RECIPE: Quick Zucchini Saute

Member Ann Tilley shared this recipe found on Smitten Kitchen that she made with this week's zucchini...yum.

Quick Sauté of Zucchini with Toasted Almonds
Inspired by the Red Cat, NYC

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons thinly sliced almonds
1 to 2 small zucchini, cut into 1/8-inch matchsticks with a knife or julienne blade on a mandoline
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Few ounces pecorino Romano or paremsan, in thin slices — a peeler works great for this

Heat the oil on high in a large skillet. When it is hot but not smoking, add the almonds to the pan. Cook them, while stirring, until the almonds are golden-brown, approximately a minute or two.

Add the zucchini to the pan, tossing it with the oil and almonds until it just begins to glisten, about one minute. The idea is not to cook the zucchini so much as warm it.

Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately, with or without cheese on top.

ADVOCACY: Food Declaration

Check out Food Declaration, a declaration that embodies the values that many people have in connection with a CSA membership. If you agree, please feel free to sign on.

RECIPE: Peach Coffee Cake

From Whole Grain Baking, King Arthur Flour

Yield: Two 9-inch round cakes or one 9 x 13-inch cake, serves 24

Ingredients:

Cake

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 cup buttermilk*

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups peeled, diced fresh peaches

Topping

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round pans or one 9 x 13-inch pan.

2. Make the cake batter: Whisk together the dry ingredients (pastry flour through salt) and set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Beat in the eggs, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the dry ingredients, one third at a time, alternating with the buttermilk. Add the vanilla. Fold in the peaches until evenly distributed. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth down with a rubber or offset spatula.

3. Make the topping: Combine all the topping ingredients in a small mixing bowl and combine until it looks like wet sand (I found that using my hands was the easiest way to do this). Sprinkle mixture evenly over the batter.

4. Bake according to pan size–25-30 minutes for the two rounds, 30-35 for the one rectangle–until the top is golden brown and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes before serving.

*I didn’t have any buttermilk around, so I made my trusty substitute: 3/4 cup plain whole milk yogurt + 1/4 cup water for every cup of buttermilk. If you look online you can find other options, namely souring some milk with lemon juice or vinegar, but I prefer the texture that results from the yogurt plus water.

RECIPE: Salads with Cucumbers

When it's this hot out I often find it hard to turn on the oven or the stove, I just want something simple, fresh, and fast. A big thank you to Mark Bittman for putting together a list of 101 simple salads. Several of them feature cucumbers, which we're getting this week.

3. A nice cucumber salad: Slice cucumbers thin (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first), toss with red onions and salt, then let sit for 20 to 60 minutes. Rinse, dry, dress with cider vinegar mixed with Dijon mustard; no oil necessary.

21. Dice cucumbers (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first) and toss with cubes of avocado, a little mirin (or honey, but then it’s not vegan), rice vinegar and soy sauce. (You could mix in a little lump crab meat, really not vegan, even rice, and call it a California roll salad.)

23. Thinly slice some cucumbers (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first), red onions, radishes and fresh chili pepper. Soak for a few minutes in equal amounts vinegar and water, with some salt and sugar. When they taste lightly pickled, drain and serve, alone or over rice.

40. Slice cucumber and top with capers, olive oil, lots of pepper and little dollops of fresh ricotta. Note: cucumbers, ricotta and oil must all be really good.

Here's a link to the full article.

FARM NEWS 7.26.09

Greetings!

It is a bit of a tough week here at Chubby Bunny. The rain just doesn't give us a break. Besides dealing with all the crop stress from the bad weather, Dan has Lyme Disease. After not getting any kind of tick borne illness last year, we were hopeful that we could make it through the season healthy. Alas, it is impossible to avoid tick habitat here at the house and the farm. We are diligent about tick checks every night, even so the suckers still got him. While he is resting and healing we are doubly thankful to our great crew of apprentices. Of course we are all hoping that the meds kick in soon and Dan will be back on his feet again. I'm going to send this off while the children are napping.

Without bothering Dan here's the best bet for harvest, but it will be a little bit of a potluck:

lettuce, cukes, zucchini, kale, celery, basil....

