October 14th, 2009 by Margie

Dear Vegetable Husband Customer,

This week, once again, we are swimming from farm to farm to harvest our produce.  Hoping to see lettuce soon, but so far, the heavy rain has destroyed the young lettuce crops for now.  What we are enjoying are the beets!  This week, we get a nice bunch of beets again from Full Moon Farm. You’ll also see beautiful breakfast radishes from Sundance Farm.  Your beet tops can be cooked along with your radish tops in a sauté.  Those are delicious and great for you.

This last week, I made possibly my favorite dish of all time with this eggplant & sweet peppers recipe.  I encourage you to give these vegetarian stuffed peppers a try.  It uses four of your ingredients from this week’s basket and it won loads of praise in my house!  I can’t wait to do it again.

The muscadines are from Steve Miller Farms this week and when I sorted them, they seem much softer than we are used to getting.  They just picked these yesterday but they were very ripe on the vines.  I would suggest eating them soon or cooking the grapes down for a really good preserve.  You need very little sugar to make a wonderful winter treat from muscadines.

Below is your list of goodies for this week:

Italian Black Beauty Eggplant
d’Avignon French Breakfast Radishes
Mixed Sweet Peppers
Beets with tops
Sweet Potatoes
Muscadines
Butternut Squash
Basil
Garlic

I feel fortunate to have such a close understanding of what all goes in to the availability of food.  Struggling through heavy rain or extremely dry climates this year has taken its toll on crops that were abundant last year this time.  It really makes me thankful for every beautiful bite I’m able to enjoy.  I hope you cherish your bounty, and remember, I’m always happy to talk food.

Namaste,
Margie Thorpe