Tortilla Espanol with Microgreens

This 5 ingredient dinner (6 if you count the garnish) was made entirely with CSA ingredients (except for salt and olive oil). This recipe is from my host mother when I lived in Madrid years ago.

Ingredients
5 medium sized potatos, diced
1 large onion, diced
5 eggs (an egg per potato)
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup olive oil
Microgreens for garnish (optional)


Procedure

• In a large nonstick skillet heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the potato and onion, stirring periodically until tender but not mushy - about 10 minutes or when the edges of potatoes start to brown.
• Turn off heat and remove potato and onion mixture from the pan with slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel. There should be a thin layer of oil left in the pan.
• In a separate bowl whisk eggs and salt. Add potato and onion mixture and stir to combine.
• Reheat the olive oil over medium heat, and pour in potato/onion/egg mixture. Cook for about 5 minutes (without mixing) until edges begin to solidify. It's ready to flip when you peek under the tortilla and the eggs have turned brown. Flip* and cook on the other side for 3-4 minutes.
• Slide onto a serving platter and garnish with microgreens.

*If flipping in the pan makes you nervous, slide the tortilla onto a plate cooked side down, put the pan on top of the plate and flip. Now the tortilla is back in the pan, uncooked side down.

Pickled Snap Peas

I'm not sure if folks have already seen this over on smittenkitchen, but I made some great pickled snap peas last week with the snap peas from Star Hollow and they were divine. Just like the folks over at smitten, I could not wait to the two weeks for them to pickle and dove in after about two days. They were wonderful.

Here's the link: http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/06/pickled-sugar-snap-peas/#more-3353

And here's the recipe. Hope you enjoy!

Pickled Sugar Snap Peas
Adapted from The Joy of Pickling via Epicurious

1 1/4 cups white distilled vinegar
1 1/4 cups cold water
1 tablespoon kosher or pickling salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 pound sugar snap peas, stems trimmed and strings removed
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1 or 2 small dried chile peppers, slit lengthwise or a couple pinches dried red pepper flakes

In a nonreactive saucepan, heat the vinegar with the salt and sugar until they are dissolved. Remove from the heat, and add the cold water. (This gives you a leg up on getting the liquid to cooling the liquid.)

When the vinegar mixture is cool, pack the sugar snaps, garlic and chile peppers or flakes into a 1-quart jar or bowl, and pour the brine over it. Cover with a non-reactive cap, or, er, plastic wrap.

The original recipe suggests you store the jar in the refrigerator for two weeks before eating the pickled peas, but good luck with that. They’re quite delicious and already lightly pickled by 24 hours later.

June 27 Farm Message

STAR HOLLOW FARM NEWS

For the week preceding Saturday, June 27^th, 2009

General news & info

Happy official summer!

Produce: new or back in the store this week are...

• ON SALE: microgreens (probably the last for the summer), red tomatoes, garlic scapes, Jerusalem artichokes (end), golden delicious apples (end), all relishes, and our Star Hollow Farm eggs.

• Greens: Asian greens mix, green curly kale, hydroponic arugula (this week in smaller portions for less $).

• Other vegetables: Romano Italian flat-pod beans, already-shelled peas (one of the Mennonite farms we get produce from has a sheller), quarts of new red potatoes, cousa Lebanese zucchini.

• Cheese: We have Pipe Dream's ash logs and demi-sec again, probably just for this one week.

• Preserves: Mrs. Brechbill (the retired mother of our cheese makers at Whispering Brook) has been at it already this year, and has a fresh supply of strawberry / rhubarb jam.

On the farm: After all that rain, we are pretty doggone wet up here. There was about 2 inches in the gauge Saturday night. The kids and I spent Sunday — Fathers Day and the first day of summer — cleaning up around our pond, and we all spent a beautiful evening at the campfire ring up there, watching the stars come out and listening to the bullfrogs. A perfect Summer Solstice and day with the family.

Our fields are still quite wet, but the boys and I got another thousand winter squash planted last night after dinner — this time the Confection kabocha that we experimented with and liked so much last year. Today will be the Sunshine red kabocha and dark green kabocha. Aside from the ease, multipurposeness and goodness of butternut squash, I guess kabochas are our favorites. Hope you like them too! They are dry and flaky in texture, and about the sweetest of all winter squashes.