RECIPE: Beet Greens and Buckwheat Noodles

From How to Eat by Nigella Lawson

Ingredients: Leaves and tender stalks from 2 pounds bunch beets, chopped

2 ounces soba noodles

1 tablespoon Japanese soy sauce, plus more, as needed

1 tablespoon mirin

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

Salt (optional)

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Procedure:

1. Put a pot of water on for the noodles, adding salt when it boils.

2. Put the beet leaves and stalks in a sink filled with cold water. Remove, drain, and cook in just the water clinging to the leaves and stalks, no more, in a heavy-bottomed or nonstick frying pan with the lid on to get the steam rising.

3. Meanwhile, cook the noodles in the boiling water, drain them, and toss with the soy sauce, mirin, and rice vinegar.

4. When the beet greens are all but ready, sprinkle with salt and throw in the noodles, adding more soy sauce as needed. Stir around in the pan until the buff-colored noodles take on a deep bronzy pink. Remove to a large plate and cover with the parsley.

Contributed by Lisa Bretherick

RECIPE: German Green Cabbage

German Green Cabbage

Serves 2

Ingredients:

½ head of green cabbage (appx 1lb 4oz), chopped

1 slice of bacon

(if not using bacon use vegetable oil, preferably Canola, but not olive oil)

1 medium onion, diced

1 Tbsp vinegar + to taste

1 tsp sugar

½ tsp dill weed

salt to taste

Can be made without bacon, but then add more salt.

Procedure:

Fry bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and let drain on paper towels. Cook onion in the bacon fat (or oil) until translucent. Add a little bit of water and the cabbage. Add salt, vinegar, sugar and dill weed. Cook for about 20 minutes or until tender. Allow excess water to cook off. Adjust salt and vinegar to taste. Break up bacon into little pieces and stir in.

Goes well with pan-fried or mashed potatoes and ham or Bratwurst.

Recipe contributed by Stephanie Leonard

EVENT: Annual Grill Night!!!

ADVOCACY: Edible Brooklyn presents GOOD BEER at BAM

SAVE THE DATE:

Wednesday, July 29th 4-8 p.m.BAMcafé at Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene.

$45 (or half price when you subscribe to Edible Brooklyn, Edible Manhattan or Edible East End)

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/69343 or ediblebrooklyn.net.

On Wednesday, July 29, Edible Brooklyn magazine, in partnership with the just-launched Good Beer Seal, July Good Beer Month and GreatBrewers.com, will throw a sudsy soiree at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Driven by the conviction that our great beer town deserves an annual bang-up beer bash—and inspired by the three-time success of Brooklyn Uncorked, our annual sold-out wine fete at BAM—we’ll serve up the best brews and, of course, top eats, too.

In contrast to the typical overwhelming swill sloshfest, Good Beer at BAM offers an intimate setting for breweries, food artisans, and we who love them, to raise a glass (or few) to the role beer plays in contemporary culinary culture. Because everyone deserves good beer, Good Beer at BAM will bring together NYC food and drink enthusiasts to sip and sup from:

* 12 to 15 breweries from New York and the region, who will pour alongside an edited list of tastes from Brooklyn and Manhattan restaurants and food makers.

* New beers brewed for the event. Expect food-focused beer premiers, cask ale from Sierra Nevada, never-before shared homebrew from the kitchen at Gramercy Tavern, beer cocktails from Back Forty, and an interborough pairing of Brooklyn Brewery beer paired with Queens County Farm pork.

* Beer bars that represent. A specially curated selection of Old Word and international beers, seldom imported and made in limited quantities, poured alongside their New World brethren by local beer bars. Tip back a Japanese white alongside the white ale from the Southampton Publick House. Enjoy an Ommegang stout next to a rare stout from England.

