsylvania this year, there was a lull in plant growth. Elaine made a command decision to cancel one of the January pick ups and replace it with another at the end of the season. Then, as February opened into March, she had a bloom in growth and added an extra pick up to ensure the produce wasn't wasted. Where the initial pickups were full of Winter squash, this last month has had a lot of greens, both lettuce and cooking greens.

In the post on choosing a CSA, I talked about being exposed to new vegetables and having to learn more about how to cook them. That certainly happened here for me.

• I had never had celeriac, a big root bulb that I learned to cook and smash like potatoes. Mixed with broth and butter, it had a mild celery flavour and mashed potato texture.
• I had limited greens experience. I've used Chard quite a bit, but never turnip, beet, and radish greens, and only rarely kale. I don't think I'd cooked collard greens. I used Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything to tackle a bunch of these and learn variety. I found his preparation of greens with yogurt just phenomenal over rice. Elaine herself had given us a recipe for beet greens with bacon, which was a hit in our home and a few months later in my mom's. With the greens, I learned the frequently a teaspoon of sugar would make all the difference, and to toss in a lot of other flavors. Sadly, a giant bundle of greens wilts down to maybe a single meal of veggies. 
• Turnips. I had eaten turnips at various points in my life. I had not been keen on them. Usually someone was disguising them as potatoes, and they just aren't potatoes. I've been avoiding cooking mine, frankly, by putting them in the back of the produce drawer. But, last night I decided Bittman had to save me. I tried his Braised and Glazed root veggie recipe, which basically cooks the turnips in a small amount of broth and butter, then boils off the liquid to leave them coated in a glossy intense sauce. My son and I agreed they were excellent. I actually had seconds. My husband thought the turnip flavor was still too strong and rejected them. 
• Blue Hubbard squash. This was the giant blue-green pumpkin size squash I used for pie and soup in the late Fall. I love love love this squash. This was my first time with this kind of Winter squash and I will definitely try to find it again this Fall. 
• Pea shoots. This is exactly what it sounds like, the green shoot vines from planted peas. I am thinking you must overseed the peas and then thin them to harvest the shoots. Anyhow, you get these little vines. Elaine presented us with a recipe to use them in an Asian subo noodle with shitaki mushrooms dish. Most excellent. So much so, I cooked it twice. I'm not one on cooking things twice, generally. I also through them in other soups and stews and they worked great. 

Our final delivery will be greens greens greens. My greenhouse I discussed in this earlier post as a sad affair has exploded. Mostly it is weeds that have exploded, but the few lettuce and spinach plants, along with a handful of onions, have shot up in the weeks I was away as well. Shot up literally, it looks like several of the lettuce are ready to bolt. :(

As we leave the CSA season, I'm looking to my local farm to get asparagus to tide me over in fresh veggies until the farmer's market opens in late May.

How to Pick the Right CSA for You

Truffula Seed Produce fields

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a popular and growing business model that allows consumers to become more connected with their local farms and the food they eat. We are just entering into the registration time for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) arrangements. A lot of people I talk to find the notion of CSAs intriguing, but unfamiliar and sometimes confusing. Like my post a few weeks ago about buying local beef, I'm hoping this post will help connect readers with farms that will lead to a positive experience.

First and foremost, CSAs serve as a means for farmers to receive funding to help offset early season costs. Many consumers are led into a CSA with the concept that it is pre-paying for bargain priced produce, and that is simply not the case. Others find themselves overwhelmed with the produce they've signed up for by the middle of the season.  It's important to understand exactly what the arrangement is that you are joining and also what kind of variety exists within the CSA model, so that you can figure out what will work best for your situation.

The primary advantage of joining any CSA is to actively support local farming at the time of the year when farmers are most vulnerable - the end of Winter through early Spring. You might ask, well, what's in it for me? I'd say, you're supporting the local economy on the cycle that is necessary for it to thrive. Access to early financing is what makes local sustainable farming possible, and it is what brings that food to the local farmer's markets in the Summer. Beyond that? Many people join CSAs for the convenience. Instead of committing to a weekly market visit, where they may arrive just a little to late and find the stands bare, they are guaranteed a box of fresh picked produce. You might scoff, but I have indeed arrived at the market on more than one occasion to find slim pickings. A lot of people also enjoy the forced variety of a CSA membership. In most cases, the farm will provide you with a bag or box of what's in season right then. It could well contain produce you've never seen or heard of before. This Winter, our family ate its first celeriac through a CSA.

