A Letter to the Teacher: Summer CSA ’15 ” Week #20

 In CSA Newsletter

As my parting, self-deprecating gift to you, my faithful newsletter readers, I share with you a letter I wrote to Zea’s teacher this evening. I hope you enjoy it along with your last box of veggies. Many thanks for your support!

Dear Ms. Hurley,

We seem to have misplaced the Food Passport consent form. Let this be a replacement. I have signed and dated below my consent for Zea to participate in this program.

As for the fruit and vegetable challenge, we hope you’ll accept how we performed this first of eight challenges. Zea lives on an organic vegetable farm and so it was actually kind of hard to do the first challenge in a way that was a challenge. She eats loads of vegetables and just about every meal we eat is more than half vegetables. Each way we tried to do a challenge, Zea would say it wasn’t new and so €˜it didn’t count’ as a challenge.

I’ve been trying to assure her that she’s already completed these challenges in her every day life and that’s good enough, but she feels strongly that to participate she has to do a challenge.  I want to encourage her desire to complete tasks you ask of her.

The one challenge we thought we could do was go to the farmers market and buy a vegetable we’ve never tried before. So when I was working the market last Saturday I looked around, but there wasn’t a vegetable there she hasn’t eaten. So then I went to grocery store and bought a pomegranate, thinking Zea had never tried one.

I was wrong. Zea reminded me that she tried one when she was 2 and I had forgotten.  She also reminded me that there are no pomegranates at the market.  I assured her that you would still accept eating the pomegranate as an acceptable challenge. Zea doesn’t believe me.

Hence this letter. I promised Zea I would write to you to make sure that the pomegranate could count even though she actually tried it when she was 2.   I sincerely hope you don’t find this pretentious, but rather a comical compromise between an organic vegetable farmer and rule-following daughter.

Thanks, Ms. Hurley.

Sincerely,

Cassie Noltnerwyss

p.s. Our farm is donating 500# of sweet potatoes and 400# of carrots to the district for use in November meals and hope it pairs well with this initiative. Also, as part of the grant the school received for this food passport program, there will be vegetable tasting and a meet a farmer event in the cafeteria. Michelle Denk has asked me to be part of this, so I very much look forward to seeing you and the kiddos later this winter!

 

 

 

 

 

In the Box:

  • Beets
  • Bell Peppers, Mixed
  • Butternut Squash
  • Garlic
  • Kale, Green Curly
  • Onion, Yellow
  • Potato, Yellow

REGs only:

  • Fennel
  • Kohlrabi
  • Leek

EOs only:

  • Carrots
  • Sweet Potato

Weekly Recipes:

  1. Shredded Sauteed Beets with Poppy Seeds
  2. Tuscan Beans with Kale and Sausage
  3. Caramelized Fennel
  4. Potato and Leek Gratin with Kale
  5. Kohlrabi Wasabi Salabi
  6. Sweet Potato Bundt Cake
  7. Aromatic Braised Chicken with Beet Chutney
  8. Vegan Colcannon with Kale
  9. Beet and Fennel Soup with Kefir
  10. Saffron Rice with Frizzled Leeks
  11. Curried Kohlrabi and Carrot Pilaf
  12. Sweet Potato Kale Hash
  13. Spicy Kohlrabi Slaw
  14. Farfalle with Prosciutto and Beets

Wednesday, October 21st” Group B EOs (Final Box for all REG and EO-B Members)