Filed under: CSA, October CSA, Sustainable Farming | Tags: Albuquerque CSA, All Natural Goat Cheese, Award Winning Goat Cheese, Cedar Crest CSA, Edgwood CSA, Eldorado CSA, New Mexico Goat Cheese, Old Windmill Dairy, Old Windmill Dairy CSA, Old Windmill Dairy Goat Cheese, Santa Fe CSA, Squash Medley Recipe, Sustainable Farming, Sustainable Farming CSA, Tiejeras CSA
Edition 3; October 3, 2008
The air is cool and breezy. The leaves are beginning to fall. Harvest time is upon us. This time of year apples, squash and other root vegetables are plentiful.
In this weeks Gourmet CSA box we have:
Apple Cider
Peach Tomatoes
Yellow Crook Neck Squash
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Feta
ExtraOrdinaire Chevre
Either Oregano or Garden Herb Fresh Pasta.
Goat Cheese Feta
Here are some suggestions of how to prepare the harvest from this weeks box.
Squash Salad Medley
2-3 Yellow crook neck squash
1 Zucchini 1 Cucumber
1 onion – optional 1/2 cup Italian dressing.
Slice the yellow crook neck squash and zucchini thinly into round medallions, than peel the cucumber and slice into round medallions. Dice ½ of a medium sized onion. Warm up a skillet with olive oil and a dash of salt. Caramelize the diced onion first, than place the squash in a skillet and 1/3 cup of Italian dressing. Cook until squash is tender. Remove from a hot skillet place in a bowl with sliced cucumbers and the remaining Italian dressing. Toss to mix vegetables thoroughly and top with Feta cheese.
This weeks pasta can easily be enhanced with a few small steps in the kitchen. Start with caramelizing onions, garlic, celery and tomatoes. Might we suggest caramelizing the onions, garlic and celery in a warm skilled with ¼ cup of olive oil and a cube or ½ tsp of chicken bullion. This will add additional flavor to your meal. After cooking your pasta for two minutes in boiling water, garnish the divine pasta with the oil and vegetables you prepared. Adding fresh tomatoes will give your meal color, texture and complex flavors.
Farmer Michael suggests using ExtraOrdinaire chevre when you prepare Macaroni & Cheese. Prepare your macaroni by precooking and than rinsing off in cool water. Mix a tub of
ExtraOrdinairy, 2 tablespoons of butter, a dash salt into your macaroni of choice. Placed mixture into 8×8 square pan. Top off the dish with traditional Cheddar or Parmesan. Bake the Dish for Approximatley 350 degrees for approximately 20 min or until cheese is slightly brown on top. Serve and enjoy while hot.
We hope you find this week’s box a pleasant treat. If the apple cider is too sweet you may want to mix a half of glass of juice with half glass of water to cut the sweetness.
Sustainable Farm Practices
There is much talk and controversy about what sustainable farm practices means to different farmers and consumers. We field questions all the time about how the goats are raised, what do goats eat and what do you do with your waste.
At the Old Windmill Dairy our goats are treated like pets. Each one is personally attended to. We pet them, talk to them and treat them as part of the family. At birth they are individually bottle fed so the kids become comfortable with human interaction. And at the same time they receive their mothers nutritional milk.
Nubian Kids
When the goats are weaned they graze on grasses and weed sprouts in the filed. Because New Mexico is aired and dry and the land yields very little new growth the goats are supplemented at milking time with top quality alfalfa and grains.
When goats eat healthy they produce our sweet creamy milk which is the most important ingredient in cheese. As you might know when you make cheese the bi product is called whey, which is the liquid that drains off the curds. One might think whey is waste. However in our case we have found several farmers who use this high protein liquid to feed their live stock.
Vegetable farmers have called upon us for our other bi product – manure. This top quality fertilizer is recycled at a few of the Estancia farms.
Here at Old Windmill Dairy, we believe sustainable farm practices include learning how to turn your waste into products that sustain life and nutrition. We believe both of our waste products produce healthy pigs and chickens while our manure provides and excellent fertilizer for vegetable gardens.
We hope this weeks box finds you healthy.
Farmer Ed.
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