Farms might grow things you've never seen. These long purple beans are from Truffula Seed Produce

A CSA arrangement challenges you to try different foods and think more about your meals. To help out, most farms provide recipes with the produce each week.  Many, but not all, farms also host special member events and offer opportunities, or even require a small commitment,  to volunteer on the farm during the season.  As a general rule, price itself is not an advantage. And this causes a lot of confusion. A "share" of a CSA rarely means that if they grow X heads of lettuce and have Y members, that each member gets X/Y heads of lettuce themselves. Instead, the funds raised through the CSA process offset the upfront costs of the farmer for seeds, compost, equipment, etc. early in the season, and are repaid in equivalent produce during the Season. The extra produce grown by the farm is then available for sale at markets. The CSA memberships alone do not provide an adequate farmer income; just do the math. Small farms can have upfront costs in Winter and Spring in excess of $20k.

These are the reasons people often tell me they joined a CSA:

• I wanted more local food because of "stuff" I'm learning about Big Ag (good reason!)
• I wanted to support local farmers (good reason)
• I thought I'd get discounted organic produce (not usually)
• I thought I'd get new, unusual foods to try (depends on the farm)
• I'd be forced to try new things (depends on the farm)
• I wanted organic food (depends on the farm)
• Convenience (good reason)

These are reasons people often tell me they left a CSA:

• Too much food (that can happen), 
• Too much zucchini or squash (that happens often)
• Too little food or unhappy with quality (rare)
• Wanted more control of their produce selection (depends on farm)
• Want to participate in the market environment and mingle
• Didn't like to drive to pick up at a set time/day

If you pick the right CSA for you, most of the time you can avoid these kinds of worries and end up a happy customer. 


How the CSA model works.

Some farms, like Green Akeys, leave members with choices

Farms advertise their CSA memberships in the January-March time frame and fill the slots on a first come, first serve basis. In most, but not all, cases you will have to pay the entire season membership before it begins. I have seen a few farms that ask for half upfront and half mid-season. In almost all cases, the farm will offer a certain number of weeks and a share of a certain value. Typically, you will see things like a 20-week share with $20/week of produce. So, your cost this Spring would be $400 and sometime in late Spring you would have your first pick up. The number of weeks and size of shares does vary extensively, and this is something you want to consider. For instance, Truffula Seed Produce is offering 22-week shares this year, starting in early June and running until early November.  They are also offering three sizes of shares. On the other hand, Everblossom Farm is running for 25-weeks (mid-May through mid-November), but only offers one share size. The costs of shares varies somewhat within the range of $20-40 for a full share. Many farms offer half shares.

Once the season begins, you'll pick up your produce either at the farm or a designated meeting spot each week. You'll want to check out what the pick up days are, they vary. Most of the time, farms can not accommodate alterations to that schedule, so if the pick up day is Wednesday, you are really expected to pick up Wednesday. Some farms offer two pick up days. Most also specify a time slot of several hours, during which you need to pick up your goods. Another important thing to consider is vacations. Generally speaking, you will have to either find someone else to pick up your share while you are out of town or forfeit the produce. You won't get a discount on the CSA for missed weeks.  These kind of details are things you want to get straight with the farmer now. I wouldn't be afraid to try negotiating some aspects that are important to you; these farmers are real people and not big companies, after all. But I wouldn't expect much ability to change what they've laid out for the very same reason. Some CSAs are really quite large, having memberships that exceed a hundred families, and it is highly unlikely they will change on request.

White Rose Farm prepares CSA shares

When you pick up, you'll receive stuff either in a reusable grocery sack or, more frequently, a 12"x12"x24" size produce box. In most cases, you'll be expected each week to return the boxes/bags from the previous week so they can be reused. How full will the box be? In the middle of the season, you can expect it to be very full. On the edges of the season, you may have half a box. It all depends on what is ready to eat. The farmer will do their best to provide fair market value as they promised, so it you have a $20 share, they will try to provide $20 equivalent to a farmer's market visit. Some farms will actually itemize the costs over the season to demonstrate the total value and,  in other cases, you might have $15 in value the first week of June but $30 in mid-July. From another perspective, the farm will try to put in each share the produce required for a family of four, eating veggies most nights.  The rest of the harvest for that week will be sold by the farmer at farmer's markets or farm stands. Often they will offer the extra produce first to the CSA members at pick up.  I only know of one variant to this scheme in Maryland, and that is Green Akeys Farm. In 2011, they are going to try a true share concept for their small CSA, in which members truly buy a portion of all the produce the farm harvests. Their members will be entitled to consume the full bounty, and will share in the risk/reward of the farm in that way.

