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Storing information

Hot Peppers:

Slice 'em up, remove the seeds, stick in a bag, and throw 'em into the freezer for later. They taste delicious in winter stews and chilis. If you would prefer hot pepper flakes, hang the peppers from a string or on a drying rack. Once they are completely shriveled up and dried, take them down and grind them up in a food processor. Just be careful not to breath in the pepper dust: It will send you into a sneezing fit. The Hungarian wax, the greenish-yellow peppers, don't work very well for drying, but the others will do fine.

Herbs:

Storing herbs is very simple; just hang them up to dry. They should do fine, as long as they are not hanging in a very humid area.

Winter Squash:

The four varieties of winter squash (butternut, buttercup, delicata and acorn) will keep through the winter if stored in a dry place, around 50-55 degrees. After we picked the squash, we placed them in the greenhouse for a week to harden the skins, so they should be fine. Just check them for soft spots periodically.

Storage cabbage:

To freeze cabbage: Cut into coarse shreds and blanch for 2 minutes in boiling water. Remove, drain, and chill. Pack into airtight containers and freeze up to one year. Once thawed, frozen cabbage will only work well in cooked applications. (from about.com)

To store whole cabbages, place in a cellar or cool place, around 32 degrees.

Kale:

You can freeze the kale by stripping the leaf from the stem and cramming it into a freezer bag. During the darkest days of winter the kale will make a nice addition to chilies, soups, curries, etc. The kale can even be used as a replacement for spinach and chard.

Feeling like fall

Hi Folks,

Oops, with school starting and the general craziness surrounding late August and September, we totally forgot to update the Blog.

School is in full swing. Students at Little River have picked apples, made apple cider, set up an archaeological site at Birdsfoot Farm and started their academic classes.

We have a few important details to relate: The Sustainable Living Project will be holding a fair at the Cooperative Extension Farm on Rte 68 outside of Canton on Sept. 25th and 26th. Mike will share the stage at a workshop about compost and the rest of the family will be managing our market stand at the fair.

The Remington Art Festival will be held on Oct. 2nd in the Canton park. Little River Students will be facilitating games for kids at the fest. We would welcome any ideas or participation.

Potato Salad

Greetings!

I tried to find several potato salad recipes that include a lot of the vegetables you will find in this week's box. One recipe is standard mayonnaise, and the other is a vinegar potato salad.

Mayonnaise Potato Salad

Ingredients:

* 3 pounds potatoes, cooked until just tender, cubed, cooled
* 5 or 6 hard cooked eggs, cooled, coarsely chopped
* 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped red onion (or 5 scallions, including greens)
* 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped celery, optional
* thinly sliced tomatoes and cucumber, for garnish, optional

Dressing:
* 3/4 cup mayonnaise (a little more or less, as desired)
* 1 to 2 tablespoons prepared mustard
* salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
Combine potatoes, egg, onions, and celery. Stir in mayonnaise, mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. (Stir the mayonnaise and mustard in a little at a time, until you have the flavor and consistency you like.)
Top with thinly sliced tomatoes and cucumber, if desired.


Vinegar Potato Salad:

2 1/2 lbs. potatoes
5 scallions (chopped with some greens)
1/2 stick (1/4 c. butter)
1/4 c. white vinegar
2-3 tbsp. parsley (chopped)
Salt and pepper to taste

4 hard cooked eggs, chopped

Scrub potatoes, do not peel. Boil until just tender. Cool. Cut into bite size chunks. Combine with scallions. Refrigerate.

The day you plan to serve, combine butter with vinegar, parsley, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Simmer few minutes, then pour over potatoes. Add eggs. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature. Chilling this recipe would make butter harden, you might substitute oil for butter to avoid this. Serves 8-10.


Enjoy!

Wine Cap Mushrooms are Ready

Hi Folks,

Mike has mushrooms available for sale! He has a patch of wine cap mushrooms growing in our lower garden space. A couple of months ago he laid down a layer of hardwood chips, spread the mushroom "stuff" on it and then placed a layer of wet straw on top of that. There are now white thread like mycilium in the layers and the wine caps are growing from that.

He had a small battle with slugs, but seems to have figured that out. There is now a moat of wood ashes around the patch. For the most part the slugs have been deterred.

The Wine Caps will be for sale at the Potsdam Farmer's Market at Deep Root Farm's stand. Deep Root CSA share holders, please let us know if you are interested in purchasing some mushrooms.

Next year, he will have shitake and oyster mushrooms available. They are growing in logs in our woods. The spores need to inoculate the logs and by late summer, next year they will be ready.

