Artisan Organics Weblog

Entries from July 2008

CSA Newsletter, July 29, 2008 Emanuel Pick Up

July 29, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Cabbage – More of the beautiful Savoy cabbage. Please help yourself to one of the larger heads or two smaller ones.

Romaine Lettuce – This lettuce is tender and juicy, perfect for a Caesar salad.

When preparing Romaine lettuce for your shares, I debate with myself the best way to present it to you. I’ve discovered that the outer leaves of the of the Romaine fall off easily so it needs to be contained. Placing it in plastic bags is the most visually appealing option. But since I can’t reuse your plastic bags, it wastes a lot of petroleum resources. The other option is to rubber band it, which squishes the heads more tightly and makes them look smaller and less attractive. But, the rubber bands are made from real latex, which is a renewable resource from the Latex tree. Today, I opted for the Rubber bands in hopes that after washing and spinning the romaine, you’ll see that it is more than it first appeared to be.

Fennel – Choose at least three bulbs. There is plenty to share.

Farm Life

We have spent much of the week weeding, transplanting and sowing seeds.

One of the things about farming is that I must always be thinking in both the short term and the long term. Which bed is the highest priority to weed today in order to have a crop to harvest next week? What so I need to sow today in order to fill your shares four months from now?

Yesterday, I sowed seeds for the veggies that will appear in your share in November. Many of them will remain in the hoop house for five to six weeks before they are ready to transplant. They will then take another two to two and a half months to mature in the ground.

In the last several days we have also transplanted the lettuce and fennel that will appear in your shares in six to eight weeks. One batch of each was sown on June 15, the second on July 7th. Both are ready for transplant now.

Why is that seeds sown three weeks apart are ready for transplant at the same time? Part of it is that I changed growing mediums. The first batch of seeds was started in a locally produced potting mix. Unfortunately, it was not of very good quality. The second batch of seeds was started in an organic professional grower’s mix that is manufactured by a large corporation and is made of products produced outside the continental United States. I have used this growing mix elsewhere and always found it to be of consistently high quality.

But, the biggest difference is the weather. On June 15 I moved the seed sowing operation into the hoop house because it was a warmer place to work. During the initial germination period the high temperature was 74 degrees. The low was 51. Obviously, with air temperatures like that, the soil temperature wasn’t very high either, even in the hoop house, slowing the germination process.

When we sowed seeds on July 7th, we looked for a cool place to work. During the germination period the high temperature was 93 and the low was 72. This made for warmer soil and therefore faster germination. That combined with the higher quality sowing medium meant that the second batch of seeds caught up with the first.

What affect does this have on your shares? This time around, very little really. I sow lettuce seeds every three weeks. Each time I sow, I plant a mix of varieties with maturity dates ranging from 55 to 75 days. The range of maturity dates and the sowing intervals greatly increase the likelihood that there will be lettuce ready to harvest every week.

In the case of the fennel, it is so fickle that there is no guarantee that it will be ready for harvest at any particular point in time any way. It will be ready whenever it pleases and there is little I can do about it. So I will baby it along, and practice being patient!

Featured Veggie of the Week

One of the shareholders from the Friday pick up site contributed a wonderful slaw recipe that uses both your cabbage and fennel. With her permission, I have included it below.

CABBAGE AND FENNEL SLAW
(adjust for quantities available)
2 medium fennel bulbs with tops
1 medium head cabbage, shredded (about 8 C)
1-2 C fresh Italian parsley leaves, chopped (or more if you like)
1 C mayonnaise
1/4 C sugar
1/4 C cider vinegar
1 T dry mustard
1/4 tsp salt
Remove and snip green leafy tops from fennel bulbs.  Set aside.
Discard stalks.  Thinly slice fennel bulbs, removing core.
Combine sliced fennel, snipped fennel tops, cabbage, and parsley leaves.
In a small bowl stir together mayo, sugar, vinegar, mustard and salt
until well combined.  Add to cabbage mixture, tossing to coat
evenly.  Cover and chill for 2-8 hrs before serving.
Yogurt could probably substitute for the mayo, but I haven’t tried it.

