Hello from early Sunday morning! Luna Field Farm Bacon is slow-cooking in the oven for second breakfast and I am sitting at my desk in the early morning dark watching Samson/House Tiger hunting mice in our living room. He does catch them occasionally, and then likes to fling them around the room, usually in my direction (“Hey, person who feeds me, I got you a present!!”). Now that our power upgrades are mostly done, we have sealed up the basement again and so hopefully we will have less rodent population in the house now!
I thoroughly enjoyed my first Saturday off since June yesterday! Markets are great, but it’s always a relief to have them over with for the season. There is still so much to do before the snow flies. Yesterday Jon and I dug carrots and potatoes at our place, and went to the dump as this is our first opportunity to since June (I have the van on Saturdays for market). The rain last week was not welcome, and it would be nice if we didn’t get any more. This time of year it does not have time to dry out, and we end up digging carrots in mucky icy soil… My knees are still aching from kneeling in it yesterday! We will welcome a blanket of snow, but not until after we have all the veggies cozy in the storage room, and the garlic is planted (this week, hopefully).
**SPOILER ALERT** If you want to keep the contents a surprise, stop reading NOW!
In your Veggie Lovers’ Club Bag this week:
Tomatoes
Honeynut Squash
Watermelon Radish
Garlic
Red Beets
Lettuce OR Shallots
Teri’s musings, recipes, and more info about the veggies in your Veggie Lovers’ Club Bag this week:
Tomatoes!
The frenzy over tomatoes seems to have calmed down a bit, thank goodness! For a while there, we were getting multiple emails and phone calls about them. When crops are scarce, I’d always rather see them go to our best customers rather than people who only contact us because their regular supplier or their own garden fell through. So, that’s you! The Veggie Lovers’ Club has gotten, by far, the majority of our tomato crop this season.
Jon has just finished the final harvest of the tomato crop, so you will get some tomatoes this week which are green and need to ripen. They will take a week or two on your counter. You can also make fried green tomatoes, one of Mom and Dad’s favourites! (Mom’s recipe doesn’t do the breading, I think she just sautes slices of tomatoes and onions in a frying pan with butter, but I’ve had the breaded version and it’s great, too!)
Storage Tips: Never store tomatoes in the fridge, especially green ones as they will never ripen. Keep on a warm counter. If you want to speed up the ripening process, put them in a paper bag with an ethylene-producing fruit (a red tomato, a ripe banana, a ripe avocado).
Honeynut Squash! 
Butternut squash is one of the “canonical” (sorry, English major!) squashes– if people only know 2 squashes, guaranteed it’s Spaghetti and Butternut. Often at the grocery store, those are the only 2 choices! Unfortunately, Butternut needs a longer season than we have in SW Manitoba, and so though we do grow a few, they are always picked under-ripe and are not that prolific.
So, you are not getting a butternut from us this year, but you are getting the next best thing– a Honeynut! We’ve been experimenting with Butternut-like varieties the past 2 years and I like this one a lot. They are small and dark green on the outside (eventually would ripen to orange but don’t need to), and orange on the inside, and smell like a sweet cucumber or melon when fresh. When cooked, they are very similar to a butternut. Sweet, dense, moist flesh which is stringless and easy to use in soups, stews, or on it’s own as a side dish. I suggest cutting it in half the long way, scooping out the seeds, placing face down in a baking dish with 1/2 inch of water. Bake for 20 minutes or until fully cooked (longer if you like it softer). They’re nice to split between 2 squash lovers, but can easily be quartered to feed more people.
One of the best ways to make people who “don’t like squash” eat it, is to hide it in comfort food like this Squash Mac & Cheese recipe. (Note to self: Don’t look up yummy, cheesy recipes before second breakfast… Now my mouth is watering!). There’s no way you couldn’t like squash when it’s mixed with butter and cheese and noodles, topped with breadcrumbs — still healthier than KD straight out of the box! Mmmm!!
Storage Tips: Store squash in a warm place above 10*C. I keep mine in the kitchen and it keeps fine into the New Year. If you want to simplify your meal prep, you can peel and cube the squash ahead and store it that way in the fridge for up to 4 days.
Watermelon Radish!
Watermelon Radishes are predictably red inside, and on the outside they are white with some green near the tops sometimes. They are milder than spring radishes as they grow best in the cool fall, so don’t take on as much heat as the regular radishes. They store well so if you don’t want to eat this one right away, you can save it in the crisper for up to a month.
A customer at market told me that she thinks cooked radishes taste like cauliflower, and they do! They are in the same family. Sometimes I roast radishes with other veggies, and honestly you can barely tell them apart from potatoes. Roasting mellows the flavour and makes them the nicest soft texture. We’re planning to give you the larger radishes that we have, so you will likely only have 1 or 2 that you can mix with roasted veggies or enjoy fresh (adds a gorgeous touch to any plate as an edible garnish), on a greens salad, in potato salad, on top of soups or in stew.
Storage Tips: Store in your crisper for up to a month. It is best to keep in a bag or sealed container so it doesn’t wilt.
Garlic!
Yes, more garlic! I know that not everyone uses as much garlic as Mom and I do, so if you are not keeping up, don’t despair– It will keep in a dark, well-ventilated warm place until Christmas! If you don’t think you’ll use it by then, or if you just want to make it easy to use, try this: Peel garlic cloves and puree in a food processor (or dice finely) and mix with olive oil. Store in the fridge for months, but beware – it can be easy to over-garlic when it’s this easy to use, especially if you’re not the one who did all the hard work getting it ready. I have a jar of peeled garlic in the fridge that I’ve been planning to do this with for some time now (note on that, peeled garlic keeps fine in a jar in the fridge for over a month, that’s how far behind I am!).
Red Beets!
Beets are such an amazing vegetable, one that’s part of our line-up year-round. Since it’s soup time, and pots bubbling on the stove are always welcome when it’s cold out, here’s Stephanie’s Ukrainian Borscht Recipe for you to try. A chef I knew once told me that my Borscht recipe wasn’t “authentic” because he thought it should just be shredded carrots, cabbage, potatoes, and beets. That’s boring! Mom and I add every veggie we have on hand into our borscht, and it’s delicious, so feel free to be creative!
Beets and goat cheese are best friends. They are such a great flavour combination!
And, if all else fails, hide your beets in a delicious cake! Here are the recipes for Chocolate Beet Cake and Beet & Carrot Cake, two of our favourites!
Storage Tips: Store beets in the fridge in a plastic bag, they will keep for months!
Lettuce OR Shallots
We had quite a hard frost yesterday at my place, and I haven’t been to Mom’s or talked to her yet to see if the lettuce froze at her place. If it didn’t, we have some to send you this week (and this is really the last time!). If it did, we’ll send you some shallots instead. Will update this post prior to Wednesday so that you know what to expect!
As always, thanks for reading and thanks for being a part of our 2016 Veggie Lovers’ Club! A reminder that we will be distributing Pumpkins next week (the final week!), so bring your little ones so they can pick out the perfect Jack-O-Lantern! We’ll have the trailer along next week so you can come in and pick one.
One final request: Please fill out our end-of-season Veggie Lovers’ Club Survey! This will help us collect information so that we can make future programs even better. Responses are completely anonymous. Your feedback is important to us and so expect that I will be bugging you to fill this out over the next week and a half!
Thanks, and have an excellent Thanksgiving!
–Teri 🙂
Brown Sugar Produce 
You must be logged in to post a comment.