Archive for month: July, 2016

Are you getting the most out of your produce each week? Did you know that the leaves, greens, stems, and stalks of many of the vegetables that we tend to throw away are edible and often contain even more beneficial nutrients than their other, more popular, half? Before you toss out the beet greens, carrot tops, and broccoli stalks from this week’s Seasonal Roots basket, consider using these culinary castaways to add texture, interest, and flavor to your next meal.

Here are a few suggestions from One Green Planet to help get you started:

• Blanch Away the Bitterness – Although you can eat green tops raw, some people might find them a bit bitter. Blanching is a useful technique to help remove any bitter taste. To blanch the greens, bring a large pot of water to a rapid boil and drop the greens in. Stir them around a bit. In just a few minutes, the greens will start to soften and become a beautiful, bright color. You don’t want to cook them too long or they will lose that color and get mushy. Then transfer the greens to an ice bath to shock them. This will stop the cooking process and help them keep that beautiful, bright color. If you don’t want to set up an ice bath, at least transfer the greens to a colander and run cold water over them for a minute. When they are cool enough to handle, drain any excess water and continue with your recipe.

• Make Pesto – While pesto is traditionally made with basil, I often make ours using kale, spinach, or any other greens that I happen to have on hand. This Beet Greens Pesto is a simple way to make use of those leftover greens: In a food processor, combine 4 cups of beet greens (remove the stems), 4 cracked garlic cloves, ½ cup walnuts, 3 Tbs. grated parmesan, ½ tsp. kosher salt and ¼ tsp. black pepper. Process the ingredients while drizzling in up to ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil until you reach the desired consistency. Store the pesto in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

• Make Vegetable Stock – Vegetable stock is a great way to use up any leftover vegetables and their green parts, and it eliminates the fear of bitterness or overcooking. Just add green tops or stalks to into your pot with whatever vegetables, herbs and spices you are using to make your stock and follow your stock recipe directions.

• Make Smoothies – Smoothies are a great way to use vegetable greens. Try starting off by just adding in a small amount of greens and gradually add in more as your taste adjust. If you are new to smoothies, try adding carrot or beet greens to this Beginner Green Smoothie* to get you headed in the right direction.    * Place the following ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth: ½ cup green grapes, ½ apple (peeled and cut up), 1 banana, 2 cups baby spinach, ½ cup green tea, 1 slice of ginger, ½ cup ice cube.

• Sauté the Greens – Sautéed greens are an easy and delicious way to put those leftover green tops to use! I love greens sautéed in a pan with olive oil, garlic, shallots and a pinch of red pepper flakes, cooked just long enough to wilt and turn crisp-tender.

Sarah Young is a wife, mother of three, Certified Health Education Specialist, and healthy living advocate. She has a background in Dietetics and a B.S. in Health, Fitness, and Recreational Resources with a concentration in Health Promotion. She is also a writer for several local and online publications, an ambassador for the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, and a health contributor for ABC 7 News/WJLA. In her spare time, she enjoys running, hiking, gardening, and spending time with her family and their dog, Maple.

You: What?! My Market isn’t open! But, I want to check out all the local options!

Us: We hear you! We get as excited as you do to shop the weekly market.

You: So, what gives?

Here’s the deal…Our market changes each week based on what our farmers and artisans are harvesting, raising and baking at any given time. That’s why we can’t post a static menu – it changes too much from one week to the next! But, we know that when you’re deciding from where to purchase your food, you may want a little more information, right?  To give you an idea of what you can expect from Seasonal Roots, here’s what the local options were for our customers last week!

Then, top your basket off with some extras.

The list of extras have costs that vary each week, with extra items as inexpensive as $2.50, and with some of our pricier items being our pasture raised meats. Some of the customer favorites from this week? Blueberry muffins, cherry tomatoes, rustic bread, kimchi, garlic hummus, milk, pasture raised eggs, locally roasted coffee, kombucha, cinnamon buns, mushrooms, honey, chioggia beets, colby cheese, granola and mozzarella! That’s not all though, we had over 60 extra items for Members to choose from this week!

Anyone else get as excited as I do on delivery day? Thursdays are starting to feel a lot like Christmas morning, whether I customize my basket or not. I just can’t wait to dive into my Seasonal Roots box and see all of the fresh goodies that are waiting for me.

Last week’s basket was full of kale, several different lettuce varieties, mushrooms, tomatoes, asparagus, cilantro, artisan bread, kombucha, and GARLIC SCAPES. While I was excited about all of the beautiful produce that had been harvested that week, the garlic scapes are what really grabbed my attention. I had never seen a garlic scape before, much less experimented with them in the kitchen. Our family had fun passing them around the dinner table that night, seeing who could come the closest to guessing what this “new” food actually was. Everyone happily took a bite off of a raw stalk for “investigative purposes” and the majority vote was that it was some type of onion (and that it didn’t taste good with a glass of milk!).

With Google on our side, we learned that garlic scapes are basically a happy side-effect of growing garlic. The “scapes” are the stalks that grow from the bulbs of hardneck garlic plants. If left unharvested, they will eventually bloom flowers once the garlic plant fully matures. If harvested before they flower, these edible green stalks are a palative cross between a scallion and……. yep, a clove of garlic.

As you may have already guessed, the scape doesn’t just mimic its bulbous counterpart’s flavor. It also shares many of the same nutritional benefits as garlic. Garlic scapes are a great source of manganese, vitamin B6, vitamin C, and selenium. They have also been linked to numerous health benefits including lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, boosting the immune system, and preventing heart disease and various types of cancer.

Some of the most popular suggestions that I came across for how to use garlic scapes included chopping them up and using them in place of scallions in a salad or as a garnish for soup, lightly sautéing them with greens, adding them into a stir fry, or making a garlic scape pesto.

After some consideration, I decided to add our scapes into one of my daughter’s favorite things: hummus. In less than 10 minutes, we had a new dish to try out and minimal mess to clean up. Served alongside some fresh veggies and homemade pita chips, we had a picnic-style dinner with lots of leftover Garlic Scapes Hummus to enjoy throughout the week.

I’m still looking forward to trying out other garlic scapes recipes in the near future, but this was an easy way to introduce a new food into a familiar family favorite. If you give it a try, let me know what you think.

Garlic Scapes Hummus

Ingredients:

–        3 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

–        1/3 cup garlic scapes, chopped

–        ½ – ¾ cup tahini

–        ¾ cup fresh lemon juice

–        ¼ cup olive oil

–        ¼ cup water

–        1 ½ teaspoons cumin

–        1 teaspoon salt

–        Ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Place chopped garlic scapes into a food processor and pulse several times.
2. Add chickpeas, tahini, and lemon juice to the scapes and process. The mixture will be very thick.
3. Add water and process again.
4. Slowly add in olive oil while still blending.
5. Once desired consistency is reached, add cumin, salt, and pepper, and blend.
6. Serve drizzled with olive oil and cumin, alongside fresh veggies, crackers, or pita chips. Enjoy!

Sarah Young is a wife, mother of three, Certified Health Education Specialist, and healthy living advocate. She has a background in Dietetics and a B.S. in Health, Fitness, and Recreational Resources with a concentration in Health Promotion. She is also a writer for several local and online publications, an ambassador for the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, and a health contributor for ABC 7 News/WJLA. In her spare time, she enjoys running, hiking, gardening, and spending time with her family and their dog, Maple.