Sandy Spring CSA

June 24, 2009: This week’s featured fruits and vegetables are carrots, bok choi, kohlrabi, beets, garlic scapes, herb, peas, potatoes, salad or baby spinach, and cherries.

Farmer Pam notes that “the cherries are compromised by the weather - they will not hold - please wash, pit and eat right away.” There’s real-life food for you!

And speaking of real-life food:

A Call for Volunteers! All that rain is good for veggies, but apparently even better for weeds! Pam says that they could really use some weeding help this week and next week at the farm. If you’re interested, please contact her via email.

Recipes: Kohlrabi is King

Kohlrabi! Last fall, I found it was one of the few vegetables my then almost-two-year-old daughter would eat! How exciting to see it return to our boxes. Here’s a whole page of recipes for kohlrabi - perhaps one of them will fit your table.

For a kohlrabi and carrot combination, try Kohlrabi Carrot and Parmesan Gratin (and there’s a recipe for roasted beets on the same page!) And speaking of beets, I can also personally recommend Beets and Carrots with West Indian Spices - very tasty.

Food For Thought: Your RDA, The Vegetable Way

Farmer Pam sent us a fun link this week - a site detailing food sources for selected nutrients. Now, if you want to find out about non-dairy sources for calcium, or non-meat sources for iron - or even just look up how much potassium is in your potato - you can. The web page is an appendix to a larger report, the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are updated every 5 years. With the new focus on obesity in the U.S., I’ll be curious to see what the 2010 version has to say!