They say that April showers bring May flowers, but they also bring delicious fruits and vegetables! The extra long winter has made spring feel a little slow in coming, but we have new produce items appearing every week and this one is no exception.
English shelling peas are the highlight of this week’s All-Veggie Boxes. Shelling peas takes a bit of time, but once you develop a rhythm it can be one of the more satisfying of the kitchen chores, and a fun way to get the kids involved! Fresh peas don’t store very well, so if you’re not planning to use them within a couple of days from your delivery, we suggest you blanch and freeze them.
The first organic peaches of the year will find their way into the All-Fruit Boxes, which is exciting news for stone fruit fans. These peaches come from Florida, where a number of orange trees have been cut down and replaced with peach orchards in response to the vicious bacterial disease known as citrus greening. Because this is the first harvest, the peaches may be a little smaller than usual, which is why we’re tossing (gently placing) a couple in each box.
The Abate Fetel pears in almost all of this week’s boxes are another special treat. You can read more about them in the Beneath the Peel blog post included in our weekly newsletter.
Organic eggplants are also starting to come into season and we have a fantastic recipe for you to try. Grab a block of tempeh and a can of coconut milk and you’ll be ready to whip up this Tempeh & Eggplant Coconut Curry. Tested and approved by the Boston Organics Crew, this is one of those vegan recipes that omnivores will love too.
Both vegans and omnivores should also check out our new organic almond milk from local juice company, Jubali. Made with just two ingredients—almonds and water—this is pure, unadulterated goodness. We also just launched two assorted snack kits that will help families and offices who want to eat healthy snacks save money. See what they contain and explore all of our other new grocery add-ons by clicking here.
Enjoy our box and have a delicious week!
Dedicated locavores have been eating a lot of root vegetables over the last few months. Fortunately, with fresh cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes coming from Deep Root Organic Coop, the end is in sight.
While we wait for the rest of the local produce to sprout, blossom and ripen, we have a hearty mix of local root veggies and some creative new recipes for the Boston Organics Community to try.
This Puree of Sunchoke Soup is garnished with pickled watermelon radishes and country bread croutons. The combination is a delightful blend of smooth and crunchy, spicy and mild.
We also have a recipe for Roasted Beets with Orange and Thyme that features organic beets from Red Fire Farm and fresh cut thyme from Happy Valley Organics.
And if you’re starting to feel like you’re in a bit of a “food rut,” here are a few simple ideas to help you discover new flavors in the kitchen.
This Week’s Local Produce
All of the fruits and vegetables we deliver are grown without synthetic pesticides and are USDA certified organic. Interested in receiving produce that’s both organic and locally sourced all year round? Check out our Local Dogma Box.
Similar to a CSA or farm share, our Local Dogma Box is filled with the best organic produce from local and regional farms and brought right to your door each week. It’s the easiest way to eat like a locavore!
There is so much to celebrate this week, it’s hard to know where to start! With Patriots’ Day and Earth Day falling in the same week, we’ll barely have time to catch our breath. Thankfully our farmers have been working tirelessly to bring us yet another bountiful early spring harvest.
Let’s Commemorate Patriots’ Day
Happy Patriots’ Day to everyone in the Boston Organics Community and good luck to those of you who are running the marathon—with so many healthy and active followers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, we know of at least a handful.
Due to the street closures, we will not be making deliveries today. If your office is normally scheduled for a Monday delivery, please check your email to see whether your delivery has been moved to Tuesday or to Wednesday.
Let’s Honor the Earth
Wednesday is the 45th annual Earth Day, an international celebration of our planet’s natural beauty and an opportunity for individuals across the globe to unite over common principles of environmental conservation and ecological restoration.
We’re looking forward to celebrating the occasion with the Sustainability Collective at Tufts University.
We’re also honoring the planet by reigniting the Green Plate Club with our friends from Bootstrap Compost. If you live in Allston, Back Bay, Brighton, Brookline, JP, Newton, Roslindale, Wellsley or West Roxbury, click here to see how you can join!
Let’s Toast To Smoothies
Jubali Smoothies are a delicious and convenient way to give your body the nutrients it needs, whether you’re running the marathon or watching from the sidelines. Made locally with raw, organic fruits and freshly made nut milks, these are the tastiest smoothies we’ve ever tried.
