CSA Box Contents Week of Sept 2nd

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you know that every year at around this time we wind up talking about back to school routines. Are we a broken farm disk? Maybe. But this is important stuff. We can’t help it - we operate in seasons, and if it's not the literal changing of weather and temperature, it's the metaphorical change of tides. Seasons are us farmers process the world! We know there are a lot of you reading this that are in the throws of a seasonal shift. We're here for you.

The days are still long and temperatures scorching, but the carefree days of summer are gone... school is in session. And that means the reinstitution of things like reasonable bedtimes and after school activities. And even if you don’t have kids or aren't bound by traditional school schedules, you may still be feeling a desire to introduce a little more structure to your routine. The slow pace of summertime grazing no longer feels like an option, and so often our food choices suffer. This week we’re here to just give you a little pep talk. With a little forethought, you can easily eat healthily amid the seasonal chaos! You can do it! Give your body (as well as your family’s) the proper fuel it needs to make this transition!

Back to school. Photo by Casey Degman.

There is a profuse amount of research floating around that touts the benefits of eating shared meals with your family, but it all seems to boil down to this: families that more regularly share meals together (at home) are more connected, have more of an opportunity for communication, are generally less stressed, and make healthier food choices. If it wasn't clear, JBG officially endorses the idea of family supper, and while it may not be something that can feasibly happen all nights, wouldn't it be nice if it happened most nights? If you live with roommates, instituting a weekly “family” meal is a wonderful way to reap these same benefits.

Some thoughts for making home cooked meals more feasible:

Meal Plan. Sit down with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine, depending on the hour) and make a grocery list. Try to think about dishes that can stretch over the course of a couple days, or ones that can double as lunch for the next day. Batch cook! Roast carrots and beets to use in a salad, pasta dish, soup, and quiche. Need help getting into the meal prep groove? Go to a couple fall classes with our friends at Club Home Made and let them show you the path to (meal) prep.

JBG customer Martha Pincoffs uses sticky notes to display the week's menu. Best part? The menu items are movable in case things change. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

One dinner's leftovers yield 3 meal-prepped lunches. Photo by Club Home Made.

Have realistic expectations. Don’t go crazy trying to make a from-scratch lasagna on a Wednesday night; save that kind of cooking for the weekend or maybe for your Italian grandmother. Master some quick recipes, and dismiss the pressure to get gourmet, every night of the week. Beautifully curated food pictures on social media should inspire us, make our mouths water, but not create unrealistic expectations of what our everyday meals should look like.

Share the responsibility. Make sure everyone in the household is involved in the process, from table setting to veggie chopping to dish duty. Ask kids to suggest some types of recipes. Eating with friends? One word: Potluck. Feeling tired of your go-to recipes? The internet is here for you. Checkout the JBG recipe archive, or simply Google the ingredients that need to be used. Wish you cooked more Thai food at home? Search “quick Thai recipes” and you’ve got a reference point. When reading recipes, always consider them as a guide but not a strict formula. Unlike most published cookbooks which have gone through a long edited processed and had recipes tested and retested, recipes that we find on blogs can sometimes be less sure-fire. If something doesn't seem right in a recipe, find another and combine the two! If you’re a CSA member, think outside (except inside) the confines of your CSA box and don't be afraid to substitute CSA veggies for specific ingredients in a recipe.

And when that fails…

Wholesome, home-cooked food won’t always be feasible because life is busy. But you know what? That’s a-okay. It’s all about balance, right? Luckily there are plenty of options in this town for healthy pre-packed lunches and on-the-go food. And this brings us to Beeline Market. We can’t help but highlight this long-time partner of ours. Beeline is the absolute authority on kid-friendly, healthy, and seasonal lunch boxes for kiddos… which they endearingly call Buzz Boxes. We love the fact that they have several Buzz Box options - some for little kids, some for big. There are boxes for the play-it-safe kids, as well as for the kiddos with a bit more adventurous of palates. Best part? Top notch, high quality, local and often organic ingredients make up the majority of these boxes, including, of course, ample JBG vegetables. Like the best farm to table restaurants in town, the Buzz Box menus are always changing based on seasonality and kiddo-feedback. Be sure to follow Beeline Market on Instagram for mesmerizing photos of perfectly portioned lunches. Here are some of our favorite Buzz Boxes of late that featured JBG Produce:

Wouldn't you eat these? Pizza features a rainbow sauce that is packed with veggies. Photo courtesy of Beeline Market's Instagram.