Everblossom Farm Winter CSA pick up

Most farms will have the CSA boxes pre-filled for pick up each week. You drop by, grab the box, and away you go. But there are some variations. Some farms allow the member to pick from a set list each week and they partially fill their own box. So, you might have a list of fourteen things in season and be able to choose any ten. Or there might be a wide variety of winter squash, and you can choose any one. These arrangements are designed to help alleviate members frustrations with getting too little variety or too much squash. You might instead be able to get more green beans or tomatoes, say. These arrangements vary by farm and are often found with larger operations. Most farms will tell you upfront what they plan to grow for the season. Read that list carefully. If it only contains six items, you might end up with lots of squash or cucumbers.  I have seen farms in Central Maryland that allow the members to input during the seed buying time (now) to what they'd like to see grown. They take the members suggestions, usually for more heirloom type fruit, and grow a few rows of those items.  But these are all deviations from the standard arrangement, so you need to look around and ask questions. In most cases, the farmer will fill the box fairly with what's ripe and have it ready to go when you arrive.

If you think that a full box sounds like too much food, or too much money, or you want to go to the market, many farms do offer half shares. Some farms also offer reduced prices for volunteering in the fields during the season. If you want to get your hands dirty, this is a great way to do that. Green Akeys does volunteer hours for a reduced rate, and Kayam Farm in Reisterstown actually offers a work share option, which has a $50 registration and 50 hours of work requirement in return for a 26-week share of produce.

What to consider in choosing a CSA. 

Some Farms, like White Rose Farms, offer more than produce

When considering a CSA, it's fair but may not be that useful to ask about return members. National statistics show that somewhere between 40-60% of membership turns over in CSAs each year, presumably for the reasons that I listed earlier.  I would say that a farm that has a much higher membership loyalty, or a much lower one, is doing something out of the ordinary (good or bad). But, for the most part, if 50% of their members decided not to renew, that's not unusual. It seems to be the natural cycle of this business model.

Definitely look at the number of weeks, the cost per week, and think seriously about your families food habits. Ask them what they are growing. Many farms provide a list of week-by-week examples of what to expect to help consumers, as Kayam does here.  If you think you might get too much food, consider whether a family member, friend, or colleague might share a share with you. Also, most produce can be "put up" for the Fall and Winter season without too much work. You don't have to necessarily deal with boiling glass jars. Got too many tomatoes? Toss them in the freezer, as they are.  They'll be fine for sauce later.

If you care about organic practices, ask. Not all local CSAs are growing organically. They might avoid pesticides, but use non-organic fertilizer, for example. Also, people have varying irrigation methods and systems. You might ask how they faired in last year's drought. The quality of their soil is going to greatly impact the quality of their harvest. The best local organic farms I know are putting very large quantities of compost into the soil to provide nutrients at the start of the planting season.

Many farms are now joining forces to provide the consumer with a multi-faceted CSA membership, or are offering more from their own farm. They might offer egg, meat, or even flower shares, in addition to produce. This gives you a convenient way to get more shopping done each week. Some farms offer their own honey in the late season, like Ceilidh Meadows Farm in Finksburg. This year, Truffula Seed Produce is joining with several farms to offer that broad set of memberships, and Green Akeys is offering chicken and eggs from their own farm.

You probably should also ask about the size of the CSA. This is a personal preference. A smaller CSA may offer more connection with the farmer, but in many cases, it will also offer less variety of produce. You have to check. Many of the farms also host membership BBQs at the farm or other social event to bring folks together at the farm. Farms like White Rose Farm in Taneytown have a monthly event calendar, as being part of the farm is central to their philosophy.

I often get asked about whether I am a member of a CSA. I have been, but last Summer, I chose not to join a CSA. This Winter we've been a member of a Winter CSA, as I've described on the blog, and it was a fantastic decision. I have not yet decided what to do this year. The CSA is not the perfect business model for me. I am happy to pay upfront, but I like the farmer's market environment (hough I hate arriving to no produce). And I like control of my menus. When I want to make pickles, I want a ton of cucumbers that week, not the week before or after.  What I'd personally like to see is a variation in the model where I pay early in the year for some kind of credits to use at the farm itself, or at the market, during the Summer Season. Doing that with a cooperative of farmers would be ideal, though complicated to execute. I personally think changes like this would reduce CSA membership turn over, but I've never seen any examples.

