July 2 - Vicki's Vegetable Ventures

Curious crops
Is there anything better than young tender lettuce at the beginning of the growing season? I do look forward to those early-summer salads. Still, getting surprised is also a benefit of belonging to a CSA. It forces one out of a safe veggie comfort zone of salad and broccoli and into a curious world where garlic grows in long serpentine curls, where an ugly-looking vegetable like kohlrabi can produce a most amazing dish.
Determined not to let the kohlrabi get the best of me, I searched and searched online for a good recipe. Finally I settled on a broccoli-kohlrabi slaw with a hummus-inspired dressing. I figured any recipe that begins “tahini, olive oil, lemon” has to be a winner … and it certainly was. I also grated into the slaw our radishes and those peculiar garlic scapes, which have found their way into several dishes lately.

Herb medley
I had planned to use our arugula for flatbread pepperoni pizza topped with olive-oil-dressed arugula, a Friday night favorite that gets devoured even by my husband Ray, who’s typically not a big pizza fan. But when he stepped on the scale that morning and was dismayed at the number staring back at him, I figured pizza was too much of an indulgence.
That was also the day our Chatfield garden expert Leigh Rovegno emailed us shareholders about the hotness of some of the crops due to high heat, suggesting we might want to cook the arugula and spinach instead of eating them raw.
So our Friday night pizza became grilled salmon topped with lime and some dill from our share, along with a greens combo of arugula, spinach and kohlrabi leaf braised in olive oil and garlic scapes.
Normally a copious user of fresh herbs, I struggled a bit this time to use up all of our herbs. So a couscous dish that called for parsley only wound up with finely chopped parsley, tarragon and mint, a lively trio that made the whole dish sing.

Those who make things grow
Last year when I started writing the blog for the Chatfield CSA, I remembered with fondness my father’s abundant garden in Lexington, Ky., where I grew up. My dad passed away last month at age 90, just at the beginning of the growing season, which I thought appropriate for such a venerable gardener. One of the best messages I received was from my friend Dave DeLeo. He recalled my first blog post last year where I talked about my dad doing “organic gardening” long before anyone ever used that term.
“It's amazing how some people have an instinctual relationship to the earth and to growing things,” Dave wrote. “When you wrote about him in his garden, I saw someone who helps things grow and who provides nourishment and encouragement. Things like vegetables, flowers, children. Every neighborhood needs that good gardener who shares his extra delicious tomatoes and string beans.”
Funny, I feel the same way about the folks growing our wonderful vegetables and herbs at Chatfield. When Leigh emailed us about damage to some of the crops because of storms, I imagined the whole staff dismayed by the harm to plants they’d been nurturing. So thanks, guys, for tending the fields and making our garden grow!