Boston Organics Blog | Fresh. Organic. Delivered. | Boston Organics (40)

A box full of super foods is being delivered to Dogma Box subscribers this week. These include antioxidant rich blueberries from Maine and beta-carotene filled carrots from Atlas Farm in Massachusetts. Also new to the box: fresh cantaloupe from Porter Farm in NY. Beautiful eggplants, chard, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, onions and apples round out the box.

This week’s Dogma Box includes:

Asian Eggplant –Picadilly Farm (Winchester, NH)
Pickling Cucumbers – Picadilly Farm (Winchester, NH)
Salad Tomatoes – Atlas Farm(S. Deerfield, MA)
Romaine Lettuce – Atlas Farm(S. Deerfield, MA)
Green Bell Peppers – Atlas Farm(S. Deerfield, MA)
Chard –Atlas Farm(S. Deerfield, MA)
Rainbow and Orange Carrots – Atlas Farm(S. Deerfield, MA)
Yellow Onions – Porter Farms (Elba, NY)
Cantaloupe– Porter Farms (Elba, NY)
Paula Red Apples – Dwight Miller & Son Orchards (E. Dummerston, VT)
Blueberries– Burke Hill Farm (Cherryfield, ME)

The included recipes utilize many of the produce items that you’re receiving in this week’s Dogma Box. Our recipes are usually quite flexible and easily adaptable based on your pantry and your dietary needs. Feel free to get creative in the kitchen! If you come up with new ways to use some of our recipes and would like to share, post them on our Facebook or Tweet us.

Wheat Berry Pilaf

Tomato, Spelt and Herb Salad

Grilled Vegetables with Rosemary and Goat Cheese Polenta

What are you cooking this week? Feel free to share with us at any time! For more recipes, check out the Produce Info, Storage Tips and Recipes section on our website and browse recipes by item. Here you can find nutritional information, preparation tips, and recipes for each produce item we offer. Happy eating from your friends at Boston Organics!

Topics: Local Dogma Box

It looks like a mighty fine week of local and organic produce ahead of us! Heirloom tomato add-ons continue, while half pints of wild Maine blueberries are here as our featured add-on of the week. Other notable produce includes field tomatoes from Atlas Farm, collard greens, Daikon radishes, and fresh thyme. Check out the newsletter!

This week’s featured add-on is wild lowbush Maine blueberries! Burke Hill Farm in Cherryfield, ME usually has fresh certified organic blueberries available in August and September, and we’ve worked with them over the past few years to get you some of the best blueberries around.

Topics: Recipes

Boston Organics has started a new series of posts for Meatless Monday recipes in order to offer ideas for vegetarian dinners and also to encourage a reduction in weekly meat consumption.

Meatless Mondays are a way to show our customers that vegetable-based meals can be hearty and delicious and that they are a nutritious and environmentally responsible way to eat.

Topics: Vegetarian and Vegan Food

Atlas Farm has organic watermelons for us this week, and we’ve made them our featured add-on! We also have 2 lb bags of heirloom tomatoes as well as Sungold cherry tomatoes available as add-ons from Atlas Farm as well! In addition to the delicious local veggies going out in boxes this week, we’re getting an early season variety of apple called Paula Reds from Dwight Miller Orchards in VT. Finally, this is the last week of our Summer Sweepstakes! Check out the newsletter for more produce news and upcoming events!

The break room at Boston Organics has been renamed the Boston Organics Test Kitchen today! We’re juicing here in Charlestown, learning the ins and outs of raw food fashion.

There are many positive reasons to juice. Juicing allows you to consume an optimal amount of vegetables in an efficient manner. A small glass of juice will supply you with a large amount of micro nutrients from a variety of fruits and vegetables. Proponents believe juicing is better for you than is eating whole fruits and vegetables because your body can absorb the nutrients better. While this is still up for debate, if you don’t enjoy eating fresh fruits and vegetables, juicing may be a fun way to add them to your diet or to try fruits and vegetables you normally wouldn’t eat. It is a great way to add more variety to your diet. If you do try juicing, make only as much juice as you can drink at one time because fresh squeezed juice can quickly develop harmful bacteria. And when juicing, try to keep some of the pulp. Not only does it have healthy fiber, but it can help fill you up. Using organic fruits and vegetables for juicing is recommended because you want your drink to be as pure as possible.