Still, I really think that membership in a CSA is probably the best introduction to someone new to the local movement.

What are your experiences? Do you have a CSA to recommend?

Here is information on several local farms that have released information on their 2011 CSA.  Several of these are farms that I have written a detailed profile of in the last year, which can give you a bit more about the character of the farm. All of the farms listed here use completely organic practices.

Of course, www.localharvest.org is an excellent resource to find others in your area.

Truffula Seed Produce (profiled by me here) in New Windsor is running a CSA for the first time. They are offering 22-weeks and three sizes of shares, with a Wednesday pick up in Westminster or at the farm. Truffula has also teamed up with other farms to offer egg, meat, bread, and flower shares, as well.  Their large size share does include a discount on the standard market price.

Nev-R-Dun Farm (profiled by me here) in Westminster is running a CSA for probably the 10th or 11th year. Tom is offering single size shares for 26 weeks at $20/share.

Green Akeys Farm (profiled by me here) in Westminster is offering ten shares of produce for $800 and 20 weeks. Based on what I saw last year, with this membership, you can expect a lot of food and a lot of variety, which explains the higher cost. They are unusual in that the members are entitled to the entire harvest of the farm. They also offer egg, chicken, lamb and beef shares. They offer a reduced rate for working at the farm some hours.

Everblossom Farm (our Winter CSA) outside Gettysburg, PA is offering a 25-week membership for $500. They also partner with other farms to offer a 21-week fruit share for $136 and an 18-week flower share.

Kayam Farm (not yet profiled) in Reisterstown is offering 26 weeks for $500 with over 30 varieties of produce. They also offer a work share option which provides food in return for 50 hours of volunteer labor on the farm. They require four hours of work from all members. This is a Jewish organic farm that I hope to profile in the coming weeks. I met them last Summer and was very impressed.

White Rose Farm (profiled here) in Taneytown has not listed their 2011 CSA membership yet, but last year they offered 20 weeks for $500.

Ceilidh Meadows Farm in Finksburg offers standard shares that include honey and eggs. I don't have their specifics for this year, but in the past they were about 20 weeks long.  They are my standard egg supplier, and like the rest of the farms listed here, a great family farm.


This post is part of Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop where you'll find a great variety of real food recipes, cooking experiences, etc. from around the world each week.

The Winter CSA: Halfway Mark

We are about halfway through our Winter CSA with Everblossom Farm in PA. This has turned out to be a great decision for us this year. Sometimes people complain with a CSA that they don't get enough food, or that they get way too  much of one thing. In my own experience, you can only do so much with zucchini, I think. Elaine of Everblossom Farm has done a great job of ensuring we are provided with a variety of produce and herbs for each of our pick-ups, though this all has to work within the confines of winter growth and root cellar storage. We chose to take 3/4 of a share, which for our family of three seems to have worked out really well. On the weeks we get the full share, we certainly have too much, but then it evens out the next time when we receive only a half share.

I took stock this weekend of where we stood with the CSA items. We have one butternut squash left, but started the season with six, so that is good. We had two quarts of potatoes and probably three pounds or more of carrots. We also had quite a bit of garlic, but again, I had completely stocked up on garlic before the Winter. There are a few things in the freezer, like leeks, but overall, we really are just talking potatoes and carrots.

I decided the potatoes were starting to be a bit soft and we better start making a bigger dent in the carrots, given we'll probably get  more next week! So, we converted the potatoes into gnocchi and the carrots into carrot cake. I had only made gnocchi once before, in a cooking class in Italy, and I hadn't really done very well. I'm not sure why that is. My instructor clearly thought my kneading skills were poor. This time I followed Jamie Oliver's recipe. After baking the potatoes in the oven, I ran them through the food mill to remove the skins and create a fine grade. Note to self, next time just peel the potatoes. The food mill requires a lot of effort to deskin potatoes. Things were actually pretty easy from there. An egg, nutmeg, salt, and a dash of flour. A bit of kneading, rolling out sausage links, and clipping with the scissors. I tested the mix in boiling water, and it held together and tasted great. Later that evening, I melted gorgonzola cheese in butter and half-n-half for decadent sauce and tossed in baked halibut chunks.

Gnocchi in the works

My son made the carrot cake for the most part, using a recipe we found on allrecipes.com. This was another first for us, and he remarked throughout how weird this cake was. In the end, it is quite delicious, particularly with a marscapone-butter icing. I think the use of crushed pineapple and apple sauce ensures that it is moist, but it wasn't too heavy.  In one fell swoop, we used three cups of grated carrots, which helps dig into the pounds of carrots in the fridge. That and a carrot salad taken from Moosewood Cookbook put us on track for carrot consumption for the week. More and we might turn a bit orange.

