A farm share and kitchen garden recipe: Cheese ravioli with fresh chard, shallots and basil pesto

When I got home from work tonight there was literally nothing obvious to cook for dinner. It's been over a week since I've been grocery shopping. But no fear! I have plenty of things growing right outside my kitchen door and sitting in the crisper drawer from this week's Green Meadows CSA farm share.

After a rummage in the back of the freezer I found a bag of cheese raviolis. I put the baby in the yard to play while I clipped the top two inches off every basil plant I have. In the back of the baking cabinet I found some walnuts, add a bit of olive oil and some fresh Parmesan cheese and voila! Fresh pesto! I made enough for two more dinners which I froze for later.

To add to the pasta I cut up all the chard I got last week from Green Meadows before it was too far gone. I sauteed it with diced garlic scapes and a shallot, also from the farm share. Toss that all together, sprinkle on some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and it was so good my husband finished his plate before I even finished a third of mine. And then he ate my leftovers.

I don't like to measure when I cook so here's about what I did in recipe form:

Cheese Ravioli with fresh chard, shallots and basil pesto:

Pesto:
-A colander of fresh basil, washed.
-a handful of walnuts
-a few tablespoons of olive oil
-a few small chunks of Parmesan cheese
Blend everything in a blender until it's minced.

Pasta:
-chard chopped into approximate 2" square pieces.
-one diced shallot
-one diced garlic scape

Saute the garlic and shallot in butter for about 5 minutes. Add the chard and cook until soft. Toss with cooked ravioli and stir in pesto. Top with fresh Parmesan. Yum! Sadly my photo is out of focus and we ate it all so I can't retake it!

Farm share soup

Squirrel Queen at The Road to Here has posted a challenge to encourage people to buy produce locally from a farmer's market or a local farm stand. The farmer's market down the street from us is regrettably small, last week they only had six stands and only two of them were selling produce. And what they had for sale was mostly what I had already picked up the previous Tuesday at Green Meadows Farm for our weekly CSA farm share, my love of which I shared with you all last month. So for SQ's Farmer's Market Challenge I'm going to focus on what I did with my farm share, and what I do with it almost every week: I make soup.


I LOVE soup. I could eat it every day, even in the summer when it's hot. The first summer my husband and I did a farm share was in 2006 and I was sadly too sick to eat all the produce. I've lived with Crohn's Disease since I was 14 ( lived, I will not say suffered, because if you suffer it's only because you let it get to you) So it's been about 19 years that I haven't been able to indulge in a bowl of popcorn, or smear crunchy peanut butter on a lap full of celery. A salad is often something I gaze at in wonder as other people with "healthy" guts shovel it in their mouths.

Generally I've been healthy for the past 19 years, I've never had surgery, I currently don't treat my illness with anything except acupuncture (the side effects of Crohn's meds are often worse than the disease). But I'm still left with the problem of getting my veggies. So I blend them.

The first time we came home with two full shopping bags of local organic produce from Green Meadows in 2006 I thought, "How on earth am I going to help Brian eat this?" I was having a relapse and had already lost 10 pounds. After experimenting we came up with this recipe for what we call Farm Share Soup. Or sometimes just Green Soup, since it usually comes out some shade of green.Basically the recipe is put in whatever you can or want. My rule is to have a variety of colors, different colors generally mean different vitamins and minerals. This week here's what I did:

-one kohlrabi
-one turnip
-one shallot
-one garlic scape (the curly thing in the photo)
-one sweet potato (not actually part of this week's share, it was purchased)
-a bunch of radishes
-two frozen blocks of spinach from previous weeks.
-a summer squash
-a box of Trader Joe's chicken broth (you can also use veggie, but I like the extra protein)
-about a half cup plain yogurt
-I usually like to add a whole fennel bulb and carrots but I didn't have any on hand.
-pinch of salt
-pinch of pepper
-pinch of coriander

Chop up all veggies and add to pot with broth and spices, boil into submission (to aid in my digestion). Then blend in a blender. Add more broth to thin if you'd desire. Add the yogurt, stir and eat! Yummy! This batch came out a pale shade of green, sometimes it's more orange, sometimes not.

