Cook for Grand Street CSA in Just Food’s Great CSA Smackdown!

Put your local food skills to the test and Cook for Grand Street CSA!


THE COMPETITION:

Just Food is challenging New York City CSAs to show off their cooking talent and local food skills with the GREAT CSA SMACKDOWN: a city-wide cooking competition for members of Just Food Network CSAs. CSA members will be pitted against each other as they prepare a delicious dish around an assortment of ingredients directly from their CSA share! With only 30 minutes to cook, competitors will need to rely on their speed, skill and creativity to make the cut. Winners will advance to a city wide final-round event, representing their CSA community in the quest to come out on top of the GREAT CSA SMACKDOWN.

Grand Street CSA will be holding its round of the Smackdown at the end of September (date/location TBD). We’ll have details on where and when in the coming weeks. Register to compete here!


Interested in finding out more? Keep reading …

THE CHALLENGE:

To cook a spectacular seasonal dish using local CSA ingredients.


THE TIMELINE:

First Round: on at date to be determined (September 27th – 30th)

Venue and exact time: TBD

Final Round: October

The winners from each first round competition will come together for a final-round event hosted by Just Food.

Venue and exact date: TBD


FIRST ROUND REQUIREMENTS:

Ingredients

Each competitor or team must select their main ingredients from their own CSA share from the current week.

Grand Street CSA will provide the following staple ingredients for all competitors to use:

– Olive Oil

Salt

Pepper

Vinegar

Butter

Eggs


Grand Street CSA will provide a portable butane burner. Competitors are responsible for all other cooking utensils/equipment, limited to the following items plus 3 Additional pieces of Kitchen Equipment as described below:

1 pot

1 pan

1 cutting board

1 knife

2 mixing bowls


Optional

Up to 3 Flavor Enhancers: spices (curry, cardamom, etc.), herbs (dill, mint, etc.) and sauces (teriyaki, soy sauce, etc.) only.

Up to 3 Pieces of Additional Kitchen Equipment (i.e. knives, mandolins, food processors, whisks, etc.).

Just Food Will Provide:

Apron for each competitor.

One prize for each GREAT CSA SMACKDOWN finalist.


FIRST ROUND RULES:

RULE 1: COMPETITORS

Competitors can compete as an individual (one person) or as a team (two people).

At least one person in each team needs to be a Network CSA member.

Each competition event must have at least 2 competitors/teams participating.

Total number of competitors is flexible. Please keep in mind your location capacity.


RULE 2: FOOD

To provide an even playing field, please confirm that all competitors have the exact same CSA share to compete with (i.e. same vegetables and quantities).

As stated above, each competitor can bring up to 3 flavor enhancers and 3 pieces of kitchen equipment.

Each competitor is free to make any type of dish they want (i.e. raw, cooked, breakfast, lunch or dinner dish)

Competitors should use their own CSA share from the current week unless additional shares are purchased from their CSA farmer.

Please try and organize your event on or close to the distribution date so that the food is as fresh as possible.


RULE 3: TIME ALLOTTED

Competitors will be allotted 15 minutes for washing produce and prepping their station and 30 minutes to cook a dish.

The MC should start and stop the official clock, and provide commentary during the 45 minutes of competition.


RULE 4: JUDGING

Three servings should be created for the 3 judges.

Judges must use the following criteria for determining the winner:

Taste: Up to 10 points

Presentation: Up to 10 points

Creativity: Up to 10 points

CSA share use: 1 point per CSA share ingredient used

The scores of the three judges will be added together for each competitor’s total score.


RULE 5: WINNER

The winner with the highest score will receive an exclusive prize and be invited to attend the finals round competitor event to compete for the ultimate title!

NYT: Celebrate the Farmer

You all know this, but it bears repeating (and is nourished by Mark Bittman’s thoughtful prose):

… most cooking is dead-easy and pretty quick: it takes 20 minutes to roast a marrow bone, and an ambitious fifth-grader can get it right on the first try. … But raising and butchering the cows and pigs that produced the marrow bones and meat for the chorizo? Growing the corn? These are tasks that take weeks, if not months, of daily activity and maintenance.

Go read the whole thing.

Swap Box Etiquette

Our swap box — a new addition to distribution this year, thanks to a suggestion from our friends at the (late) LES CSA — has been generally well received. It’s a nice easy way to have a little bit more control over the veggies you get to take home each week. Chances are there’s always someone who’d love a little extra of exactly the item you don’t want to take home … and vice versa. The box hasn’t always been prominently placed, but please do look for it if there’s something you want to drop in it.

Ah, and there’s the rub: please don’t just take. Turn on your own inner sense of justice before interacting with the swap box, and make sure your super ego — not your ego (or your id) — is in charge.

Basic rule of thumb: take something, leave something.

Thanks.

CSA Smackdown (details to follow)

Just Food — the non-profit that starts and supports CSAs in NYC — is putting together an Iron Chef competition for CSA members called the CSA Smackdown. The basic idea is a 30-minute cook-off using one week’s veggies from Provider Farm. We’d have our own competition, and the Grand Street winner would move on to the finals to compete against other CSA cooks from all over New York.

