Recipe by Club Home Made

The quickest way to eat your greens.

Once you've acquired the flavor for dark, fresh greens - just harvested from the fields - you'll begin to crave them in this simplest preparation.  It's a boost of nutrients that not only tastes good, but it's the kind of food that makes you feel good after supper. When you feel the calling, cook these greens.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 bunches of sweet potato greens (amaranth, bok choy, purslane, kale, collards, spinach or swiss chard all work here)
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced thin
• Olive oil
• Soy sauce
• Rice wine vinegar or lemon juice
• A dash of sugar
• Fish sauce (optional)
• Hot sauce (optional)

Stems and garlic are sauteed together before the greens are added in. Don't mind the sausage. It's just heating up. 

How To: Wash and chop your greens, keeping the stems and leaves separate. Heat olive oil in a large pan, and saute the garlic and stems together until the stems are tender and the garlic fragrant. Add chopped greens to the pan, and add a glug of soy sauce to the pan to help steam the veggies.  At this point, I sometimes add a tablespoon or so of water or broth. Sprinkle a dash of sugar over the greens. Just when the greens have wilted, add a few dashes of fish sauce and a couple dashes of hot sauce, stir, and taste for salt. If the greens need more salt, add more soy sauce. Once seasoned to your liking, add a generous dash of vinegar or lemon juice, and serve. These greens were enjoyed with some leftover sausage, white rice cooked in homemade chicken stock, and garden tomatoes sprinkled with salt and some rice wine vinegar. Satisfying food can be so simple!

Other easy additions to a quick greens saute: sauted onions and peppers, grated ginger, sesame oil or sesame seeds, toasted nuts, or a can of coconut milk to for saucy greens. If my meal is lacking some fat, I'll often add a hefty tablespoon of butter as well.

CSA Box Contents Week of July 22nd

It’s hot out there, so we’ll keep this short and sweet: This is your last opportunity to join our CSA and get a free tote bag. If you didn't get the memo, we’re running a July promotion - join our CSA, enter DIVEIN at checkout, and we’ll send you one of our very fashionable rooster tote bags. We promise this will be your new favorite bag. 



Chances are some of you reading this are already CSA Members. If this is you: thank you from the bottom of our zucchini-filled hearts! Here in Texas, we’re able to farm year-round, but summers can be tough. Not only does the heat take a toll on our plants, but it’s hard on our staff. This is also the time of year when many of our members put their subscriptions on hold for travel. We are proud to offer this flexibility, but we’re also looking to grow the CSA at a moment like this to make sure we’re generating enough revenue to pay our staff, to buy everyone popsicles once in a while, and also to prepare for our fall season. This week alone, we had to purchase over $10,000 worth of seeds to get ready for fall crops! Members, we couldn’t operate this farm without your help, and we’re so glad to grow your vegetables. Those of you on vacation: don’t forget to take some pictures, but come home soon. We miss you! If you’re reading this, we have a favor to ask: please forward our email with the July Promotion code to a friend of yours who you think might like to give the CSA a try. We’ll stop giving out free tote bags at the end of the month, so folks need to act fast to enjoy this freebie. 

If you’re not a CSA Member but are curious about the program, now is the time to give it a try. If you join today, you’ll get the opportunity to enjoy the change in seasons. Your first few shares will feature summer crops like homegrown tomatoes, sweet peppers and cucumbers, which will then be replaced by early fall favorites like sweet potatoes, kale, and cabbage. Go on, dive in and get to know your Texas seasons. Below are a few of the CSA program’s highlights, and here are a few more frequently asked questions. 

 

• Four different box sizes - individual to family size 
• Option to customize your share and pick the vegetables you want
• Local, certified organic produce grown on our family farm
• Over 200 varieties of vegetables + recipes to help you along the way
• Ability to adjust schedule for travel - we're flexible! 
• No long-term commitment
• Deliveries starting at $22 per veggie share

Go on.. take the plunge, and start receiving the best quality vegetables your kitchen has ever seen. There’s no reason you should be cooking with anything less than fresh. Please don’t hesitate to shoot us a line if you have any questions or just want to talk tomatoes.  Till next week! 

Bunch, and throw. Bunch, and throw. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Our farm photographer, Scott Gordon, captured some beautiful shots this week at our River Road farm. Surprising pops of color came in the form of purple eggplant and red radishes. Despite the heat, we're managing to harvest some greens like baby bok choy and arugula, which should be welcome variety for our market customers.

 

Looks like a lively radish harvest. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

It's raining compost! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Eggplant, anyone? The long arms of this harvest trailer make harvest time a breeze. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Fishing for black beauty eggplant among waste high plants. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Lush greenery... with some pops of purple. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

The very beginnings. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

A summer radish crop. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Bunch, and throw. Bunch, and throw. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

When Texas skies touch down on Texas farms. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Sweet. Potato. Greens. Have you dabbled? Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Soothing to the eye, no? Photo by Scott David Gordon.

