Week 14

Crop	Half	Cost	Full	Cost
Tomatoes	2.5 lb.	5.00	4 lb.	8.00
Cherry Tomatoes	1 pint	2.75	2 pints	5.50
Japanese Eggplant	1 lb.	2.00	2 lbs.	4.00
Corn	4 ears	2.00	6 ears	3.00
Cantaloupe or Watermelon	1 small	2.00	1 a little bigger	3.00
Potatoes	2 lb.	3.60	3 lb.	5.40
Total		17.35		28.90

Recipe Of The Week

Eggplant Salad-Asian

1 lb Japanese eggplant

salt

1/3 cup oil

1 tsp minced ginger

1 tsp minced garlic

1 Tb white vinegar

2 Tb Tamari sauce

1 Tb sesame oil

1 tsp sesame seeds

2 chopped scallions or some onion

1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes

Cut eggplants into small circles, do not peel as skin is so tasty and tender! Saute in oil until the eggplant is lightly browned and just tender. Remove the excess oil. Mash together the ginger, garlic and salt. Combine that mixture with the remaining ingredients and toss with the eggplant. Add a dash of lime juice if desired.

What’s Going On?

Hello everyone! So for those of you that asked for green tomatoes, I am going to hold off for a week or two on giving them in your shares. I have your names down, and will not forget, it will just not be this week. The ACME cooking class is set for August 5^th at 10am and we have filled it up quickly. The class will be using the eggplant given that week in their shares to cook with. For anyone else who is interested in learning more ways to cook with eggplant, I am considering scheduling another class to focus on this crop, as the plants are doing very well this year and we will see it pretty regularly. Please email me your next available Saturday morning date if you are interested.

Things are going well work wise for us right now. We have been doing a last sweep of weeding through the peppers and eggplants that look so nice. We will be transplanting some fall crops in about three weeks or so. I am worried here about the grasshoppers, as we have tons. This is the worst year I have seen for them. My worry is that the day after I transplant out those pretty tender broccoli, cabbage, kale and collard plants they will be eaten down. It has happened before, not to me, but I have heard tale. I will do what I can, and am hopeful we will win here.

Produce Info:

Cantaloupe and watermelon are so yummy, but can be a bit frustrating to grow at times. This year we have had a decent amount of rain so far and because of that it makes the melons very juicy. Juicy is good, but perhaps takes away from the overall sweetness of the fruit as well. We have more in the ground to come, so look forward to those. I don’t know if I have clarified yet that you are receiving mostly Pink girl tomatoes and Big Beef tomatoes so far this year in your shares. The pink girls are pink, and you should wait until they are a nice deep pink before eating as they are very sweet that way. The big beefs are red, and likewise, you should wait until they are a nice deep red until eating. Leave on you counter out of the sun or in the bag if you want to hurry them along. All of the ones I have given you are pretty close, but I don’t want to give you all entirely ripe ones so that you can have some to last you the week.

We have cut the very tops off of your corn because of the dreaded corn earworm. I write about this guy every time I give corn, as the earworm can be hard to control organically. The earworm bores into the top of the corn and starts to eat away, leaving a brown slimy residue in its path. If you still have some of this left over, we are sorry, just cut off a little more and enjoy, the rest of the ear is delicious. Next year I am going to invest in a Zea-latter. This is a little gadget that has appeared in my Johnny’s seed catalog a few years ago for earworm control. It is supposed to help earworm control by about 25-30%. You walk along with this little gun like thing that is attached to a bag filled with some sort of vegetable oil. You squirt a little of the oil on the silks of the corn, the oil then runs down the silks into the kernel and prevents the earworm from thriving. We’ll see how that works in ‘07. I am determined. For those of you who have been members for 4-5-6 years now, you may have noticed that corn, potatoes and onions have always been a challenge for me. Well, I think we have got the potatoes down, as the cooler still has weeks worth of deliveries waiting to be made to you. There are still more onions to come as well, and leeks in the fields for soon. The corn could be better, and more of it, but we are getting there!

What To Look Forward To....

Basil should show up next week, about time! We will have more cucumbers and summer squash hopefully soon, they do slow down a bit with the heat. This is it for the corn, it is good so enjoy it! We may see a dip in the tomatoes for a couple of weeks as we transition between plantings. We will still have some, but just not as many. We will see colored peppers either next week or the week after, both yellow bell and red bell. As I mentioned we will start harvesting leeks soon, yummy! I have sowed two varieties of beans recently, a purple snap bean some of you may remember and an Italian flat bean. We should have these guys in about five weeks. Something to look forward to! Please let me know if you have any questions, thoughts or concerns, I love to hear from you! Elise.