Good Beer at Bam will benefit Just Food and Added Value.Beers by: Brooklyn Brewery, Southampton Publick House, Kelso of Brooklyn, Blue Point Brewery, Allagash, Troegs, Ommegang, Left Hand, Sierra Nevada, Smuttynose, Magic Hat, Victory, Ramstein, Keeghan, Fire Island, Ithaca, and Brooklyn HomebrewBeer bars: Jimmy’s No. 43, Beer Table, Blind TigerFood by: The Good Fork, Beer Table, Back Forty, Gramercy Tavern, Jasper Hill, No. 7, Widow’s Hole Oysters, iCi, Porchetta, Co., Rosewater, Brooklyn Greenmarkets,

For information contact Rachel Graville, rachelgraville@gmail.com, 646.246.9650.

ADVOCACY: JUST FOOD Annual Fundraiser

Just Food organizes and provides a lot of training for CSAs, including Chubby Bunny, helps urban farmers in New York including raising chickens, does advocacy work around food justice and the environment, etc. Their annual fundraiser is in September and below is the save the date and link to ticket sales website.

Save the Date

Let Us Eat Local

September 16, 2009

Early Bird Tickets Available

Tickets available now at the New York Charities website. Early Bird ticket prices available for a limited time only. Click here to buy your tickets now.

General Admission: $150 - early bird $125

VIP: $235 - early bird $215

This year, we will offer tastings from more than 30 of NYC's best restaurants and food producers, including:

- Angelica Kitchen - Aureole - Blue Hill - Candle 79 - Cookshop / Hundred Acres / Five Points - Da Silvano - Dirt Candy - Gramercy Tavern - Great Performances - The Green Table - Jean Georges - Jimmy's No. 43 - Marlow & Sons - Mas - Pure Food and Wine - Rose Water - Rouge Tomate - Saul - Telepan - The Tipsy Parson -

Join us as we celebrate Just Food's delicious mission -- to connect New York City residents with sensational, seasonal, locally grown food.

FARM NEWS 7.20.09

Two pics this week of 2 beautiful crops from the allium family. The garlic is all in now, after 2 full afternoons of the whole crew working on it. In the past we've cured it in the barn, but this year we put it right in the green house with the shade cloth on.

Bea is showing you that it is turning out to be a great onion year. Onions can be a tricky crop for us and we get good crops about every other year it seems like. This year they've been grown on biodegradable non-GMO corn based black plastic and they seem to like that treatment as well as the cool wet weather. Alas, we're finding a good onion year and a good tomato year is rare. On our farm anyway. Onions enjoy English weather, Tomatoes enjoy Arizona. Dan and crew are, however, working hard to keep our tomato plants going. Feeding them calcium and potassium through drip irrigation.... and spraying them with hydrogen peroxide to keep disease at bay. They are hanging in there and hopefully we'll get some nice hot dry weather to ripen up the fruit. The other nightshade family crops are doing pretty well so you can expect to start seeing eggplant and peppers coming soon in your share.

Here's this week's share:

lettuce, chard, cabbage, zucchini, dill and/or cilantro, broccoli, carrots, beets, string beans. Wow!

Enjoy,

Your farmers,

Dan and Tracy

Recipe: From Member Stacey Gilles

We roasted our first chicken share last night and it was so good!

Everything on this plate (with the exception of the croutons and butter) was from Chubby Bunny. No fancy preparations, just simple, fresh food!

Roasted Chicken with garlic pan sauce

Steamed broccoli

Buttered carrots

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: Annual Grill Night

Like to cook? Share it with the CSA members and help prepare food for grill night! We need a volunteer to make vegetable skewers and a volunteer to make hamburgers. All meat and vegetables will be provided at pick-up on Tuesday, July 28th. Be creative! Contact Holly for more details. Holly_Magliano@mckinsey.com.

GENERAL INFORMATION: Coffee Shares

Let the coffee shares begin! We will start distribution next week so put your orders in today. Again, you don't have to receive weekly shares. If you want a one time purchase you can do that too. Please fill out and forward the membership order, which was attached to this week's email, form to Fernando at csa@croptocup.com.

Chubby Bunny CSA, in association with Crop to Cup Coffee Co, will now be offering coffee shares!

