Family Day at the Farm

Mark your Calendars! Sunday July 31 beginning at 2pm

Come out to the farm for an afternoon of family fun. Some of our farm crew are planning some fun kids activities but I bet folks of all ages will want to participate! We will also be happy to take folks on a general farm tour. Lots to see in the fields and pastures.

Of course we will fire up the pizza oven too so there should be at least a slice or two for everyone to enjoy beginning at about 5pm.

If we can get any of local jammin' musicians to stop by, maybe we will even have some music fun with the pizza.

If you are inspired, bring some grated cheese for the pizza or some other tid bit or desserty thing to share. We will certainly have good cool water and probably some juice but feel free to bring anything in that department as well.....

Hope you can come! An RSVP to our email will help us to know how much pizza dough to make.... lunableufarm@myfairpoint.net

Sweet Peppers and Fennel

Late July CSA Share
In the CSA shares this week you will find Fennel, pictured on the right. We have some tips for using fennel in a post from last year but here is another recipe to try. This is slightly adapted from the MACSAC cookbook that many of you have purchased.

Orange and Fennel Salad with Mixed Greens

1 bulb of fennel, cut in 1/2 and remove core
2-3 blood oranges or 4-6 tangerines
salt & pepper
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dry sherry (optional)
4-5 cups mixed greens ( to divide on 4 plates)

Slice fennel as thin as possible (use a food slicer or mandolin if available).
Cut one of the oranges (two tangerines perhaps) in half and squeeze out the juice and pulp. into the bowl. Peel & section the remaining oranges. Poke the sections with a sharp fork so they will absorb the dressing.
Mix sliced fennel, juice & oranges with olive oil and sherry- season with salt & pepper.
Let stand for 10 minutes then serve over a bed of greens on individual plates.


No hot peppers in the share.... Those long green peppers may look like a hot pepper but they are not. The dark long green ones (on the left in the photo above) are "Carmens", an italian bull-horn type pepper. It is one of my favorites. They yellow one on the right is similar. We call it a cubanelle or italian sweet pepper. For some reason, most info about this pepper says it is often fried but we often just eat it raw like the other sweet peppers.
If we ever put hot peppers in your share ( and we hope to later in the season), we will put them in their own bag and label them so you will know.

Mixed spicy greens. In the shares you will often get a choice of a type of green that you can cook. Kale, Chard and mixed spicy greens are the most common in the middle of the summer. The bag of mixed greens are often a little on the spicy side. You can sautee them just like you would other cooking greens but you could also mix them with lettuce to spice up your salad.
Don't be afraid of cooking greens. Just try not to over cook. I usually start by sauteing some garlic and onion in butter or olive oil. Once they are translucent, I just toss in my greens (ususally chopped a bit and if necessary, I will seperate the stem from the rest of the leaf and cook that a little first since it is a little longer) Once the leafy stuff goes in, just cook for a little bit until the color gets bright and shiny then get it right off of that heat! drizzle a little lemon juice, vinegar or tamari over them. Serve as a side or on rice or pasta. Experiment and have fun!

BASIL, BASIL

We hope our CSA members have been enjoying all of the basil we have been sending in the shares. We imagine that many of you are already fans of pesto, but if that is now in your culinary repertoire, you can try this basic recipe:

A food processor is really good for this but I guess traditionally it everything was just chopped and then ground up with a mortar and pestle... I think a blender can work, but you need to be careful you don't burn out the motor.

Put in the food processor
3-4 cloves of garlic or a bunch of garlic scapes (pre-chop these a bit)
1/2 or so of walnuts (pinenuts are traditional but they are more expensive and exotic... but taste great)

run processor until you get a nice rough peanut butter texture
add
3-4 cups of basil leaves (although, I often just put the whole bunch, stem and all, in the cuisine art) You can also sub in up to about 1 cup of basil with parsley.
1/2 cup of olive oil

run processor again. You may want to add some more olive oil as it runs to help everything along... maybe 1/4 cup or so.

mix in about 3/4 - 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (if you have it in a chunk, you can pre-chop it a bit and put it in the processor in that first stage with the nuts and garlic)

You end up with a fairly thick paste that you can toss with hot pasta. It is a delicious, easy summer meal.

You can also dry or freeze basil. I usually freeze it by chopping up leaves in the food processor with some olive oil. I then glop big spoonfuls onto waxpaper on a cookie sheet, freeze it over night or so then put all those little chunks into a freezer bag. Then I can take out the amount I need during the winter. This year I just froze the leaves on a cookie sheet (that's the photo at the top of the page...) then put them in a bag. This is what Aurora's family does.

Introducing Kohlrabi......

A belated intro to one of our favorite vegetables: Kohlrabi. I really love Kohlrabi. One of our early CSA members, Jim Hornig, suggested that we grow it about 20 years ago. It is a fast growing brassica (member of the broccoli/cabbage family) that has been more common in Europe than the US. Of course, now that we have been introducing it to the Upper Valley for all these years, we see it more and more at other farmers' stands... just another example of Luna Bleu charting new waters from way back when.... or not...

Anyway, what should be done with this wild looking vegetable that looks like it may have floated down from outer space? Typically, people eat the "bulb" (really, a swollen stem), but you can also eat the leaves like you would collards or kale. It is best to peel the bulb with a paring knife because the skin is a bit fibrous. Then you can cut it up and enjoy it raw... use with dips or put into a salad. One of our apprentices, Aurora, made a lovely salad with julienned cucumbers, kohlrabi and carrots (we still have some in the cooler from last fall!). I don't know exactly what sort of dressing she made... maybe sort of a lemony vinaigrette... You can also cook with it. At this time of year, I like to put it in stirfry. It has a crisp and juicy texture... sort of like a water chestnut or maybe jicama (although I don't think I have had either for years... not since I have kohlrabi!). Of course it is also good in soups and other cooked medleys of vegetables or just on its own.

Enjoy your kohlrabi. If you would like to share any of your favorite ideas or recipes, just let us know.

Pizza Oven House

It has been about a year since we built our pizza/bread oven and now finally we are getting a shelter built for it. Steve Hoffman, a good friend of ours is doing all of the skilled work and we helped with a little of the heavy lifting. Now we have the beginning of a beautiful frame and all we need is the roof... Not sure if it will be completed by our next open house... but maybe...

It will be really nice to put away the tarp that now covers the oven all the time. We will also be able to store wood next to the oven and keep other supplies out there. Oh it will be so spiffy!

Tonalli, one of the WWOOFers who helped build the oven last year, is here visiting for a few weeks so she gets to help put this shelter up now!