Last week's rainy market: That was really something — one of our rainiest markets ever. The thunder and lightning added a nice touch to the outdoor market. We all got pretty well soaked, but amazingly our outdoor sales were pretty good... people kept coming in spite of the rain. That doesn't usually happen, and it made up for my missing store link in the email reminder last week.

Open-farm invitation:

We are pleased to invite you to our "open farm" (as opposed to open house!). Please see some of the details below.

WHAT: Star Hollow Farm Fourth of July get-together. We invite you to join us to see the farm, our crops, our chickens, meet and get to know us and the others who come. We have 2 other get-togethers scheduled for the first weekends in August and September.

WHERE: Our farm, in Huntingdon Co., PA, approximately a 3-hour drive north of DC.

WHEN: Over a 24 hour period from Saturday afternoon, July 4, until Sunday afternoon, July 5. (The times correspond to about when Randy will get home from market on Saturday and run 24 hours. By Sunday afternoon we'll need to be cleaning up and getting ready for Monday!)

TRANSPORTATION: There is no public transportation option for getting anywhere near us, unfortunately, so I think we're limited to your private vehicles. It's about 125 miles on the road from DC (100 miles as the crow flies, but that doesn't help most of us) and a three hour trip, at legal speeds. For those of you with seats to spare, and who are willing to provide a ride to those without wheels, please email us ASAP and give us your name, tel. number, and number of seats available. We'll then make up a list and have it at the CSA table/truck in Adams Morgan the next two Saturdays for those needing rides to peruse and make calls.

DIRECTIONS: Email us for directions. Print them out and bring them with you. Beware that they need to be followed closely or you'll end up somewhere else. Finding specific locations in the country, where road signs are often missing, is not nearly as easy as deducing an address in neatly-planned DC. GPS directions will try to take you across a creek at a fording that can be dangerous in high water. And the directions from MapQuest are clearly wrong in several ways and would not likely get you to us. If you just want to look at a map and get an idea where we are, look for either Maddensville or Selea, in Huntingdon Co., PA. Each are within 2 miles of us.

CARAVAN SUGGESTION: If you want to do it on your own, that's fine. If you like the idea of just following our white truck up the highway, here's what to do: either drive up and meet us at 18th and Columbia in Adams Morgan at 1:30, when we're loaded up from market, and we can caravan up from there. If you want to avoid that scene, meet us at the "always closed on Saturdays" truck weigh station on I-270 north of Gaithersburg, on the way to Frederick, at something like 2:00-2:15.

FOOD & BEVERAGES: We are planning on providing beer, iced tea, apple cider, coffee, hot tea, and well-water for all. If you need something else, please bring it. We have a large walk-in produce cooler where you could keep your own food and drink.

• Saturday supper: This is a potluck affair, but based on the distance involved, we're thinking "cold dish" or at least easily heated up. We'll provide marshmallows and sticks for an after-dark campfire. We'll also have Firehook bread, and if we can get our old charcoal grill cleaned up, some grilled veggies.

• Sunday breakfast: We'll make coffee and tea, and fry up scrambled eggs and potatoes, as well as provide homemade muffins. If you need something else, please bring it.

• Sunday lunch: Light fare of fruit, salads, drinks and leftovers.

CLOTHING: Our farm is out in the wilderness; not much like what you'd picture if you're thinking Montgomery Co., MD, or Lancaster, PA. We have mown paths along the creek and around fields, but they are not golf course or state park quality. If you plan on leaving the front lawn, you should be prepared with long pants, socks and shoes. We are not short on poison ivy wherever we don't mow regularly. We've also got several varieties of snakes that call our farm home, as well as plenty of mosquitoes and ticks. We have a nice creek below the fields, with a good spot to sit and cool off, so if you want to bring trunks or cut-offs, feel free. And evenings can be cool.

What if you forget to come for your order? The standard protocol is that we'll bring it home, put it in our cooler, email you and ask if you'd like us to bring it the following Saturday. In the winter everything is still usually fine. At this time of the year, that will not be the case, but you'll surely still find something useful in there. If we bring it a second time and you don't come that time either (which happens more than I would have guessed) we're done. FYI, it is deducted from your account the week you place the order.

Star Hollow CSA blog: http://starhollowfarmcsa.blogspot.com/ will connect you with our farm blog, where you can share recipes or other ideas related to food and the farm. Email Michele (smcasto@gmail.com) if you want to become a “contributor.” You don't have to email her if you just want to look at what others are saying and respond.