Crop to Cup Coffee Co. is a Brooklyn based coffee importer and wholesaler. They work directly with coffee farmers in Eastern Uganda and have an innovative farmer community reinvestment program that you can learn about in the attached documents. To provide an example of their sustainability program in action, the bulk coffee purchases from a single co-op customer of C2C last year (this specific coop is based in New York) resulted in the planting of 1,242 coffee trees to assist growers in building their farming businesses and achieving higher incomes.

Below is a message from Fernando to help acquaint you with Crop to Cup and what they have to offer.

Dear Chubby Bunny CSA Members,

As you enjoy your veggies from this year's harvest, our roaster in Brooklyn is ready to fire up your Crop to Cup coffee beans!

Crop to Cup is supplying the 2009 Chubby Bunny CSA season with fresh roasted, farmer-direct coffee, at reduced rates only for CSA members. $6.99/lb for Crop to Cup Uganda Bugisu? Can't be beat anywhere in town!

Ordering is easy (all via paypal), and you have two options: 1) Week-to-Week (no commitment, any volume, any time) and 2) Bean Subscription (any quantity on your preferred schedule). We have various coffee options, and each coffee is available in whole bean or ground. More details and order form are attached.

If you are interested in C2C coffee for this season, please fill out the attached form with your details and preferred ordering option. You can email or fax it back to us.

For Week-to-Week orders, please remember to submit your orders via www.croptocup.com/csa at least 48 hours in advance of your pick-up time.

For Bean Subscribers, please send us your subscription forms as soon as possible.

Any questions? email Fernando, Crop to Cup's CSA Program Manager: csa@croptocup.com

Meet your coffee's farmers at http://croptocup.com/farmer_regional_profiles.php

EVENT: Save the date for the annual Grill Night!

Our Annual Grill Night will be Tuesday, August 4th from 5:30 - 7:00 pm

Burgers, hot dogs and veggies

Dessert Potluck

More details coming soon!

ADVOCACY: FOOD INC.

In case you haven't seen the latest "horror movie" about America's industrial food supply, FOOD INC., it is now showing in New York at Film Forum and reveals how the nation’s food supply has become industrialized and is controlled by a handful of corporations that often ignore consumer health, the livelihood of the farmer, and the environment in the interest of profits. The film includes interviews with Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Joel Salatin (Polyface Farms), and Gary Hirschberg (Stonyfield Farms). Showtimes are: 1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20, 10:15.

If you can't make it to the movie and want to know more, Council on the Environment/ Greenmarkets recorded a panel discussion. Link is here: http://www.cenyc.org/about/foodinc

CENYC Executive Director Marcel Van Ooyen joined all-star panelists at the New York Times Center for the New York Premiere of Food Inc.. Panelists included Eric Schlosser, the film’s director, Robert Kenner; Alice Waters, the renowned chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California and a champion of locally grown ingredients and farm to school; and Gary Hirshberg, the chairman and president of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer.

A visit to the farm...

This was posted on Anri's blog. She is our amazing recipe coordinator and did a great job documenting the visit. You can click the link above to see more photos.

Do you know where your food comes from?

July 13, 2009 by anrielizabeth

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of visiting Stonewall Dairy in Cornwall Bridge, CT and Chubby Bunny Farm, in Falls Village, CT. They are the farms that provide the dairy and vegetables for my CSA. A group of about 30 of us (all CSA members), made the two hour plus drive from Manhattan, early Saturday morning.

At Stonewall Dairy, we first toured the milking area. We were able to see where the cows stand when they are milked as well as where the milk is stored and cooled and then bottled. Milk that the CSA receives on Tuesday afternoon has been milked Monday evening and Tuesday morning. It doesn’t get any fresher than that. We also got to meet three extremely cute dairy calves. During the tour we learned of the many safeguards that are in place to keep the milk from coming into contact with any harmful bacteria, something that is crucial when it comes to raw milk (which is unpasteurized). We also learned that there are strong movements to try to shut down Connecticut’s raw milk dairies, but the dairies themselves are putting up a good fight.

Next, we were able to see the chickens (Kosher Kings) that are raised for meat. In order to help cultivate the grass (chicken waste is high in nitrogen which enriches the soil), the chicken coop is moved daily so that the chickens are exposed to fresh ground. We also got to see the hens who lay the eggs that come to the CSA. They are free to roam an entire swath of land around the hen house. Some members got to pick up the fresh eggs from the laying berths along the side of the hen house.

