| Bring us your compost! |
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Bring your own household compost if you don't mind the walk to the compost piles. Acceptable compost ingredients include all vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, bread crusts and coffee grounds. Please, no other animal products. Thanks to everyone who has helped us build our compost piles!
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Fried Green Tomatoes
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from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
4 medium green (unripe) tomatoes
1/4 cup fine cornmeal
3 to 4 T vegetable oil or clarified butter
Salt and freshly milled pepper
3 T chopped basil, parsley or green chile mayonnaise
Slice the tomatoes crosswise 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick. Press each piece into a plate of cornmeal to coat on both sides. Heat the oil in a wide skillet over high heat until hot enough to sizzle a drop of water. Add the tomatoes, reduce the heat to medium, and fry on both sides until golden. Remove to a plate, season with salt and pepper, and serve with the chopped herbs or mayonnaise.
Fried green tomatoes can be a first course or side dish, used in a sandwich or pasta, or served as a garnish for a stew of corn and late summer vegetables. For a particularly delicious sandwich, combine fried green tomatoes with garlic mayonnaise or goddess-type dressing, sliced feta or fresh mozzarella, and a layer of greens like arugula or basil.
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Green Tomato Soup |
Ingredients
2 T extra-virgin olive oil
2 oz thinly sliced Black Forest ham or bacon, chopped (1/2 cup)
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced scallions (from 1 bunch)
1 T chopped garlic (2 cloves)
1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf
2 lb green unripe tomatoes, chopped
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups water
1/2 t salt
1/4 t black pepper
Garnish: sour cream (optional)
Preparation
Heat oil in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat until hot but
not smoking, then cook ham, stirring occasionally, until beginning to
brown, 1 to 2 minutes. Add scallions, garlic, and bay leaf and cook,
stirring occasionally, until scallions are tender and lightly browned,
6 to 8 minutes.
Add tomatoes, broth, water, salt, and pepper and simmer, partially
covered, until tomatoes are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Discard bay leaf
and season soup with salt and pepper.
More green tomato recipes from Epicurious.
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Welcome to the 2008 Harvest Season!
CSA Pickups at the Farm this Week:
- Tuesday, September 23 from 3-7 PM
- Thursday, September 25 from 3-7 PM
- Sunday, September 28 from 3-7 PM
CSA Pickup in Davis Square (for pre-registered shareholders only):
- Tuesday, September 23 from 5-7 PM
Many thanks to Ned Martenis for this week's photos. |
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What's In the Share This Week
 Please note: This list is prepared the week before you receive your share. Some guesswork is involved!
We do our best to predict which crops will be ready to harvest, but sometimes crops are on the list that are not in the share, and sometimes crops will be in the share even though they're not on the list.
- Eggplant and/or peppers
- Lettuce
- Red or savoy cabbage
- Broccoli and cauliflower
- Green tomatoes: these are really green and most likely won't ripen on the counter Check out the fried green tomato recipe at left for the traditional cooking method, or the soup recipe a little further down on the left for a different approach. Many folks make relishes or chutneys with green tomatoes as well.
- Choice of greens
- Kohlrabi: the return of the alien vegetable with the broccoli-stalk-crossed-with-cucumber flavor (according The Produce Bible). Full of iron, calcium and phosphorus, along with vitamins A and C, kohlrabi is great raw or cooked and is a favorite with some farm kids! Peel it for best flavor. Check out some kohlrabi recipes on Epicurious.com.
- Delicata and/or acorn squash
- Potatoes
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Pick-Your-Own Crops This Week
 Shareholders are welcome to pick-your-own during daylight hours Mondays through Thursdays and Sundays.
Please remember to check the white board on the red kiosk for PYO information and current picking conditions!
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Notes from the Field
The Story of Santa Claus and the Arugula
The photo at the left is a picture of how farmers look in September - happy, sunburned and a little bit tired! From left, Andy, Jonathan, Dan and Amanda were getting ready to lay out some reemay in case of a frost last weekend and seed some oats and peas as cover crops over our cherry and plum tomato beds. We did get a little frost on Friday night - enough to put some brown spots on the basil and chill the tomatoes. We don't usually have tomatoes this late in the growing season on our farm, and while we are getting a few to ripen slowly in the greenhouse, the very chilly nights have persuaded us to put some green tomatoes in the share this week. Otherwise, the farm staff is busy getting fields cover cropped, harvesting sweet potatoes (hundreds of pounds are curing in the greenhouse, high temperatures converting the starches to sugars and sealing the skins for better storage) and transplanting next June's strawberry plants. Shareholders who come to the farm to pick up their CSA share on Tuesday nights are familiar with the Hawke family: Natasha, our local beekeeper, kimchee and kombucha maker, food preserver, raw milk guru, and bicycle mechanic (I could go on!), Gregorian (age 12), Boudicca (9), Aubrey (6), Cassia (4) and Julian (2). For two seasons, the Hawkes have brought a special warmth and flair to Tuesday night distributions, along with warm apple cider, the occasional cello solo, and some really amazing pesto. All summer long, Boudicca has read stories to the younger children on the farm during CSA distributions, and she has become a storyteller in her own right as well. In honor of fall greens season, I could not resist sharing a fable that Boudicca told her younger sisters when one of them was requesting, shall we say, more than her share of something. "Once upon a time there was a family who was making stockings for Christmas. Each child made a beautiful homemade stocking, but there was one little girl who wanted extra presents, so she made a HUGE stocking, more than twice the size of the others. She knew that Santa Claus would not be able to resist filling her giant stocking, and she could not wait to see all the gifts she would find inside on Christmas morning.  All the children hung their stockings out at the foot of their beds on Christmas Eve. When Santa Claus arrived, he filled each stocking to the brim. Just as the little girl had expected, he could not resist filling her stocking all the way up - but what she did not expect was that he filled it with arugula! When the children woke up in the morning, they were all overjoyed with their gifts. But when the family cooked down the arugula, the little girl was surprised to find that she had really gotten the smallest present after all." Wise advice from a fellow arugula-lover. We hope you enjoy the harvest. | |
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| Warmly,
The Staff of Waltham Fields Community Farm
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Debra Guttormsen, Administrative and Finance Coordinator
Paula Jordan, Children's Learning Garden
Claire Kozower, Executive Director
Jonathan Martinez, Assistant Grower
Dan Roberts, Farm Crew
Erinn Roberts, Assistant Grower
Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm Manager
Mark Walter, Children's Learning Garden
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Waltham Fields Community Farm
