The Kohlrabi with sage I wrote about previously, I liked so much, I realize, because it tasted so much like Thanksgiving stuffing.  You can never make enough stuffing because you are limited to what fits inside the Turkey cavity.  I never liked cooking extra in a casserole dish, it never comes out the same or as good.  This year I will experiment with Kohlrabi with sage on Thanksgiving.  I will try mixing with the stuffing or serving it alongside.  Jim will be planting a late crop of Kohlrabi to be available for Thanksgiving.  It is definitely something to incorporate into the Thanksgiving menu.

The versatility of Kohlrabi was evident when instead of using sage, I used basil.  I made pesto the way I normally do, only I pureed it with Kohlrabi and ate it sans pasta.  Just as the Kohlrabi ably replaced the breading, it did not leave me wanting pasta and it was delicous.  Jeremy, the Fields Farm intern, tells me he shreds Kohlrabi raw with carrots and it makes it a great coleslaw.

Not turning on the stove is a great idea since it has been over 90 degrees everyday.  The peak of season hitting at the Farmer’s Market and the hot weather makes for “Salad Days”.  If you need some ideas check out 101 Simple Salads for the Season.  Click the “Single Page” link and do a page search(usually ctrl + f) for the ingredients you have on hand.

Hello,
We are getting into a routine now for summer.
We’re finding that Monday is a project day and we start harvesting for the week on Tuesday.  The Frig is packed Tuesday by noon and veggies are available through Saturday.  Sometimes things are still available Sunday but no harvesting is done the day.  We’re having a higher demand for eggs than we can provide so we’re asking you to limit eggs to 1 to 2 dozen a visit.
Thank you for understanding we want everyone to be happy.We are harvesting our first potatoes and raspberries of the season, last week for kohlrabi.
Potatoes – $3.00/bag
Fingerlings – $4.00/bag
Raspberries – $3.00/boxKale – $2.00Lettuce mix – $4.00Scallions – $2.00/bunchKohlrabi $2.00each
Summer squash and broccoli start next week.
Enjoy

Since I did this website for Fields Farm, Jim and Debbie are nice enough to kick me down some of the Fields Farm cornucopia.  When they offered me some Kohlrabi, I confessed that I had never tried it before.  Kohlrabi seems only to be introduced to the US food supply by the Farmer’s Market/Organic Foods movement, Mom didn’t cook it when I was growing up unless it was in one of those Hamburger Helper packages.

I was struck by the appearance of the phosphorescent purple orb with symmetrical tentacles coming out of it from all directions.  It looked like something that you would find on the cover of a Yes album.  Debbie told me you cut it up and cook it like any other vegetable.  Kohlrabi has been compared to broccoli stems in that it absorbs the flavors of what you cook it with, turnips in that it is a bulbous shape and you can eat the greens and to eggplant in that its purple on the outside, white on the inside, roundish and you have to cook it to soften it up.  But those comparisons are not even as close as saying a mango is like a peach or any exotic meat tastes like chicken, Kohlrabi is pretty unique.

At the Farmer’s Market yesterday I asked Jim why he does Kohlrabi.  He said it is beautiful and that it loves the cold.  It can grow in the spring and in the fall here and won’t suffer with our inevitable frosts.  I got a couple of more Kohlrabi to stuff in my panniers and take home with me.  Meanwhile going on simultaneously and coincidentally Debbie puts a Kohlrabi recipe up on the site.  I discover it when I get home and try it out for dinner.

It is probably obvious that I have been searching Kohlrabi, and one thing I found went on ecstatically about pureed Kohlrabi.  Debbie’s recipe didn’t mention that, but it was the same basic idea.  So I diced up a Kohlrabi, fried it up with a head of the young garlic that I recently got from Fields Farm, in a good amount of olive oil and some salt and pepper.  I had some fresh sage that I got from the Farmer’s Market.  I love sage, but sometimes it is hard to figure out what to cook with it–I think I had a match here.  I grabbed a bunch of leaves, threw it in and pureed it.  I was too lazy to bake like the recipe said, so I just grated some cheese on top of it.  That was fine and it was steamy enough to melt the cheese.  Wow.  It was incredible.  I finished eating it all up before I touched anything else on my plate!

In the impetus these days for local food, I think maybe Kohlrabi can be something significant in the Northwest cuisine.   For instance a basic technique in cooking is using a mirepoix.  Mirepoix is a finely diced mixture of onions, carrots and celery that is a base for sauces and other foods.  It is a french technique but is also a part of elemental foods such as Bolognese Pasta Sauce.  Celery takes 5 months to grow and is very sensative to frost.  Guess what? that means you cannot grow it here.  I hereby propose that for the Northwest Mirepoix we replace the celery with Kohlrabi!  I will be eager to try this variant of Mirepoix out as well as other ways to cook up some Kohlrabi.