The Carrot Cake

While we are in the lean weeks right now for the CSA, the rest of the group feels the same way we do. This was a great idea.

The cake used a lot of carrots

Winter CSA Pick Up 3

We received the third installment of our winter CSA on the 18th of December; this week it was a full share for me. Ever since the pie I'd made at Thanksgiving, I'd had visions of Blue Hubbard Squash dancing in my head. I'd been hoping one would find its way into my goodie bag this week. Sadly, no. There was winter squash, but not pumpkin-type squash: butternut. The full share got three butternut squash this time, which over a two week period is normally fine. But, as I had had hoarding issues during the early Fall months at the Farmer's Market, one thing I am plum full of is butternut squash. I've been working it, but as of Saturday, I had six. Luckily, I've been scrounging the recipe books for butternut recipes and it's quite amazing how much variety there is. I guess I mentioned that in a previous post, that I'd located soup recipes where butternut squash acted as a medium for sundried tomatoes or such. It really works quite well. Last night, though, I simply roasted a few of the squash and smashed them with fresh ginger and a little orange juice; a tasty simple side.

So, in the next few weeks, I have to work on potatoes, as we got two quarts of those, and I still have a little from, yes, the market. That shouldn't be too hard. I've already finished the two nice big heads of lettuce we got this week, using up more green peppers and a few of the carrots. We got a ton of carrots this pick up, but they last forever and are fabulous for stock, so no worries.

I also hoarded garlic over the summer and early Fall. I love garlic and cook most days with it. The garlic you get from the grocery store seems to turn rubbery and sprout within a few days of entering the front door. Isn't that funny how that is? It looks fine there, but then takes a nose dive in the comfort of your home. Like those herb plants??! They are all nice and perky, and you think, oh, much better to have the plant for $2.49 than to have just a small package for $2.29, but within a day of getting home, the bright and cheery plant is brown and failing. It's a conspiracy, I'm sure. So the garlic conspiracy led me to hoard enough garlic for the winter months from local farmers. I'm storing them in brown paper bags in the basement so they stay dry and a cooler. But now I'm also getting a few beautiful heads of garlic from the CSA each time, making it close to a steady-state equation. Lots of garlic. Maybe I'll have to find a garlic chicken recipe or something like that.

So, here's the haul list for the 3rd pickup:

Leeks - one very large bunch

Onions - two quarts

Garlic - two heads

Potatoes - two quarts

Carrots - a big ole bag

Winter squash - three butternut

Lettuce - two large heads

Kale - one very large bunch

Fresh herbs - sage and thyme

I have the least experience with kale. Last time, I waited too long and it had wilted quite a bit, so I didn't have much to use. I just threw it into a pasta sausage thing. I'll have to find something more creative this time, and before it dries up. Maybe potato and kale soup, but I was going to make corn chowder with corn from the summer and the potatoes.

Winter CSA installment 1 - the aftermath

Well, I started this draft shortly after we got the first install of our winter CSA with the intent of telling what I did with our produce for that two week period. Now I lost the thread, and I'm halfway through the second batch of produce from the CSA. We'll pretend as if it was all planned. 


The way I've got this CSA arranged, I get a full share every other pick-up and a half share on the alternate pick-ups. So, the first load was quite a lot of food. It certainly makes you plan in advance to either consume it, "put it up" for later, or make expensive compost. While I'm quite the fan of composting, I'm not a fan of expensive compost. I hate things to go to waste, so I either wanted to eat it or freeze it before the food went bad. For the most part, I met that goal. 


Unfortunately, as I think I mentioned before, I had already been hoarding from the Fall farmer's market. This left me with a lot of butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and potatoes. On the flip side, it's caused me to experiment with butternut squash recipes, in particular, in a way I've never done before. I can now make some mean, and fiercely different tasting, squash soups. My favourites so far are a butternut-sundried tomato soup, in which the squash is a medium for sundried tomatoes, and a butternut-apple-ginger, in which the squash is a medium for ginger. Both are outstanding. 


