Maplewood Organics

Annual CSA Member Picnic

Come enjoy good company, tour the farm by foot and hay rides, and eat delicious Maplewood and member food! Please bring a dish to share. You may also bring a friend who might be interested in joining our CSA next year. Maplewood Organics will provide burgers and fixings, place settings, and non-alcoholic beverages. We'll have dinner around 6:00. Keep an eye out for an Evite for this event.

Sunday, September 19th, 1:00pm-4:00pm

NOFA Weed Dating Event

This is NOFA's play on the highly successful singles phenomenon called 'Speed Dating.' In Speed Dating, each participant spends a pre-determined amount of time with one potential mate, then moves on to the next. In Weed Dating, it’s much the same—except, instead of sipping on Cosmos while chatting with your partner, you’ll be weeding a bed of vegetables or doing other similar, light labor. This is a great opportunity to meet other farm and food enthusiasts, farmers, and NOFA-VT staff. We hope to not only ignite the flames of human companionship, but tighten the relationships between farmers and consumers as well.

Singles will receive a farm tour and refreshments, in addition to cultivating new connections. Farm experience is not required, but please come prepared for an hour’s work. Not looking for love? Friend-seekers are welcome as well.

Garden Progress and Farm News

Maggie has been working hard hand-weeding our new plantings. They look pretty good! We should have enough lettuce to offer for the next couple weeks at least! We had our first taste tonight in tacos. I'm thrilled to be able to offer fresh lettuce to you again soon after a large portion of our lettuce crop bolted or turned bitter in the heat of this July.

We're waiting for our next crop of carrots to get a little bigger. Our new planting of summer squash and zucchini have small squash on them already! The plants look so much healthier than our first batch. I'm hopeful.

We were really lucky to have help Monday from our former intern, Hannah, and a visiting intern from Blue Heron Farm in Grand Isle, Eric. We were able to do some extra harvesting to get a head start on Wednesday's work - great for Sita and I. Last Wednesday and Thursday were challenging days. We did take Sunday mostly off this week for a pontoon boat ride on the Lake.

Recipes of the Week

Here are 5 ideas for using fresh pumpkin.

For the best flavor, slice and seed fresh pumpkin and roast in a medium oven for 30-40 minutes until tender. When cool enough to handle, remove skin and mash or blend the flesh. Alternatively, peel and seed raw pumpkin, cut into chunks, place in a large pan with the minimum of water and simmer until tender. Drain thoroughly and mash, blend or process to a puree.

Pumpkin soup Pumpkin makes wonderful soup. Cook cubes of fresh pumpkin in vegetable stock, adding other vegetables such as onion, leek, potato, carrot or turnip if you wish. When the vegetables are tender, puree in a blender or food processor. For extra savor, add spices like cinnamon or nutmeg. Ground or grated fresh ginger also work well.

Pumpkin cakes Add up to 175ml (1 cup) pureed pumpkin to teabread recipes, for moistness. Always use spice with pumpkin, because its natural flavor is very mild. Traditional choice is a mix of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.

Pumpkin pies Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without a pumpkin pie. The simplest way to make one is to use bake a pastry case or pie crust (or buy a good quality ready-made one). For enough filling for two 9-inch (20cm) pie crusts, mix 450 ml (2 ½ cups) pumpkin puree, fresh or canned, with 5 fl oz low-fat evaporated milk, three beaten eggs and 1 ½ tsp cinnamon, ¾ tsp ginger, ¼ tsp each nutmeg and allspice (but check before adding spices, as some canned pumpkin comes ready-spiced). Bake for 15 mins at 425F/220C/gas 7, lower the temperature to 350F/180C/gas 4 for another 40 minutes.

Pumpkin pancakes Great for breakfast, these are whizzed up in minutes. Substitute 90ml (1/2 cup) pumpkin puree for the same quantity of milk in your favorite pancake recipe and cook in a hot pan, pouring just enough batter to make small pancakes.

Pumpkin in savory dishes Try cubed pumpkin, browned with onion and garlic, then simmered in a tomato sauce with a dash of chili. Great with pasta or rice. Or use pumpkin in risotto. Finely chop and soften 4 shallots or one onion in a little olive oil. Stir in 250g ( 1 ½ cups) risotto rice, 500g (3 cups) grated fresh pumpkin (use a food processor to do the grating), then gradually add 850ml (5 cups) hot vegetable stock, making sure each addition has been absorbed into the rice before you add the next. When rice and pumpkin are tender, stir through a generous grating of Parmesan cheese, and leave to stand, covered for 10 minutes to allow the rice to swell.

Green Pepper and Tomato Salad Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray

•1 green bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1 1/2-inch dice

•3 vine-ripe tomatoes, seeded and diced

•1 small onion, chopped

•1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

•1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

•1/2 lemon, juiced (1 tablespoon)

•1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

•3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

•Coarse salt and black pepper

•1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1/2 a palm full

Combine peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, parsley in a bowl with your fingertips. Squeeze the juice of the lemon with the lemon half sitting upright. This will help prevent the seeds from falling into the bowl. The lemon juice will spill down over the sides of the lemon and the seeds will remain with the fruit. Squeeze the juice evenly over the salad. If the lemon is under-ripe, microwave it for 10 seconds before you cut into it. Next, sprinkle a tablespoon of vinegar over the salad -- just eyeball it. Drizzle the extra-virgin olive oil over the salad, add the salt, pepper and cumin. Toss again. Taste to adjust seasonings and serve.