Blue Gate Farm News – Volume VII , Number 12 – August 19, 2008
In
this week’s box:
Basil: Genovese
Beans: Carson/Empress Mix or Fortex Green Beans
Edamame:
Butterbean
Hot
Peppers: Assorted
Tomatoes:
assorted (see 7/29 newsletter for descriptions)
For
those with the Egg option: one dozen free-range eggs (assorted colors)
For
those with the Herb option: Sorrel, Lemon Balm, Tarragon
For
those with the Honey option: choice of liquid or comb
Featured Recipe(s) (see
below): Finger Lickin’ Edamame with Asian Sauce
Rain this week: 1.5 ” (from 8/12 - 8/18)
What’s up on the farm?
We’ve been celebrating the
glorious weather on the farm this week. It’s
been perfect conditions for sowing more fall crops including beets, turnips and
more kale. And the nice weather has
pushed the recent sowings to germinate quickly, the salad, Swiss chard, Chinese
cabbage and pac choi are already up and growing.
During some of our garden
cleanup this week, we’ve noted some interesting characters. We have an incredible population of praying
mantis in the garden this year. We found
crazy numbers of tiny ones earlier this season and a large number of them
appear to have survived to maturity, as we have seen many more than ever before
and they are the size of your hand! These
alien-looking beneficial bugs eat a great number of “bad bugs” so we welcome
them to make themselves at home. We’ve
also seen a great number of Leopard Frogs this season. These are considered to
be a dwindling population of native frogs so we are very pleased to see so many
of them in the gardens. They too are good “bad bug” eaters.
This is a bittersweet week here
as our good friend and hard-working farm helper, Kate, heads north to ISU to continue
her career as an Agronomy/Agriculture major.
Her willingness to jump in to all the weeding and harvesting tasks has
been a huge help in this challenging year, plus she laughed at Jill’s jokes! Our heartfelt thanks and best wishes go along
with her.
We were the recipients of
some great generosity this week. Many of
the hot peppers in your boxes were grown by Jill’s Aunt Louise, who thought we
(you) might be able to use them. Then we
were given the opportunity to go and cut the “out of control” basil at Reichert’s
Dairy Air (our fabulous cheese supplier). So we hope you enjoy these treats and big
thanks to our veggie donors this week!
Reminder…High Tunnel raising: on
Sunday, August 24th, we plan to assemble and erect the two tunnels
from
Finally, the bundle
of crazy plant-looking stuff in your boxes this week is edamame and this is the
traditional way of packaging it and best maintains its quality. Edamame
is the proper name for vegetable soybeans. Don’t worry we didn’t sneak into the
neighbor’s field and harvest his crop late at night. These are a special variety of soybean,
specially developed for fresh table use. These beans are a nutritional champ,
containing all nine essential amino acids and is also high in calcium, iron,
zinc several B vitamins and isoflavones. You do want to cook them though, not use them
raw, or you will miss out on all those great nutrients. For best quality, use
within a couple of days, until that time, store whole plants in the
refrigerator in a plastic bag. To use,
remove bean pods (do not shell) and discard stems and leaves. Our favorite preparation (besides the included
recipe) is the simplest, just drop beans (in the shell) into boiling salted
water (like water for pasta) and cook for 3-4 minutes. Drain and eat hot or room temperature in the
traditional fashion, by holding the bean in front of your mouth and squeezing
the end of the shell to pop the bean into your mouth (don’t eat the shell).
Young friends of ours love these and call them ‘popping beans’ for just this
reason.
Best from the farm,
Jill & Sean
Finger Lickin’ Edamame with
Asian Sauce
1 lb edamame (soybeans) in
the shell 2
garlic cloves, minced
2 tbs soy sauce 1
tsp honey (or brown sugar)
1 tbs each sesame oil, canola
oil & rice vinegar 2 tbs
sesame seeds
Boil edamame in salted water
5 – 8 minutes. Combine other ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer,
stirring to dissolve honey or sugar.
Toss with hot edamame. Serve immediately, letting diners
pop beans out of the pod. The glaze was inspired by a recipe in The Roasted Vegetable, by Andrea
Chesman. The recipe works with shelled edamame, too.
Recipe Source: Angela Tedesco, Turtle Farm