CSA Week 10, The Halfway Mark

As farmers we feel proud to get to the halfway mark in the season, but it's also bittersweet because it means it's half over!  The growing season is fleeting and no matter how much we try to take advantage of it, it goes by too fast and before you know it we're all back to buying veggies at big name grocery stores for the long summer.  All that to say, let's enjoy these last 10 weeks people!

IN THE SHARES THIS WEEK:

Let's not take kale for granted.  After it's rise to popularity as a super food a few years ago, kale has become a commonplace staple in many veggie friendly kitchens.  Kale salads are almost as common as lettuce salads on restaurant menus.  It is true that kale is one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet, loaded with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun and dress it up sometimes.  Steamed kale, juiced kale and sauteed kale are all too often the things we tend to do with it.  If you're going to have kale a couple of times per week, those things could get boring fast.  The picture above was taken during the filming of a pilot for a cooking mini series that was shot entirely on our farm 5 years ago.  It was called The Fare Field and you can still see the 4 short pilots on Vimeo.  The concept was to invite one local chef to our farm for each episode and have them prepare simple, but creative meals right there in the field.  Anyway, episode 4 featured Chef Bradley Herron from Michael's Genuine Food and Drink and he prepared this beautiful kale salad with shaved carrots, a shaved hard cheese, nuts and pomegranite seeds.  One of the things that really struck me was that he chose to keep the kale leaves whole in order to show their true beauty and freshness.  Kale leaves are so pretty, I loved the idea of not chopping them into a green mess; this picture still inspires me to eat raw kale to this day.  On the opposite end of the spectrum is one of my favorite go-to recipes for anything green, but especially kale.  Pesto!  Pesto is basically a ground up paste of nuts (traditionally pine nuts), garlic, herbs (traditionally Italian basil), parmesan cheese, salt and olive oil.  It does not have to be strictly made with basil or even just herbs, no no no.  You can sub arugula, spinach, kale, parsley, leeks or a combination of them and get really cool different styles of pesto which can be added to pasta, toast, rice, veggies, shrimp, etc.  It doesn't need to be made with pine nuts either.  Pine nuts of really oily so they lend themselves to it, but walnuts, or almonds are really good too.  Another trick I like to recommend is switching out cheese for nutritional yeast for a vegan version on pesto.  Not only for the sake of being vegan, but because it's actually really yummy!  So here's my latest preferred version step by step (this version actually came about because my daughters school is nut free so I found that sunflower seeds are a great sub for nuts and I reduced the garlic to almost nothing so that it's most kid friendly):

Good quality virgin olive oil, sunflower seeds, just a tiny bit of garlic, nutritional yeast, sea salt, lots of kale and just a little bit of basil (any basil, even thai basil).  I pulse it all in a food processor until it is smooth and adjust ingredients by eye and taste to get the consistency and flavor I like.  There's not wrong or wright when it comes to pesto.  There's a lot of wiggle room for different portions of the ingredients, just go easy on the salt ;)