Best of luck to all the parents, students, teachers, faculty and staff out there who might be reading this. May our fresh vegetables and curated recipes help ease your transition into this new school season. Cheers!

When in doubt, encourage your kids to eat from the cafeteria! JBG veggies make a regular appearance! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

   

Things feel busy at the farm this week. The 100 degree days are brutal, to be sure, but there is the slightest scent of Autumn in the occasional breeze, and this, combined with the thousands of fall plants we're working to seed, has us feeling optimistic that the heat will eventually subside. If you want to get in on this agricultural sense of optimism, we encourage you to come volunteer with us! We are knee-deep in our busiest planting week of the whole year, and next week will be more of the same. We need your help! Did you know that if you volunteer with us for the day, you get to leave with a Medium CSA share? Help out your local farm and leave with free vegetables. 'Nuff said! To volunteer, you must RSVP by filling out this Google form. Our volunteer coordinator, Angie, will shoot you a confirmation email!

Remember that baby bok choy from a few weeks ago? It's sizing up, and its stark white stems looks beautiful on our dark brown soil. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Jack climbing into his office for the day. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sometimes it takes climbing on top of a box truck to understand the full scope of our eggplant beds. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Who needs a conference room when you have a tailgate? Photo by Scott David Gordon.

This is where most meetings at the farm take place. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Krishna and Brenton going over seeding plans and planting schedules. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Pretty great germination rates, if you ask us! We spy two empty cells of the hundreds pictured. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Graffiti eggplant has a thin skin and is known for its creamy texture and slightly-fruity insides. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Eggplant overview. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Radishing harvest from the late summer fields. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

To harvest sweet potato greens, one must wade into the greenery. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Be like Megan and Margarita. Recipe and photo by Megan Winfrey.

This week, I'd like to take a moment to thank the good farmers at JBG for their persistence with the melon crop this year. If you've been following along, you know they were thrown some curveballs, but melons are always better late than never! Especially when you live in a state where summer lasts well into fall. During these dog days of summer, there are few things more refreshing than a glass of fresh watermelon juice, besides maybe a plunge into Barton Springs. Watermelon juice is super simple to make at home. The personal melons from JBG yield about 4 cups of juice each, so I used 2 watermelons for this recipe since I would be sharing with the family.

Spicy Watermelon Margarita

 

Slice melons in half and scoop all of the bright pink flesh into a blender. Blend on high until a pureed texture is achieved. If you prefer a pulp free juice, place a fine mesh sieve over a large bowl and pour the blender contents through the sieve. The juice can take a few minutes to seep through, but you can help it along by stirring the pulp with a rubber spatula or your fingers. Transfer the juice into a pitcher and chill in the fridge until ready to use. I like to add a few teaspoons of lime juice to enhance the flavor and fridge life, which is about 5 days.

If you'd prefer a pulp-free watermelon juice, strain the watermelon puree through a fine mesh strainer. Photo by Megan Winfrey.

Enjoy it fresh on the rocks or mix up a cocktail with your choice of clear liquor - I recommend tequila but mezcal, gin, or vodka would all be delish. If you're not drinking, you can zhush it up with a sugar, salt, or Tajin rim and a splash of lime juice for a mouth watering mocktail.

I assembled our spicy margaritas in this order:

• A dab of chamoy on my finger then rubbed around the rim of a glass
• Dip the rim in Tajin
• Ice
• 1 shot chilled tequila
• Watermelon juice to fill the glass
• Squeeze of lime
• 2 jalapeno slices
• Quick stir to incorporate
• Lime garnish
• Try not to guzzle
• Repeat

And don't forget the garnish. Photo by Megan Winfrey.

