Salad 4: Spinach Mandarin Salad

I really like pairing spinach and tat soi with fruit. Their stronger texture compliments the soft fruit, and the sweetness of the fruit seems to enhance the greens' flavor, too.

Ingredients

1/4 pound tat soi

1/4 pound spinach

1 small onion, chopped

1 can mandarin oranges, drained

1/4 cup roasted almond slivers 

Raspberry vinagrette, or another sweet dressing

Wash and chop the greens. Top with onions and oranges. Add the almonds and dressing just before serving. (Super easy!)

Salad 4: Spinach Mandarin Salad

Day 2: Strawberry spinach salad

With a house full of girls, pink is always a winner. This salad is definitely pink, and a favorite use of the spinach.

Ingredients:

1/4 pound spinach

1/4 cup tat soi

1 green onion

6-8 large strawberries

1/4 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

1/4 cup sugar

In a small saucepan, add the sugar and pecans. Roast on medium heat, stirring constantly until sugar is dissolved. Pour pecans onto wax paper to cool.

Coarsely chop the spinach and tat soi (after you have washed it, of course). Finely chop the green onion. Slice the strawberries. Mix all together in a large bowl.

Serve topped with the sugar roasted pecans and a favorite sweet dressing. Make the salad super pink and delicious by making your own strawberry vinaigrette. I used the recipe from here:   http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/89812/strawberry-vinaigrette/

It's also good with a store-bought raspberry vinaigrette.

Day 2: Strawberry spinach salad

Fall and Winter Garden

To all my RVP customers, I wanted to share where all your produce is coming from this fall and winter. Want to learn more, www.rvp.locallygrown.net My fall and winter garden consists of 3500 square feet of high tunnels and 1000 square feet of low tunnels.

Here is Hoop A
From left to right, Radishes, Beets, Swiss Chard, Spinach, Haikuri Turnips, Some left over broccoli, Lettuce, Napa Cabbage, Joi Choy, Red Choy, Tatsoi, Longevity (a type of tatsoi I guess), and Arugula.



They all still need mini hoops and row cover to cover them, but that is on the to do list.

Hoop C
My most mature crops and most recently planted.
Left to right, Lettuce, Kale, Spinach, Under the cover Green onions, Bok Choy and Napa Cabbage, Freshly Planted Haikuri Turnips and Carrots



Hoop D
This building grew Bell peppers and Cherry Tomatoes this spring and summer. I tore out the cherry tomatoes. Too overgrown and slowing production. The bell peppers are great. They are loaded and I have been picking bunches every week for the Farmers Markets.

Outside rows are bell peppers and under the row covers I have spinach and lettuce. I just transplanted the 250 plus lettuce plugs yesterday and the spinach is coming up or getting its true leaves. I still have grasshoppers in here and they love spinach. They don't mind the lettuce, but they will eat the spinach down.



On to the Movable Buildings. I have two movable buildings and I have crops growing outside and I am going to move the buildings over the crops soon. One probably this week and the other one once I loose the green beans or in about two weeks.

M1

Haikuri Turnips, Beets, Carrots, Carrots, Haikuri Turnips


M2 Has the same crops growing in it as M1.



M1 also has green beans growing inside.


Low Tunnels Broccoli and Cauliflower.
I have over 400 broccoli and cauliflower planted. They will go under row cover soon. I have to get a lot of other stuff done first!





The first low tunnel hoop.



Brussel Sprouts

They go planted too late, but we are going to see what happens.




Last outside planting of Green Beans.

This was a last second Hail Mary Planting. I have rinsed the frost off of them once and I have picked 40 pounds of beans off of the first picking. I am hoping to get 1-2 more pickings!

Fall and Winter Garden

Flip That High Tunnel

HGTV's got nothin' on Jay.

In the past few weeks, he has torn the spring/summer crops out of Hoop A, C, and D, the three largest of our high tunnels. Out came the tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes, and in went the fall crops. And that is how this:

became this:

and this:

became this:

 We have spinach, lettuces, bok choy, carrots, and a lot of other greens growing in two of the big buildings now. And, in building D, the peppers are staying for now. They are loving the elbow space and have really flourished in the past few days. It seems odd to pick fresh salad this time of year, but it's a very, very good odd.

Flip That High Tunnel

Fall and Winter Salads

To eat local foods and what is in season, one has to think about eating salads here in the fall. We have a huge variety of greens that we are growing and selling this fall/winter. They are all being grown in our high tunnels.

Here are just a few of the different varieties we are growing this winter. We have over 10 varieties of lettuce, 3 varieties of spinach, 2 varieties of Bok Choy, Napa Cabbage, Arugula, Kale, Swiss Chard, Tatsoi and beet greens.