If you would like to try juicing, and have a juicer handy, try this basic juice recipe! Be sure to wash your produce before putting them into the juicer, but beyond that there’s not much prep work. So long as the juicing items can fit in the juicer they can often be fed through as is.

Ginger Zinger

3 Carrots 1 Apple (cored and quartered)

1/2″ knob of ginger (peeled)

Makes 1 serving

*NOTE: We used Rainbow Bunched Carrots so juice color may vary

One of the most anticipated gifts of summer has arrived. Summer farmers markets have popped up around Boston! There’s nothing quite like meeting the farmer who grew your food and being able to ask about where your produce came from and how it was grown.

Farmers markets offer the chance for shoppers to make the most informed decisions, and that starts with knowing where your food is coming from. In order to make the best choices for you, your family, and the environment, use the farmers market as an opportunity to educate yourself! Local foods can still have pesticides on them, so ask around and find out what the farmers are using on their crops. Most farmers are more than happy to tell you all about what they do and how they grow their produce.

In order to learn more about the foods at your local farmers markets, here are some questions we think are helpful to ask the farmers you meet.

Do you follow organic guidelines or other environmentally sustainable agricultural practices?

If the farm is Certified Organic, then you can know with confidence that they are using strict guidelines that ensure your food is being produced in a safe and sustainable way. However, just because a farm isn’t Certified Organic, it doesn’t mean they don’t use sustainable agricultural methods. Without the certification, you may need to do a little more research to better understand what they are and are not doing. Farmers markets provide a great opportunity to find out directly from the grower what kinds of practices they use.
To get a better sense of what all of it means for the farmer, the crops, the environment, and you, you may want to ask the farmers the following questions…

How do you fertilize?
There are many effective and safe ways to fertilize soil in sustainable ways. Find out the farmer’s methods and look into it yourself!

Do you use any synthetic pesticides or fungicides?
As a general rule, all synthetic chemicals are prohibited in organic agriculture. The presence of agricultural chemicals like pesticides in our food system is greater now than it ever has been, and the long term effects of exposure to these chemicals are, at best, not reliably known, and at worst, proven to cause harm to humans. Due to the sheer amount of these chemicals that are used all around us, we just can’t escape them. We need to be particularly careful about what we expose our children to: even small concentrations of agricultural chemicals in growing bodies isn’t good.

How do you manage pests and disease? Do you practice Integrated Pest Management?
Some farms practice techniques such as integrated pest management (IPM) in order to limit the amount of synthetic pesticides they release into the environment. Since this is not regulated and there are no standards, IPM can vary from farm to farm.

Do you use genetically modified seeds (GMOs)?
Genetically modified seeds are relatively new but are gaining widespread use. The long term health and environmental risks which GMOs pose have not yet been adequately investigated. Genetically modified seeds and foods are prohibited in Organic standards. Organic certification is one of the only safeguards against GMOs.

How do you decide which products to grow?

What crops are coming into season next? Are they growing on a schedule?

How has the weather impacted your crops this season?

What’s your favorite fruit or vegetable?

To learn more about the benefits of produce that’s both local AND organic, check out this great article!

What questions do you like to ask your farmers at the farmers market? Let us know!

Topics: Organic Farmers

The first heirloom tomatoes of the season have arrived from Atlas Farm! We have 2lb bags of heirloom tomatoes available as add-ons, and we also have pints of smaller sized heirlooms available. Other produce highlights this week are Spanish onions from Atlas Farm, Mung bean sprouts from Jonathan’s Sprouts, and sweet corn from Lakeside Organics. We still have Vermont blueberry add-ons this week, and they should continue for 1 to 2 more weeks. Check out the newsletter!