CSA Box Contents Week of Aug 26th

Good morning! Farmer Brenton here. Farmers in Central Texas usually don’t get an off season, persay, but two weeks ago I was able to take off two weeks and travel to Thailand and Laos. It was my first time in Asia (and that far away at all) and I literally had the best time ever. It was best trip of my lifetime, if you would believe it, and I feel so lucky to have been able to go. Of course, like any life changing trip it's somewhat hard to describe... but let me try to tell you about it. This vacation was really a food-vacation... which if you know me at all, should be no surprise. If you read the blog, you likely love food… and probably travel, so hopefully you’ll find my travel tales interesting.

Some of the breathtaking views.

A FOOD OBSESSION

As many of you know I love food, especially home-cooked food. Growing up in Southern Alabama, I’ve always been into Southern food, and when I moved to Wyoming after college I got really into interior Mexican food and bought just about every Mexican food cookbook I could get my hands on. When I moved down to Austin, my obsession with Mexican food continued, obviously, and then I got reconnected to my Southern roots, so to speak, and dove deep in to Louisiana cooking, too.

Beautiful red corn varieties as seen on my trip. Remind me of my southern roots!

I didn’t grow up eating Asian food at all, but when I moved back down to Austin, kind of around the same time I started the backyard garden on Holly Street, I started eating more and more Asian food, and pretty immediately fell in love with the bold flavors, use of vegetables, and I’ve always loved spice. Asian food kind of hit all the marks. Specifically, I started to get really into Thai food, and started to cook it more and more. I also built myself a pantry with lots of Thai ingredients, and also some special kitchen tools made just for Thai cooking. I have this huge stone mortar and pestle (that I also use for Mexican cooking) and this sticky rice cooker. It looks like an hour glass, and is made out of aluminum. You put this bamboo basket on top, which is where you steam the rice. I’ve got this tool to shred green mango and papaya to make Som Tum, a Thai salad.

Plus, I have a gigantic library of Thai food cookbooks. I have this one cookbook, that I think is one of the first Thai food cookbooks ever published in the United States. I got this book so long ago, and it was my first introduction to some Thai ingredients. For example, this was the first time I had heard of using cilantro root in food, specifically in green curry. I was already growing cilantro, and soon I began to add more Thai ingredients to our crop plan. We grow Thai basil, lemongrass, and some Thai eggplant varieties. This year, maybe in subconscious excitement for my trip, we’re growing four different Thai chili varieties.

I’ve been planning this trip for about 4 months, but for way longer I’ve been going to Thai restaurants in Austin and talking to the owners about their food and also asking them for recommendations of where I should go. One of our former farm managers, Becky, actually grew up in Thailand (and speaks Thai), and she introduced me to Dee Dee's Thai food truck. This place specialized in Northern Thai food an, and is one of my favorite Thai places in town. Okay, enough about why I wanted to go to Thailand and Laos. Let me tell you about the trip.

Meals to come.

GETTING THERE

The trip was 2 and a half weeks, which is really a long time for me to be away from the farm… luckily Krishna and the rest of the crew held down the fort. It was really an adventure getting there. We boarded a 6am flight from Austin that was LA bound, but we had to make an emergency landing in El Paso because someone on board was having a heart attack (luckily, he was okay). After rerouting and getting to LA, we traveled over the ocean and across time zones and landed in Taiwan, and then to Chiang Mai in Thailand. We finally were in Asia! We had a 4 or so hour layover in Chiang Mai (our final destination was Laos), and were eager to see where we are.

We left the airport, and got a taxi. But the taxis in Chiang Mai are really more like pickup trucks. You get in the bed and share the taxi with several other people. I pretty much felt like I was in one of the harvest trucks at the farm. We had read about this one restaurant that supposedly served the best Khao Soi, this famous dish in Chiang Mai, and so were headed that way. Chiang Mai is a huge city, probably the size of the greater Austin area with several million people around. It’s bustling and busy, but without highway and major roadway infrastructure. From the back of this truck, we were hurried through this town and caught the first glimpses of Buddhist temples, and soo many markets. Everywhere you looked, there was someone selling something. They were all independently run little enterprises… people were grilling everywhere and were selling grilled fish, meat, sausages. More street food than I’ve ever seen before, more vendor booths setup. People were just hustling!

There was so much delicious and diverse street food, some of it recognizable to my Western eye, and some of it a complete mystery.

