Winter Share 2011-12 – Week 11

Taco Themed, with some extra goodies including pork chops and sorghum syrup

This week brings back a few family favorites – the taco theme. We have tasty organic corn chips and organic Black Turtle beans from Shagbark Seed and Mill, along with a variety of salsas from Blaze Gourmet, and mixed greens from our friends at Healthy Harvest in Middlefield. Finally, we have the last of the winter’s frozen sweet corn that will compliment the taco theme well.

As a meat choice to go with the taco salads this week, we are going to have a selection of available sausages, including ground pork (unseasoned), ground italian sausage, and some link chorizo. All should lend themselves well to the taco salad theme.

Finally, I just had a call from a fantastic local program called Cleveland Crops. It is an initiative through Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities (see article here: http://topics.cleveland.com/tag/CleveLand%20Crops/index.html). Their focus is to take abandoned Cleveland properties, such as the Stanard School, and turn it into a productive farm. They are succeeding and growing awesome produce.

This week they uncovered their row crops from the winter and found lots of beautiful kale. They need to cut it out to get new kale and particularly carrots in the ground so they can be ready for Fresh Fork in early June.

Oh, and the surprise ingredient this week. Sorghum syrup. What is it? Well, it’s like a slightly more bitter version of molasses. Molasses is made from cane sugar, and since that doesn’t grow in Ohio, we don’t have that. Sorghum is a type of wheat. It has several advantages to the farmer. First, it is a good source of protein for animal feed, particularly chicken feed. The top, or sorghum berries, are harvested for feed. The roots are deep and strong and tend to break up heavy soils. And the stalk can be pulped and boiled to make sorghum syrup. This is kind of a rare situation but we embrace it.

This week’s newsletter will include several recipes for sorghum syrup as provided by Parker Bosley. In general, think of substituting it for brown sugar, molasses, and maple syrup, although not a 1 to 1 ratio. Usually use less sorghum or blend it with the other sweetners.

Here’s all of this week’s bag contents:

Winter CSA Wk 11:
1 pack pork loin chops
1 bag corn crackers
2 lb black turtle beans
1 pint salsa
1 bag mixed salad greens
1 pint sorghum syrup
1 dozen eggs
1 lb assorted sausage
1 lb sweet corn
1 lb kale, bunched