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Mighty Mother's Day Bouquet!
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News from the farm...
The North Asheville Tailgate Market will be at the Salvage Station on Riverside Drive this coming Saturday May 8 due to UNC Asheville graduation, regular hours 8am to 12pm
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Mother's Day is this Sunday. We have LOTS of gorgeous flowers and will be making special, bigger $25 bouquets for the occasion. Place your orders Wednesday or Thursday to reserve your bouquets for pick up on Saturday.
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The lovely rains and the warm weather of the last few days has made all our crops really start to put on some good growth. Potatoes are pushing up through the soil and our early onions are starting to bulb out. And the strawberries have plumped up and turned red! It doesn't look like it is going to be our best strawberry year ever so don't wait to get some. The warmth and rain also brings on the weeds so I foresee a bunch of hoeing in our future.
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The winter cover crop pictured below is doing its thing, protecting the soil, providing habitat for beneficial insects, mining nutrients from the soil that in turn will feed the soil microbes that in turn will feed our plants that in turn will feed us. And they look so beautiful doing it!
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What's available this week??
FLOWERS! Lots of flowers! Special mixed bouquets for Mothers Day, extra abundant and gorgeous, regular mixed bouquets, straight bunches of our first peonies, more ranunculus, anemones and snapdragons. For vegetables we have our kales, curly green, red ursa and lacinato. Rainbow chard will be available next week. For lettuce, we have tender panisse green oak leaf, red butter, red leaf, romaine and green little gems. We have good amount of lettuce mix. Yellow spring onions. Oh, and I almost forgot: strawberries!!!
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Veggie starts: tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, summer squash and winter squash plants. For culinary herbs, we have oregano, thyme, sage, two kinds of perennial fennel (these are excellent pollinator plants), French tarragon, English lavender , cilantro, dill, parsley and of course basil, Italian, Thai and tulsi. We have three kinds of scented geranium and smattering of other bedding type flowers. Make a plan to cover your frost sensitive plants. Even though this coming week looks be frost free, that can change any time up to around May 15th.
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PLEASE NOTE: the NATM is at Salvage Station on Riverside Drive this Saturday May 8 due to UNC Asheville graduation. Same hours 8am to 12pm.
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John's Recipe of the Week
| John Loyd is our dear friend, neighbor, CSA worker member and a gourmet Southern cook. His delightful cooking observations and delicious recipe offerings appear here each week. |
“There are people in world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Mahatma Gandhi
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Vivian Howard is a chef from Eastern NC who has a Kinston NC restaurant called The Chef and the Farmer, sourcing almost all of her food from local vegetable and meat producers. She is a great favorite, teacher and inspiration to us because of the way she cooks, with attention to seasonal foods. She is the author of Deep Run Roots, a cookbook well worth looking into and available locally at Malaprop’s bookstore. Vivian also has several seasons of The Chef and the Farmer on PBS passport. A great watch if you cook. She also has a new cookbook called This Will Make it Taste Good.
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DELICATA SQUASH – At our house, probably our most popular, due to its creamy texture and edible skin. Figure half a squash for each person.
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ROASTED – You may never get past this way to prepare delicata as its so good simply roasted.
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Cut in half. Seed. And roast sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper in the oven set at 425F for about 20 to 25 minutes until it is soft. You can run it in your broiler to put a nice finish on the top as well. Finish with salt, pepper and butter if you like.
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You may prepare this dish in advance and reheat in a 425F oven for around 15 minutes or so.
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Cut in small cubes, seed and roast with salt, pepper and an olive oil drizzle, on parchment paper for 20 to 25 minutes.
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Add and roast ½ cup of pearl or sliced sweet onions at the same time.
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Once out of the oven, add one diced small sweet apple, like gala, and two cups of torn kale. Three springs of fresh thyme leaves, 6 sage leaves finish this dish along with sea salt and pepper. Dried sage and thyme can work, but be careful, tasting as you go, putting in a little at a time.
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Put the dish back in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes to warm the apples and kale.
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If you like you may also dress this dish, while still warm, with vinaigrette, maybe with a splash of maple syrup added.
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You can make this in advance too, holding out the apple and kale until you reheat at 425F.
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Thanks for reading and best wishes.
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Your farmers, Vanessa and Alex
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Love the flowers. Honor the vegetables. Let the weeds go!
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- Cheri Huber and Ashwini Narayanan
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