week 23

Lettuce                Green Peppers               Green Tomatoes

Bok Choy              Mixed Radishes                Kale

Sweet Potatoes           Seminole Pumpkins      Garlic

Herb bag:      Cutting Celery  Curly Parsley     Dill      Sorrel   

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” ―  Meister Eckhart

As we enter the season of Thanksgiving, we’re grateful for successful garden experiments.  This new squash is an experimental variety for us this year, and we are well pleased.   Meet the Seminole Pumpkin.  This pretty little pumpkin is a Florida native (like Coree), and was cultivated and used extensively by early native Floridians.  It tolerates drought and wet conditions and has few pests.  The native people used it dried, but it can be baked, boiled, steamed, or fried.  The texture is creamy, not stringy, and the flavor is sweet and nutty.  It makes a fine pie, and don't forget to toast the seeds.  It was almost lost, but has made a come back thanks to the recent surge in heritage seed projects.  We had wanted to try this one for a couple seasons but struggled to find room for it in the garden.  The vines grow VERY long, and the squash can cross with butternuts, which we really don't want to do.  This year was no different.  We started a few, but couldn't settle on a good place to plant them out.  Late in the season, in desperation, we finally threw them in around the new compost pile, next to the chicken fence.  Plenty of nutrition there, plenty of light, and out of the way. They took off and created a swamp of squash vine and flowers.  We couldn't see much signs of fruit and didn't have time to mess with the jungle of it all until after the good frost took the vines down a bit.  Paul went wading out into the thick of it one day last week to see what he could find.   He returned later than he anticipated, having harvest 100 squashes!   When he hooked up the mower to cut the field, he walked through again and found a dozen more, and then smashed a few more besides with the mower.  Gardens are full of surprises.

The Bok Choys take the cake so far for nice big heads of greens.  We love the white stalks and dark green leaves.   What a treat.  These are great raw – cut the crisp white parts up like carrot sticks and use them to dip, or stir fry the whole thing fast.  Use it slowly, keep it wrapped up well and it will keep quite awhile.  Good accompanying flavors include ginger root, onion, cilantro, sesame or coconut oils, and small root veggies, like carrots or radishes.

Another option that should not be ignored is the possibility of fermenting your bok choy.  Choys make fine kimchi variations.  Kimchi is the Korean version of Sauerkraut.  Some version of fermented green exists almost everywhere in the world.  Lacto fermented food is extremely healthful, and tasty, and provides an easy way to store large quantities of certain veggies.

I'm including this recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions for you to play with if you choose.  Fermentation is both an art and a science – so as long as you follow the directions in terms of salt and water content, the vegetable content can be EXTREMELY flexible.  Use what you like.  Taste everything often.  Just make sure there's always water on top.

Kimchi

1 head Chinese Cabbage or the like              1 bunch green onions (or a couple bulb onions)

1 cup carrots, grated or sliced                                   ½ cup daikon radish, grated or sliced

1 Tbsp freshly grated ginger                          3 cloves garlic (at least), peeled and minced

½ tsp dried chili flakes (optional)                  1 Tbsp sea salt

4 Tbsp whey, or an extra 1 Tbsp salt

Place veggies, ginger, garlic, chili, sea salt and whey in a bowl and pound with a wooden pounder or meat hammer to release juices.  Pack into a quart sized wide mouth mason jar and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the cabbage.  The top of the veggies should be at least 1 inch below the top of the  jar.  Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage.

These next two recipes are from The Spice Box Vegetarian Indian Cookbook.  I've a strong suspicion that this soup will work just fine with kale:

Spinach Soup

4 cups water                           1 lb fresh spinach

salt to taste                             dash of black pepper

1 Tbsp oil                                1 tsp cumin seeds

2 medium onions, chopped   2 tsp lemon juice

½ cup sour cream

1) Bring water to a boil.  Add spinach, salt and pepper.  When spinach is cooked, puree in a blender.

2)Heat Oil in a saucepan and fry the cumin seeds until they puff up.  Add the onions and fry till wilted.  Add the puree and heat thoroughly.  Remove from heat, stir in the lemon juice and sour cream.

I tested this on a Seminole Pumpkin, and modified this recipe quite a bit –

Pumpkin Curry

4 Tbsp oil                                pinch asafetida

1 tsp turmeric powder           4 cups pumpkin, peeled and cut in small chunks

4 tsp coriander powder         2 tsp cayenne powder (I didn't use that much!)

salt to taste                             2 fresh chilies, seeded and chopped

1 cup water                            2 tsp mango powder

1 tsp sugar                              1 Tbsp dried grated coconut

            Heat oil in a wok and add asafetida and turmeric.  Fry 1 minute.  (Here I added an onion or two and some fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped – let it cook down for a couple of minutes before proceeding.)  Add pumpkin, coriander, cayenne, chilies (the hot stuff is optional).  Fry 2 minutes (I let them cook longer than two minutes so the squash actually browned a little).

            Add 1 cup water, cover and bring to a boil at medium heat until pumpkin is soft.  (Here's where I really departed from the print – I added a can of coconut milk, and a little water, then let it all cook until soft.)

            Mash mixture with a wooden spoon.  Add mango powder, sugar and coconut.  (I left out the sugar, grated coconut and mango powder altogether, and we enjoyed the chunky creamy pumpkin curry over rice with some cilantro to green it up, just like that!)

Cut the tops and tails off your radishes – they’ll keep well in the fridge.  Enjoy it all!

If you need special extras of anything for Thanksgiving – please let us know soon.

