Savory
The Basics
Summer savory and winter savory are closely related to rosemary and thyme. Savory is relatively unfamiliar, but once you begin using it, it’s hard to go back! It has a peppery flavor that adds dimensions to savory dishes, with winter savory having a more concentrated flavor than summer savory.
Cooking Tips
Both excel in an herb rub for meats and fish, in a Dijon vinaigrette, stuffing, eggs, beans, and flavored vinegar. Add sprigs when cooking beans to enrich the broth, and then more fresh chopped to the finished beans.
Savory has also be used medicinally in a tea to aid indigestion and sore throat, or the leaves can be rubbed on bug bites to bring relief from itchiness.
Salad Mix
The Basics
One of our spring, fall, and winter season crops is salad mix, a blend of lettuces and colorful greens. A bag of this mix holds much more nutritional value than eating a head of iceberg or even Romaine lettuce. A rule of thumb when picking out healthy salad greens is the darker the green, the more nutritional value.
Dark leafy greens in our salad mix include cress, spinach, tatsoi, ruby streaks mustard, arugula, mizuna, and a variety of lettuces. These greens are packed full of vitamins K, C, E and some B, as well as minerals including iron, calcium and potassium.
Cooking Tips
Salad greens are a great base for larger dishes. Add other seasonal vegetables to make a more filling salad, or use the greens as a bed under a fried egg for breakfast, or a portion of meat, fish or tofu.
Sage
The Basics
Sageis most common in Italian and Middle Eastern recipes. Sage also has a long and varied history of medicinal uses, including its use as an herbal tea. Sage is a perennial shrub commonly grown in herb and flower gardens, with lovely blue and purple flowers.
Cooking Tips
More typically associated with hearty, autumn harvest-type meals, sage pairs very well with winter squash, beans, onions, cheese, garlic, pork, and poultry.
Try it cooked in butter or olive oil with garlic as a topping for pasta, especially good on potato gnocchi!
Storage Tips
Store fresh leaves in a plastic bag in the fridge for 3-5 days. To freeze sage, wash, dry, and place in a bag in the freezer. To dry sage, wash the leaves and hang in a cool, dry place.
Rosemary
The Basics
This wonderfully aromatic herb comes from a perennial shrub that’s the staple of any herb garden. Hailing from the Mediterranean, rosemary is used heavily in Italian and other regional cuisines.
Cooking Tips
Rosemary goes beautifully with meats and fish, in soups and stews, and with roasted vegetables.
When dried, its flavor will mellow. Try it with potatoes, or put sprigs under the skin of a roasted chicken.
We sell our rosemary by the bunch, which you can easily rinse and hang in a dark place to dry for the winter.
Storage Radishes
The Basics
We store watermelon and black radishes all winter to liven things up when the cold sets in. Radishes are in the Brassica family along with broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, cauliflower, turnips, and Brussels sprouts.
Cooking Tips
Watermelon radishes are mild and beautifully colored with pink insides, so they make beautiful edible garnishes. Slice thin whole circles to put on top of salads.
Black radishes are spicier, with a scaly black outside and creamy white interior. They’re great sliced with butter and salt on bread. Add raw spinach and herbs for a great sandwich. You can grate them raw on salad, or do a grated salad with radishes, olive oil, salt and pepper, carrots, sweet onion, raisins, apples, anything you like.
If you don’t like the bite of radishes, try sauteing them, it takes the bite off and makes them sweeter. We also like to use them on a surface such as crackers, and for dipping in hummus. These radishes are also great to pickle.
Red Radish
Cooking Tips
These bunched red radishes are our favorite to grow in summer for their balance of sweet and spicy kick. Gorgeous sliced paper thin in salads, or quarter and serve with salt and butter.
Like bunched spring turnips and bunched beets, you can also use the radish greens! Try them sauteed with butter and lemon, in soup, or in pesto.
Storage Tips
For best storage, cut the greens from the radish roots when you put them away, and keep both in a plastic bag or container.
Radicchio
Cooking Tips
This bitter green has a strong flavor that pairs excellently with caramelized onion, sharp cheese, a vinaigrette, dried or fresh fruit, and sweetened nuts.
Try it raw, lightly wilted, or grilled for your next salad.
Saute the onions in olive oil until starting to caramelize, then add balsamic vinegar and radicchio. Chop the outer leaves in large pieces, then the tender inner leaves a little later. Add a little salt and agave nectar or other sweetener. Tweak the balance between bitter radicchio, balsamic, and sweet as you cook. Chop some extra-sharp cheddar and nestled it the leaves before plating your dish.
Potatoes
The Basics
We have many colors and types of potatoes over the season. In the summer, we sell new, young potatoes with thin skins that should be used within a few weeks.
Our storage potatoes include fingerling varieties, blue, yellow, red, and white types.
Cooking Tips
Different types of potatoes are suited for different uses depending on their starch content.
High-starch potatoes such as Russets are excellent for frying or baking whole.
Medium-starch potatoes including yellow Yukon varieties, Red Chieftain, or Salem whites, are general all-purpose potatoes that can be boiled, mashed, roasted, or hold their shape in salads.
Fingerling potatoes are best used roasted or in salads.
Storage Tips
Store potatoes in a cool, well-ventilated area that does not get below 50 degrees. Make sure that they are kept dark, or they will begin to sprout much sooner and develop a green skin. A paper bag is a great way to keep potatoes protected from light. If your potatoes do begin to sprout or turn green, just dig out the sprouting eyes and discard them, and trim off any green discoloration.
Popcorn
The Basics
Our organic popcorn has great flavor and texture. We harvest the cobs in late summer and let them dry naturally in our greenhouses. We sell some popcorn on the cob, and also jars of kernels.
Cooking Tips
To pop popcorn on the stovetop, rub the kernels off the cob and into a bowl. Heat a tablespoon or so of high-temperature oil, like canola, coconut or corn oil, on high in the bottom of a saucepan. Put in your kernels and cover: usually a layer of kernels on the bottom of the pan is a good amount per batch It’s okay if a little chaff gets in too. When they start to pop, start shaking the pan a bit on the heat to keep popped kernels from burning on the bottom. When popping slows, remove the pan from heat and transfer popcorn to a big bowl or paper bag.
To pop in a microwave, place the cob in a lunch-sized paper bag and heat for approx. 2 1/2 minutes or until popping slows. It’s better to err on the side of underdone rather than burnt!
We like a dash of olive oil, and then nutritional yeast (in place of Parmesan cheese), salt and pepper.
Curry powder, salt and dried dill is also great. Maple syrup, salt and sunflower seeds is yummy too.
Hot Peppers
The Basics
We grow many varieties, from Habanero to Jalapeno to the milder Hungarian Hot Wax and Poblanos. We offer dried peppers in the fall and winter.
Cooking Tips
Hot peppers can be used green or red. Add some to anything you’re cooking for flavor and heat. When cutting up hot peppers it’s a good idea to wear rubber gloves if you have them to protect from the heat.
To cut their heat, you can roast them in the oven, seeded and halved, and then fill the halves with lots of cream cheese or mild goat cheese and stick ’em back in the oven to broil until the cheese gets golden on top.
You can freeze hot peppers easily for use later whenever spicy flavor is needed – just remove stems and seeds and freeze raw in a bag.
Members can come to the farm to pick their own hot peppers for hot sauces, salsas, freezing, or drying.
