Summer Share 2014 – Week 16

Can you believe it is

week 16 already?  This cool spell this last week has really brought it to my attention that the growing season is

nearing an end.  It is bittersweet for us.  We love the bounty of the summer and the energy of our summer

season, but the harvest time of year gets exhausting.  If you think of it this week, thank the drivers and staff at

the back of the truck who have been working around the clock lately.  Mike, Kevin, Eric, and I have often been

running double farm runs on a day – meaning we’ll go out and fill and entire truck up, return, unload or switch trucks,

then hit the road again.  Last Tuesday, for example, we brought back 62 pallets of food and had to do the same routes

on Thursday and Friday morning to fill the supply for the rest of the week.  Needless to say, our warehouse was

jammed full!  Just now Kyle and Brandon are finishing cleaning up the docks and cooler to get ready for Mike and

Kevin to get back with the first loads of this week’s produce this afternoon!

And in house here,

Lauren and Michelle been holding down the fort and keeping all the orders organized and getting them out the door!

It’s been crazy.

This week’s newsletter

is quite long.  Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to write much for it lately and I have a lot to talk

about.

Here is the quick

“table of contents”

–          Packing the bags

–          Upcoming Events

–          Winter Season and “Put ’em up”

–          Salmon buying club 2014

–          Product Feature:  Peggy’s Pickles

–          Recipe Feature:  ratatouille

PS Please bring your bags back this week.  We’ve had poor bag return

rates lately.  (I had to sneak this in somewhere!)

Thanks

Trevor

Bountiful bags and long lines.  That brings a

second thought to my mind.  Sorry about the waits the last month on the bags.  Some bags are much more time

consuming to pack than others.  Last week’s bag was possibly the worst we’ve ever had.  All the bags were

bursting, but the larges and vegetarian bags had 24 items in them!  As you could tell, they didn’t even fit in the

bags…and you should have seen the back of the trucks!  Sadly, this happens to be the luck of the draw because when

the crops are ready to harvest, we have to take them.

Further, last week’s

bag contents cost more than what you paid for the bag!  We’ll have to make that up in the last 6 weeks so I’ll try to

shop wisely for you over the next few weeks.

This week, we

lucked out and the cool weather slowed some things down.  This week’s bag will be significantly easier to pack with

fewer ingredients and fewer variables between the bags.

Upcoming Events.  As we close in on

our winter season, we do still have a few events coming up.  We have the emails scheduled to come out gradually over

the remainder of the season, but here is a “save the date” list:

Sunday, Sept

21:  Uptown Popup Dinner with Chefs Parker

Bosley and Adam Lambert.  A few seats remain.  Details and registration HERE for Uptown

Popup.  Here are some photos from last week’s Raw Vegan Popup Dinner:  Photos Here.

Sunday, Sept

28:  Customer Appreciation Pig Roast and

Potluck.  Lots of family activities, a free event, and a day full of fun.  Please join us.  Details and registration HERE.  A

deposit is required so that we can plan accordingly for staff, tables, and our dish.

Monday, Oct

6:  Ethnic Eats with Chef John Selick. 

More details to come as we work out the menu, but expect some good eats and info.  Registration link (with limited

details) here: Ethnic Eats

Monday, Oct

14:  Cabbage Mania with Parker Bosley. I’m

really looking forward to this one as cabbage is a favorite vegetable of both Parker and I.  More details about the

menu to come, but registration is open at this link:  Cabbage

Mania

Monday, Nov

10:  My favorite event of the year, Thanksgiving

Beer Dinner.  It is just what it sounds like.  A full T-Day feast with multiple preparations of turkeys,

countless sides, and delicious sides.  We’ll demo several of the recipes and answer questions from the attendees

about how to master their Thanksgiving feast.  Full dinner and beer included.  This one sells out fast.

This year’s menu to come later.  Registration link here: 

Thanksgiving Beer Dinner

Photos from last year’s Thanksgiving Beer

Dinner.

There may be a few more

surprise popup dinners coming this fall.  I’ll let you know soon.