Categories: Tuesday Pick Up - Emanuel Hospital

CSA Newsletter, July 25 2008, Good Sam Pick Up

July 25, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Cabbage – This week you’ll receive your first cabbage. It is a young and tender Savoy with beautiful blue green crinkly leaves. I suggest you use a simple recipe so that you can experience its flavor. I will steam mine and then sprinkle a little good quality rice vinegar on it at the table. You will be receiving more of this cabbage in the coming weeks so you’ll have an opportunity to try more complex recipes later.

Chard

Romaine Lettuce

Beets or Fennel – Your choice. I love oven roasted beats served at room temperature with goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. And, the beat greens can be sautéed with your chard.

If you select the fennel, you might try grilling it. Remove the stems then slice the thickened stem. Coat the pieces with olive oil then drizzle with balsamic. Grill until done. If you have a grill basket you might want to use it so that the pieces don’t fall thru the grate.

Don’t forget that the fennel greens can also be eaten. Snip the tender top two or so inches of the greens and toss them with your salad.

Farm Life

This week has seen weeding, weeding, and more weeding. I have hired a laborer who is doing nothing but weed the Canada thistle. He started in the tomato beds and then moved to the onions. Now he is weeding eating around the fence lines in order to keep that thistle from producing seeds. A Canada thistle seed is viable for at least seven years so any seeds that hit the ground now will be a problem for years to come.

While Roberto was weeding, Nathan transplanted onions, more than 1,000 individual onion plants. Hopefully, they will mature before the rainy season returns so that we can harden them off well before distributing them in the fall.

Nathan has also been building trellises for pole beans and tomatoes. This is a harbinger of good things to come. It means the tomatoes are doing so well that they need a trellis to support them. So far, the Golden Nugget cherries have the most fruit. We will see which ones actually ripen first.

Speaking of fruit….. the apple trees are doing very well. Though I have seen a few adult Codling Moths, the apples do not appear to be too wormy. If the fruit continues to look so well, you will have apples in your share in August.

Featured Veggie of the Week

Your cabbage is the featured veggie of the week. As you will see when you go to this link http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2376/2

Cabbage is a good source of Vitamin C and the mineral Magnesium. This link assumes that the cabbage has been boiled. If you steam it, the nutritional content will be greater.

Categories: Uncategorized

CSA Newsletter, July 22 Emanuel Pick Up

July 22, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Cabbage – This week you’ll receive your first cabbage. It is a young and tender Savoy with beautiful blue green crinkly leaves. I suggest you use a simple recipe so that you can experience its flavor. I will steam mine and then sprinkle a little good quality rice vinegar on it at the table. You will be receiving more of this cabbage in the coming weeks so you’ll have an opportunity to try more complex recipes later.

Chard

Lettuce/ Salad Greens – Choose either a head of lettuce or a bag of salad greens.

Onions – Most of the bunches are small white onions but there are a few Chippollini’s thrown in there too.

Farm Life

This week has seen weeding, weeding, and more weeding. I have hired a laborer who is doing nothing but weed the Canada thistle. He started in the tomato beds and then moved to the onions. Now he is weeding eating around the fence lines in order to keep the thistle there from producing seeds. A Canada thistle seed is viable for at least seven years so any seeds that hit the ground now will be a problem for years to come.

While Roberto has been weeding, Nathan has been transplanting onions, more than 1,000 individual onion plants. Hopefully, they will mature before the rainy season returns so that we can harden them off well before distributing them in the fall.

Today, Nathan began trellising the tomatoes. This is a harbinger of good things to come. It means the tomatoes are doing so well that they need a trellis to support them. So far, the golden cherry tomatoes have the most fruit. We will see which ones actually ripen first.

Speaking of fruit….. the apple trees are doing very well. Though I have seen a few adult Codling Moths, the apples do not appear to be too wormy. If the fruit continues to look so well, you will have apples in your share in August.

Featured Veggie of the Week

Your cabbage is the featured veggie of the week. As you will see when you go to this link http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2376/2

Cabbage is a good source of Vitamin C and the mineral Magnesium. This link assumes that the cabbage has been boiled. If you steam it, the nutritional content will be greater.

Categories: Uncategorized

CSA Newsletter, July 18, Good Sam pick up

July 18, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Chard

Sour Cherries – One basket, full to the brim. Those of you that enjoy making desserts will recognize these as Pie Cherries. They are usually considered a little tart for fresh eating, but are great for cooking or for recipes that need a little added zing. See below for ideas.