So, here's the weirder things I used stuff for.. well, at least, weird to me because it was a first. i have little experience with beets. Like almost none. Mark Bittman suggests making a Swiss Roesti from them -- essentially a giant hashbrown of beets and parmesan. This was truly excellent, though burned in parts. Where it calls for a nonstick pan, I think they really mean that. But I don't have one, so it wasn't elegant, but it tasted great. I chalked the charred parts up to learning, and since they were the same colour as the beets, you couldn't pick them out (until you bit in). The other beet recipe was for beet greens and bacon, and it came from the farm. I just got fresh bacon from my 1/2 hog I ordered from Copper Penny Farm, so I had the perfect combo. I had no idea how well those flavours go together. I thought the beet greens would be a bit bitter, like chard or another green, but it wasn't. 


The celeriac was a trip. I mashed them as the farm suggested. It was like mild mashed celery, which is great if you like celery and weird if you don't. Luckily, I liked it and so did my son. My husband probably preferred it over the beets, which he wouldn't fein to try. 


I never really thought brussel sprouts were anything to write home about, and when I saw that there were aphids in the stalks, I almost went the compost route. It looked like a lot of work for not a lot of gain to me. But I decided that I'd cook the sprouts that i could relatively easily debug, and compost the rest. In the end, I think I cooked about 3/4 of the sprouts, but they were really small when I peeled off the buggy parts. I roasted them and used them in a pastas primavera. The flavour was sweet and subtle; I don't recall that being the case with any other sprouts I've eaten, so I'm not sure if it was because they were fresher, smaller, or a different variety. 


Now, the blue hubbard squash.. that's some good stuff... I cooked mine into two things: pie and soup. Both were  fabulous. The pie was rich and sweet, the soup very similar to German kerbis (pumpkin) soup. The only recipe I found for this squash was the pie on allrecipes.com, but it was great. 


I'm trying my hand for the first time at lactose-fermenting with the carrots. I'm using a recipe for ginger carrots from Nourishing Traditions that combines shredded carrots, ginger, salt and whey. The mixture ferments at room temperature for several days and you end up with a sour, nutritious gingery carrot side - at least, that is the theory. 


I think the only thing so far to overwhelm me is the green peppers. I've received something like 10 of them, and I'm just not a fan. so, I blanched and froze most of them. I'm sure they'll come in handy somewhere, someday. 


The first install was: (the second was very similar)
potatoes - 2 qts.
sweet potatoes - 3 large, 5 small
onions - 1 qt - these are easy to use up
leeks - 1 bunch - I froze some, put some in soup
celery - 1 bunch - froze for stock making
parsley - one large bunch - still have some of this
sage - 1 bunch - dried some, used some in various recipes
parsnips - 3 large (these store a long time and are awesome) - I ended up freezing several of these, roasting others
carrots - 1 medium bunch (ditto as parsnips) 
squash - 2 acorn, 1 butternut, 1 large blue hubbard - used these all 
garlic - 2 heads
brussel sprouts - 2 stems, about 4 cups - pasta primavera with leeks and fromage blanc
celeriac - several,  about 3 cups - smashed celeriac and potatoes - interesting
chard - 1 large bunch (probably am going to blanch and freeze this soon)  - blanched two bunches now
beets, red - 1 large bunch with greens (will blanch and freeze the greens; roast and freeze the beets)
green peppers - 5 small

The Winter CSA Experiment

Our first pick up

Sometime earlier this year, I stumbled upon The Winter Harvest by Elliot Coleman. "The Winter Huh?", was my first thought, then, "kindle edition?" Sure enough, there is one. The first chapter left me intrigued and befuddled. In the middle of Maine, Elliot Coleman runs a winter CSA, a big one. And the book strives to share with the average ambitious gardener how they too can have fresh produce all Winter long.  I'm an average, slightly over-ambitious gardener.  But for all it's convenience and wonder, Kindle doesn't do photos justice. No library copy of the book was available. So within a few days of discovery, I found myself cracking the bind of The Winter Harvest in my early-Summer living room. Beautiful big pictures showed huge hoop houses full of green produce with snow all around. Coleman provides the reader with details of the equipment and, more importantly, the timing they need to have that kind of picture in their own yard. Ambition set in and I tried to get seeds in the ground, appropriately timed for the right light and heat necessary. At some point, reality also set in. I live in the woods and my greenhouse is a product of a years-ago over-ambitious idea of creating a Winter wonderland. But, well, I live in the woods.  The seeds I planted this August all sprouted, but struggling for light are weak, skinny stemmed shadows of the real thing.

