CSA Week 7

August already! The vegetables are rolling in as fast as ever: I hope you are enjoying the bounty! The last couple shares have been fairly generous with an extra item each week plus large quantities of certain vegetables (I'm looking at you, zucchini and cucumber). The zucchini will still be around for a few more weeks but they will start to slow down. After another week or so we will probably be back to just eight items plus herbs rather than nine. Until then, we enjoy that summer veggies that only last for a finite amount of time!

One vegetable we will be without for about 3 weeks is lettuce. The heat caused our last planting of lettuce to bolt and the next planting is not nearly big enough. I have also seeded some salad mix but it will be at least two weeks until it's ready. While we wait, I recommend making delicious, crisp salads with things like kale, chard, cabbage, and cucumbers. 

You will notice that your beets come topped this week - we are seeing some disease in our beet and chard greens which are making them not particularly beautiful. When this happens with beets, we simply remove the tops and eat the bottoms are they are unaffected. The chard is another story. I hope to have enough for everyone but I may have to make it a choice between kale or chard if there aren't enough lovely chard greens. 

Our garlic is all harvested and looking nice. The garlic cures under the shade we have strung up in the greenhouse, filling the space with the smell of garlic. The onions are also sizing up well and will be the next vegetables to use the greenhouse to dry and cure. I also tried to peer into our ocean of winter squash vines and what I can see looks great. They have about another month of growing and ripening to do and then they also will spend some time curing in the greenhouse. 

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Since we without lettuce for a couple weeks, I thought I would share some 'salad' recipes that use ingredients other than lettuce. These are perfect accompaniments to simple meals of grilled meats or sandwiches. No need to turn on the oven or spend much time in the kitchen. 

Zucchini Salad
Kale Caesar Salad
Shredded Beet and Carrot Salad
Tomato Cucumber Salad
​Mediterranean Chard Salad
Cabbage Slaw