Put

’em up!  This is the time of year to start processing

veggies for the winter (if you haven’t been doing so all along).  Below are some ideas and things you can find on our

website, many available for pickup this

week:

Roma

Tomatoes:  tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, oven dried tomatoes (like sun dried), dehydrated tomatoes,

frozen tomatoes (to sauce later or use in stews).  $20 per half bushel (approx 20#)

Hot

Hungarian Peppers:  hot pepper slices, stuffed hot peppers, pickled hot peppers, Italian hot peppers in

oil, pepper butter (like a homemade mustard).   $18 per half bushel

Apples/Pears:  apple/pear sauce or apple/pear butter.  Pears are in now and

again at the end of the month, then apples should continue to come in most of the winter thanks to controlled atmosphere

storage.  Pears $20 per half bushel.  Apples  $32 per bushel (45-50#).  Both will include an

additional $6 crate deposit.

Cabbage:  make your own sauerkraut!  $2.5 per large head. 

Peggy’s Pickles

Speaking up “put ’em

up,” fellow customer Peggy S from Solon has been working hard at putting up her organically grown pickles.  Peggy

started a cottage industry business creating refrigerator pickles.  Her dill pickle spears are crunchy with a nice

acidic zing and a light dill hint.  Peggy’s Pickles are not canned; instead, they are fermented and are sold as

refrigerator pickles.  This means you must keep them cold and the benefit is that there are live, healthy enzymes in

the pickle due to the fermentation process.

Peggy sells her pickles

by the 32 oz jar (quart) and each jar is $6.50.  The supply is limited this year to about 100 jars and they may be

preordered at http://csalogin.freshforkmarket.com

Winter

Season.  The Fresh Fork Market winter session starts

the week of November 3^rd.  For those who have done it before, you can attest to the fun.  We start

with 3 consecutive deliveries then start every other week schedule to skip the holidays.  The winter season is 15

deliveries and it lasts until mid-May.  There is only one size bag (essentially the summer large bag) and no

vegetarian or vegan options available (such options wouldn’t be a fair value in the winter).  The bag comes out to

$45 per delivery, which is every other week.

We’ve been working hard

to get ready for the season.  A few weeks ago I made an impromptu drive to upstate New York to buy an automatic bean

snipper. This machine trims the tails and tips off of green beans and wax beans at a rate of 1,000# per hour!  This

made is possible for us to buy Jonas Hershberger’s 6,000# of beans last week.  Yeah, we put a few beans away already.

Here are a few photos of it

in action.

We’ve also been using

the corn husker and cutter that I bought last fall to process sweet corn. We’ve already put about 15,000# of sweet corn

into the freezer for the winter.

Other frozen vegetables

include peas, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and diced heirloom tomatoes.  Clark Pope and some of our other

producers have been working hard as well to “put up” tomatoes into sauce and other preserves for you this winter.

Full details about the

winter season and registration can be found here: Winter

Season Details

Salmon Club 2014:  Wild Caught Alaskan Salmon

Ok, now I got your attention. Clearly not local, right?  Well there

are some things that we will never source local here, and some fellow Fresh Fork subscribers have turned me on to a truly

fantastic product.

Jill S and her friend Freddy organize a “buying club” in Cleveland for the

Wild Salmon Company out of Asheville, NC.  Heidi, who lives 9 months of the year in Asheville, grew up in Seattle and

her family has always fished salmon in Alaska.  At age 15, her dad bought her a commercial fishing permit for one of

the fisheries in Alaska. Today, she has fished every summer for 20 years in Alaska.

Heidi and her boyfriend catch the fish and even sort them for quality and

package them for sale. The product is sushi grade, IQF frozen.  It is fantastic and very reasonably priced (since she

is selling direct).

Last winter, Allyson and I traveled down to Asheville to help Jill and

Freddy out and pick-up their salmon.  We were very excited to meet Heidi and learn about her operation.  It was

fascinating.  And because I have no control, I decided to bring back 200# for last winter’s customers to try.  I

get emails weekly to this day asking when we’ll have more.  It is really that good.

This year we worked with Heidi in advance to buy a whole pallet and ship

it back to Cleveland directly from the processor in Seattle.  This year’s fishing season just ended and Heidi is in

Seattle now sorting and grading the flash-frozen fish.  The salmon will arrive in Cleveland in October and will

be distributed during the week of October 13^th.

Because we were able to work with Heidi before she started packaging, we

were able to get the cream of the crop – all center cut filet portions graded by size. 

Usually she sells random weight boxes.  I know that is a recipe for disaster when you need to split them up.  So

we worked to get you all the same size portions.

