To paraphrase Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, let the garlic begin!
What an opportune time for it to rain. With the fields too wet to dig potatoes this morning we have opted for the less strenuous but equally rewarding activity of processing the garlic. And it is far less muddy in the patent pending garlic curing chamber. What is involved in garlic processing? First, we cut off the tops. Since the tops are dry and hardly palatable, plus they take up room and make the garlic look ugly, we cut them off. Second, we decide whether the bulb we cut off is “big”, “small” or “unknown”. Why do we want to sort them? We keep the biggest bulbs to plant in October for next season. The idea is big bulbs grow big bulbs and by saving the biggest we have the opportunity to grow the biggest next season. This is our form of “guided evolution”. The final step is to put the bulbs in mesh bags for storage. Since we have 1000s of bulbs we keep all the garlic at room temperature on a really, really big, industrial size kitchen counter. Actually we don’t use a kitchen counter but that is what I suggest you do. Room temperature, dry and with good air circulation. One step we do not do and leave as an exersize for our members is the removal of the dirty, outside bulb wrapper. Though we have great soil for growing tasty garlic, it is not the best for growing stain-free garlic; it has too much silt. So the garlic is quite difficult to get clean without harming the underlying cloves. By leaving the outside layer on we preserve the garlic’s natural protection. When you are ready to use it you can clean up the bulb.
Now what can you do with the garlic? Maybe the question should be “What can’t you do with garlic?” Of course cooking with it is ideal — though those of us with vampire control problems may keep some hanging on our front doors. And if you want to use up a lot of garlic I suggest roasting it and spreading it on a nice, warm crusty bread. At this time of year I like to roast garlic on the grill. I clean the bulb (you can wash it in cold water if you like) to remove any remaining dirt. I then slice off the tip of the garlic bulb exposing the tips of the garlic cloves. I drizzle a little olive oil on the top so that it oozes under the garlic skins. Then pop it on the grill and cook until soft. Once soft, each clove easily squeezes out of the wrapper onto the bread. Very tasty!
Of course there are a million other things you can do with garlic. How about some garlic mashed potatoes? Or roasted garlic mashed potatoes? Or roasted potatoes with garlic? The options are endless! Hopefully the field will dry out enough so that we can dig up a few more potatoes for this week.
What else besides garlic and potatoes do we have on tap for the week? New this week will be bell peppers! We will also have tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, cabbage, onions, summer squash/zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, yellow beans, a few eggplants, a few watermelons for those who haven’t received them yet, a few hot peppers, and maybe tomatillos. The tomatoes seem to be ripening slower than usual. Not sure if this is good or bad. On the good side maybe it will spread out the load over a longer period of time. On the bad side it gives nature more time to cause havoc with the tomatoes. Hopefully they will be coming on strong soon. I haven’t figured out why the summer squash/zucchini continue to produce. Usually by now they are dead and gone. I’ll let you decide if they being the Methuselah of squash plants is good or bad. This goes for the cukes as well. We planted a second round of cukes to take over when the current ones die. We might be harvesting both planting next week. This will most likely be the final week of sweet corn. I suspect there will be a bunch of it again. The variety this week is Xtra Tender 270-something. It is one of my favorite — along with the last two we’ve had. Don’t forget you can eat corn raw! Very delicious!
CheeseShare
No cheese this week but we have another opportunity to purchase more one-of-a-kind Fresh Earth Farms Garlic Scape cream cheese. It will be here August 31. Price is $5 per 8 oz tub. The cheese that week will include one of the garlic scape cream cheeses as well as spinach leek cheddar and a medium cheddar. Grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches!!
FruitShare
No fruit this week but we will have Colorado peaches on August 31. If you’d like to order a la carte please let me know. 9 pound box is $39. A 20 pound box is $63.
MeatShare
No MeatShare this week.
Survey
Don’t forget to send back your survey. It is very helpful for us to hear how we are doing. And thank you to all who have sent it in. Hopefully I will have time to summarize the findings in a future newsletter.