 

 

Author: The Migoni Kitchen Servings: 2 Cups Total Time: 35 minutes

Have you ever bought a jar of salsa at the store and been disappointed?? This happened to us so often, we finally decided to make our own. We always find the store bought salsas to be too chunky, have too much onion, not enough lime, etc. We don’t like to brag, but I think our homemade roasted salsa is by far our favorite salsa we’ve tried! It’s perfect for serving with tortilla chips, but also great to top off your favorite Mexican dishes like enchiladas, tacos, quesadillas, etc. Plus with all the peppers we’ve been getting in our JBG box, this is the perfect way to use them up!



Ingredients:

• 6 Small Tomatoes (such as roma or vine ripe)
• 5 Jalapeno Peppers
• 2 Serrano Peppers (omit for mild salsa)
• 2 Cloves Garlic, Unpeeled
• 1/2 Medium Yellow Onion
• Juice of 1 Lime
• 1/2 Cup Cilantro
• 1/2 Teaspoon Black Pepper
• 1/2 Teaspoon Sugar
• 1 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
• 2 Tablespoons Distilled White Vinegar

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 450F. Place the tomatoes, onion, garlic, and peppers on a foil lined baking sheet and roast in the oven for 30 minutes, removing the garlic at the 10 minute mark and setting aside. Remove from the oven and let cool until cool enough to handle. Peel the garlic, deseed the jalapenos and remove the core of the tomatoes. Add the whole serranos, deseeded jalapenos, cored tomatoes, onion and garlic to the blender along with the salt, pepper, lime juice, vinegar and cilantro. Blend until smooth. Adjust salt to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

CSA Box Contents Week of July 15th

Some of you may be hip to the power of Purslane,  but for those of you who aren’t: this post is for you. Purslane is currently being harvested at JBG, and its appearance in your CSA shares may have some of you scratching your heads.  Here at the farm, we intentionally plant and grow this vegetable, but you may have seen purslane growing as a “weed” in your own garden or maybe even even peeking out from sidewalk cracks. This weed-turned-vegetable (dandelion greens’s kindred sister) is resilient and delicious, and we hope you read this post and don’t miss out.

A verdant field of... Purslane. Photo by Scott David Gordon

As you likely know, so many of the dark leafy greens that dominate ideas of “healthy eating” (spinach, kale, etc.) can’t stand up to this Texas heat and are comically out-of-season in the summer. But here we are, mid-July, and along comes this curious little green, related to succulents, called purslane, pursley, or verdolaga in Spanish. This plant thrives in heat, and is able to offer us something green and leafy in the middle of the summer. That’s vegetable magic, if you ask us! Nestled in these small glossy leaves is a formidable amount of nutritional punch.  Purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids than many types of fish. I repeat: purslane contains more Omega-3s than many fish and more than any other vegetable, making it a wonderful addition to your diet. This surprising little vegetable is rich in vitamins - most notably Vitamin-A, in addition to Vitamin-C and B. But what does it taste like? Purslane has a slightly lemony flavor and is almost a bit salty, making it a satisfying vegetable eaten both raw and cooked. It’s got a slightly sour-tang, and its texture is like a crunchy-juicy spinach leaf (versus a grassy, dry kale kale leaf). Add it to a salad, throw it in a stew or stir fry, or simply wilt it along with a bit of garlic. Use it as a summery replacement for spinach in a quiche or a sub for parsley in a raw salad.

Bunching purslane for CSA shares and farmers' markets. Photo by Scott David Gordon

If you’re looking for a direction to turn with this vegetable, there is no better way to wander than to Mexico.  Traditional Mexican cooking has made use of this nutritious green for centuries, and though it’s somewhat novel in the modern American diet, farmers’ markets and grocery stores in Mexico stock purslane (verdolaga) as a staple. Before the Rio Grande was considered to be anything more than a mighty river, purslane was part of cooking traditions and indigenous cuisines in many parts of North and Central America.  

 

Not surprisingly, many of the Mexican verdolaga recipes we found online utilized other vegetables currently in season like tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes. Our social media wizard, Hector, is quite the expert on his Mexican foodways, and was kind enough to share two purslane recipes with us. We are sincerely thrilled to share these with you! Hector has worked with JBG since 2010, and has been eating vegetables way longer than that. If you’re looking for no frills internet food inspiration, follow Hector on Instagram to see what he’s cooking. Not only does Hector cook with heart, but he has a familiarity of vegetables and spices that should only belong to a seasoned abuela. 

Hector hatching a plan at the farmer's market. Photo by Scott David Gordon

We’re including purslane in at least two of the CSA box sizes next week, likely in the Small and Large boxes. If you’re dying to try some, which we hope you are, shoot Faith an email and we’ll include some in your box if we can! We hope you enjoy these recipes, and get to know this unique, nutritious, and tasty weed...errr, vegetable.

 

Verdolagas en Salsa / Purslane in Salsa

Ensalada de Verdolagas / Purslane Salad