We’re giving away free samples again this week to a lucky few customers selected at random. You can also order them as an add-on. Get the combo pack to save money and try all six new flavors!
Let’s Celebrate Spring
Fresh asparagus is now available as an add-on. A sure sign of spring, these crisp spears can be prepared any number of ways, but this recipe for Roasted Asparagus and Baby Artichokes with Lemon-Oregano Aioli is perfect for customers with all-veggie boxes who will also be getting a handful of baby artichokes in their delivery this week.
We also have a lot of exquisite organic zucchini and yellow summer squash on the way. Our recipe for Yellow Squash, Onion and Tomato Bake is worth checking out because it’s so simple to make. It just happens to also feature the local, organic tomatoes from Deep Root Organic Coop and raw milk cheddar from Neighborly Farms, which is on sale this week!
In just a few weeks we’ll get to taste the first local kale of the year from Atlas Farm, but for now we’re sourcing it from a few organic farms further down the eastern seaboard. Organic kale is extremely healthy for you and can be sautéed with tofu, baked into chips and blended into pesto.
One cup of kale has 2.5 grams of fiber, which makes it a little tough to eat raw unless you massage the leaves with olive oil and lemon juice first. You can also blanch the leaves quickly in salted water, like it explains in this recipe for Shredded Kale Salad with Pancetta and Hard-Cooked Egg.
However you prepare your kale and whatever you decide to cook this week, we hope you enjoy it in the company of good friends and family. With plenty of good weather on the way, there is a lot to celebrate!
Enjoy your box and have a delicious week!
The geothermal greenhouses at L’Abri Vegetal were running vigorously all winter long and it paid off with an abundant early spring harvest of organic tomatoes and cucumbers.
L’Abri Vegetal has been a pioneer in organic greenhouse growing for more than 20 years, and as a member of the Deep Root Organic Coop, they share resources and information with a collection of other small, organic farms in northern Vermont and southern Quebec.
Locavore Recipe of the Week
This recipe for Potatoes and Celeriac Au Gratin makes use of the diverse collection of local spring produce in this week’s boxes. Dogma Box customers can use potatoes from Maine and celeriac from Red Fire Farm in central Massachusetts.
The homemade tomato-basil sauce that’s included in the recipe highlights the wonderful flavors of fresh basil from Happy Valley Organics and the previously mentioned slicing tomatoes from Deep Root Organic Coop.
If you want to use even more local ingredients, you can even substitute in some of Kimball Brook Farm’s organic half-and-half and Neighborly Farm’s Monterey Jack—both available in the dairy section of our add-on page.
This Week’s Local Produce
All of the fruits and vegetables we deliver are grown without synthetic pesticides and are USDA certified organic. Interested in receiving produce that’s both organic and locally sourced all year round? Check out our Local Dogma Box.
Similar to a CSA or farm share, our Local Dogma Box is filled with the best organic produce from local and regional farms and brought right to your door each week. It’s the easiest way to eat like a locavore!
Spring is a season of change. First the time changed. Then the weather changed. Now, as the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, the variety of fruits and vegetables in your boxes will start to change too.
The Citrus Cycle
You may have noticed that the varieties of citrus in your boxes were different throughout the winter as particular mandarins and oranges came in and out of season. The Cara Cara and Blood Oranges, which are two of the most colorful fruits available in the winter, are winding down and Valencia oranges are starting to take their place.
Valencia oranges aren’t the prettiest of the bunch (some even turn a little green after they ripen), but they’re one of the sweetest varieties of oranges. Their thin skins and bold flavors mark a delicious end to the citrus cycle. Juicy plums are starting to make an appearance in a few boxes, and soon stone fruit will replace citrus as the fruit du jour.
Meyer lemon season has come to a close, but we’re now offering 1 lb. bags of organic juicing lemons for all of your cooking needs in the seasonal produce section of our grocery add-on webpage. You can also get organic strawberries this week and organic asparagus starting next week.
Various Veggies
Over the next few weeks you’ll see our selection of root vegetables being replaced with the likes of green beans and artichokes – both of which can be found in this week’s boxes!
