09/26/2024
CSA Pick Up #15
9/20 - 9/21
This week’s harvest includes:
Tomatoes: Lots of them. We are in peak tomato season right now. The quality of these tomatoes is phenomenal. Great for fresh eating. However, you may be contemplating making a tomato sauce.
Forgive me, but this is where I cannot remain silent in the face of a grave injustice that occurs around this time each season. I have summed up my observations and feelings, here in this essay, titled:
'On Tomato Sauce: Correcting a Grave Injustice to a Noble Fruit’
In this essay, I am going to get very serious - because this really is no laughing matter. There is some grave misinformation ‘out there’ about how to make tomato sauce. Really, really bad information on how to turn fresh tomato fruit into a sauce is all over the Interwebs. Advice so heinously bad, it should be banned from all social media: Myface, Instagrammy, Whatsup, Tictalk, I know them all. Stop laughing. It’s not funny. I’m not smiling.
Have you heard this terrible sauce-making advice? The 'technique' goes something like this: slash an x-shape into your tomato’s skin and then drop it into boiling water, then fish out the co**se and burn yourself as you slide the skin off the fruit. Then, you (shudder) THROW the SKIN away! NOO! And proceed to drop the brutalized innocent fruit, seeds and all, into the pot you are supposedly making tomato sauce in but I can tell you right now that that will not be what I would consider tomato sauce. Simply Barbaric! Stop it!
There is so much wrong with this I’ll generously call ‘technique’, and not just the ritualistic burning of your fingers. First off, the skin is by far the most important part of the fruit in terms of the concentration of phytonutrients - mainly the presence of the super antioxidant Lycopene. Lycopene is proven to significantly lower chances of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. And eighty percent of this medicine is found in the skin of the fruit. The skin is also a very solid source of soluble fiber. And yet, misguided people throw it all away. Just…throw it away. Why? It’s tragic, really. This ignorance must be eradicated.
And I think I may know why this misguided attempt at saucing occurs. It’s because if one just cuts up raw tomatoes into let’s say wedges and then puts them into the sauté pan to make a fast tomato sauce, all the fibers in the skin tend to roll up into tight, hard little orange fibrous, toothpicks. You've seen it. Those are unpleasant to eat. I do not like them. But there is a very simple solution - your blender. It has a little button that says ‘puree’. See? It’s right there. This is what it is for. Simply puree your tomatoes raw, and then add them to the pot to cook down. How simple. And no more satanic gashing of crosses into the fruit and then torturing them and yourself with boiling water. What is that all about? That's just sick.
Also, and this is very important, why would you then want to purposefully add the seeds into your sauce? That’s counterproductive. The seeds contain bitter compounds that can be imparted into the sauce during extended cooking. Most say it is such a miniscule amount that you can’t taste it but as a sauce aficionado, I can taste it. Yes, I can. To avoid this unpleasantry simply cut your tomato in half horizontally at the ‘waist’, and then hold it upside down and with your fingers scoop out all the seeds from the little chambers within the tomato called ‘locules’. They fall right out. After scooping out all the seeds, put the flesh WITH the all-important nutrient-rich skin intact into the blender and puree. Nice.
Of course, now you could add chopped onions, peppers, garlic, olive oil, basil – whatever suits you to the pot. Boil it, then cook it down. Also, and this is important, all the chopped-up fibers of the skin impart a very nice, silky smoothness to the finished sauce. Smoooth. You can use this technique when just adding one single tomato to your evening dinner sauté, or when you are making a bigger batch to freeze. When I make a big batch of sauce, I cook it on a low setting overnight to drive off water and thicken it up nicely. The whole house smells like a pizza in the morning. Sorry I had to get so serious, but I have taken an oath to confront this grave misjustice each season, in defense of the fruit of the most Noble Nightshade.
Peppers: Pepper-palooza continues unabated. Look at those colors! What a lineup.
The heat of a pepper:
Capsaicin is the chemical that gives peppers their ‘heat’. It is found in low concentrations in the flesh of the fruit, and even lower concentration in the seeds. Then where is it located? Most of the capsaicin in a hot pepper is located in the fleshy material in the center of the pepper upon which the seeds are attached. It is commonly called the pith. The proper term is the placenta, just like in animals, since this is where the seeds, the next generation, are held. Capsaicin glands are also located here, thus the heat. The plant spends a lot of energy making capsaicin. Why? It serves as a deterrent to mammals coming and eating the seeds before they can mature. It is also a fungicide that keeps the seeds from rotting before they mature.
Lettuce mix: We are really cranking out the lettuce this season. This bed, the second planted bed of the season, should keep us in lettuce until, say, pickup #18. However, we have just planted some fine lettuce plug plants (yes, we planted in late September!) and this third bed should mature just in time to cover those last two weeks. Yeah, man. Also, this lettuce is in perfect condition. Get it out of that bag and into Tupperware ASAP. Take care of your produce, and it will take care of you.
Potatoes: We have begun digging into our potato beds, that is always exciting. We have some amazing purple potatoes. They are purple all the way through, not just the skin. That is a whole lot of anthocyanin, the purple pigment found many places in nature. The purplish color of oak leaves, for example, are due to the presence of anthocyanin. The skin of an eggplant – anthocyanin. Anthocyanin is a very powerful antioxidant. There are molecules called ‘free radicals’ running wild in your body right now. They are so mean. They damage vital cell components, thus can cause disease (dis-ease). Anthocyanin destroys those free radicals, protecting your cells and body. Why would you not eat it? There are also some white/yellow potatoes. Potatoes are not roots. They are composed of stem tissue. They are stem tissue used as a carbohydrate storage structure.
Sweet potatoes: Sweet potatoes are actually roots. This cultivar (cultivated variety) is called ‘Beaureguard’. It is a southern sweet tater, grown mainly in Alabama and Mississippi. So very tasty and super healthy. Let’s call it a ‘super food’. Why not. They are loaded with minerals, fiber, and yes, antioxidants.
Select-a-cooler: A selection between the last of the golden zukes, or an eggplant. The zukes really performed well. They made super fruits and lasted a very long time in the field. The eggplants are an interesting story. Remember that quadruple heat wave (12 straight days above 90F) that we endured? Well, it had a physiological effect on the eggplant plants. They were looking healthy and holding flowers one day, and a couple days later all the flowers were on the ground. When it gets too hot for these plants, that’s what they always do. Too hot to reproduce, I suppose. So instead, these plants just kept growing vegetatively. They are huge. They did re-flower when the heatwave ended. And those flowers are just now developing into fruits. The plants are robust and growing in the protective environment of the high tunnel. So, they’ve got both plenty of strength and plenty of time to do some serious fruiting. I expect a late rush of eggplant fruits.
Arugula: This bed is like an arugula machine, and it does not appear to be slowing down. We are so good at growing arugula. So, we will keep harvesting it for you. It can be blanched and then frozen in a plastic bag to be used in a sauté or soup this coming winter. It is coming, you know, winter. If you are not a fan of arugula uncooked, try cooking it and using it to flavor a rice or a pasta. The bitterness that turns some people off is not pronounced when it is cooked. Try to get this green into your GI tract. Your body will thank you.
This week concludes a really super third quarter of the season. We have plenty of crops in the field to have a great fourth quarter as well, for the win.
Oh! We are going to have a Bee Thankful Farm display at the Deerfield Fair this year! Thank you, Sarah. Exciting!
Take good care,
Nick and Carol
