August 26th, 2009 by Margie

Dear Vegetable Husband Customer,

This week we are bringing back Sundance Farms sweet onions before they disappear.  These are so nice you can eat them raw or use for cooking, but I highly recommend tasting a slice before you do anything else to them.  I love one or two thrown whole on the grill!  The fruit this week is a pound of muscadines from Whippoorwill Hollow Farms.  Yes, we are in Georgia and these are our native grapes.  I popped a few in my mouth on the way back to the city today but hopefully I did not eat in to your share (smiles).  You can also cook these if the skin is just too tart for you.  I will post a muscadine jam recipe on the website since we will get them again this month, I am sure.

We are enjoying some of Rashid’s vine-grown spinach this week again.  This is a very hardy leaf but please be careful not to crease the leaves when storing or they will turn dark like many varieties of spinach.  You can eat the smaller stems but as they get larger, they will be a little tough or stringy.  You will find a bulb of garlic from Full Moon Farms in your basket too.  This will help with the pesto or stir-fry.  Let me know how you like the local garlic.  I find it much different than what is shelved at the stores for us.

I am hoping for one more rally of tomatoes in the next couple of weeks.  Cross your fingers!  We could get more slicing heirloom tomatoes in a week or two.  The farms are really struggling to get fall crops planted now but the weather is so unpredictable right now.  As you enjoy your food this week, chew on this – For every $1 of money you spend locally, it shifts $4 to $14 into the local economy.  We are all in this together and eating locally is the best grassroots campaign I have ever been a part of! Below is your list of goodies for this week:

Mixed small tomatoes (sun gold & juliette red)
sweet peppers
eggplant
yellow onions
okra
spinach
garlic
basil
muscadines

Our fall trip to the farm is now scheduled for Saturday, Sept 19th and we will enjoy a beautiful brunch at Farm 255 Restaurant in Athens.  I hope you will consider joining us.  More details will be on the website by Friday.  Have a beautiful week and remember I am always happy to TALK FOOD!

All the best,
Margie Thorpe

August 19th, 2009 by Margie

Dear Vegetable Husband Customer,

This week we say hello to eggplant for the first time this year.  There are some nice recipes already on the website so if you have not tried one, check it out.  We also have a lot of the sweet peppers and we will continue to have sweet peppers each week for a bit.  For this reason, this week’s recipe will make good use of them.  Last night I made a nice sauté of the left over peppers with garlic and added them to some already stewed tomatoes (I always throw in the crock pot the ugly or over ripe tomatoes).  All this over pasta with a little cheese (I confess) was a great supper on the fly!

I am almost done with all the details for our upcoming pilgrimage to the farms.  This will be such a fun trip for us to celebrate with all of you.  Great food, wonderful farmers, champagne and us!  What more info do you need?! (grins)  You will be the first to know as soon as I confirm everything this week.

We have loads of food starting to come in as we round the corner of summer season.  Our lettuce this week is so delicate and tasty.  Steve Miller’s farm grew this and the arugula for us.  Once again, I got out myself and harvested the figs at a farm in Mableton.  Well, my dad helped a little until he started saying I was working him too hard.  I don’t want to get in trouble with the seniors.  I hope to offer fruit again next week and maybe something different.

I always want your feedback so if you love or hate some of the crops, let me know.  The farmers like hearing good stuff sometimes too.   I got us as much of the small tomatoes as I possibly could this week because so many of you have told me how much you love them.  We will have them for a couple of weeks, or we hope to, nature willing. Below is your list of goodies for this week:

Mixed small tomatoes (sun gold & roma)
sweet peppers
carrots
eggplant
potatoes
lettuce
arugula
figs
basil

Please look for my email later this week with details on our fall trip to the farms!  Have a beautiful week and remember I am always happy to TALK FOOD!

Namaste,
Margie Thorpe

August 12th, 2009 by Margie

Dear Vegetable Husband Customer,

Welcome back for all of you that were been traveling over the summer.  We are ending the summer crops now and starting to plan for fall.  The next month or so we will see different produce pop up each week.

This week I could not begin to tell you which farm your tomato or beans came from.  I have been at different farms every hour just trying to harvest enough food for us.  Please understand that while every morsel of your food is quality and free of pesticides, some might be a bit over-ripe this week or have a blemish.  These are some of the challenges we face working with all natural, organically grown produce.  I have also been working with Scharko Farms to harvest some figs for us this week.  I am new to this so forgive me if your figs are over-ripe.  Next week I will pick them a bit more firm so they will keep.  For now, pop them in your mouth as a little mid-week candy or toss them in a salad like I did last night…so good!

We have the first of the okra this week so for those of you that love this veggie, here it is.  For the folks that don’t like it so much, I challenge you to put down your fear of the texture and try the recipe with okra and potatoes on the website.  I have talked about my journey to like okra in the past so I won’t bore you but if you are interested, read the writings on the website from last year.

You have green beans that are bundled in a bag and crowder peas in an open bag.  The crowder peas are fun to sit and shell leisurely.  Check out the recipe for crowder peas that I am adding to our website tomorrow.  We should see more peas as we get further into the season.  If you hit some that are not shelling, you can cook them with the beans whole.  I eat the entire thing when they are young like that.  This basket is definitely a little of this and a little of that.

Below is your list of goodies for this week:

green beans
squash
heirloom tomatoes
sun gold tomatoes
sweet peppers
crowder peas
okra
figs
basil

Remember that we will have figs again next week and I highly recommend a little of Mary’s goat cheese with them if you eat cheese.  Have a beautiful week and remember I am always happy to TALK FOOD!

Namaste,
Margie Thorpe

August 5th, 2009 by Margie

Dear Vegetable Husband Customer,

This week is the beginning of August and tonight is the full moon.  Your food is unseasonable once again.  We have beautiful mixed lettuce from Rashid at Truly Living Well Farm, as well as his vine-grown spinach once again.  The hard search for tomatoes paid off because we are going to have two types of roma tomatoes to choose from this week.  The small ones are as sweet as the sun golds you enjoyed a few weeks ago.  I will keep searching each week to see who is still producing tomatoes despite the hardships this year.

We are coming into a season change so food is more difficult to find as the farmers are plowing in their summer crops and beginning to plant for the fall.  Thank goodness for diversity because our community did not all plant at the same time.  I am finding that while some farmers have little to offer now, others still have several items growing.  Each week, I hold my breath and have faith that the food will come and so far it has.

Speaking of, I would like to thank all of you that have been doing this for a while.  This week we will celebrate our one-year anniversary.  Vegetable Husband thanks you and all the farmers thank all of us!!  As my 7-year-old neighbor would say, give yourself a round of applause for going local.  Imagine how many dollars we are taking from large corporate grocers and giving to our own community as we eat healthier.  That calls for a toast.  I am actually putting together a fall trip to the farms September 13th for us to do just that. I will give more details as I arrange them.  I am pricing a bus for all of us and a few coolers of champagne for the brunch in the fields…sound interesting?  I hope so!

Below is your list of goodies for this week:

Stringless green beans
Marketmore cucumbers
Roma tomatoes large
Roma tomatoes baby
Mixed lettuce
New Zealand variety Spinach
Arugula
Potatoes
Peppermint

Eat good and stay cool…and remember I am always happy to TALK FOOD!

Namaste,
Margie Thorpe