After touring Stonewall, we all headed to Chubby Bunny Farm for a picnic lunch (catered by yours truly, more on that later). After lunch, we met Dan and Tracy who own and run the farm. We were able to see where all of our vegetables come from, from things we’ve already received like chard, salad mix, and broccoli, to things that are to come such as sweet corn, onions, and celery. Dan talked a lot about soil fertility and how his main goal at the farm is to rehabilitate the land. He said that in the six years that he has owned the farm, he has seen earthworms return to the soil in increasing numbers, which, for him, is an indicator that he is succeeding. One way in which he increases the fertility is through his use of cover crops, for example arugula, which we are able to see. Cover crops provide the soil with key nutrients and help replenish some of what is taken out by other crops. Dan also spoke about how he chooses what he wants to plant, then works out how he is going to make a profit; unlike large-scale organic farms, driven to plant monocultures of crops that are going to bring in the largest profit.

Towards the end of the tour we walked through the raspberry bushes and were allowed to pick and eat the slightly tart berries. As we were eating, I asked Beatrice (Dan and Tracy’s daughter) what her favorite thing was that her Daddy grew. She responded, “wild blackberries, but Daddy doesn’t grow them.” She then led Dave and me into some bushes behind the raspberries, where we sampled some of the wild blackberries. Delicious.

We ended the tour at the main barn, in front of which we were able to see the seedlings that are awaiting planting. It was a wonderful afternoon, spent learning important lessons about the food we eat.

RECIPE: Two from the farm visit

Due to popular demand, here are two of the recipes from the farm visit. If you are interested in any of the others, please let me know (you can email me at recipes@chubbybunnynyc.org).

Ithaca Pie

Adapted from In Season by Sarah Raven

Serves 12-15 (as a main course)

(I used this recipe in a 12" x 15" x 3" pan, and still had some dough left over, so you should be able to halve it and make the pie in a standard 9" x 13" pan. If you do this, check the pie at 30-45 minutes. If you do experiment, please leave comments to let us all know how it worked out.)

Ingredients:

For the crust:

5 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups (3 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

3 eggs, beaten

Ice-cold water

1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)

For the filling:

2 pounds spinach, chard, kale (one, or a mixture of all, of these greens)

Large bunch of dill, finely chopped

4 tablespoons chopped mint

4 tablespoons chopped parsley

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 cup olive oil

4 scallions, finely chopped

2 leeks, finely chopped

1/2 cup long-grain rice (I used brown rice for the picnic, but have also made this with bulgur and actually prefer the result)

6 ounces feta (optional)

Salt and pepper

Procedure:

1. Sift the flour with the salt and rub in the butter or pulse in a food processor until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add enough beaten eggs and ice water to bring the dough together in a ball. Wrap in plastic and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (can be done a day in advance).

2. Remove the tough stalks from the spinach, chard, and kale. Coarsely chop the leaves and mix with the finely chopped herbs. Saute the onion and garlic in a little oil in a large pan until tender. And add all the greens, including the scallions and leeks. Mix well with most of the remaining oil. Incorporate the uncooked rice (or bulgur) and take off the heat. Season well with salt and pepper.

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Divide the dough in two (one piece slightly larger than the other) and allow it to warm up for a minute or so. Roll out the dough--on a floured surface--as thinly as you possibly can.

4. Roll the larger piece around a rolling pin and transfer it to the base of your baking pan. Make sure that there is some pastry hanging over the side of the pan.

5. Add the filling and crumble the feta over it (if using). Cover with the other layer of dough. Crimp the two layers together by brushing with a little water and pinching around the edge.

6. Brush a little oil over the top and scatter with sesame seeds (if using). Prick the surface with a knife. Bake the pie in the preheated oven for just over an hour, until the top crust is golden brown.

This is delicious once it has cooled a little and is perhaps even better eaten cold the next day. It's also excellent for feeding lots of people at a picnic.