Almost half of the Boston Organics Community will find fresh green beans in their boxes this week, which means it’s the perfect time for us to share our recipe for Greek-Style Braised Green Beans. The recipe calls for large Roma tomatoes, but cherry tomatoes will work too if you slice them in half. Using quality ingredients is essential for this recipe, which relies on fresh tomatoes, garlic and lemon to build a succulent, slow-cooked flavor.
Speaking of tomatoes, this Cherry Tomato and Cucumber Salad is a simple yet excellent recipe for those getting the 2/3 Vegetables boxes. It can be enjoyed as a springy side dish or mixed with feta cheese and scooped onto a bed of organic red leaf lettuce for a more filling meal.
The Small Box and the All Veggie Boxes get to experience the delightful flavor of organic baby artichokes from California this week. Most of the baby artichokes haven’t even developed a “choke,” which makes preparing them a breeze. Just remove a few of the outer leaves, slice them in half, drizzle them with olive oil and throw them on the grill. This recipe for Grilled Artichokes with Parsley and Garlic is just the excuse you’ve been looking for to fire up the BBQ, but a grill pan will work if you want to stay indoors.
The seasons are definitely changing, but if you find yourself waxing nostalgic for more root veggies, you can always stock up on fresh sweet potatoes and russet potatoes in our add-on produce section.
Enjoy your box and have a delicious week!
Spring is the season of seedlings, baby bunnies and all things new. Quite suitably, our local farm partners are harvesting lots of crisp, young vegetables for us this week.
Dogma Box customers will be introduced to Lebanese cucumbers, one of the most adorable spring vegetables. These tiny cucumbers are a special variety that is meant to be harvested at a young age.
They have very few seeds and edible skins that don’t need to be peeled at all. This makes them ideal for tossing into a simple salad or for making quick pickles!
Grown by one of Deep Root Organic Coop’s member farms, L’Abri Vegetal, these mini cukes were grown in a greenhouse heated with geothermal power. Though the farm is located across the border in southern Quebec, it’s actually about as far away from us as Bangor, ME.
The Lebanese cucumbers are joined by freshly harvested organic alfalfa sprouts from Jonathan’s Sprouts in Rochester, MA. One serving of sprouts contains 3 grams of protein and a whole bunch of essential vitamins and minerals!
Locavore Recipe of the Week
This Smooth and Crunchy Sandwich probably looks familiar to vegans who commonly rely on the natural proteins in chickpeas and whole grain breads to maintain a balanced diet.
Perfected by the acclaimed New York chef and restauranteur, Marcus Samuelsson, this sandwich will gratify any veggie loving omnivore with its perfect blend of flavors and textures.
The sliced avocado can be omitted by committed locavores, but we find that it adds an important element to the sandwich’s overall composition. Those wanting to keep it really close to home can make their own hummus with the Boston Organics Hummus Meal Kit.
This Week’s Local Produce
All of the fruits and vegetables we deliver are grown without synthetic pesticides and are USDA certified organic. Interested in receiving produce that’s both organic and locally sourced all year round? Check out our Local Dogma Box.
Similar to a CSA or farm share, our Local Dogma Box is filled with the best organic produce from local and regional farms and brought right to your door each week. It’s the easiest way to eat like a locavore!
There’s a lot to celebrate this week! Whether you’re preparing for an Easter brunch, a Passover seder or simply reveling in the start of spring, we have plenty of delicious organic goodies for you to enjoy.
Alfalfa sprouts, leeks and collard greens are just some of the many gorgeous spring vegetables going in our boxes this week.
If you’re trying to sneak some vegetables onto a loved one’s plate this Easter you might want to try Southern Style Creamed Collards. Cooked in bacon fat and butter, then sprinkled with bacon and more butter, this is about as indulgently gluttonous as collards can get.
Those looking for something a little less heart attack-inducing might opt for a Smooth and Crunchy Vegan Sandwich. This sandwich features locally grown alfalfa sprouts and it’s a great meal for veggie lovers of all ages. Organic sprouts are also a very healthy addition to soups, salads and wraps.