Again, the inspiration for this whole trip was really food, and our very first meal did not disappoint. We found our Khao Soi eatery, just outside the gates of the old city, and it was spectacular. This is a soup-type dish, specific to northern Thailand. It has a lot of Chinese influences and has two types of home-made noodles - sauce noodles and hard noodles (fried in oil) that float in this chicken-noodle-soup like broth, but more coconut-curry flavored. It’s served with all of these delicious pickled greens and vegetables. This $1.20 bowl of soup was, up to this point, one of the best things I had eaten all year and it set the tone for the rest of the trip.

 

LAOS

Our plane ride to Laos felt like a trip back in time. The entire vibe of the airline was very 1960s. People and flight attendants were very dressed up, and they had the most peaceful music playing on the plane before take off. Even the colors of the inside of the airplane were notable - deep navy blues with turquoise trim. Believe it or not, the airplane food had us excited.

The serenity of the plane ride was pretty different from the roadways we experienced when we touched down in Luang Prabang. In Laos, there really aren’t many cars, and instead everyone drives motorbikes. And these motorbikes, it seems like the drive wherever they want. In the United States, we’ve got pretty strict sides of the road that you’re supposed to stick to, but a “correct” side of the road is not a concept in Laos. Being on the roads there is like you’re swimming in a river, just weaving in and out of oncoming and passing motorbikes. Scooters seem to be coming straight for you, but then suddenly they’re moving out of the way. Amazingly, no one is crashing! Everyone just knows how to swim in this river of motorbikes, and once we were there for a while we got completely used to the flow. No one is even mad in this kinda traffic.

We knew the food was going to be awesome on this trip, but we didn’t expect just how welcoming all the people would be. The trend of amazing, generous, and welcoming locals started off early with our room in Laos. We got there, and after slipping off our shoes (no one wears shoes inside there), we were invited to this beautiful terrace and given smoothies. With whatever fruit we wanted. The place we were staying felt like this beautiful tree-house, with peaceful porches and spectacular views, that if it was in Austin somewhere would cost you a fortune to stay in. But here, everything was so inexpensive...even a farmer could live like a king for a couple of weeks.

Our welcome smoothie, which included copious amounts of passion fruit.

LUANG PRABANG

Luang Prabang is a world heritage city. It used to be controlled by the French, and those influences are everywhere - in the architecture, especially, but also in the great coffee and pastries that can be found on ever corner. I love this city so much. There are markets everywhere you look, in so many different corners of the city. So there are literally so many farmers, growing so many crazy vegetables that you’ve never even seen before. And fruit. The bounty and variety of fruit is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s an agricultural meca. And coffee! They even grow coffee.

Markets with fruit and vegetable offerings unlike anywhere else in the world.

We spent a lot of time at these markets. You can’t go anywhere in the city without stumbling on a new one, and some of them are miles long..occupying one main street, but then every side street seems to be filled with vendors, too. There is so much exotic produce! So many vegetables that I have NO CLUE what they are. One day it rained, and suddenly the next day there were vendors selling 20 different kinds of mushrooms. We saw live frogs, eels, birds (that looked like sparrows to me), bats, live turtles, live shrimp, pincher crabs, muscles… We even saw someone selling something that was like wasp larva. Of course, we had to get some of this to try. It was so good, and the whole time I was eating it, I was like “I can’t believe this wasp larva is so good.” There are desserts everywhere, rice puddings served in banana leaves, and these really really delicious mini coconut pancakes that were about an inch and half across.

Wasp larva, anyone? High in protein, fatty acids, minerals and vitamins, it's not a bad snack.

And the fruit! I found myself addicted to passion fruit and passion fruit smoothies this trip. We also ate a lot of these fruit called mangosteens. These fruit have this purple people (which they use to dye clothes), but it’s white inside, a lobed fruit.. Kind of like an orange with white flesh. It’s hard to even describe the flavor, but it’s good. We also ate lots of custard apples, which taste and smell like honeysuckle. It cost, basically pennies, to eat some of the best fruit in the world, and I couldn’t stop eating it. The fruit was off the hook. Oh! I forgot, there were also a huge selection of bananas, including these really tasty small ones.

Mangosteen.

When not gorging on fruit, we were exploring the outdoors. One day we rented scooters and drove them to these beautiful, cascading waterfalls… probably 200 feet tall... that emptied into this beautiful turquoise pool.