CSA-Specific News

Planned CSA produce for this week:

This week the plan is for a pint of cherries, a Euro cucumber (greenhouse, seedless, non-bitter), baby red beets with tops, snap peas, garlic scapes, a red tomato, and a bunch of herbs from our garden (most likely to be French sorrel or summer savory, but may include something else if we don't have enough of either of those for all the CSA boxes). Enjoy!

Adams Morgan CSA volunteers. Thanks to Jen and her mom and Kirsten and Susanne and the children for their help handing out orders last weekend.

Thanks for your support!

Randy, Chris and all at Star Hollow Farm

June 20, 2009 Farm Message

STAR HOLLOW FARM NEWS

For the week preceding Saturday, June 20^th, 2009

General news & info

Hello all!

Produce: new (or back) this week are..

• Greens: hydroponic arugula, red chard, catalogna dandelion, large spinach.

• Veggies: green beans, fava beans, bunched beets, purple broccoli, cucumbers (Euro, slicer and pickling), horseradish, kohlrabi roots, yellow squash, Prudens Purple heirloom tomatoes.

• Berries: Sweet cherries

• Herbs: micro-basil.

On the farm: It's been a busy week already, and it's just 6:30 on Wednesday morning. The rain has let up, and we got a lot done over the last two days: prepared ground for an acre of winter squash and planted 1000 delicata plants and 1000 butternut plants. We also transplanted 1200 popcorn plants! That's more than usual, but we like popcorn, so... (hope you do too!)

Open-farm dates: The first “open farm” is just two weeks away, on July 4^th and 5^th.

Star Hollow CSA blog: (http://starhollowfarmcsa.blogspot.com/) Email Michele (smcasto@gmail.com) if you want to become a “contributor.”

CSA-Specific News

Planned CSA produce for this week:

This week the plan is for a pint of strawberries, pint of cherries, summer squash, red tomato, sweet onion, green beans, snow peas, golden delicious apple. Enjoy!

Adams Morgan CSA volunteers. Thanks to Heather and Katie for their help handing out orders last weekend.

Thanks for your support!

Randy, Chris and all at Star Hollow Farm

Potato Salad with Sugar Snap Peas and Radishes

I haven't made this recipe yet, but it looks like a great way to use lots of the things in our CSA box this week.

• 1 1/2 pounds unpeeled assorted fingerling potatoes or baby potatoes (such as white-skinned, red-skinned, and purple), cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
• 8 ounces trimmed sugar snap peas
• 1 bunch radishes, trimmed, sliced
• 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Steam potatoes on steamer rack set in large pot over boiling water until almost tender, about 10 minutes. Add sugar snap peas and steam until peas are crisp-tender and potatoes are just tender, 1 minute longer. Transfer vegetables to large bowl. Cool slightly. Add radishes and onion. Whisk next 4 ingredients in small bowl to blend. Whisk in Parmesan. Season dressing with salt and generous amount of pepper. Add dressing to potato mixture; toss to coat. Season with more salt and pepper, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Also, here's an interesting recipe for radish leaf pesto.

06-13-2009 Farm Message

STAR HOLLOW FARM NEWS

For the week preceding Saturday, June 13^th, 2009

General news & info

Hello all!

Produce: new (or back) this week are..

• Greens: Lacinato kale, collards, baby arugula.

• Veggies: Organic asparagus, broccoli, shell and snow peas, new red potatoes, gold squash.

• Mushrooms: Star Hollow shiitakes

• Cheese: Keswick Creamery's cheddar, feta, dragon's breath, ricotta. Pipe Dream's goat ash log and demi-sec.

• Berries: Strawberries

• Herbs: a dozen kinds of herbs total, this week with larger basil, cilantro, dill, tarragon, summer savory.

On the farm: I just looked back over the message I wrote last year on this week. We had just begun planting potatoes because it had been so wet. Onions were just going in also. So, even though the wetness has held us back this spring, we did have some dry earlier that we didn't have last year, and we're actually well ahead of planting over last year. Our 5 varieties of winter squash are all ready to go out into the fields whenever it's dry enough. I had about 4 hours on Monday afternoon that the ground was dry enough to work, but I chose to hill and cultivate the potatoes that were already a foot tall and pretty weedy over planting squash. Always tradeoffs. It rained again during the night, and so we're waiting for dry ground again.

