In light of the continuing stormy financial weather, this article bounced to me from the SBS website provided more than a little food for thought. It’s more than a little astounding that we can come up with $700 billion just-like-that to support the global financial system when you consider what else could be done with that kind of money.
Basically, that’s a lot of rutabagas.
$700 billion would buy 2,000 McDonald’s Apple Pies for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Or, if you want to take the culinary high road, 31 pounds of foie gras (we’d have to buy the world’s production for 197 years to get there, though). Or 11 pounds of black truffles (if we got all of those truffles from France, we’d have to buy all of their annual production for three years, so maybe that’s more reasonable than the foie gras.)
At one of those hyper-food restaurants you read about occasionally, where they serve the results of “molecular cuisine,” we could take the entire population of the world’s five most populous nations out to a really fancy dinner.
For a more plebian approach, $700 billion would buy 350 billion pounds of certified organic rutabagas from Rock Spring Farm, at retail prices. That’s a heaping 20-bushel bin (the ones you see watermelons in at the grocery store) for everybody in the United States. Or, it’s enough rutabagas to stretch to the moon and back 92 times.
Don’t even get me started on beets.
On the other end of things, the UN’s World Food Program used about $3 billion to help feed 86.1 million people in 2007, about one tenth of the 850 million undernourished people on this planet. Based on those numbers, and assuming everything else stays the same, 700 billion dollars would feed all of the world’s hungry for the next 23 years.
Weather: A drizzly Saturday dried out quickly on Sunday, leaving us wishing we had gotten a bit more rain. By Monday we had made it back in the field for more transplanting, followed by all day rains on Tuesday and Wednesday, which the harvest crew gamely picked their way through. By Wednesday evening, soils were nicely moist and the new seedings of carrots, beets, radishes, and salad mix were having a hard time believing their good fortune.
What We Did: On Thursday, Chris seeded salad mix, beets, and radishes, flame-weeded a new crop of carrots the day before they germinated, and tore up a crop of weeds on our rental land in preparation for the start of the storage crop planting season. Our transplanting crew put out the last of the onions, celeriac, and parsley, as well as the first crop of greenhouse cucumbers. The greenhouse crew – which is basically the transplant crew when it’s too wet to transplant – seeded another crop of broccoli, the winter squash, storage cabbages, and Brussels sprouts. Sarah and Ben re-organized the packing house to better meet the needs of the harvest team. Chris cultivated everything on the farm during Memorial Day’s dry intermission. Everybody worked to get the crops harvested, washed and packed.
Comings and Goings: Our summer crew season officially opened on Monday when Emily returned from an academic year of nursing in Rochester. Bekah, a religion studies major from LutherCollege in Decorah – and Emily’s roommate for the summer – joined us on Wednesday, just in time for a rainy radish harvest.
How to store this week’s box: Everything goes in to the refrigerator except the onions. Remove the tops from the radishes and store them separately if you think you might use them, or just discard. Remove the tops from the spinruts. Everything should go in loose plastic bags in your crisper drawer. Store the onions dark and cool and dry – not in the refrigerator.
We worked hard to get the Purple Radishes and the French Breakfast Radishes this week, managing to time their harvest for a steady drizzle that left he picking crew soaked to the bone. I’ve been excited about purple radishes for a long time, but consistently had a hard time finding a quality variety. This year, I stumbled on a new hybrid that seems to have done quite a nice job of producing a tasty crop. Spicier than the French Breakfast radishes, the purples have a good flavor that isn’t dominated by heat. I think this has as much to do with the cool spring and relatively consistent moisture we’ve been blessed with (a curse for tomatoes is a blessing for radishes, which is the nice thing about diversity, right?).
Radishes with Lemon Vinaigrette
1 bunch radishes
2 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp olive oil
generous salt and pepper
Slice the radishes pretty thinly, say 1/8 of an inch. Combine lemon juice, olive oil, and a generous pinch of salt and several grinds of black pepper in a small bowl, and whisk until emulsified. Toss in the radish slices, and toss until thoroughly coated. Chill for fifteen minutes or more before serving.
Those of you new to Rock Spring Farm may not have heard of Spinruts before. These white spring turnips originate in Japan, where they are traditionally grown in the spring, as we have done here. We harvested this crop from the greenhouse. In the second year that we sold these at the Rochester Farmers Market, a customer returned to our stand and informed us that if we continued to call them turnips, lots of good, deserving people would never try them; he suggested we call them spinruts, which is “turnips” spelled backwards. We never looked back. With a mild, sweet flavor, these bear only the slightest resemblance to their fall cousins. I often slice them to serve as crudités with dinner or lunch, but my favorite is to lightly steam them – don’t overcook, or they get a little mushy and less-than-perfect.
The turnip greens are delicious as well, and I especially enjoy them sautéed with a bit of soy sauce.
Lemony Spinrut Pickles
This recipe was given to us by another market customer taken with this delicious spring treat.
1 bunch spinruts, sliced 1/4-inch thick
Zest of one lemon
1 tsp salt
Mix lemon zest and salt. Arrange some of the spinruts in a single layer in the bottom of a non-reactive dish, sprinkle with lemon-salt mixture, and continue to layer spinruts and lemon-salt mixture.Cover, place in refrigerator for 4 hours or more, and serve.
I’ve never understood why Red RussianKale is called a kale, since it’s the same species as turnips. Still, the flavor and texture is quite unlike kale’s hearty greenhouse or the spicy flavor and almost ethereal texture of turnip greens. Cut into thin ribbons, you can serve it as a salad.
Red Russian Kale with Pancetta
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced pancetta
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch Red Russian kale, stemmed and chopped into 1-inch ribbons
1-1/2 cups chicken broth
In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Sauté the onion and pancetta until the onion is translucent and the fat has rendered from the pancetta. Add the kale and toss to coat the leaves with oil. Add the broth and bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat, and simmer until the leaves are tender, about 8 minutes. Raise the heat and boil, uncovered, until the pan is dry. Season with fresh ground pepper and serve.
Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but we found a partial bin of Yellow Onions in pretty darned good condition as we were cleaning out the dry side of the cooler. I don’t expect them to store very well once they come out of refrigeration, so don’t hang on to them for too long, but they should store for a week or two just like you would in the fall, in a cool, dark place with low humidity. I like to cover them with a towel in the pantry, but they will also store well in a kitchen cupboard.
We are still harvesting Asparagus, and will continue to do so for another three weeks. I never get tired of it, although I might if we kept harvesting it forever. Almost every night, I lay a bunch out on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and cook in the oven under whatever else we’re having for dinner until it’s tender and delicious.
Our Baby Red Oak Lettuce didn’t size up as nicely as I wish it had for the last of these spring shares, so I selected the largest heads we have for this week’s box. Enjoy.
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