admine9519, Author at Morning Song Farm - Page 12 of 44

We’re enjoying perfect purslane weather here in North San Diego and our CSA boxes reflect the bounty.

Ingredients:
Purslane
Flour
Ground bread crumbs
Beaten eggs
Salt
Cold pressed coconut or olive oil

Combine a half cup of flour with a teaspoon of sea salt.
Rinse your Purslane to remove any sand and then roll them in your flour/salt mixture.
Now dip in the beaten eggs.
Cover each stalk piece with bread crumbs

Fry or sauté each stalk until golden brown, and serve with a simple dipping sauce:
Ingredients:
16 oz. of unflavored yogurt
3 cloves of fresh garlic
1/2 teaspoon of salt
dash of tabasco
cup of chopped cilantro

Combine cilantro, salt, tabasco, and crushed garlic in a Cuisinart and pulse until smooth. Add yogurt and pulse until combined. Refrigerate until serving.

Nothing new here under the sun, but I’m just so over Carl eating my stuff. I don’t know what it is about money and Carl, but he seems to have an other worldly sense for when there’s money in an unattended envelope. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t have turned my back on Carl with an envelope of 20’s on the golf cart, but the level of vigilance that is required to never, ever get your stuff eaten by Carl has proven to be beyond me. Think about how many speeding tickets you’d have by now, if you never, ever, ever, got away with speeding. Not once, not ever. As in, every time you exceeded the limit by even one nanosecond of a mile, bamm, you get a ticket.  Some times the ticket isn’t too costly, sometimes it bowls you over, as in… you just can’t believe the wreckage of what was formerly known as your living room.  That’s what it’s like caring for  Carl. There is no elbow room, no margin for error. It’s never like, high five that, I’m so lucky Carl didn’t notice that, eat that, get that. If it’s unattended, even for a moment, if the door is left unbolted, even for a blink, if you aren’t 100% present, on top of your game, and situationally aware, you’re Carl Toast: Yep, Carl has eaten whatever it is you formerly held to be most definitely yours. I’m lucky all he got was $40, as I turned back from a discussion with my son in the driveway to behold a bouquet of 20’s stuffed into Carl’s mouth. “Nooooooooo.” I saved the rest, 40 of it will be going to some very pricey goat manure compost.

That paper towel will suck the moisture out of the leafy green, wilting it quickly, and the paper bag is too porous, and will compound the problem.  I often use simple tupperware type containers, or zip locks, although the best method is to use the Green Storage bags that you see advertised here and there.

Also, don’t jam your leafies into anything, give them some space to breathe. And don’t wash leaves before storage.

To answer  questions about organically grown shelf life (vs. conventional)….if a produce item stays “fresh” beyond its normal shelf life, it’s because it’s been sprayed with a chemical to make it so. There are fungicides that will keep fruit looking fresh, but the trade off isn’t worth it. Heck, that’s why our subscribers are choosing to purchase organic produce from us.

Just the soup to enjoy to celebrate the beginning of the warm months!

Preheat oven to 350. Peel off the outer skin of each tuber, and then carefully slice into long, thin sections. In a separate bowl, combine a quarter cup of either olive oil or virgin coconut oil with a couple crushed garlic cloves, dash of tabasco sauce, pepper and salt to taste. Dump your cut sweets into your oil mixture, toss, and then scatter on a baking sheet. Bake until tender. Enjoy!

Actual sweet potatoes on the left, African yams on the right.

Sweets or Yams? Most of us think that the dryer, lighter fleshed tuber is a sweet potato, while the orange fleshed variety is a yam. But actually, both are sweet potatoes, botanically. This is important to know, because the two; yams vs. sweet potatoes have distinctly different nutritional benefits. The tubers we normally see in the grocery store or farmers markets here in the US are almost always Sweets. Often grocers refer to the light skinned ones as Sweets, and the orange fleshed ones, in the image at left, as yams. True yams are grown in Africa as a staple, and are rarely seen in grocery stores domestically. (For comparison, see the image above of the African yam. The true yam is rough skinned, and can grow to an astounding 150 pounds. Sweets are smooth skinned and certainly aren’t known for rivaling livestock in weigh-ins. All Sweets, whether light fleshed or orange fleshed, are morning glory relatives. Though different in colors, the sweets share similar nutritional value and health benefits because they are all genetically similar. Though shockingly low-calorie considering their filling attributes, the sweet potato has a reputation among health food lovers as being among the most densely nutritious veggie available.

Sweet potatoes are packed with vitamin A; one medium sized tuber has nearly eight times an adult’s needs. Additionally, the sweet contains considerable amounts of anti-inflammatory compounds which can be very important to people with IBS, arthritis, gout and other inflammation-related diseases and the tuber also has a very low glycemic index which is thought to be a benefit for those dealing with diabetes.

If they weren’t so darn good, maybe we could see not adding them to our diets on a regular basis, but happily, these gems are quite tasty, and deserve to be grown and served more frequently than during the winter holidays!

This is so quick and easy, smooth and delicious, it may become a favorite quick breakfast meal!

Ingredients:
2 medium cooked yams (I throw them in the oven when I’m cooking something else, and then have them at the ready when I want to use them for this or another quick recipe. They can also be easily microwaved)
3 cups vanilla yogurt
1 cup milk
2 cups crushed ice
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinammon
1 ripe banana

Blend until smooth. Serves 8.