Kohlrabi – In preparing to till the bed for planting the next succession of crops, I realized that there were just enough kohlrabi left for one more share. Enjoy as this is truly the last until the fall.

Lettuce - There are several varieties to choose from, all of which are now familiar to you. Choose from Simpson Black Seeded, Buttercrunch, and Butterking.

Culinary Sage – Sage is one of my favorite herbs. I particularly like it in an omelet. I also love the fried sage leaves that are served each year at the Eco-Farm Conference. Unfortunately, they won’t give me the recipe. If you have one, I’d love to receive it.

Lavender – Did you get to attend the Oregon Lavender Festival last weekend? Here’s a bit of Lavender for you just in case you didn’t. While you can certainly enjoy it just for its scent, don’t forget that you can cook with it too. I use a recipe for Rosemary Chicken but substitute lavender for the rosemary. Be cautious who you serve it to though. It’s said that lavender is a powerful love potion.

Farm Life

This week we have launched a full scale assault on the thistle. I have hired a farm laborer who has spent the last several days in a weeding frenzy. He has finished the tomato beds. Today, he started working in the onions. By the time he gets through all of the beds once, it will be time to start over again.

Meanwhile, we are going to try some experiments to keep the weeds at bay. My step daughter came and helped out on the farm this week and weeded 50 feet of the summer squash. We are going to put down a layer of biodegradable cardboard in the area where she worked and cover it with a six inch layer of hay. Hopefully, the lack of sunlight will slow down the weed growth. And, in the fall, we will be able to till it all in, adding valuable organic matter to the soil.

Both the green and yellow zucchini are beginning to produce. The patty pan, yellow crookneck and others will follow shortly. The yellow beans have recovered from being grazed by the deer and are flowering again. You’ll see both the beans and summer squash in your shares in the coming weeks.

I have mentioned to you a couple of times now that you will be receiving fennel in your share. Unfortunately, the fennel has other ideas. Fennel is known as a very fickle crop to grow. It had been doing quite well, but then it stopped. I suspect because the nights have turned cool again. (It was in the upper 40’s here last night.) The result is that the fennel is not quite mature enough to harvest for your share.

Veggie of the Week

Your Veggie of the week is a fruit! Sour Cherries are usually used for making desserts. The amount included in your share should be enough for your favorite Cherry Tart recipe or a small cobbler.

If you’d like to try making a dessert but don’t have a favorite recipe, try this Southern Sour Cherry and Raspberry Cobbler

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1737,145172-247204,00.html

For those of you that are not dessert cooks, how about using them in drinks? Add them to your Fruit Smoothie for a little summer tartness, or try this recipe for Fizzy Sour Cherry Lemonade. This recipe can be made with or without alcohol.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_23286_,00.html

Looking for a recipe to impress a special someone? How about this recipe for Sour Cherry Soup? This soup is served chilled. The sour cream in the recipe tones down the tartness of the cherries. The soup could be your first course. A nice green salad with your lettuce could be the second. Perhaps “Lavender Grilled Chicken” for the third? Surely you will have won their heart by then!

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1748,148174-249207,00.html

Categories: Uncategorized

CSA Newsletter, July 15, Emanuel Pick Up Stie

July 15, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Fennel – Your featured vegetable of the week. See below for recipes and nutrition information.

Chard

Sweet Cherries – These sweet, ripe cherries are from a tree at our house.

Culinary Sage – Sage is one of my favorite herbs. I particularly like it in an omelet. I also love the fried sage leaves that are served each year at the Eco-Farm Conference. Unfortunately, they won’t give me the recipe. If you have one, I’d love to receive it.

Lavender – Did you get to attend the Oregon Lavender Festival last weekend? Here’s a bit of Lavender for you just in case you didn’t. While you can certainly enjoy it just for its scent, don’t forget that you can cook with it too. I use a recipe for Rosemary Chicken but substitute lavender for the rosemary. Be cautious who you serve it to though. It’s said that lavender is a powerful love potion.

Farm Life

This week has been an eventful week on the farm. First, everything that has a wheel has had a flat tire… the truck, the tractor, even the garden carts. And, the tractor broke down again. This time it’s the thermostat. Fortunately, my wonderful neighbor came over and tilled beds for me so that I didn’t get behind in the transplanting schedule. By the time we are finished we will have transplanted 1200 row feet or about 3000 onions.