 





A beautiful temple in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The inside is adorned with beautiful murals, but no photos were allowed.

LONGBOAT

The only way to get to Chaing Mai from where we were in Laos was by boat. We spent 2 days on this longboat (it was long.. About 100 feet) that went through the Mekong river… which is kind of like the Mississippi in terms of its importance and usage. These boats were powered by these huge diesel engines on the back, which took us on a tour of national forests and small villages. This boat ride was two nights, and it docked at a tiny village overnight. We didn’t quite have a plan of where we were going to stay, but got very lucky when a fellow boat companion told us his brother recently finished renovating a guest room that he was going to rent out. This room was beautiful, and when we looked out our window the next morning, there was an elephant across the river!

 

This journey through this part of Laos on our way to Chaing Mai felt so rural and undiscovered. On our way, we learned that China is bringing a railway into this area. We passed this huge bridge that was a part of the project… I can’t help but think now is the time to see this region, when the only way to see it is by bumpy car rides or very long boats.

Construction, funded by China, of a bridge that will cross the Mekong.

Chiang Mai was filled with trips to impressive temples, beautiful artwork, more incredible meals, and lots of coffee. We rented a car and left the big city behind, and headed for a small town called Chiang Dao.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

I’m so glad we found our way to Chiang Dao. Here, we stayed in this very small hut that was surrounded by a towering bamboo forest.. The bamboo was like 8 inches in diameter! There is this world renowned restaurant at the base of the mountain here that we had researched, and so obviously we went. We were the only customers there, and the food was incredible. The folks working at this restaurant told us that we had to go climb the mountain the next day and see the Buddhist monks that live on top. We were told that they don’t allow westerners to eat breakfast with them. They eat breakfast at 8am, but you could go see them before that.

So at 7am the next morning, we were at the base of this mountain ready to start our assent. We met someone at the base who asked us if we could help carry all of this stuff up (at least 1000 steps). There was this huge pile of supplies and food, and so naturally we grabbed as much as we could hold, and helped carry the supplies. When we arrived at the top, there were about 15 people all preparing breakfast for the monks, and they invited us to serve the monks breakfast! In a cave! They only eat once a day, and so this is a really important meal. After we served the monks, we got to eat with all of the volunteers. This was by far my favorite meal of the whole trip. It felt like a Thanksgiving meal - the food was a whole conglomeration of home-cooked dishes, made by home cooks. And of course, the experience of serving the monks, being in the cave, hearing their chants and witnessing the religious ceremony added to the experience.

Our culinary experiences didn’t stop there, that day. After coming off the mountain, we decided to get some coffee at this place we had read about (which happened to be next door to our hut). Little did we know, this coffee roasted and served coffee with beans that were grown on the very hill we had just come down from. The owner said his whole extended family lives on the hill and harvests the beans by hand. He made us the most delicious cappuccino. Some of this delicious coffee made its way home with me, and it will help get me through this planting season.

Home grown beans, roasted and ground on the same property they they are farmed.

MORE ADVENTURE

After leaving Chiang Dao, we ventured even further off the beaten path to this small town that was in the middle of this national forest. We actually had found an airbnb that was run by this indigenous tribe there, and when we met up with our host he said we would be the only visitors for the whole month. We actually couldn’t even drive our rental car the whole way there - we had to meet our host on this pinpoint on a map, leave our rental car in the middle of the national forest, and then ride with him (in his 4 wheel drive vehicle) deeper into the forest. Our home for the next couple of days was next to a waterfall, and on our first night the entire family helped make us dinner.. All while sitting on the floor of this beautiful bamboo hut. This meal is another that sticks out… the eggs they used were so delicious, and it was such simple, yet tasty food.

Hanging out with the whole family at this Airbnb, deep in the jungle.

Our trip concluded back in the city, with more trips to the markets, and more - you guessed it - delicious food. On our last day, we had heard about this family who lived outside of town on a huge tract of land and had some elephants. We weren’t interested in riding elephants or anything, but we did want to see some. So we made arrangements with this guy who picked us up in town and then drove us 3 hours to this small village in the jungle. When we got there, there were no elephants to be seen. But that’s because we had to go find them! This land was the ancestral home of these three elephants, and they weren’t confined in anyway. Once we finally found the elephants, we gave them some fruit, and simply spent some time with them. A family in the village cooked us lunch, shared stories about their lives and their culture, and opened our eyes a little bit more to the wonders of Thailand.