Shiitake mushrooms: We're tickled that our shiitake mushrooms are starting to produce. We go up each morning and harvest the mushrooms that look ready from the soaked logs on the fruiting stand and then start soaking more logs for the next batch. Within a day or two the mushrooms start popping out of the logs. We've also soaked the oyster mushroom logs, but aren't seeing any action there yet. We've reduced the portion size on the shiitakes to just a quarter pound, so that they're not so expensive. (Shiitakes are typically the most expensive of the commonly available fresh mushrooms around, and the log-grown versions are notably more flavorful and more highly regarded than the house-grown ones.)

What does LOCAL mean? And why should we care? Local food has been touted lately as being better for the environment, more nutritious, better tasting, and good for local communities. We're always reading the ag press and seeing what they have to say on the subject. We got the "Local Harvest" e-newsletter last week, and it contained their definition, which I'll include. "Local food is grown near here, on a human scale, by people who care deeply about the land and make thoughtful, conscientious choices for its stewardship. It is nutritionally intact and fantastic tasting (!)... Its history is knowable and unsullied... In other words, local goes way beyond geography. It is food we know in our bellies we can trust... Real food." A bit pretentious and self-serving, but we agree!

PASA gathering: We had about 40 or so folks over last Sunday afternoon for a tour and potluck, people from our south-central region that are members of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. It's PASA's winter conference that we take a week off to attend, and then tell you about afterwards, when we're all “charged up.” It was fun, and we had a beautiful afternoon / evening to enjoy it. I hope that we are as lucky with our CSA open farms, starting next month!

Open-farm dates: The first “open farm” is less than a month away. Below are the dates we've set aside for our open-farm get-togethers.

• July 4^th and 5^th, August 1^st and 2^nd, September 5^th and 6th

Star Hollow CSA blog: (http://starhollowfarmcsa.blogspot.com/) Email Michele (smcasto@gmail.com) if you want to become a “contributor.”

CSA-Specific News

Planned CSA produce for this week:

This week the plan is for a pint of strawberries, a bunch of Lacinato kale (aka Dyno, Black, or Tuscan), a small bag of lambsquarters (wild spinach), a pint of snow peas, a pound of new red potatoes – the first of the season, a head of bibb lettuce and a few radishes to go on top, along with some onions. Enjoy!

CSA box values. Someone asked a week or so ago about why the dollar value of the CSA boxes isn't always $15.00, as it was last year. Since we had said the box would be $15 originally, we felt locked into that amount. Then, about this time last year, it occurred to me that the way our bookkeeping works there was not really any reason why it had to come out to exactly $15, which was often a challenge for us. So we did a survey and asked for any comments about having a “roughly” $15 box, but variable from week to week. Every person who responded said fine. It's only been since we've gotten under way this year that we've actually enacted that, and so now perhaps you're seeing it for the first time, depending on whether you've been ordering all along or not.

Adams Morgan CSA volunteers. Thanks to Barbara & Chuckie and Lily & Tyler for their help handing out orders last weekend.

Thanks for your support!

Randy, Chris and all at Star Hollow Farm

recipes for greens?

I'm preemptively trying to find a (vegetarian) recipe where I cook the kale and possibly wild spinach (in this week's box). Any suggestions?

Pesto

Unfortunately I haven't had much luck with herbs in my apartment (my windowsill is either too sunny or too shady), so I'm quite fond of the herbs from Star Hollow. As such, I've made a number of pesto's, since I usually have leftovers from whatever it is I'm cooking. Making pesto is a great way to use herbs, and it freezes really well (and defrosts quickly for an easy after work dinner). I've made pesto with any combination of herbs and nuts that I have on hand (basil, sage, tarragon, almonds, walnuts, pine nuts...). I bought this tarragon for a terrific potato salad recipe, and had a bunch left. This pesto is about half a large garlic clove, a scant one cup of tarragon, Pecorino Romano, toasted pine nuts, salt and olive oil. I will likely use with pasta, or, if I'm motivated, use in a variation of a pork chop recipe that was in the NYT the other week. For now, though, it's in the freezer!

The best thing we've tasted since pear season...

Many thanks to the Macks and Martins!

Log-grown shiitakes at Star Hollow Farm

June 6, 2009 Farm Message

STAR HOLLOW FARM NEWS

For the week preceding Saturday, June 6^th, 2009

General news & info

Hello all!