Here is some more wine cap info and a recipe:

Stropharia rugosoannulata (Wine Cap)

Delicious and often enormous, the Wine Cap pops up commonly in the hardwood woodchips used in landscaping mulch around trees and along tended pathways. This mushroom can be identified positively only in the presence of both the young and mature specimens. The buttons are sometimes but not always a Burgundian red wine color on top. When the veil is still closed over the immature gills, there is a coglike star pattern around the stem. In the mature fruiting bodies, the gills change from pink to a dark pinkish grey to grey brown color while the color of the cap lightens to a light brown to beige color. The spore print is purplish black in color.

I recommend eating only the young mushrooms of this species which are firm and bug free. The buttons of this species can reach 5-6” in diameter while still immature. They are meaty and rich and are well paired in meat sauces and sautés. When large, it can be cut into strips, brushed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with herbs, salt and pepper and grilled to perfection.

Wine caps and cauliflower

Here's a side dish where the mild flavor of cauliflower offsets the stronger influences of the wild mushrooms and Indian seasonings. Wine-cap stropharia mushrooms have enough of a penetrating flavor to withstand the pungent spices.

2 tablespoons peanut oil
2 teaspoons garam masala or curry powder
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (1/4 teaspoon peppercorns)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 1/2 pounds cauliflower, broken into florets
2 1/2 cups sliced wine-cap stropharia mushrooms

1. Heat the peanut oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garam masala, black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and black pepper and cook, stirring constantly, until the mustard seeds pop, 2 to 3 minutes.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and cook the vegetables, stirring, for another 15 minutes, until the water from the mushrooms has evaporated.

Spiced Wine Caps

8 cups wine cap stropharia mushrooms, sliced
1 tsp. almond oil or canola oil
2 tsp. water mint or other mint species, ground
1/2 tsp. nutmeg, ground
1 tsp. cardamon, ground
1 tsp. anise seeds, ground
1 tsp. salt
2 tbs. wineberry wine or red wine

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the mushrooms, and add the mushrooms, spices, and salt.

2. Cook on medium heat 5 minutes, stirring often.

3. When the mushrooms release liquid, add the wine and continue cooking another 10 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed or evaporated, stirring often.

Wine Caps in Wine

12 cups wine cap stropharia mushrooms, sliced
1/2 tbs. olive oil
6 tbs. lemon juice or lime juice
6 tbs. oak leaf wine or white wine
1/2 tbs. nutmeg, ground
1/2 tbs. fennel seeds, ground
1/2 tbs. salt

1. Cook the mushrooms in the olive oil over medium heat 3-5 minutes or until they begin to release liquid.

2. Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer over low heat 15 minutes.

3. Uncover and cook over high heat, stirring constantly, until all the liquid is evaporated or absorbed, about 5-10 minutes.

Kale Recipe

Kale

It is a bit early, but the kale is going crazy. Here are some sample recipes to try. Enjoy!

Roasted Kale with Sea Salt from healthycookingsuite101.com

• 4 cups firmly-packed kale
• 1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp. good-quality sea salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Wash and trim the kale: Peel off the tough stems by folding the kale leaves in half like a book and stripping the stems off. Toss with extra virgin olive oil. Roast for five minutes. Turn kale over. Roast another 7 to 10 minutes until kale turns brown and becomes paper thin and brittle. Remove from oven and sprinkle with sea salt. Serve immediately.

Makes 2 servings.

Garlicky Greens Recipe from 101 cookbooks.com

If you are using spinach ignore the stem instructions below. With spinach I simply trim any long stems. Also, feel free to make this vegan and/or dairy-free by leaving out the Parmesan cheese. Toasted almonds or pine nuts are a great substitution (or addition).

1 large bunch of kale, chard
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
fine grain sea salt
5 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (opt)
crushed red pepper flakes

To de-stem each leaf of chard/kale, grab the main stalk in one hand and strip the leaf from the stem all the way up with the other. I then tear the big leaves into bite-sized pieces, but you can use a knife for this task if you prefer. Wash the greens in a big bowl (or sink) full of clean water, rinsing and swishing to rinse away any stubborn grit and dirt. Drain, rinse again, and set aside.

Hold off cooking the greens until just before eating. Then, in a large skillet heat the olive oil. Add a couple big pinches of salt and the greens. They should hiss and spit a bit when they hit the pan. Stir continuously until their color gets bright green, and they just barely start to collapse - two, three, maybe four minutes, depending on how hot your pan is and how much structure your greens have. Then, just thirty seconds before you anticipate pulling the skillet off of the heat, stir in the garlic. Saute a bit, remove the pan from the heat, stir in the Parmesan, and add a big pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. Taste, add a bit of salt if needed, and serve immediately if not sooner.

Cuke Dude visits Bonno Road

This is what farmers, who live off-grid, do for entertainment