As for the sour cherry pie, here's a link to the recipe I used. Making a lattice crust (or, for some, even making the dough from scratch) can be intimidating, but it's easier than you think. If enough people are interested, I would be willing to do a pie making demo some time, so please let me know. (Again, my email is recipes@chubbybunnynyc.org)

RECIPE: Ziti with Chard

Adapted from Cooking Light, October 2003

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil8 cups chopped Swiss chard (separate leaves and stalks)4 garlic cloves, minced4 cups hot cooked ziti (about 8 ounces uncooked pasta)2 cups grape or cherry tomatoes, halved¼ cup chopped, pitted kalamata olives2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice¾ teaspoon kosher salt½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper¼ cup shaved fresh Romano cheese

Procedure:
1. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chard stalks and garlic; sauté 2 minutes.

2. Add chard leaves and continue to sauté for about 5 minutes (until leaves are wilted and hot.)

3. Combine chard mixture, pasta, and next 5 ingredients (pasta through pepper), tossing well. Serve topped with cheese.
Contributed by Lisa Bretherick

RECIPE: Braised turnips with mustard sauce

Adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 lb turnips, small ones quartered and large ones cut into eighths

salt and pepper

1/2 cup vegetable stock (plus additional ¼-½ cup if needed)

2 Tbsp whole grain mustard

1 tsp arrowroot powder (or cornstarch)

Procedure:

Heat olive oil over medium heat in a medium skillet. Add turnips, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and brown, stirring frequently, for about 10 min. Pour in veggie stock, cover, reduce heat to low, and let simmer for 10-15 min, until turnips are tender. Remove turnips, leaving liquid in the pan, and set aside. Stir mustard and arrowroot powder together, and then add this to the remaining liquid in the pan. Add additional stock if most of the liquid cooked off. Let this cook over low heat until it thickens (2-3 min), and then pour over turnips.

Contributed by Stephanie Leonard

FARM NEWS 7.12.09

Hi Folks,

This week on the farm: Garlic Harvest! The crew and your farm family will spend several afternoons digging up the garlic we planted last October. This entails driving a tractor with a subsoiler attached in the rear to loosen the soil, followed by many hands to pull up the bulbs, windrow them, and load them on the trailer for curing in the barn. (Pictures hopefully next week) . Garlic harvest timing is critical- wait too long and the bulbs break when you try to pull them... Harvest too early and sacrifice potential yield of size and weight. Generally mid July is the time to harvest, so here we are!

Pictured in this weeks' newsletter, Beatrice on a ladder helping hang our newly donated Chubby Bunny Farm sign. Thanks Phil and Jenny Gneiting for helping us with the purchase of this terrific work of art!

Your share this week, approximately:

Purple Globe Turnips
Fresh Garlic
Broccoli
Salad Mix
Chard
Zucchini
Parsley
Carrots

Enjoy!

Your farmers,
Dan and Tracy

FARM NEWS 7.6.09

Summer Greetings!

Here is our apprentice Cody showing his 4th of July spirit in the potatoes. By the way, the potato crop looks beautiful, wouldn't you say? Under the ground they are sizing up nicely, but they still have a ways to go. Finally we are having gorgeous summery weather. Although it actually feels more like fall with the crisp clear cool mornings. All this rain means weeds, weeds, weeds and it looks like the crew has lost of hoeing and hand weeding on the agenda this week. We're harvesting 4 days a week now and the harvests will only be getting larger so Dan feels a bit of a crunch to find the time to get to all the field work that has to be done. You might think that the fields have all been planted but let me tell you there is still lots of seeding to be done - greens every week until September - and plenty of transplanting too. Sometimes while I sit here on a Sunday morning writing these little notes to you, I scratch my head wondering, didn't I write the same thing a couple weeks ago? Well that is the nature of things around here. We just go around and around the same circles and sometimes the circle shrinks a bit when a task is completed (getting in one time crops like potatoes) or grows a bit as another task starts to demand more time - like harvests. So here we are with another plan for the week that looks a lot like last week: seeding, cultivating, fertilizing, plowing, transplanting, harvesting.

