Are these names new to you? Don't worry, they are delicious! We are several weeks into the winter CSA and it's so exciting to me that there is so much variety! This is our 3rd season with winter production and I am still amazed at all the wonderful goodies to eat. Eating local in the winter is so good for us, the veggies are packed full of the nutrients and minerals we need when we are missing good sunshine and fresh air. Most of them are dense and delicious, but sometimes scary to prepare the first time!
So let's talk about the veggies, if you got some weird looking rough, white/green roots then you got some celeriac. It's got a flavor like celery and texture of turnip. We have a few favorites with this one.....this soup is great although I use chicken broth instead of veggie broth, but either way is great, and we also love to just stir fry whatever is in the swap bin after CSA pick up! This calls for all sorts of winter veggies (including celeriac and parsnips-the white carrot looking thing)! The Autumn crown that went out last week is a great winter squash. We made pumpkin pie with it and also pumpkin smoothies. It can be used like butternut.
We had a rubbed kale salad last week and some rubbed chard salad this week and boy to those greens pack a lot of nutrition! My kids were really going for them. I don't use a recipe for the rubbed greens, but I like to chop them and massage on olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a tiny bit of maple syrup. The massage helps relax the greens and make them more like lettuce to chew on. OH and a special treat from another local farm was the mushrooms.....we love them sauteed with onions and rosemary. Mushrooms have lots of selenium which is a mineral lots of us lack.
I have been doing more bone broth since my little slip off a fence three weeks ago. My broken ankle is healing well and I hope to be back in good shape before my due date of New Year's Eve! This time of year I like to add fermented cod liver oil back into our diet because of the lack of sunshine. I have also read that it's great for broken bones so I have doubled my intake of that for the next few weeks. We made more elderberry syrup to have in the freezer so let us know if you'd like some or help yourself to it in the cabin freezer. It lasts a few weeks in the fridge or 6 months in the freezer. We are doing this daily so prevent another cold or any illness from entering the house before the farm baby arrives!
Well we hope you are enjoying the goodies. Please pray for all the animals in this rain, it's quite difficult to keep everyone warm and dry, but I'm glad it's not snow this time! Coffee, our cow that had twins (we named them Cream and Sugar) had to be dried off (not milked this season) because her delivery was too hard. So her twins are with another mama cow (Elise) who very sweetly adopted them. We are thankful we didn't loose her, but will be tight on milk for about 6 weeks. So please make sure to always have your jars here on the scheduled fill up day for you or we won't be able to fill your milk.
Blessings,
The Bakers