The final box of the season is here! The 22 weeks have flown by for us, have they for you? Here is a quick note from Jennifer to end the season.
Hi everyone! It’s a very brisk week on the farm but so beautiful. The fall colours are out in all their splendour and when lit with a little sun, are a truly marvellous sight. We are still harvesting some things from the fields: kale, spinach and cilantro remain, and some items that have been growing since the spring: Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes. Cutting down the Brussels sprouts is like cutting down a tree, at least for the larger ones. Some of you will get leeks instead as some of the Brussels sprouts are still growing and won’t be ready until November or December!
Jerusalem artichokes may be new to you. They’re not like other artichokes. In fact, they are a tuber like potatoes and send chutes from an artichoke planted like a seed to form several more artichokes from each plant. From the sunflower family, they grow all year, are very tall (5 or more feet!) and bloom a sunflower like flower just before they are ready for harvest.
So why would you want to eat these odd, almost ginger-looking tubers? http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2456/2
They are a great source of iron, thiamin, potassium, and niacin. It can be tough to find good plant sources for iron (spinach and baby bokchoy are awesome for this as well), and potassium is something that we need to be getting all through the day as no one source gets you all you need or even close. Why do we need potassium? For our muscles to contract, including that all-important muscle: the heart, for maintaining healthy blood pressure, and for our body to function well at the cellular level. So eat up on potassium rich foods!
The banana, famous for it’s potassium content, only has 23 percent of your daily value and Jerusalem artichokes are not far behind at 18 percent. This means you should be eating potassium rich foods all day long, like Jerusalem artichokes and bananas, spinach, avacadoes, sweet potatoes, kefir or yogurt, white beans and pepper squash.
Hope a little information inspires your healthy eating. I like to make a creamy soup with Jerusalem artichokes, slice (don’t peel) an Sautee with garlic and olive oil or butter, or roast along with carrots, beets and squash.
I sincerely hope you have enjoyed each bite of your organic, local eating experience, and perhaps discovered some new nutritional powerhouses that you never knew existed! With the abundance of choice we have in our food today (and so many of them poor ones), it’s wonderful to trust the goodness of organic veggies in their natural state (no label required). We thank you for taking on this culinary adventure and hope you’ll be eager to enjoy it again next year.
From all of us at Zephyr Organics
In your final box of the season:
Week 22
-butternut squash
-beets
-cabbage (green)
-baby bokchoy
-red kale
-Brussels sprouts or leeks
-jersalem artichokes
-celery
-spinach
-carrots
Whole
-green peppers
-eggplant
-delicata squash
-pepper squash
-leeks