Here's the harvest:

beets, turnips, broccoli, lettuce, basil, scallions, thyme, chard

EVENT: July 11 Farm Visit Details

Finally a few more details on our trip to visit Stone Wall Dairy and Chubby Bunny Farms on Saturday, July 11th. Please print the attached document and bring it with you as it has detailed directions and a few helpful tips. Remember, this is a great event for the whole family!

The day will begin at Stone Wall Dairy. They are the amazing farm that supplies our raw milk, eggs and chickens. Let's plan on meeting there at 11:00 am on Saturday for a very instructive tour of the dairy farm. If you get there later, then please walk around the property and find us. The kids love the tour even more than the adults because they get to meet the cows and the chickens up close and personal!

After the dairy farm visit, we will drive to Dan and Tracy's farm, Chubby Bunny, where all our wonderful vegetables come from. As soon as we get there we will have a picnic lunch. We are in luck as this year our amazing Recipe Coordinator/chef has volunteered to cook for our picnic. All you need to bring is your own drinks and a picnic blanket.

After a picnic lunch we will get to tour of the farm with Dan and Tracy and hopefully their 2 kids, Beatrice and Baxter. If you haven’t been on one of these farm visits yet, I highly recommend it! Last year I learned so much about organic farming and the work involved, that I gained an even greater appreciation for our farmers........ and for the amazing products we get!

In order to get an accurate headcount for the picnic lunch we need you to please RSVP. Email me at stephny_2005@yahoo.com and let me know how many people you will be attending with. Remember, this is a great event for you and your kids so please bring the entire family!

If you need a ride or have space in your car and would like to give someone a ride, please contact Gabrielle at gabichka@gmail.com . She will be coordinating the rides.

We look forward to seeing you. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Stephanie

Chubby Bunny Events Committee

ADVOCACY: What's on Your Plate?

What's On Your Plate? is a thought-provoking and entertaining documentary about kids, food and politics. Safiyah and Sadie are two 11-year old African-American girls growing up in New York City. Over the course of a year filmaker Catherine Gund follows them as they start to ask - and answer - questions about the food on their plate. Where does it come from? What's in it? Why is it so hard to get healthy meals into schools and what will happen if we don't?

Official film site is Aubin Pictures: http://www.aubinpictures.com/woyp/about.htm

July 7, 2009 from 6:45pm to 8pm

BAMcinematek

30 Lafayette Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11217

To buy Tickets: http://www.movietickets.com/pre_purchase.asp?house_id=5311&movie_id=75052&showdate=5

A note on cutting and cooking chard

When cooking chard, you want to be able to enjoy both the leaves and stem, however, the problem can be that they cook at different rates. Instead of winding up with perfectly cooked leaves and undercooked stems, or well-cooked stems and over-cooked leaves, try separating them so they can both be cooked properly.

First, remove the leaves from the stem:

Then, stack all the leaves on top of each other and roll them up:

Next, cut through the roll so that you wind up with thinly shredded pieces (this cut is called chiffonade):

Lastly, dice up your stems as you would celery:

Now, you can add just the stems to the pan and saute them first (I have some cut up scapes in there as well).

Once the stems are almost done cooking, add the leaves and mix them in. This way, both parts will be cooked just the right amount of time, and you can enjoy them together in one dish.

RECIPE: Kohlrabi and turnip slaw

From The Season's Other Veggies

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 pound kohlrabi (leaves included)

1 medium turnip, peeled and quartered

3 tablespoons lime juice

1 tablespoon peanut oil

2 teaspoons honey

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

salt and ground pepper

2 scallions, thinly sliced

Procedure:

1. Separate stems from kohlrabi bulb, trim, and discard tough bottoms of stems. Half leaves lengthwise, then thinly shred crosswise. Trim root end from bulb and peel away tough outer layer; half lengthwise.

2. Fit a food processor with shredding blade (or use box grater) and shred kohlrabi bulb and turnip.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together lime juice, peanut oil, honey, and sesame oil; season with salt and pepper. Add scallions, kohlrabi leaves and bulb, and turnip to bowl; toss to coat. Let stand at least 15 minutes.

Contributed by Phyllis Jo Kubey