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2nd Tuesday!

Too much zucchini on your hands? Chef Joshua Stokes of Grill a Chef will be with us at the pickup this Tuesday from 5:15-7:30 to answer any kitchen questions you might have about how to make the most of your share via new ideas, different techniques, or just general info. So bring your culinary quandaries, whatever they might be and hopefully he can help you sort them out.

Grill-A-Chef personally guides cooks through their own kitchens, in order to encourage cooking and eating well. It offers free advice in the form of tips, recipes, fundamental techniques and simple demos. Use an unfamiliar ingredient, try a new style… Grill-A-Chef hopes to inspire creativity in the kitchen and to help your ideas to the table. See the latest newsletter here.

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Amplify Exhibition at Abrons

Our hosts at Abrons Arts Center have invited us to tonight’s opening reception for their Amplify Exhibition. From the postcard:

How to live a creative and sustainable life?

Designers, academics, organizations, and urban activists joined forces to identify individuals and communities that are creating more sustainable ways of living and working.

The exhibition will ask questions and demonstrate new ideas for solving old problems by showcasing installations about creative communities on the Lower East Side and around the world.

Opening reception is tonight, 6-8pm. The exhibition remains open through September 15.

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Plum Crumble

CSA member Amy Carlson suggests this recipe from the New York Times for this week’s Italian plums:

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1½ tablespoons plus 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
  • ¼ plus ½ teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
  • 2 heaping tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger
  • 12 purple Italian or prune plums, cut in half and pitted
  • ¾ cup granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 well beaten egg
  • ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
  • Vanilla ice cream, optional.

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 375 degrees, with rack in center.
  2. Thoroughly mix brown sugar, 1½ tablespoons flour, ¼ teaspoon cinnamon, ground ginger and candied ginger. Add to plums and mix well. Arrange, skin side up, in ungreased, deep 9-inch pie plate.
  3. Combine remaining sugar, baking powder, flour, cinnamon and salt. Mix well. Stir in egg. Then, using hands, mix thoroughly to produce little particles. Sprinkle over plums.
  4. Drizzle butter evenly over crumb mixture and bake 30 to 35 minutes. Crumble is done when top is browned and plums yield easily when pricked with cake tester. Remove from oven and cool.
  5. Serve warm or refrigerate for up to two days or freeze well covered. If reheating, bring to room temperature then warm at 300 degrees. If desired, serve with ice cream.

Total time: 50 minutes
Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

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Watermelons are not melons

Waterberries

Fun fact passed along at distribution this afternoon and confirmed tonight on the internet: watermelons are actually berries.

It has to do with the fruit being produced from a single ovary, and seeds embedded in and spread throughout the flesh of the fruit.

Just to drive you crazy, that means grapes, bananas, and tomatoes are really berries, too.

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Fresh Fruit Compote

CSA Member Donna Gallers shares this recipe:

This refreshing dessert is a great way to use up all that extra fruit from the farm share or farmer’s market before it gets over-ripe (or even when it does — just cut away any parts that are bad). It is thickened with kuzu root starch, which is available as a chunky powder in natural food stores, often in the macrobiotic foods section. The kuzu adds no discernible flavor to the dish.

Prep & cooking time: Approximately 45 minutes (plus cooling time if serving chilled)
Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients:

  • 3-4 cups fresh peaches and plums (I used 6-8 small peaches and 6 small prune plums)
  • Handful of blueberries if you have them
  • 3 tbsp kuzu root starch
  • 1 ½ cups water
  • 1-2 lemon wedges
  • 1-2 tbsp natural sweetener of your choice (optional—you can try agave, honey, maple syrup, etc. I have also used lucuma powder.)

Directions:
Wash, pit and cut fruit into small pieces (approx. bite size). Place in a saucepan and add water. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat. Add the juice of the lemon wedges, and sweetener if desired (I like the naturally tart fruit flavor and often leave mine unsweetened).

Simmer at low to medium heat for about 20 minutes, until fruit softens and breaks apart. (You can help it along by mushing up some of the fruit with a wooden spoon, but leave some small chunks for texture.)

Dissolve kuzu root starch in 6 tbsp cold or room temperature water.** Add to the fruit and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until thick. Pour into dessert dishes. Serve warm or chilled. If served immediately, dessert will be a very thick liquid; for a more gelled texture, chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour (this is how I prefer it!).

Serve plain or be creative with toppings: try chopped nuts, granola, or (for chilled version) a dollop of fresh whipped cream or plain yogurt.

You can also experiment with cooking other fruits, such as nectarines, berries, or cherries. If you like a tart dessert, try adding some cranberries.

**The general rule for thick desserts is: 1 tbsp kuzu dissolved in 2 tbsp water for each cup of liquid, i.e. cooked fruit. So if you cook a larger amount of fruit, increase kuzu and water accordingly.