In mid-September when I saw an ad on Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org) that send "Find a Winter CSA in your area", I didn't hesitate. But I also had low expectations. I had talked to any number of farmers during the summer about a Winter CSA. All had read and admired Elliot Coleman, but none had plans for a Winter harvest. It seems clear to me that there must be a great market to tap into in Central Maryland, but I can also see the risk looming over their shoulders. It does require more hoop houses and, to get good variety, cold storage of the Fall veggies. But Coleman harvests something like fourteen greens and root vegetables right through the dark of Winter in Maine. I'll say it again: Maine. My zip code search revealed two Winter CSA farms, one in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia. The Pennsylvania farm was outside of Gettysburg, about 75 minute drive from my house. The farm was listed as certified Naturally Grown, meaning organic practices certified by a farmer's organization.

This CSA was 20-weeks, covering the full expanse of the Winter, with pick up every other week. I'd have to drive to PA ten times during five months. Could I do it? I was close, but not quite there. My solution: convince others they wanted to drive to PA for produce during the Winter. In the end, six families are splitting four shares from Everblossom Farm in Carlisle, PA. This way each of us only makes the trek a few times and gets fresh produce through the season.

Andrea and I made the first drive up yesterday. Everblossom Farm is part of Elaine Lemmon's childhood home, where her dad still raises beef and other products conventionally. More about that another day.  She's been running the farm and CSA for 8+ years and it shows. The pick-up was very organized and bountiful, and moreover the handful of others picking up were obviously regular subscribers. One man said he was part of a group of twenty families form Gettysburg. She feeds over forty members using the 5-6 acres she rents from her father.

So using this produce through the Winter will be back to my last CSA challenge of a few years ago. It's local, and it's coming. You just gotta figure out what to do with it. No dilly-dallying. This week's pick up was large, but I had to keep in mind that it is two weeks of produce really. Still, it's a lot of food for a family of three. I figure sharing how we make do with the CSA over the coming months could be interesting to some folks, so we'll do that.  And, I'll make some future posts about what I learn about Elaine and the farm.

My real issue is that I am a "storer"; reference the Squirrel Family post earlier. So I've been busily buying extra produce over the last month to put up for the Winter. Only a few weeks ago, when I arrived home with three butternut squash and a bunch of potatoes, who knows what else, did it dawn on me that I might have too much food. We'll see, I guess.

Here is what was in  the first pick up. I wish I had an extra fridge or cold storage but I don't. I'm trying to use a basement window well, but that's iffy because while it probably wont' freeze, the temperature fluctuates from 42-55 degrees Fahrenheit and I can't control the humidity.  So some of this will have to be dealt with soon so as not to go to waste.

potatoes - 2 qts.
sweet potatoes - 3 large, 5 small
onions - 1 qt
leeks - 1 bunch
celery - 1 bunch
parsley - one large bunch
sage - 1 bunch
parsnips - 3 large (these store a long time and are awesome)
carrots - 1 medium bunch (ditto as parsnips)
squash - 2 acorn, 1 butternut, 1 large blue hubbard
garlic - 2 heads
brussel sprouts - 2 stems, about 4 cups
celeriac - several,  about 3 cups (i've never cooked, never ate; she sent a recipe)
chard - 1 large bunch (probably am going to blanch and freeze this soon)
beets, red - 1 large bunch with greens (will blanch and freeze the greens; roast and freeze the beets)
green peppers - 5 small

So we'll see how I make out over the  next few weeks....

Summer Reading

I have several posts in my mind right now, but unfortunately, haven't had the time to get them out and onto paper. I thought I'd start this one by highlighting some of the reading I'd done this summer, and where I plan to take what I learned to investigate and write some new blogs in the near future. Call it a preview. With references.

I tend to read mostly non-fiction and in the last year have read a lot about food and food movements. I'm amazed at how influential the written word can be, how it can drive people to make wholesale changes in their lives and behaviour. The classics in local living, or at least the mosts referenced in my experience, are Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and several by Michael Pollan, most often Omnivore's Dilemma.  I think the former tends to resonate heavily with people who like a personal story, to which they can relate and be encouraged to take on similar endeavors. Kingsolver makes it attractive to try living locally, at least just a bit. The number of people I have met who cite her book as a major source of change in their lives is huge. And more than one have taken steps such as raising chickens based on her family's story. I myself started making cheese solely based on her insistence that it really wasn't that hard to make mozzarella cheese. As a result of that chain, I now make yogurt every week, and it's the best you'll ever taste. So, those kinds of works are extremely motivating. Others like this are Plenty, by the Canadian couple who was among the first to attempt a 100-mile challenge, and the more extreme See you in a Hundred Years, from the New York couple that decides to regress to the turn of the 20th century in the Virginia countryside for a one year period. Ok, I'm not sure that the latter book will motivate many people to give up running water, even for a month, but it is interesting.

Michael Pollan of course has a long run of books that are fact-based accounts of food and food industry. Omnivore's Dilemma hit my sweet spot, at least for the first three-quarters of the book, and I found the material both shocking and enthralling.  I can source that book as a major change point in my life, leading to a massive reduction in the use of grade two corn products and a complete re-evaluation of our family's meat sources. Because of that material, I initiated group buying of pasture-raised meat and all of our meat in the last eighteen months has been purchased from local farmers practicing sustainable, admirable techniques. That book is a bit thick for many, and I know a lot of people preferred Food Rules, though I never read that one. Going outside of reading and onto the screen, the film Food, Inc. has had a massive influence people and the way that they think about food. I have had countless people ask me about that film and other tv reports that have spawned since it was released. Another fabulous fact-based book about nutrition, so with a different perspective than Pollan's work, is Real Food, by Nina Plank. I read that one sometime in the Spring, and I thought it was absolutely excellent.

But I digress, as I didn't read any of these works this Summer. I did read Organic, Inc. though, by Samuel Fromartz. This is sort of a mix of the two styles above. Fromartz discusses the history, motivation, and existing tensions of the organic food movement and industry, starting in the early twentieth century. He interweaves the stories of farmers who have tried to make a living from sustainable  agricultural practices in a global economy world. A central theme is this tension between organic and local movements, and whether that can realistically be one in the same. As organic food becomes more widely consumed, what is the impact of the resulting Big Organic industry.  It's definitely an interesting read for the lover of non-fiction, fact-based, stories kinda things. Here in Maryland there are a number of local farmers who are certified organic, and a number who aren't. I am also seeing more Naturally Grown labels posted. In any case, one of those is Nev-R-Dun Farm in Westminster, Md., owned by Tom Reinhardt. In the last few months, he went through his recertification process and I hope to talk to him soon about what that entails, why he's going through formal certification (which costs), and what he thinks about being an organic farmer in Maryland. More to come on that. In the meantime, you can find Tom at the Westminster Farmers markets (Sun/Tue) and at his website, www.nevrdunfarm.com.

Another book I picked up in the middle of Summer and haven't completely made my way through is The Winter Harvest Handbook, by Eliot Coleman. This came to my attention through Amazon "recommended for you" and the subtitle is Year-round vegetable production using deep-organic techniques and unheated greenhouses. I like the idea of year round vegetable production, so I took a closer look. Low and behold, they are running a winter CSA (community support agriculture) in Maine, growing produce in unheated greenhouses. This just fascinates me to no end. I have a small greenhouse that I usually run as a cool house, meaning at around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but here they are in Maine, in lots of snow, using no heater at all and making enough produce to sell to folks. It motivated me to get my own greens, like lettuce and a few other things, in the ground early enough so that they should provide a harvest without using electricity this late-Fall and winter. It also motivated me to find a winter CSA somewhere that I could take advantage of for fresh produce through the winter months. Thanks to Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org), I was able to locate a winter CSA about 40 miles away in Pennsylvania. It means we'll have to take a hike every few weeks to pick up food, but I gathered up some friends to pitch in, and it seems well worth the experiment. This CSA doesn't start until nearly Thanksgiving, but as it does, I'll report on that experience. The farm we've subscribed to is Everblossom Farm, www.everblossomfarm.com, just outside Gettysburg.

Another book from this Summer was Made by Hand by Mark Frauenfelder. The subtitle of this new book is Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway world. This is a light read that fed into my own drive to be self-sufficient, or to at least have the knowledge that you could be. Fraenfelder takes the reader through his own adventures of raising chickens, keeping bees, building musical instruments, pursuing edible landscaping/permaculture, and the like.  I'm not about to raise chickens, but I do plan on writing a post about my friend who has taken on raising egg layers over the last year and a half.

Other things in the head and hopefully soon in the works are a few local farmers we buy from: Michael Akeys of Green Akeys farms (www.greenakeys.com) just sold me eighteen chickens in the last few weeks after an eventful six months trying to get them all to processing stage, thanks to intervention by the local fox population. And, Greg Thorne of Thorne Farm in Westminster runs a naturally grown 25-acre farm with a wide selection of produce, but also flock of sheep that are used both for wool and meat. (http://www.thornefarm.blogspot.com/)