Full share & 💛 yellow💛 half shares

218 Gates Avenue between Classon and Franklin
(IMPACCT Brooklyn at the Gibbs Mansion)
5:00 to 7:30 pm

Special guests + core meeting at tonight’s distribution!

Tonight’s distribution should be very busy indeed! We’ll be joined by some friends from Big Reuse (if you haven’t been to their warehouse in Gowanus - check it out! A+ thrifting!), in partnership with NYC Department of Sanitation, to talk to us about curbside composting, which begins borough-wide in Brooklyn on October 2! They’ll have compost and leaf bags to give away, and can help you get set up for composting in your building.

We’ll also be holding a core meeting beginning at 6:15 - if you’re curious about how the CSA works, you’re welcome to stop by and join us!

Sign up for work shifts - only 6 weeks left in the season!

Believe it or not, we’re in the final third of our CSA summer season. If you haven’t already, please sign up for work shifts today! As a reminder: all CSA members who complete their required work shift hours (4 hours for full shares, 2 hours for half shares) will be entered in a raffle at the end of the season! If you have any questions about fulfilling your work hours, please reach out to volunteer@clintonhillcsa.org

This week’s share

Eggplants
Tomatoes
Sweet peppers
Greene Romaine lettuce
Spinach
Radicchio
Yellow onions
Various summer squashes
Fruit: Windflower’s own husk cherries 👒
Extras: eggs, bread, mushrooms, granola

Teased in last week’s letter - a potato harvest instagram post!

News from Windflower Farm

According to the Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog, “the mildly bitter flavor of radicchio adds a nice touch to mixed salads.” The variety that we are sending this week is called ‘Virtus,’ which is a Sugarloaf type. Our Fedco Seeds catalog says that it “looks like Romaine crossed with Napa cabbage.” On her Lopez Island Kitchen Gardens blog, Debby Hatch says, “to cook it, I’ve braised the outer leaves in olive oil and garlic and served them as a side dish or as part of a pasta sauce. She has “also sliced the heads in half, brushed them generously with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and ground black pepper and grilled them.” Radicchio goes well with pears, nuts and Gorgonzola cheese, and with sherry or red wine vinaigrette.

It’s not much fun when things don’t work as they are supposed to. We awoke on Monday morning to find our cooler on the fritz. The thermometer read 55 degrees, too warm to keep vegetables for very long. I suspect that the problem originated with last week’s one-two punch: a heat wave followed by a power outage. Ready to tackle the problem, I put on my amateur plumber’s cap and coveralls. My spare parts box contained the previous year’s broken part – a motor contactor - but not a spare replacement (as it would have if I were a professional), so I headed off to my HVAC distributor in Bennington, a 90-minute round trip (where this time I bought two). But it turns out that the contactor wasn’t the broken part after all! And so, I called Gene, who, along with his dad before him, has taken care of our cooler ever since we bought the thing. But I was only able to leave a message, and I am sitting near the phone as I write. He’ll call; he’s very dependable. In the meantime: a precaution you might take at home is to bathe your greens in very cold tap water before putting them into the crisper drawer of your refrigerator.

Have a great week, Ted

P.S. It turns out that Gene did call. He spent all of 10 minutes here and the cooler is now working fine.

Recipes

Radicchio Caesar salad, 29 ideas for eggplant, and everything you ever needed to know about husk cherries.

Did you know? Our website has recipes, food storage tips, and information about the vegetables you might come across in your share!

Volume 22, Week 16