Both the green and yellow zucchini are beginning to produce. The patty pan, yellow crookneck and others will follow shortly. The yellow beans have recovered from being grazed by the deer and are flowering again. You’ll see both the beans and summer squash in your shares in the coming weeks.

Featured Vegetable of the Week

Fennel is an aromatic plant with pale, celery-like stems with emerald green, feathery foliage, and a characteristic anise-like flavor. Long prized in Italian cuisine, fennel is beginning to make its way into American cooking. In fact, I was first introduced to fennel when I borrowed a friend’s Williams-Sonoma Italian Cookbook.

Fennel is a good source of Niacin, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Folate, Potassium and Manganese.

Fennel can be eaten raw in a salad or cooked in a variety of ways. If fennel is new for you, you might enjoy this simple recipe for roasting it. Or, you can coat it with a good quality oil and grill it. If you have a grill basket, you might want to use it to keep it from falling thru the grate.

http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001677roasted_fennel.php

Categories: Uncategorized

CSA Newsletter, July 12, Good Samaritan Pick up site

July 11, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Bunching Onions – This is the last time you will receive onions from this planting. Some of you preferred using them as chives when they were very small. Others of you have preferred them at this larger stage. All in all, it has been an interesting experience to include them in your share at the various stages of growth and receive your feed back.

Lettuce, Lettuce, and more Lettuce – At least three heads of lettuce. There are three different types of lettuces this week. Please take your pick. There is plenty to go around so if you’d like more than three heads, help yourself.

I sowed these slow bolting varieties more than three months ago. Then I had to hold the seedlings in the greenhouse because it was too wet and cold to transplant. The result was that the successions caught up with each other. Instead of maturing over the course of several weeks as planned, they are all ready for harvest at the same time. Which means we get to enjoy an abundance of lettuce!

Simpson Black Seeded is an Heirloom loose leaf lettuce first introduced in 1850. It has large, sweet, bright green, crumpled leaves. As the name implies Bronze Mignonette is a lovely reddish bronze butterhead lettuce. Buttercrunch is a classic green butterhead.

Farm Life

My thanks to farm volunteers Rosalea and Jeff. Both have gotten new jobs that do now allow them the flexibility to continue working on the farm. I greatly appreciate their contributions and wish them well on their new endeavors.

Our volunteer, Nathan Miller, is continuing to add has considerable energy and talents (See Nathan’s Bees in the side bar.) I am grateful to him for the many, many hours he has spent weeding thistles.

As mentioned in your Independence Weekend supplemental newsletter, this weeks share includes fewer vegetables than I hoped to provide. I have lost many hours of sleep trying to figure out how to increase the variety of vegetables available to you. But no matter how much I worry, I still can’t control the weather.

I have contemplated purchasing vegetables on the wholesale market to distribute with your share. I decided against this for two reasons. First, it is too expensive. The price I am charging for the shares doesn’t cover my existing expenses. I don’t have the financial resources to absorb more costs.

The second reason is that it would feel dishonest. The primary reason for joining a CSA is to have a relationship with your food… to know the farm… and the farmer. If I supplement your boxes with produce from the wholesale market, that relationship is forfeit. I become just another middleman in the food distribution chain.

As the Artisan Organics web site says, “… together we share the joys and challenges of farming”. For the next week or two, we will share the challenges. But don’t despair, we will soon share the joys in the form of a bounty of summer squash, green beans, and fresh ripe tomatoes.

Categories: Friday Pick Up - Good Samaritan Hospital

CSA Newsletter, Emanuel Pick Up Site, July 8. 2008

July 8, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Bunching Onions – More of the Lisbon White bunching onions. You have received this same variety, from the same planting, for four weeks now. In the beginning, they looked more like chives than onions. Now, you can clearly see that they are forming a bulb and becoming more “onion-y” looking.

Lettuce, Lettuce, and more Lettuce – You are receiving three kinds of lettuce this week. I sowed these slow bolting varieties two months ago when it appeared that winter would never end. Now, I am glad I did as they are performing well in the fields. Each of these is delicious enough to stand alone in the salad bowl. Or you may mix them together for a more colorful treat.