Delicious Kohlrabi and easy too!
Grate or chop finely 2 Kohlrabis.  Saute with 2 gloves of minced garlic in your favorite oil until tender.  Cover with 2 to 3 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese.
Pop in the oven at 350 til cheese is brown.  Makes 2 large servings or 4 small.

CSA farms and farmer’s markets get more and more popular and so are home vegetable gardens.  They are all antidotes to the problems of our industrialized food production system.  One problem being, the food often doesn’t taste good, other problems being, eh…I won’t get into it, as others have.

Vegetable gardens are also getting popular, for the same reasons as guns, because of the uncertain times we live in.  People are considering the possibility are that our whole system may collapse.  It may be a good hedge to be able to rely on yourself.  Dimitry Orlov who wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union, describes how small vegetable gardens got people through the disorder and upheaval.  Russians, because of the slim pickings available in Soviet era stores had a history of small gardening.  (By the way, our Farmer in chief, Jim is currently reading Orlov’s book.)

Books on gardening are often found lacking because because it is so location specific.  Luckily for us in Central Oregon, a local longtime expert gardener has written a book.  When Jim first got interested in farming 20 odd years ago, he actually took a class from the author.  The book is available free on her website!

http://www.juniperandsage.com/garden/book.htm

Of course, we have another great local resource, right here, too.

Hi, I am Dale the webmaster of FieldsFarm.org.  In addition to being able to put together some computer code, I also like to think I can put together some foodstuffs to delicious result.

Like all good chefs, I don’t look at the recipe and get the food, I get the fresh, quality food that is available and then make up the recipe.  From Fields Farm I got some baby carrots, kale and garlic curls.  I also picked up some cherry tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market.

I started by cooking up some Bulgur.  Bulgur is a wheat grain food common in the Middle East, Mediterranean and India.  It is not even packaged anywhere that I know of, but in the markets that have bulk bins, it can usually be found.  You can substitute it for rice–though maybe not when you are making sushi!  It cooks exactly like white rice.  I put 2 cups in a saucepan with some oil and a couple pinches of salt and fry it for a couple of minutes.  I then add 4 cups of water.  After it comes to a boil, I simmer it for 14 minutes.  Though it cooks like white rice, it tases more like brown rice–only a lot better!  It has a nutty whole-grainy taste and a unique texture that is rough but in a very pleasing way.  I figured this would be a good match for the kale. 

I cut a few carrots into wedges and sauteed them in some olive oil.  After awhile I threw in the curls, which I had roughly chopped(don’t cook the skinny tips, they will burn, just throw them in raw at the end.).  When it all was carmelized with nice brown burn marks, I turned off the burner and tossed in the Kale, which I had also roughly chopped.  After a couple of minutes I mixed it all on a plate with an equal amount of Bulgur, drizzled a good amount of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it and topped with the cherry tomatoes.

The rest of meal consisted of bbq chicken and a couple of big glasses of cheap, acidy Australian Chardonnay that could stand up all of this. 

With such a good salad, I can’t leave you hanging without the recipe for bbq sauce.  If I left you to your own devices you might come up with something than was not worthy.  That would dishoner the Bulgar Salad! 

Start with a store bought bbq sauce.  Find one without crap in it like fructose, mono and diglycirides, etc.  For 1 cup add 1 or 2 teaspoons each of red pepper flakes, crushed ginger, cumin, sesame seeds, sesame oil, soy sauce and fennel seeds.  Cooking it helps even if it is just a minute in the microwave.

bon appetit!

Sweet carrots, beautiful purple kohlrabi, tender garlic curls and various greens are available at the farm.

After the little setback with the big hailstorm, most everything is recovering.

This week we have a good supply of eggs.Vegetables include:

Carrots – $2.00/bunchGreens Mix – $4.00/bag
Lettuce Mix – $4.00/bagKohlrabi – $2.00 each ( these are tender and delicious, the leaves are great for steaming or saute)
Garlic Greens – $2.00/bunchGarlic Curls – $2.00/bag (these are at there peak this week and next)

Enjoy!

There was some was  wild weather last week and like many other farmers we did have some damage to our crops.  Our next lettuce planting was set back, rhubarb and spinach were severely damaged as was some of our brassica starts. We’re beginning to see some recovery but it will take a couple of weeks.  We will only have a few bags of greens and kohlrabi this week.  We do have eggs.

Thanks for all your support,

Jim and Debbie

Incredibly sweet spinach is ready now!

Asparagus is just up.  Great time to start using farm bucks.  Asparagus will be part of the first week of vegetables for our CSA customers.