Farm to Table Recipe

 In Eat Your Greens, Farm Fresh Recipe, News, Today in CSA

Today in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

This week’s farm share is a green bounty of freshly harvested goodies, some of which I’m not very familiar with. These deeply vibrant and strong bitter greens call out to me for adventure in culinary parts unknown. Motivated purely by their glowing pigment rich nutrients, I became determined to make a meal out of it all, tonight.

This many greens use to mean one thing…. a salad. What salad dressing to use on my greens would be the next question. However, I’m teaching myself to look at food differently and see options outside of whats been packaged for me to find. When you start reading labels, you begin to realize there is a whole new world of meal prep waiting out there. Now I think of salad as what dressing to create from scratch, instead of buy. You can never go wrong with fresh ingredients made into something from scratch.

The desire to feel good and be healthy, has challenged me to develop a new relationship with the food in my life. First I look for it’s ability to sustain life, then at which options give the most return on investment, and stabilize my access to nourishment every day of my life.

There is an easy, comfortable way to prepare a healthy dinner. It lives conveniently beyond strolling for recipe ideas, and creating shopping lists to follow them. You don’t have to work so hard to create a lifestyle change, you just need the option of simple choices. A healthy diet can meet you where you’re at, simply by keeping it fresh. Unpack your CSA box every week and eat what you have. Seasonal freshly harvested local organic produce found in your CSA, is always Farm Fresh. Always most nutritious. Always most delicious. This is how I unpacked meal from mine…..

Wash greens in a bowl of cold water. Rinse and repeat until soil is dislodged and removed.

Next chop your veggies and peel garlic. Start a pot of jasmine rice.

Over low-medium heat, add butter and freshly minced garlic to pan. Set aside a few garlic cloves to add later.

Add greens and veggies. Mix with butter and garlic, keep on low-medium heat and cover.

Slice 3 gloves of garlic into shavings. After 5 minutes, add garlic to pan. Stir and cover until done (soft).

Plate over rice. Serve with a delicious glass of lemon water. For desert, rinse and remove stems from freshly harvested strawberries and cut into bite sizes. Swirl delicious raw kefir with a dash of real maple syrup or farm fresh honey, and top with strawberries and a sprinkle of pecans!

Give thanks…. and enjoy!



Get To Know Your Farm

At Sage Mountain Farm, we know that the food you put into your body on a daily basis makes all the difference in quality of life. For that reason, our primary mission is to reconnect Southern Californians with their food source by offering truly local, organically-farmed food. More than ever, consumers are beginning to see the light with regard to food that is processed, food that is infused with preservatives because it has traveled across multiple time zones and borders, and food that is less nutritious and flavorful because it cannot be harvested at peak ripeness or readiness.

This new awareness is bringing us back into a relationship with our food, the animals, the plants, the land where these are grown and raised, the farmers, and importantly, with each other. At Sage Mountain Farm, we aim to connect you with food that is grown organically and as close to you as

possible.

Our food tastes like it came from your very own garden, because in a sense, it has—in our garden which is just down the road. So dig in, do your research, and get to know your farmers because there’s nothing we love more than feeding our Southern California neighbors the healthiest, most nutritious food possible.


 


A Personal Note about why belonging to a local farm’s CSA program is so important to me:

I eat organic fruits and vegetables because nutritional content is important to me. What I’ve learned while working at a small farm reveals a truth contrary to our common belief.  A look into the scientific facts about the nutrition of produce on store shelves, creates an uncomfortable revelation about the food we’re serving our families.

Did you know that the nutritional merits of fruits and vegetables steadily loose vitamins while in storage and transit? That the antioxidants decrease rapidly after harvest making it difficult to reap the full health benefits of fresh produce?

Four big factors that impact the nutritional value of the produce you eat:
-The ripeness of the produce
-The length of time since harvest
-The varieties chosen
-The harvesting methods

Sage Mountain Farms produce:
-Only the best nutrient rich, flavorful seed varieties
-Hand-picked & handled
-Harvested at the peak of ripeness, maximizing nutrient content
-Harvested to order! Your order is harvested and delivered within 24-48 hours.
-Minimal travel necessary (none for farm pick ups CSA & Farm Stand)

Let me show you some examples of why this should be important to you:

Studies have shown that tomatoes harvested green have 31% less vitamin C than those allowed to ripen on the vine (Lee and Kader, 2000). Vine ripened red peppers too, have about 30% more vitamin C than green peppers (Howard et al., 1994). It is not just vitamin C content that is reduced, in fact vine ripened tomatoes contain more of the important antioxidants beta carotene and lycopene than those harvested prematurely (Arias et al., 2000).

Lettuce loses 46% of some key nutrients within seven days of cold storage. Spinach loses 22% of lutein and 18% of beta carotene content after just eight days of cold storage (Ramberg and McAnnelley, 2002). Culinary herbs, when used fresh, contain significant amounts of antioxidants. These antioxidants decrease rapidly after harvest making it difficult to reap the full health benefits of fresh culinary herbs with products from commercial grocery stores (Bottino, 2010).

Nothing compares to the juicy flavor of a tomato picked fresh off the vine and eaten right in the garden. Today’s global food system ensures that we can find ripe tomatoes any day of the year in any store across the country but the flavor of those tomatoes is often a far cry from that deep red, vine ripened fruit in your garden or the next best thing, Sage Mountain Farms CSA box. Moreover the fresh produce we find in our grocery stores today actually contains fewer nutrients than the same types of produce did just 30 years ago.

Did you know that in 1951, an adult woman could meet her daily requirements of vitamin A by eating two peaches? But by 2002, she would need to eat 53 peaches to obtain the same amount of vitamin A !!! (Ramberg and McAnnelley, 2002). Commercial agriculture of the 21st century seems focused on enhancing shelf
life of produce, often at the expense of taste and nutrition. This means that maximizing your nutrient dollar in our current grocery store climate is a daunting task and can result in produce lacking in both flavor and quality.

The perceived convenience of global food sourcing and mass shipping of
produce to achieve lower prices has been a detriment to our diets and our
planet. I hope you join a local CSA today and insure that farm fresh produce is available for you and your family every day.

From our home on the farm to yours… we wish you good health and good life!

Hope to see you at the farm soon.

Many Blessings,
Amy

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