Produce: new (or back) this week are..

• Greens: Rainbow chard, green kale, red Boston lettuce, bunched spinach.

• Veggies: Sugar snap peas, Baby beets with tops, baby sweet white turnips with tops, kohlrabi with tops, French breakfast radishes, yellow tomatoes.

• Cheese: Goat cheese: ash log and demi-sec.

• Berries: STRAWBERRIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Other: This season's strawberry jam.

More changes to store checkout pages: Last week we added a graphic look to the pages, highlighting “page 1 of 4,” etc. with the idea of reducing the number of people that didn't get to page 4 of 4 (and thus not really submitting the order they thought they placed). It was not 100% effective. This week we've added a larger, more conspicuous “Continue” button, in a bright color, and renamed it “Next Step.” Maybe that will also call attention to the need to keep going. (It's our Star Hollow Farm “Next Step” program for recovering order abandoners.)

Another thing we're going to try to improve is the “SELECT PICK-UP SITE” drop-down box. Every week there are folks who don't select anything, or people in a hurry who select the wrong site. Until we get to that, however, if you would try to be extra thoughtful to select a site, and have it be the one you really want...

On the farm: We've been hard at it, trying to get field work done in between cloudbursts and thunderstorms. We got in our second acre of potatoes before a rain on Monday, and then were able to cultivate the first-planted potatoes that are already a foot tall and were weedy as could be, so now all of our potatoes are under control. For the moment. (And you don't want to mess with Out-of-Control potatoes, believe me.) (It's early, I'm tired, and this is what happens.) (Sorry.) (!)

Now it's time to shift over to our next largest crop, winter squash. We have planted 1200 plants each of butternut, acorn, delicata, and gray, green and red kabocha squash in the greenhouse. Still to go are 1200 buttercup. After the ground dries out again – we had a tremendous thunderstorm and downpour, knocking out our power last night – we'll start laying plastic mulch and transplanting out the squash.

We're also tickled that our shiitake mushrooms are starting to produce, although rather slowly. We've set up our “fruiting stand” and soak logs each day. Within a day or two the mushrooms start popping out of the logs! Pretty cool, though at first observation, it's not as many as we would have hoped :( I'm sure there is a lot more to learn about them, and they don't exactly have my undivided attention at this time of the year.

Star Hollow CSA blog: Why not cut and paste this link into your “bookmarks” now? (http://starhollowfarmcsa.blogspot.com/) We'll also put it in the weekly emails. Thanks Michele! email her (smcasto@gmail.com) if you want to become a “contributor.”

Open-farm dates: The first “open farm” is just 4 weeks away. Below are the dates we've set aside for our open-farm get-togethers. Those weekends are:

• July 4^th and 5^th

• August 1^st and 2^nd

• September 5^th and 6th

You're invited to spend anytime from Saturday noon to Sunday afternoon with us here. We'll show you around, talk, relax, eat, etc. We ask you to bring a dinner dish with you for Saturday evening, and we'll make you eggs and potatoes for breakfast Sunday. Camping is available anywhere on the farm... no indoor facilities are available for sleeping. If you're interested, let us know in advance and we'll email you directions.

CSA-Specific News

Planned CSA produce for this week: (“Strawberries,” he shouted.)

This week the plan is for a quart of our first strawberries, some Boston lettuce, microgreens, a few garlic scapes, an onion, one or two log-grown shiitake mushrooms, a red tomato, and a bunch of herbs (spearmint or oregano or chives). Enjoy!

Adams Morgan CSA volunteers. Thanks to Ruth and Eva and Jodie and her daughter for their help handing out orders last weekend. (Request from the farm: if you decide you can't make your shift the following week, and you cross out your name on the volunteer calendar, please tell Randy right then so he can ask people to sign up there at the truck.)

Thanks for your support!

Randy, Chris and all at Star Hollow Farm

Tuscarora Frittata

This frittata was made entirely with ingredients from the farmer's market: onions, mushrooms, spinach, eggs, and soft goat cheese. The goat cheese is so delicious, I could add it to just about any dish. I've been using it mostly for salads - greens, toasted nuts, dried cranberries, oil/lemon/mustard and the goat cheese crumbled over it all - lovely. I've had it spread on a grilled hamburger - mouthwatering. It's also nice on a cracker with a little slice of fruit. If you haven't ordered the goat cheese yet, you really should. It's divine.