We left Thailand on a Tuesday, and with the time change somehow ended back in Austin on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning I was back on a tractor at JBG, thinking of all the incredible farms I saw in Laos and Thailand. Farmers there were so skilled - growing productive crops on hillsides! They had caterpillar tunnels with electricity run to them that grew speciality flowers, and every farm seemed to be growing vegetables, fruit, and flowers... so diversified! Needless to say, I’m pretty inspired (and very full) and ready for our busy fall at JBG.

These farmers are so advanced! I can't imagine trying to grow produce on such a hilly terrain.

Checkout these pristine fields.

By Mackenzie Smith

Let's talk quesadillas. Photo by Mackenzie Smith.

I get it. The world doesn’t need another quesadilla “recipe”, but we can always use a reminder that a thoughtful meal prep session puts us in a place to make beautiful riffs on the concept of melting cheese inside a tortilla on a hot surface -- and use up the goods from our CSA box. This is no dig on the quesadilla, which makes up about 20% of my diet and has since elementary school, just a hard sell for stuffing as many veggies as you can into the mix.

This past Sunday, I boiled a big pot of potatoes in salty water while also roasting most of the veggies in my CSA -- pretty much the extent of meal prep most weeks. I got pulled away for over 30 minutes to put my baby to bed, and completely forgot about what was going on in the kitchen. Turns out when you boil potatoes for too long, they still work like a boiled potato, but the taste is slightly bitter (nothing grating them into hash browns and serving with fried eggs and a tangy garlic yogurt sauce or turning them into straight up buttery mashed potatoes can’t fix).

When you roast beets and summer squash at 425 tossed in olive oil and salt for “too long” without stirring, they turn into veggie candy. By candy, I mean the sugars in the vegetables caramelize and much of the water evaporates, so what was once a full sheet pan of squash has reduced to ¼ of the original mass. Summer squash, which has a tendency to be a little bitter, is now slightly sweet, chewy and charred around some of the edges. The beets are also chewier than what you’d expect, almost meaty -- both a super tasty pairing for sharp cheddar and a corn tortilla.

Roasted veggies, ready for any application. Photo by Mackenzie Smith.

Unlike their less-cooked counterparts, long-roasted veggies are nice and malleable, making it easy to stuff a LOT of them into a quesadilla. Based on what I started with, I would estimate that the quesadilla in this pic has about 2 medium-sized summer squash packed in, and 2 small beets. Practically health food?

Overstuffed quesadillas are so good because the cheese and veggies that don’t fit into the tortilla melt onto the sides and get a little crispy as the tortilla finishes cooking in the pan.

The dipping sauce here is another version of my spinach stem green sauce, wherein I throw an entire bunch of spinach stems in the blender with a couple of bunches of soft herbs (usually parsley, cilantro and basil), a clove of garlic and a few scallions with lemon juice, pickle juice or vinegar, a few tablespoons of olive oil and salt to taste. Bright green goodness, somewhere between a chutney, a pesto and a chimichuri, and good on anything savory -- especially these quesadillas.

Since getting pulled away to take care of a baby is my new brand of cooking (ha), lukewarm quesadillas are totally a thing around here these days. Sure, oozing hot cheese on a tortilla is one of the world’s greatest pleasures, but an almost warm quesadilla packed full of caramelized local vegetables and sharp cheddar with an herby green sauce is a fine quick summer lunch.

If you need a recipe for quesadillas, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has a great blog post about them on Serious Eats. As for the vegetables, cook them like this:

Preheat oven to 425 F

• 5-6 medium summer squash or zucchini, cut into ½-inch coins
• 4-5 beets -- peeled and cut into slices
• Olive oil
• Salt & pepper to taste

Place squash on one sheet pan, and beets on the other. Drizzle generously with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Cook for about 10 minutes and stir. Cook for another 20 or so and stir again, then walk away for 10-15 minutes before removing from the oven.