Simpson Black Seeded is an Heirloom loose leaf lettuce first introduced in 1850. It has large, sweet, bright green, crumpled leaves. As the name implies Bronze Mignonette is a lovely reddish bronze butterhead lettuce. Buttercrunch is a classic green butterhead.

Farm Life

My thanks to farm volunteers Rosalea and Jeff. Both have gotten new jobs that do now allow them the flexibility to continue working on the farm. I greatly appreciate their contributions and wish them well on their new endeavors.

Our volunteer, Nathan Miller, is continuing to add has considerable energy and talents (See Nathan’s Bees in the side bar.) I am grateful to him for the many, many hours he has spent weeding thistles.

As mentioned in your Independence Weekend supplemental newsletter, this weeks share includes fewer vegetables than I hoped to provide. I have lost many hours of sleep trying to figure out how to increase the variety of vegetables available to you. But no matter how much I worry, I still can’t control the weather.

I have contemplated purchasing vegetables on the wholesale market to distribute with your share. I decided against this for two reasons. First, it is too expensive. The price I am charging for the shares doesn’t cover my existing expenses. I don’t have the financial resources to absorb more costs.

The second reason is that it would feel dishonest. The primary reason for joining a CSA is to have a relationship with your food… to know the farm… and the farmer. If I supplement your boxes with produce from the wholesale market, that relationship is forfeit. I become just another middleman in the food distribution chain.

As the Artisan Organics web site says, “… together we share the joys and challenges of farming”. For the next week or two, we will share the challenges. But don’t despair, we will soon share the joys in the form of a bounty of summer squash, green beans, and fresh ripe tomatoes.

Categories: Uncategorized

CSA Newsletter, Good Samaritan Pick Up, Week III

July 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Happy Independence Day

This Weeks Veggies

Butterking Lettuce – This lettuce has soft textured leaves and marvelous flavor. An All American Winner in 1966, it remains vigorous and sweet even in hot weather.

Bok Choi – This is the last of the Bok Choi for a while. It does not do well in warm weather so we will not see it again until the fall.

Kohlrabi – This week’s featured Veggie of the week. See below for information on its history and use. I have now harvest all of the Kohlrabi. On Monday, I will spread compost on the empty bed and till it in to prepare for the next succession of planting.

Braising Green Sampler Pack – Several of you have mentioned when you pick up your veggies that you still have something in the refrigerator from the previous week. Usually, the unused item is the one that is unfamiliar to you. This week I am introducing the new item as a Sampler Pack. This pack is an assortment of different greens commonly used in stir fries. You’ll find Chard, Spinach and Kohlrabi tops. Sautee them in olive oil with a little of your bunching onions. Explore the taste and texture of each leaf. Which ones do you like the best? This also gives you the opportunity to try the kohlrabi tops if you have not done so already.

If you are already familiar with braising greens, just toss them in with your Bok Choi.

Bunching Onions – More of the Lisbon White’s. This is the third time you have received onions from this same planting. They are beginning to form a more discernible bulb. You will receive more bunching onions in the future but they will be a different variety.

Farm Tales

Good news. The tractor is repaired! And just in time for preparing more beds. There are more than a thousand onions ready to go in to the field in preparation for fall harvest.

More good news. The first of my order of irrigation equipment has finally arrived. I mentioned last week that I will be irrigating with water from an irrigation pond at the back of the property. Once I get the water from the pond to the fields, I will be using a combination of different types of drip systems..

Drip irrigation has many advantages. From the environmental perspective, it uses much less water, leaving more H2O for the fish.

Drip irrigation also has many benefits from the agricultural perspective. First, it waters the vegetables and not the weeds, reducing the amount of time I have to spend weeding. Second, it reduces the transmission of water borne diseases, resulting in healthier crops. Lastly, it does not splash dirt onto your vegetables, meaning you spend less time washing your lettuce. (Please note, while I do wash the worst off the field dirt off of your vegetables, you should wash them again before eating them.)

Drip irrigation does have one major draw back. It is made with plastic. As you know, plastic is made from a finite resource, petroleum. It is difficult to reconcile my goal of a sustainable, earth friendly farm with the use of plastics in the field. Consequently, the choice of a plastic product weighs heavily on my mind. Plastic irrigation equipment is particularly weighty because the built-in emitters make it difficult to recycle.

