THE BEET: Volume 13, Issue 15

THE BEET : VOLUME 13, ISSUE 15

In this week’s BEET:

1. Share Allocations
2. Halloween Pot Luck Party!
3. Milk not Jails inventory
4. Composting Volunteer Opportunity
5. Lewis Waite Farm
6. Letter from Ted
7. Moussaka

CSA Pickup Today 5-7:30pm

PS 56 at Gates and Downing (enter on Downing)

A Few Announcements

Share Allocations:

The last few weeks, we have been coming up short at the end of the night during pick ups.  We are asking everyone to please pay careful attention to the amount of each item allocated to your share.  As the weather has been affecting crop yields this year, Ted carefully packs each bin with the correct numbers of vegetables per share.  So if you accidentally take an extra squash, or onion, that means another CSA member, who comes in later may not get one.  The extra food that is donated to the soup kitchen, is only in the crops that Ted has a surplus of, which right now, is only a few items.

Halloween Pot-Luck Party

Our Pot-Luck Dinner is back this year!  And we want you get involved!  The annual pot luck dinner is a fun-family friendly night where we can all get together, share some delicious home cooked farm food, have a few activities for the kids- such as pumpkin painting, or apple bobbing, and for those who are inspired- to do it in costume.  Yay!

We need some volunteers to help out getting this all together, and we hope everyone will sign up to bring a dish and share this dinner together!

Sign up at the check in table when you pick up your share!

Party Date:  Thursday, October 30th

Milk non Jails pick up information

There has been a bit of confusion with the pick ups for Milk not jails.  Please bring your confirmation email either in paper form, or on your smart phone with you when picking up to make sure you get all your goodies.

Volunteer Opportunity: Compost

Do you still need to fulfill your volunteer hours?  We need help disposing of our compost.  During each pick up a small amount of compost is generated- some lettuce leaves, carrot tops, ect . .  and we need someone to volunteer to pick it up and dispose of it each week- either in a personal compost, at the Fort Greene Farmers Market compost collection (Saturdays) or in another earth friendly way.

Up until this point, we had been contributing it to the compost at the school, but they are now all full, and unable to accept any more.

Please email me if you're interested:

newsletter@clintonhillcsa.org

Extras for Next week: Lewis Waite Farm

Want to order some extras to fill out your pantry?  Place an order here for pick up next week.

Here's a short note from them:

As summer winds down, here at Lewis Waite we are gearing up for the fall.  All staff, new and veteran, are looking forward to sending all your favorite products to you this fall as you start eating inside again. Using the oven and crock pot? We have stew hens, soup or marrow bones and many other inexpensive cuts to make your own nutritious soup/stew stocks. Don’t forget there is no waste when it comes to meat. All cut offs, bones, etc can be thrown in the freezer and saved for a soup night. Not sure what to do with your extras? Send us an email or try the recipe below from Shannon Hayes.  We are happy to point you in a delicious direction. Here's an article on how to make a lip-smacking great stew.

Letter From Ted & Windflower Farm

The weather man has been predicting temperatures in the low 30's for tonight, which, if it were to come to pass, would be happening a little bit early for us. In fact, it would be devastating. First off, we are not ready to say goodbye to our tomatoes or peppers. Secondly, we fully expect the beans and sweet corn to hang in there a few weeks longer. And, finally, we’d like our carrots to have more time to bulk up. I don’t really expect any of these crops to come to harm tonight, but I also know that their days are numbered, and that, within the month, they’ll all be gone, to be replaced with root crops, bulbs and tubers - the feel-good foods of fall - along with cold-hardy greens and broccoli. We’ve passed the two-thirds point in the farm season, leaving us with just eight more distributions, including this one, and we now begin the transition from summer crops to fall crops.

Last week, we harvested our Butternut squashes, completing a winter squash harvest that included pie pumpkins, Buttercups, Acorns and, my favorite, those pretty and delicious green and white Delicatas. We’ve also recently completed harvesting and trimming our red and yellow onions and garlic. See the attached photos. And we are well into our potato harvest. These storage vegetables, along with the beets, turnips, carrots, garlic, fennel and leeks we have yet to harvest, are the crops that, to me, make fall (and winter) such a wonderful time in the local foods cycle.

Be on the lookout: winter share details will be coming shortly.

This week’s share will include corn or beans, a head of lettuce, your choice of kale or collards, plus tomatoes, sweet peppers, chiles, eggplants, potatoes and onions. Enjoy! Next week’s vegetable share will be similar, but we’ll add winter squashes, continue to juggle who gets corn and beans, and change the greens lineup to keep it interesting. Your fruit this week will be Yonder Farm’s ‘Stanley’ plums. Bon appetit!

All the best, Ted

Recipes:  Moussaka

Now that the weather is cooling off at night, we can turn our oven's back on without fear that the house will over heat.  One of my favorite things to make in the fall: Moussaka.  It uses up all the good fall vegetables, and even though it's a heartier dish, there's  no filler in it like pasta or grains.  It's all  veggie goodness (or veggie + meat goodness.)

Moussaka originated in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Like many ancient dishes, it has a number of regional variations.  “Moussaka or musaka, often written as musakka, is a meat and vegetable stew, originally made from sliced aubergine (eggplant), meat, and tomatoes, and preferably cooked in an oven.  The Greeks cover the stew with a layer of beaten egg or béchamel sauce. Elsewhere in the Balkans mussaka has become a much more various oven-baked casserole, admitting many more vegetables than aubergine or courgette, often dropping tomatoes and even meat.

I’ll warn you in advance, this is not an simple dish to prepare. While the steps themselves are pretty easy the process is time consuming. This dish would be best suited to a special occasion, like a Sunday family gathering, when you have a few hours to prep and assemble the ingredients. Serve the leftovers during the week– the dish refrigerates and freezes well.  The end result is worth the effort– it’s scrumptious, with layers and layers of amazing flavor.

Here's a link to a delicious vegetarian recipe.

Clique here for the classic Meat-lovers version.

Happy Baking!