CSA Newsletter, July 15, Emanuel Pick Up Stie

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