The center-cut, wild caught Alaskan salmon filet portions are

available by the piece and by the 10# box.  The pieces average about 6 oz each.  They are $18.50 per lb,

so $7 per serving. For those who know they will eat it, think about buying a whole 10# case and saving.  10# cases

are $165 per box and average about 26 portions per box.

You can purchase this preorder via http://csalogin.freshforkmarket.com.

When shopping, we didn’t want to create a special category just for

fish.  Look under Meat.  This is a once per year opportunity and once it is gone, there won’t be any until next

year.

Note: This is a preorder and the product will ship during the week

of Oct 13.  Please keep your confirmation email, print it out, and put it on your fridge to remind you to get it the

week of Oct 13th.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes, Zucchini,

Squash, and Eggplant – about equal proportions zucchini, squash, and eggplant and three times as much tomatoes,

chopped.  So if you have 2 cups of zucchini, 2 cups squash, and 2 cups eggplant, add 6 cups tomatoes.

Garlic – a few cloves

sliced small

Onion – 1 large onion,

roughly chopped

Green Pepper – 1 to 2

peppers, cut into long strips and then in half

Salt and

Pepper

Start by preparing all

your vegetables.  Cut the zucchini and squash into cubes about a half inch by a half inch.  For the eggplant,

cut the skin off and also cube it up.  Toss the zucchini in a bowl with a little sunflower oil (or olive oil).

Season with salt and place on an oiled cookie sheet.  Do the same to the squash and eggplant.  Keep all

ingredients separate.

Roast the vegetables in

the oven, turning them once or twice, until they start to have color and a lot of the water is baked out.

In a heavy bottomed

pan, get some oil hot.  Add your onion and pepper and saute until slightly translucent.  Add the garlic but be

careful not to burn it.  Now add the tomatoes and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat down to a simmer.  Add

the roasted eggplant, zucchini, and squash and let simmer until it thickens.  This can take a while depending on the

tomatoes.  You can also transfer to a crock pot and let it simmer there.  Add a few tablespoons of honey to

mellow out the acid.  Continue cooking until consistency you desire is reached (I like mine more thick).  Check

for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.  Serve as a side dish, main course, or a condiment (I like serving

it over mac and cheese).

This is one of my

favorite recipes from the summer cooking classes so far.  This one is from our Easy Meals class we had last

month.  Start by cutting your zucchini and/or squash in half (not lengthwise).  Then quarter each half

lengthwise, essentially into jo-jo fry shape.  Cut your cherry tomatoes in half.  Shred some sharp, dry cheese,

such as the Hulls Trace Aged Cheddar.

In a hot sauté pan, add

some sunflower oil.  Toast the zucchini/squash until they start to brown some.  Flip them a few times and

repeat.  Add the cherry tomatoes for the last few minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Remove from the

heat and toss with the shredded cheese.  Serve.

By Parker

Bosley

1

large butternut squash

1

large onions

4

thick slices bacon

1

cups chicken stock

salt and pepper

To cut the squash:  Cut the “neck” from the bulb.  Split

each of the resulting two pieces.  Remove the seeds and pulp.  Cover the squash with foil and roast the squash

in a 350 degree oven for about an hour or until the pieces are very soft.  The “neck” portion will take longer.

This is the reason for separating the two parts of the squash.

While the squash are roasting cut the bacon in one inch pieces.  Sauté the bacon in a heavy bottom pan that

will be used to make the soup.  Adjust the heat to prevent the bacon pieces from becoming crisp.

Peel and slice the onions.  When the bacon has rendered its fat, add the onions.  Cook the onions

until they are very soft and beginning to color.

Remove the flesh from the roasted squash and add it to the bacon and onion mixture.  Add the chicken stock

and enough water to cover the ingredients.  Cook for about one hour.

Puree the soup in a food processor or blender.  Pass the soup through a screen. 

Taste and add salt and pepper.  Remember the salt from the bacon so you may not need much

salt.

Garnish the soup with fresh herbs, sour cream, whipped cream or an herb butter. 

This soup can be made in large batches at the end of the season when you have an abundance of squash.  You

can use most any hard squash-acorn, buttercup, Hubbard, turban or a combination of several kinds.

You

could also use only a small amount of chicken stock and create a squash puree to serve as a vegetable rather than a

soup.  Make ahead and use later.  Place the squash in a gratin dish and back it just enough to

reheat.

The

soup and the puree can be frozen for winter use.