These greens are very cold tolerant and some will continue to keep growing through the winter. They all will be put under rowcover as soon as I can find the time to make that happen! We are continusely planting to keep a steady supply of greens available. I just planted spinach on October 3rd. With any luck it will be ready to harvest by the 5th of November. I have over 400 more transplants to go out ASAP!

Check out what we are harvesting currently.
8 ounces of Salad Mix
Kale
Black Seeded Simpson

Green Salad bowl

Red Saladbowl
Buttercrunch
Red Sails

8 ounces of Spinach

Spinach

Fall and Winter Salads

Friday's Featured Food: Eggs

Old Man Sleichter has a farm
E-I-E-I-O
And on that farm he had some chickens
E-I-E-I-O...

Yep, we've got those too. And aren't they pretty? (FYI that hen is eating an apple peel.)

We have had laying hens for 4 or 5 years now, and are up to 41 hens and 1 rooster. That number has fluctuated quite a bit, especially the first couple years when the coyotes were outsmarting us. Did you know a coyote can climb a 5-foot sheep panel? But, since our chicken yard got a "roof", we have lost very few.

Our chickens are what I would call semi-free-range, but industry would qualify as completely free range. They always have access to the outside yard. Since they love to eat seeds and to peck at bright red fruit, they do have to stay confined when we have new seeds planted or ripe tomatoes. Otherwise, they can go as far as their little legs will carry them. I was surprised to learn that hens will always come "home to roost" around sunset. It doesn't matter how much free space they have to roam, they always venture back to the chicken house in time for the sun to go down.

When they are laying, our hens will produce almost 2 dozen eggs a day. However, they aren't laying right now. Half of our chickens are a year old, and we had separated the young hens from the old, just to make sure our old ones are still laying. But, the door that separated them had glass in it, and someone who shall remain guilty shut the door too hard, breaking the glass, intermingling the chickens and scaring the eggs right out of them. (Actually, it was the stress of the change that made them stop laying for a bit.)

What do we do with all those eggs, when they do start coming again? We sell most of them at the local Farmers Market or through direct sales.

How do the eggs differ from store-bought? The most noticeable difference is the yolk. The yolk of our eggs are a deep, bright yellow, making anything you cook with eggs a bit brighter.

And speaking of cooking, we do eat a lot of eggs around here. L and N (daughters 3 and 4) love scrambled eggs, K loves fried egg sandwiches, and M loves boiled eggs. My favorite is Eggs Benedict, but that takes a lot of work and a lot of butter, so we don't make it too often. If we had to vote on one egg recipe that we all love, it'd be Egg Pie, known to the rest of the world as a quiche.

Quiche Sleichter

Pie crust for a 9-inch pie
8 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup shredded cheese
1 small onion, chopped
5-6 spinach leaves, shredded
4 large eggs
2 cups heavy whipping cream
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Steam the spinach in the microwave, following the directions on a Ziploc steam bag.
3. Prepare the pie crust and put it in the pie shell. I use the Betty Crocker pie crust recipe, because it's easy and delicious.
4. Sprinkle bacon, cheese, spinach, and onion onto the pie crust.
5. Beat eggs.
6. Add cream, salt, and pepper to eggs and beat until well blended.
7. Pour egg mixture into pie crust, covering bacon, etc.
8. Bake the quiche in the oven for 15 minutes.
9. Reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. The recipe I base this off of says it will take 30 minutes, but it always seems to take 45 minutes or more to get it completely done in the middle.
10. Let it stand 10 minutes before serving. That will let it set up just a little bit more.

Friday's Featured Food: Eggs

Be jealous...but not for long!

One of my favorite aspects of our massive garden is getting to walk outside and "shop" for supper. Last night, we had a fresh spinach and lettuce salad with asparagus, cherry tomatoes, homemade croutons, carrots and cauliflower. Okay, so I had to buy the carrots and cauliflower, but give us a couple weeks and that too will be from home.

Spinach amazes me, how quickly it grows from this:

 

to this:

to this:

It also is one of the most fascinating seedlings, to me. Look back at that first picture; are there any other plants that look like a grass and broadleaf at the same time?

And to add to the spinach? Some fresh salad greens from our office room. Grown in a planting flat, this lettuce experiment has definitely proven itself worthy and cost-efficient:





So, as I said, be jealous, because it was delicious! But don't be jealous for long. You can pick up some locally grown salad for your own dinner table at any of the area Farmer's Markets starting up soon.

• Manhattan Farmers Market starts next weekend, April 24
• Clay Center's Farmers Market starts May 7 at the Courthouse Square
• Find a market near you

Be jealous...but not for long!