The recipe changes according to the season. In the fall I add more potatoes, turnips and pumpkin. Late in the summer more squash. Sometimes I put in coconut milk since there's evidence it's beneficial for Crohn's disease (and tastes yummy!) There are no rules except trying to add lots of color and coming up with flavors you like. And the best part is I'm getting an insane amount of veggie goodness without the Crohn's-related issues and I freeze a jar from every batch so we can have farm share soup all winter too!

Bon apetite!

Eating locally: the CSA farm share

Reduce footprints put out a challenge this week to eat locally. This actually works in nicely to a post I've been working on about our local farm share. For the fourth year in a row my husband and I have had a community sponsored agriculture (CSA) share in the delicious organic produce of Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, MA. This was the first week's distribution which I picked up last Tuesday, believe it or not this is a "small share". It's far more than my husband and I can eat. We freeze a lot for the long winter:


Green Meadows has an interesting history in that the property was owned by General George S. Patton III of WWII fame. His son, Major General George S. Patton IV, retired to the farm in 1980 and turned this former leisure property into a blueberry farm. All the fields are named after brave soldiers who lost their lives fighting with the Major General in Vietnam.

We love our farm share for many reasons:

-it's local (five minutes down the road from our house).
-it's organic
-it supports a local business
-it makes us eat our veggies :)
-every week there's a pick-your-own offering, the past two weeks it was strawberries, check them out below! I ate most of them and only left my husband two, I couldn't help it they were SO good!

-and most importantly (my husband's favorite reason) it makes us feel good. He says he enjoys talking to the "cute farm girls" that grow our food. He did actually just say that. Although it's actually a large crew of very dedicated women and men, but we'll let him enjoy talking to the farm girls....

Green Meadows Farm also has chickens, turkeys, sheep, pigs (which they let you feed!) and a super friendly house cat that's employed to get the mice. Four years ago getting a slot for their CSA was easy. This year there were 300 people on their waiting list and they're already taking names for next spring's waiting list. I take that as an excellent sign that Americans are starting to be more mindful about what they eat.

To find a farm with CSA shares near you go to localharvest.org and enter your zipcode. I'm still stunned at how many farms offer farm shares! In a 15 mile radius of our house there are nine farms that have shares, talk about eating local!

My "Monsanto Sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden"

I've been a little deprived of news lately but I caught a brief bit of the Daily Show the other night and was appalled to learn that the big three agro-business corporations are criticizing Michelle Obama for planting an organic garden. Apparently, Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and Dupont believe it is irresponsible of the First Lady to not use pesticides and chemical fertilizers in her 1100 square foot plot.


A few months before I heard the news that Michelle Obama was planning an organic garden on the White House grounds I decided to turn an unused 6 by 14 foot patio into a raised organic vegetable bed. The plan is to plant the veggies that we never get enough from in our Community Supported Agriculture farm share from the organic Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, Massachusetts. You can see my bed half-finished above. I still have to move about a yard of loam I had delivered from Wolf Hill, my husband and I are giving our backs a break for a day. My little 84 square feet of awaiting dirt is nothing to Michelle's, but it's all I can fit in our 3200 square foot plot (and half of that is a house).

Now after hearing that Mrs. Obama is taking heat for not using chemicals, and unknowingly NOT teaching America that we need these chemicals in our life, I've decided to provocatively name my little patch of land the "Monsanto sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden". I'm already envisioning a nice sign with Michelle posing oh-so sophisticated in her gardening gloves with her foot crushing a bottle of pesticides and a bag of genetically altered seeds.

I know that not everyone in America has even the mere 84 square feet that I have to grow organic vegetables. Nor can everyone afford them in the grocery store. But, if you do have a patch of land, and like to garden, what's the big deal if you want to make it organic and therefore not expose your family and pets to chemicals? Realistically, without some kind of pest management it would be hard to grow enough food for the world's growing population. But major agro-business and a family's home plot is worlds apart.

So I say to DuPont, Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and the other members of the Mid America Croplife Association: "Keep your grubby chemically hands out of my backyard" and even more so "keep your genetically modified and genetically dead seeds out of my backyard". It's all heirloom veggies in my plot, and Neptune's Harvest organic fish emulsion fertilizer if I need it. My compost from last year's growing season will do most of the work.

Here's my plan courtesy of Gardener's Supply's Kitchen Garden Planner. I can already taste the organic tomatoes, green beans, basil, lettuce, carrots, spinach and cucumbers...

I applaud you Michelle Obama....so take THAT Monsanto!