After much research, I have concluded that the use of the plastic irrigation equipment will have less of a long term impact on the earth than the other alternatives. I recently learned that there is an agricultural plastics recycling facility in Brooks, OR. (See the Comment on the blog entry for the Tuesday, July 1, Emanuel entry.) At least I can take some comfort in knowing that the plastic will be re-used when it is no longer functional on the farm.

Veggie of the Week

This week’s featured vegetable is Kohlrabi. As the link below describes, kohlrabi has been a staple of the European diet for centuries, despite its neglect in the US.

http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch24.html

The link below will lead you to several recipes for cooking kohlrabi. I’d try the cheesy Kohlrabi but substitute a good quality local orange cheese. http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes.php?q=Kohlrabi

Categories: Friday Pick Up - Good Samaritan Hospital · Uncategorized

CSA Newsletter, Tuesday Pick Up, Emanuel Hospital

July 1, 2008 · 1 Comment

This Weeks Veggies

Reine des Glacies Lettuce –This is the last of this variety of lettuce for a while. It does well in cool weather but is bolting now that the weather has warmed up again. It will be replaced with other varieties of lettuce, at least until the fall.

Bok Choi – Enjoy it while you can. At most, you’ll receive Bok Choi this week and next. After that, we will move on to other members of the brassica family.

Kohlrabi – This weeks featured Veggie of the week. See below for information on its history and use.

Spinach – This is the first spinach of the season. Unfortunately, the sudden change to hot weather (it was 102 here on Saturday!) has caused the spinach to begin bolting. Hopefully, I will be able to salvage enough to include in next week’s shares as well.

Radishes – This is also the last of the radishes. They are fairly mature. Those of you that like more heat in your radishes will appreciate this.

Scallions – More of the Lisbon White bunching onions. This is the third time you have received onions from this same planting. Do you see how they are maturing? They are beginning to form a more discernible bulb. You will continue to receive these until the bulb is about an inch in diameter, by which time other onions with a longer growing period will be ready to harvest.

Farm Tales

Good news. The tractor is repaired! And just in time for preparing more beds. There are more than a thousand onions ready to go in to the field in preparation for fall harvest.

The tractor still has a slow leak in a tire. But, thanks to the kind offer of help from my neighbor, I’ll be able to get the tire off and down to the repair shop fairly easily.

More good news. The first of my order of irrigation equipment has finally arrived. I mentioned last week that I will be irrigating with water from an irrigation pond at the back of the property. Once I get the water from the pond to the fields, I will be using drip systems to irrigate.

Drip irrigation has many advantages. From the environmental perspective, it uses much less water, leaving more H2O for the fish.

Drip irrigation also has many benefits from the agricultural perspective. First, it waters the vegetables and not the weeds, reducing the amount of time I have to spend weeding. Second, it reduces the transmission of water borne diseases, resulting in healthier crops. Lastly, it does not splash dirt onto your vegetables, meaning you spend less time washing your lettuce. (Please note, while I do wash the worst off the field dirt off of your vegetables, you should wash them again before eating them.)

Drip irrigation does have one major draw back. It is made with plastic. As you know, plastic is made from a finite resource, petroleum. It is difficult to reconcile my goal of a sustainable, earth friendly farm with the use of plastics in the field. Consequently, the choice of a plastic product weighs heavily on my mind. Plastic irrigation equipment is particularly weighty because the built-in emitters make it difficult to recycle.

After much research, I have concluded that the use of the plastic irrigation equipment will have less of a long term impact on the earth than the other alternatives. And, as the price of oil rises, there will be sufficient economic incentive to create a local recycling center for agricultural plastics. Right now, the closest recycling center is in California.

Meanwhile, I will continue to struggle with these choices. And, when I do use plastic, I will try to make it last as long as possible. And, I will continue to try to find venues for recycling it.

Veggie of the Week

This weeks featured vegetable is Kohlrabi. As the link below describes, kohlrabi has been a staple of the European diet for centuries, despite it’s neglect in the US.

http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch24.html

The link below will lead you to several recipes for cooking kohlrabi. I’d try the cheesy Kohlrabi but substitute a good quality local orange cheese. Or, you might try the slaw if fish is on your menu soon.

http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes.php?q=Kohlrabi

Categories: Tuesday Pick Up - Emanuel Hospital