Happy Spring!
If you signed up to work at the CSA this week but didn’t
get an email asking for your confirmation, you’re not working at the CSA this
week.
CSA weather report…hot with a slight breeze. Air
quality – BAD till midnight today (for ground level ozone and fine
particulates…ugh…not a day to be doing any work/exercise outdoors, and people
with lung/breathing/heart/health issues need to be aware)
DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CSA SHARE IN YOUR CAR FOR ANY LENGTH OF
TIME (it’s too hot and it will not be happy, and won’t last as long as it would
if it were happy…which happens at about 40 degrees 😊).
Important…if you ever send anyone to the CSA
to pick up food for you, please tell them to BRING BAGS (and make
sure at least one of them is plastic for the wet foods so you don’t get the dry
ones wet which would not be a good thing…will make the foods that don’t want to
be wet rot faster)!
CSA Events coming up this month…
CSA Culinary Extravaganza at Blind Bat for this month
needed to be cancelled but will be rescheduled HOWEVER, may still have a
restaurant outing elsewhere this month (stay tuned 😊)
Saturday, June 21st – CSA Spring Harvest Farm Tour
(at our CSA farm, Green Thumb Organic Farm, Water Mill)
Details about this see below and in your weekly CSA Events
email!
This email includes…
- What you need to know
- CSA Spring Harvest Farm
Tour coming NEXT WEEK!
- Wonderful resource for
CSA Members
- Food safety and
COVID-19…
- Click activism…every
little bit counts!
- What you actually got
last week
- And now, for something
completely different…
*Anything in any of our CSA emails not directly related to the functioning of the CSA, feel free to take or leave at your discretion, and anything related to health issues always consult with your physician(s) before taking any action.
1.What you need to know (will be either new info to
first time CSA members, or reminders/old hat to returning CSA members)…
Most immediate helpful hints…
- Bring at least TWO bags
to the CSA EVERY WEEK for wet and dry food items (and never
the twain should meet)
- When packing up your CSA
food, start at the left side of the long table and work your way to the
right and go out the garden door. Why? We set out the food to be packed in
that order so the heaviest food items will be on the bottom of your bag,
and your food won’t get squished (another way to make your food go bad
faster), and if you separate the wet from the dry foods you’re doing
pretty good on having your food last longer! 😊
- When you get your food
home, if it’s in a plastic bag take it OUT of the plastic bag and store
elsewhere…even if it’s in another plastic bag (the original bag will be
too wet and your food won’t be happy there for long)
- Plan on using your food
in the order of how long it will reasonably stay fresh.
Before you leave the house…BRING BAGS
to pack up your food (CSA members are responsible for packing up their own
shares) – canvas/plastic/paper…bring whatever suits your fancy. The CSA does
NOT provide bags for CSA members.
Time – 3:30pm to 7:30pm
Place – Sky Room Café in the Cinema Arts
Centre at 423 Park Ave, Huntington
Parking – park in the all the way around at
the back of the building by the day care center (you’ll see a fenced in
playground area with a sandbox)
When you arrive at the CSA –
- Check in at the sign-in desk with our friendly CSA
worker
- Read the Wall Chart that tells us every week what we’re
getting, how much we’re getting, and what the farm charged us for it…some
weeks it’s take one of everything but…SOME WEEKS IT’S NOT!!! So you have
to make sure you read the Wall Chart every week, and not assume anything.
You can also ask your fellow CSA members that are working that day what
the story is for the day (they should have name tags on).
Before you leave the CSA – Make sure you have everything on the list (like the story of the 3 bears…not too much, not too little, but just right 😊)! If you get to talking with people, have kids with you, etc., it can be easy to be distracted and if you get home and find out you don’t have everything that was on the list, you’re out of luck because at 7:31pm the food is donated to a local food organization (Community Solidarity…read more about them in the CSA Events email under Tuesdays) that’s waiting to pick it up and get on their way.
Veggie info sheets are added as needed. This is the link to the: Veggie Info Sheets. Print them out, put them in a notebook and you end up with a cookbook at the end of the CSA season. Also, there are good tips on storage, prep, and nutrition.
CSA words to live by…when trying any new food you’ve
never eaten before…START SLOW!!! Read up about it (make sure it doesn’t
interfere with any medications you might be taking or any health conditions you
might have), see what traditional/conventional ways it’s prepared (cultures
that have been eating certain foods for many years basically have a good idea
what they’re doing, and we can learn from that), try a small portion, see how
your body/digestive system reacts, and proceed from there. Then try preparing
in different ways and see what you come up with, and feel free to ask for
suggestion/info/recommendations!
Paraphrased wise words by a nutritionist that I read (and
don’t remember where I read it or who said it), BUT it’s pretty smart info
regarding eating seasonally in our part of the globe…
Spring… is all about detoxing (what we get
from the CSA at this time is a lot of green things that are really good to help
clean us out from whatever we accumulated during the winter)
Interesting piece about spring greens (out of the 14 listed,
we get 12 of them with our CSA…watercress nutritionally and botanically similar
to Curly Cress/Peppercress) and detoxing…
http://www.nourishingmeals.com/2012/03/detox-with-spring-greens.html
Summer is all about being hydrated (the
popular summer foods are all full of water…Tomatoes, Lettuces, Summer Squashes,
etc.)
Fall/winter is all about storing energy (we
get all the dense vegetables…Sweet Potatoes, Winter Squashes, etc…. that are
energy powerhouses to fuel us through the winter) to get you through the winter
to make it to…Spring!
Week #2
June 12, 2025
- Garlic Scapes – 1 bunch
- Dandelion Greens – 1 bunch
- Curly Cress* – 1 bunch
- Lettuce – 1 head
- Lavender – 1 bunch (and yes…it is edible 😊)
Total Items: 5
Herb Share – June 1A
Chives: Garlic AND Mint
Flower Share -Week #1
Peonies
Please let me know if any of these links are no longer
functioning…
*Cress, Curly
It’s speecy spicy, very good
for you, and goes well in small amounts in any salad, sandwich, wrap for
starters…read on…
https://harvesttotable.com/cress_cress_is_a_common/
https://www.healwithfood.org/health-benefits/garden-cress-nutritional-benefits.php
Pepper Cress – tangy/spicy
herb that can be used raw in salads, on sandwiches or wraps and you can toss a
small amount in at the end of a stir-fry or cooked recipe to give things a bit
of a culinary punch
http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/peppercress
Peppercress Aioli…
https://food52.com/recipes/10884-peppercress-aioli
more Peppercress recipes…the
Smoothie/Juice and Hummus recipes look pretty good (weights need to be
translated as this is from the UK)…
https://www.florettesalad.co.uk/recipe-category/peppercress
more recipes from a place
that does Peppercress Sprouts more than growing them in soil outdoors…
http://www.urbancultivator.net/learn-about-peppercress/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_cress
Web MD on “garden cress”
(basically same as Pepper/Curly Cress)…
2.CSA Spring Harvest Farm Tour coming up NEXT WEEK!
Saturday, June 21st
11am/12pm
CSA Spring Harvest Tour
Green Thumb Farm
Montauk Hwy.
Water Mill
To register:
Reply to this email or leave a voice message at
631-421-4864, and either way leave your name and the number of people in your
party
Want to see where your CSA food is coming from? Have any
questions about our CSA farm or about your own home gardens? This tour is for
CSA members and their immediate family only (Green Thumb Farm does not do tours
for the general public). It’s one of two times we get invited to visit our farm
each year (the other one is in October). If you are sharing a CSA Share with
someone, the tour is technically for the CSA Member only BUT usually what will
work is the CSA Member goes on one tour and the CSA Share Partner goes on the
other tour using the CSA Member’s name (because as far as the farm is
concerned…you don’t exist 😊!). The tour will be a
walking tour lasting approximately 1 hour. Dress appropriately (closed shoes,
sun protection, etc.). It will be rain or shine (barring torrential downpours
and thunderstorms). CSA members receive a 10% discount off of all purchases at
the Green Thumb Farm farm stand (including vegetable, herb and other plants for
your garden 😊).
After your farm tour, I’d suggest planning on eating at the
food truck (Hardwood Poke Co.…local Tuna line-caught used by owner of the food
truck AND they have a vegan option AND some of the produce they use might be
from Green Thumb Farm 😊) that’s going to be
parked at the farm (unless they sell out and then I’d suggest to make a trip to
Barrow Food House in Aquebogue…on the way back travelling west). I’ll be eating
at the food truck after the noon tour UNLESS they’re sold out and in that case,
will go to Barrow Food House.
Check out the websites for the eateries (and their menus)
here…
Hardwood Poke Co. – I have yet to eat here BUT every CSA
Member who has wants to do it again (that’s a good review in my book 😊)…
Barrow Food House – with most entrees between $16 and $20,
for the Hamptons, that’s like going to McDonald’s 😊…can
eat inside or outside and the food is local and good (have eaten at least half
of what’s on their menu 😊)…
3.Wonderful resource for CSA Members
Want to know more about what foods you’re getting at our
CSA? Check this out…
Seasonal Food Guide
https://seasonalfoodguide.org/
Keep in mind we’re not going to be getting everything listed
(for example we’ll never be getting Ramps or Morels as they’re usually foraged
and not farmed), but it is useful for the foods we do get.
You can get the app, or just use the website to find out what’s seasonal and local for New York, and then click on “seasonality” and then click on “cook and learn” for more info.
4.Food safety and COVID-19, flu, etc.…
Even though it’s been a while since the word “pandemic” has
been bandied about, people are still getting COVID (there’s new variant going
around) and other illness. And the lessons we learned during the past few years
can still come in handy today to avoid basic things like colds and the flu.
Watch writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (son of a Harvard University
geneticist and immunologist, grandson of a chemist, and author of Food Lab:
Better Home Cooking Through Science), talk about COVID-19 and food safety…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkvw9lZ3v3I
And read in more detail here…
After keeping the CSA going thru 2020 and 2021 while the
Cinema Arts Centre was closed (with everyone staying healthy using the simple
practices of wearing face coverings, hand washing, and social distancing), this
is where we are now at this moment in time…
- Face coverings are
optional
- Hand washing upon
entering the theater is recommended (it’s always a good idea in preventing
COVID as well as the flu and colds)
Why COVID HATES soap (works better than hand sanitizer or
gloves), and we’re talking plain soap, NOT antibacterial soap (the use of which
causes antibiotic resistance which could kill us all ☹)…
https://healthmatters.nyp.org/how-does-handwashing-with-soap-kill-the-coronavirus/
- Will try and keep the
CSA area relatively uncrowded if any future outbreaks of any infectious
diseases occur
- Enter near the Box Office entrance, and exit thru the door that leads out to the Cinema garden and upper parking lot stairs
5.Click activism…every little bit counts!
Join me in telling Congress to stop the so-called "Food Security and
Farm Protection Act," U.S. Senate Bill 1326!
The so-called "Food Security and Farm Protection Act," S. 1326, a
repackaged version of the EATS Act, would nullify California's ban on the sale
of pork from hogs bred in gestation crates, chickens raised in battery cages,
and calves raised in veal in crates. A majority of the state voted to pass that
law (Prop 12) in 2018, and after a legal challenge, the US Supreme Court upheld
the ballot initiative in 2023. S. 1326, introduced by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA),
is the industry's attempt to undo the ruling. The name of the bill is ironic as
it would, in fact, weaken food security and remove protections for farmers,
while rolling back animal welfare standards. The top beneficiaries would be
foreign corporations.
https://advocacy.organicconsumers.org/page/72566/action/1?chain
6.What you actually got last week
Week #1
June 5, 2025
- Beans: Black Turtle – 1 bag (2/3 lb.) - $4.00
- Scallions – 1 bunch - $6.00
- Tarragon* – 1 bunch - $4.75
- Lettuce: French Crisp, Red – 1 head - $4.50
- Strawberries – 1 pt. - $6.50
Total Amount: $25.75
*Tarragon
Please let me know if any of
these links no longer work…
https://food52.com/blog/12703-fresh-tarragon-and-its-5-best-uses
https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/tarragon-tips-recipes-chicken-steak-article
http://www.herbwisdom.com/herb-tarragon.html
https://www.spiceography.com/tarragon/
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/t/tarrag07.html
http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/tarragon-herb.html
We pay our farm $23 per week for our CSA share…some weeks we get a bit more, some a bit less. This week, it was $2.75 over $23.00. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but it adds up over the course of the CSA season (at the moment it’s a total of $2.75 more food than what we paid). We seem to always get at least one CSA share’s worth of food every year that we didn’t pay for…some years two, and last year it was almost four weeks worth extra, so we’re talking almost $80 worth of food we got gratis…it’s all good! 😊
5.And now, for something completely different…
Sometimes, you really need to take time to read and follow
directions when cooking…
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