We’re still putting together the details, but we are planning on participating. Look for more information here and in your inbox.

Wash Your Loose Greens

As a bit of a follow-up to the question of how to deliver loose greens, a few members have asked recently if the lettuce and spinach we receive has been pre-washed. The answer from Max:

Yes the farm washes all the loose greens they have bagged for us … but you should probably give everything another good rinse yourself before eating.

This Week’s Vegetables & News from the Farm

The hail may have dinged up the crops a bit but we still have loads of food:

  • Beets
  • Broccoli
  • Carrots
  • Cucumbers
  • Kale
  • Spring Onions
  • Salad Mix
  • Cilantro
  • Scallions
  • Summer squash
  • Zucchini

New this week, carrots! We should have them until the end of the season.

News on the Farm — You gotta lose to win

Dear Friends,

What a past few weeks of extremes! After a couple sweltering days of stifling heat, we had a post card perfect weekend, only to be followed by torrential down pours, lightning and hail last Monday morning. Our crops made it through the heat just fine, really enjoyed their weekend, and were optimistically looking forward to rain on Monday. I always tell the crops “be careful what you wish for” but they don’t listen to me and last Monday greeted them with 5 inches of rain and hail.

We suffered some pretty major hail damage to some pretty minor crops (unless you REALLY love cilantro and cutting lettuce, than it was major damage to major crops). We are very fortunate that our fields all drain extremely well. That is one advantage to the rocky, gravely Connecticut soil the glaciers left us with. On the farm I used to work at in Massachusetts, after a rain like that, you would need a small row boat to go out and check your peas and carrots. I am pleased to report that aside from the initial damage of the storm, we suffered no residual damage.

There is something I find strangely comforting about the storm damage we experienced this week. When things go wrong on the farm and in the fields we tend to blame ourselves. If the tomatoes blow down, it is because I didn’t do a good enough job trellising them. If a deer eats our lettuce it is because I didn’t maintain the fence properly. If the fence was maintained properly and the deer got in any way it is because I am sleeping at night instead of tirelessly guarding the lettuce. But when rain and hail flatten 4,000 row feet of leaf lettuce, what could we have done? It is out of our hands, and for that reason, it rolls off my back a little easier.

I have learned over the years that in order to be a successful farmer you have to get used to the idea of loss. We lose crops all the time on the farm. If one plant dies we can barely even tell. I feel like I can’t even see individual plants any more…only rows of plants. When more than one plant dies we do start to pay attention. Sometimes we can help, other times we can’t. Our best laid plans are often disrupted by pests, weather, diseases and weeds. All we can really do is prepare the best we can and be creative and resourceful. Being a CSA farmer and having the support of our share holders makes accepting the inevitable losses a lot easier to swallow. The diversity of our farm gives us strength, when some crops fail, others thrive and each week the CSA baskets are full.

Speaking of loss, it seems appropriate to mention that late blight has been confirmed in New Haven Country (two counties over from our farm). Late blight is a disease that can absolutely devastate tomato and potato crops. It is the culprit responsible for the Irish potato famine and it can take down an acre of healthy plants in under a week. Late blight is technically a leaf mold, and like other molds it needs water, and damp conditions to spread. If it is hot and dry late blight is much less of a problem than if it is cool and damp. As organic farmers we are fairly ill-equipped in dealing with many agricultural pests and diseases when compared with our conventional counter parts.

In many cases we almost expect the diseases and insects to be present, and just plant extra to compensate. We expect our cucumbers and squash to get diseases and die. That is why we plant three successions of them. Late blight however is a different story. Late blight is on our ‘serious problem’ list with a few other specific diseases. The only thing that we can do to stop late blight on the farm is to prevent late blight on the farm. Once it appears in the field it is often too late to stop it. If cool, damp weather persists we will use an organic anti-fungus spray to help protect our potatoes and tomatoes. It is absolutely essential that we scout our fields on a regular basis and watch for signs of the disease. Late blight can spread quickly and even just a few infected plants undiagnosed in a home garden can easily produce enough spores to affect hundreds of acres of crops. If you do not know what late blight looks like please check out this link.

Well, that was a bit of doom and gloom, but sometimes that is life on the farm. It’s not all bad though, after a long wait it looks like the carrots are finally here, and that is certainly something to smile about!

On behalf of your farm crew, Tana, Kara, and Larry

Your Farmers Max and Kerry

Provider Farm
(860) 222-5581
www.providerfarm.com

June Bake Sales Were a Great Success

Michele Egan writes in about the success of her June bake sales:

Hi CSA members!

Our bake sales were a success, we raised close to $1,100 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Thank you to all for your support, week after week! Thank you for allowing your kids to buy treats then negotiating to hold off until after dinner. We all know how much fun that is!

Special thanks to Jeremy Sherber, Erica Cullman, Katia Kubicek, Teresa Wong and Ron Baltazar who baked and/or helped us sell! Also thank you, Daria Segalini for helping Michele carry all her stuff back to her apartment!!!!

What an amazing community we live in. Feel free to come cheer for us on July 8th in Central Park.

Best-
Michele, Sara & Kate

You can also contribute here.