Donna Gallers is a licensed massage therapist and holistic health coach based on the Lower East Side.
www.donnagallers.com or www.dgallers.vpweb.com

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Zero Waste Weekend at Hester Street Fair

With help from the Lower East Side Ecology Center, Hester Street Fair is hosting a Zero Waste Weekend, this Saturday and Sunday, 10am – 6pm, at the Fair on Hester and Essex.

  • E-Waste — computer monitors, keyboards, mice, scanners, printers, fax machines, cables, TVs, DVD players, etc. A great opportunity to get rid of the broken-down junk cluttering your closet.
  • Compost — collecting compostable items and demonstrations for setting up simple composting bins in your home.
  • Fabric and Clothing — donate your unused clothing and fabric.
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Podcast: Farming, Economics, and Government Involvement

From this week’s Just Food CSA Newsletter:

As a CSA member, you are probably lucky enough to know your farmer, how they grow their crops, and you can be confident that your payments are helping a small farm to be both environmentally and economically sustainable.

But what about the large-scale farms that produce most of our food in this country? Where does the money for this kind of agriculture come from, and how well is that system working?

The environmental news & commentary blog Grist recently posted a podcast featuring an interview with “local food economist” Ken Meter to discuss this issue. In the podcast, Meter and host Tom Philpott look at the history of agricultural loans and subsidies, government programs for farmers that have been lost, and lessons that we should have learned from previous economic disasters. The second part of the podcast, in which Meter and Philpott will discuss alternatives to this system (like CSA) that help keep wealth in our communities, will be posted next week.

To listen to Part 1 the podcast, click here.

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Just Food’s Veggie Tip Sheets

Some of you have seen at distribution a big notebook with a page for just about every vegetable we might get during the season (and many we won’t) — from Aji dulce peppers to Yukina savoy.

The notebook has over 100 tip sheets, with advice about how to store, prep, and cook various items. They’re prepared by Just Food, the great organization that helps set up CSAs in NYC (and helped get us started in 2008).

Now Just Food’s Veggie Tip Sheets are available in their entirety in your web browser.

For example, from this week’s shares, cucumbers:

  • Cucumbers need to be stored in the refrigerator in order to retain their moisture.
  • They will keep well for up to 10 days in the refrigerator drawer if they are kept whole.
  • Once they have been cut, cucumbers will deteriorate quickly.

Also, did you know that only one gene separates a nectarine from a peach? It’s the gene that makes peaches fuzzy.

Thanks to core member Jeff Schiller for getting these digital files by correctly answering a trivia question at Just Food’s recent CSA picnic. The question: from how many states do NYC’s CSAs get their food? Answer: four. (But he’s not sure which four!)

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The C in CSA

There are over 100 families participating in the Grand Street CSA this year. In 2008, when this CSA first started, membership was made up largely of people who had heard about it through the LES Parents forum and therefore already had some things in common. But since then, the CSA has grown larger and broader, picking up many people who just happened across distribution one week and signed up on our wait list, not necessarily knowing anyone else who belonged but just wanting to get their hands on our beautiful vegetables.

And slowly the C in CSA — Community — grows up.

Distribution is a great time to get to know your neighbors. Each week, you’ll see children playing with each other on the steps at Abrons, and members swapping recipes or just chatting about summer vacation. Communities like ours — casual, collaborative, routine, local — aren’t always so easy to find in NYC. Aside from the good food, it’s one thing that makes the CSA such a rewarding project.

And, by and large, everyone’s been amazingly helpful and flexible. Muted reaction to our disastrous second distribution was a strong indicator of members’ willingness to ride the unpredictability of our partnership with the A in CSA. But we wanted to remind everyone of three things you can do to reinforce the cooperative nature of our community:

Put your volunteer shifts in your calendar.
Everyone is required to work two volunteer shifts during the summer. Based on your own indication of availability, we’ve filled up the whole calendar already. Don’t wait until we send you a reminder five days before your assigned shift, please check our calendar now and find your name, then put it in your own calendar so you don’t forget.

Please wait until set-up is complete before picking up your shares.
Farmer Dave has a long drive from Connecticut every Tuesday, and he can’t always make it down on time. When he’s late, please wait until CSA volunteers have finished setting up the bins, labeling the shares, and writing up the white board before you start to bag your own vegetables. (Or better yet, lend a hand.)

Measure carefully.
Please weigh your produce carefully, checking the accuracy of the scale first with an empty bowl. We’ve run out of a few items recently before the end of distribution, which is not fair to members who can’t make it to distribution until 8pm.

That’s it. Thanks for your help.

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More Chances for Beef Shares this Year

If you missed our grass-fed beef sign-up this spring, you’ll have a few more chances to participate. Woodbridge Farm will be providing us with beef over the next three or four months, and you can sign up whenever you have the urge. The order form below has the details: