Greetings CSA Members!

(Or non-members who happen to be reading, or even potential future members…)

Heading into our first CSA week 2019, we’re so excited to have you on board. Tomorrow brings our first delivery to the Cedar Rapids area. Expect your first share (delivered in personal cooler with ice packs) on your porch or stoop tomorrow evening! During the time of your delivery, we will also be in the neighborhood delivering fresh produce to Cedar Rapids restaurant favorites like Cobble Hill, Rodina, The Map Room, and many others!

*Next Tuesday, make sure to leave the cooler we left you out on your porch/stoop at around or before 4 PM.*

We will swap it out, clean it, and replace it with a fresh new cooler packed and cooled with your new share next week.

The first delivery will include: 

• Mixed Cherry Tomatoes
• Shiitake Mushrooms
• Cucumbers
• Napa Cabbage
• Basil (Purple “Opal” variety)
• Carrots (Orange)
• Summer Squash
• Garlic Scapes
• Kale Bunch (Green)
• Bunched Sweet Fresh Onions (Red, Semi-Sweet)

What Are Garlic Scapes? | Some Explanation and Tips

To those who are already acquainted with and delighted by garlic scapes: my apologies. For the rest who may be curious reading that they will find garlic scapes in their share and who have never experienced them, you might be thinking: what are they? What will they be?

Or, when you open your share, you’ll wonder: “What are these pigtail-looking things?

Garlic scapes are the flower of the garlic plant. As the garlic plant gets larger during the early summer months, the flowers must be picked off and removed so the plant shifts its focus from flower/foliar production back to bulb production. Scapes must be picked (and we choose to pick them) so we pull up the biggest, most pungent and delicious garlic bulbs come late summer for garlic harvest.

Though we don’t want them on our garlic plants, they’re very, very, VERY welcome in the kitchen.

You can chop off the pale white/yellow flowering head you see pictured and mince the green part of the flower stalk. Think of it as a cross between green garlic or onions and a garlic bulb, except it packs a bit more of that trademark garlic pungency.

Jupiter Ridge’s farmer Will recommends very finely mincing garlic scapes raw into a salad with cucumber, basil, tomatoes, olive oil, and vinegar.

Jupiter Ridge’s farmer Adrian would suggest using it in place of bulb garlic in pesto, it seems to bring out a “punchier” garlic flavor. It’s also great on pizzas (kind of like the wood-fired pizzas you’ll find at Park Farm Winery, which use our own local organic scapes!)

To keep it simple, garlic scapes can be minced and used to replace bulb garlic in just about any recipe.

Let us know if you have any questions about it – email us, Facebook message us, or Instagram message us. We’re happy to talk to you about them.

Wellness Spotlight On: Shiitake Mushrooms

I can’t tell people enough about how great shiitake mushrooms are for health at farmers market.

Talk about the ultimate meat replacement for all you vegans out there (and to you meat eaters, shiitakes make an EXCELLENT pairing with steaks and burgers). Shiitake mushrooms come packed with tons of protein and fiber, the former being incredibly important for vegans/vegetarians skimping on meat, but the latter (fiber) is important to your gut (and you won’t find it in meat).

Also, sun-exposed shiitakes (like ours to some extent, which are grown outdoors) are some of the highest non-meat food sources of vitamin D out there, which is a very important vitamin for non-meat-eaters to stay on top of. The same goes for vitamin B12 (which, yes, shiitakes also contain small traces of).

So there you go – for anyone wanting to cut out or replace meat consumption (but are worried about missing out on the nutrition we crave from it), shiitake mushrooms are a satisfying choice.

Also: we can’t forget that shiitakes are considered a “medicinal” mushroom in some parts of the world. The antioxidants they contain have been shown to support healthy blood pressure levels, boost the immune system, and reduce the risk of major illnesses, even cancer.

Find shiitake mushrooms in your share this week!!!!

We look forward to delivering to you tomorrow, and we hope you enjoy the very best of the summer fare we have going on right now.

Best,
Adrian & Will | Jupiter Ridge Farm