Peace be with you all.                                                                                                            The Entwistles

week 24

Lettuce Green Beans Garlic
Sweet and White Potatoes Butternut
White Russian Kale Radishes Napa Cabbage herb bag: Parsley Arugula Chives

We’re grateful that this Thursday’s rain held off long enough to get most of the veggies out of the field. Hopefully it will let up enough to pack the van without getting too soggy. Your Napa cabbages will be rain washed today.

So – this is the last official delivery of the Fall Extended Season. We will NOT be here next week. We will miss you. Thank you all so much for sharing this part of the year. It’s been a wonderful Fall and we appreciate sharing it with you. We’re hoping to take some pictures of the garden and post them on the blog or FB. There’s still an amazing amount of food out there.

However, we’re taking a little break. Some friends are arriving to watch the chickens and turkeys and we’ll head north (a little counter-intuitive perhaps) to visit family in Canada. When we return (pre-Thanksgiving), we’ll drop a line and offer more greens, turnips, salad fixings. We hope you will partake. The broccoli is shaping up nicely, probably just in time for Thanksgiving, and the Red Ball Turnips are just beautiful.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it, but Kale Chips are real. Mostly, we love our kale steamed with butter and maybe a touch of balsamic vinegar or nutritional yeast flakes, but for those of you who have trouble with kale, this is worth a try. Lulah wants to eat kale for breakfast now (no small feat). Here's a rough recipe, pulled from the internet, for you to get started with.

1- Preheat oven to about 300*
2- Use about a salad spinner’s worth of kale. Tear the leaves off the thick stems into bite size pieces, or just cut out the mid-ribs and leave the halves whole.
3- Place leaves in a large bowl. Drizzle with about 2 tsp of olive oil.
4- Sprinkle with salt, pepper, Parmesan, Asiago or your seasonings of choice. Toss kale with oil and seasonings until the leaves are well coated.
5- Spread in a single layer (very important that they not do much overlap) on baking sheets. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until kale is very crispy when moved in pan.

These ‘chips’ probably won’t last long, but if you want to, you can store them a couple days in a zip lock bag. This crispy kale can be crumpled up and used on soups or grains as a green garnish too! Our thin flat leafed kale doesn’t work as well as the Lacinato and White Russian for this treatment. It’s important not to use too much oil. Experiment – enjoy!



We’ve had a couple requests for Kimchi information. I’ve posted a link to Sandor Katz’s website, www.wildfermentation.com on our blog. He has some basic fermentation info on there, as well as a lengthy list of on-line fermentation information resources. I’m paraphrasing his book Wild Fermentation for this Kimchi recipe.

Basic Kimchi
1 lb Chinese cabbage (napa or bok choy) 1 daikon radish or a few red radishes
1 or 2 carrots 1 or 2 onions/leeks/scallions
3 to 4 cloves garlic (or more!) 3 to 4 hot red chilies (or more, or none, as you like)
3 Tablespoons fresh grated gingerroot (or more!) sea salt

1) Mix a brine of about 4 cups water and 4 Tbsp salt. Stir well to thoroughly dissolve salt.
2) Coarsely chop cabbage, slice radish and carrots, and let the vegetables soak in the brine, covered by a plate or other weight to keep them submerged until soft, a few hours or overnight. Add other vegetables (snow peas, seaweeds) if you like.
3) Prepare spices: Grate ginger; chop the garlic an onion; remove seeds from the chilies and chop or crush, or throw them in whole. Kimchi can absorb a lot of spice. Mix spices into a paste.
4) Drain brine off vegetables, reserve it. Taste veggies for saltiness. You want them to taste decidedly salty, but not unpleasantly so. If too salt, rinse them.
5) Mix the vegetables with the spice paste. Mix everything together thoroughly and stuff it into a clean quart size jar. Pack it tightly into the jar, pressing down until brine rises. If necessary, add a little of the reserved brine to submerge the vegetables. Weight the vegetables down with a smaller jar or a zip lock bag filled with water or brine. Cover the jar to keep out dust and flies.
6) Ferment in a warm place (kitchen counter usually works fine). After about a week, when ti tastes ripe, move it to the refrigerator. Traditionally, kimchi is slowly fermented more slowly with more salt and kept in a crock in a cellar or hole in the ground.

Almost any kind of leafy green can be treated with way with interesting and delicious results. Paul eats kimchi with his breakfast porridge. It is full of natural lactic acid, vitamin C, and pro-biotics. It’s good for you, and yummy too. Kimchi pairs well with rice, eggs, beans. Enjoy.

We’ve not said enough about the sweet potatoes this year. It was such a good year for them. We hope you’re enjoying them as much as we are. If you have not been a sweet potato fan in the past – give it another try. These are much more flavorful than your average store boughten sweets. We’re always amazed when we eat conventional potatoes, what a different flavor these home grown foods impart. We just bake them, unwrapped in a medium oven until they are completely soft throughout. Peel off the skin (or eat them!), add butter or olive oil, salt and pepper if you like. Good food can be so simple.

A couple notes about storage crops – if your butternuts and potatoes are piling up – you can keep them a long time if you’re careful. Sweet potatoes and butternuts like to be kept warm and dry. A shelf in a room temperature closet works well. Sweet potatoes will sprout if kept in sunlight or moisture for too long. White potatoes, on the other hand, need to be kept cool (not cold) and dark. Dark is key to their keeping qualities. We store these crops for our own use all winter (we just pitched out a few straggling butternuts from two years ago). You can too.

Be well and we hope to see you soon!
With Love, Paul, Coree, Lulah and Levon

“Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you who you are.” – Anthelme Brillat-Savarin