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. 

Our first crop for 2009 is a website!