Spring is a difficult time of year for organic fruit growers. We’re starting to transition out of citrus season and into the very beginning of stone fruit season. Usually we would see the first harvest of plums and pluots from Mexican growers by the first week of April, but difficulties with pollination has drastically limited the amount of organic stone fruit growing south of the border.
We’ll hopefully see more stone fruit in May, assuming California can sort out their issues with the historic drought. In the meantime, we have juicy organic strawberries and a few other treats to tide us over.
We tested out this Heirloom Apple Salsa last weekend and loved the way the sweet honey and spicy jalapeno peppers combined when paired with salty blue corn multigrain chips from Late July. We might even make it again this Friday as a modern twist on the traditional Passover dish, charoset.
Almost any organic apple can be added to this salsa, including the Empire apples from Dwight Miller and Son Orchards. This salsa’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser at parties, but it can also be used as a healthy addition to your late-night snacking routine.
Want to dye eggs for Easter but don’t want to bring a bunch of synthetic chemicals into your kitchen? Make natural dye out of organic beets, onions, cabbage and more! Click here for easy step-by-step instructions.
Enjoy your box and have a delicious week!
Much like pondering a glass containing equal parts water and air, the way you look at a black radish demonstrates whether you’re a pessimist or an optimist.
For pessimistic locavores, a black radish symbolizes the depths of winter; the soft and hard rind squashes have all been eaten, the local winter greens have been buried beneath several feet of snow and the supply of more colorful storage crops are running low.
But the optimist locavore looks beneath the black radish’s thick skin and recognizes the sweet and spicy flesh just beneath the surface.
The optimist might consider this portentous root to be the very first sign of spring because wherever a black radishes appears, the first spring-dug parsnips and local asparagus harvest are soon to follow.
These hardy radishes have made it through the winter and so have you! Optimists can celebrate this accomplishment with Black Radish Chips or a Black Radish and Potato Salad.
And this Black Radish and Blood Orange Salad is so tasty that you might just convince those pessimists that the glass is half full after all.
This Week’s Local Produce
All of the fruits and vegetables we deliver are grown without synthetic pesticides and are USDA certified organic. Interested in receiving produce that’s both organic and locally sourced all year round? Check out our Local Dogma Box.
Similar to a CSA or farm share, our Local Dogma Box is filled with the best organic produce from local and regional farms and brought right to your door each week. It’s the easiest way to eat like a locavore!
Dogma Box customers have an exciting new item in their boxes this week: Adirondack Blue potatoes from Red Fire Farm.
Unlike your common colored potatoes that look like any old russet beneath the skin, Adirondack Blues have a radiant bluish-purple flesh. This coloring indicates the presence of an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which also gives blueberries, raspberries and grapes their vivid hues.
Adirondack Blue potatoes are a hybrid variety created at Cornell University about a decade ago, but it wasn’t widely planted until Penn State partnered with Utz to create potato chips that matched the university’s colors.
There’s no need to be alarmed by this potato’s genetic history. Its lineage can be traced back to potatoes that have been grown in the Andes Mountains for over 8000 years and its organic certification verifies that it has not undergone any transgenic modification.
Adirondack Blue potatoes are celebrated for their ability to remain moist when baked, their low starch content, and most obviously for their unique coloring which has been used by adventurous chefs to create striking new dishes.
Locavore Recipe of the Week
Adirondack Blue potatoes lose their coloring a little when they’re boiled, so if you want to preserve its natural vibrant blue, its best to microwave or bake the little tubers.
This recipe for Potatoes Boulangere comes from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. The concept for potatoes boulangere, however, originated in France centuries ago when people in rural areas did not own their own ovens.
Acclaimed foodie James Beard explains that “on their way to church, women would take the Sunday roast of lamb in a dish, surrounded with sliced onions and potatoes, to the baker to be cooked in his oven while the family prayed. Afterward, they picked it up and took it home for lunch, perfectly done.”
Making a good potato boulangere requires a bit of preparation, slicing the potatoes thinly and spreading the ingredients evenly in the dish, but once you slide it in the oven the hardest part is having to wait patiently before digging into the crispy, cheesy top.
This Week’s Local Produce
All of the fruits and vegetables we deliver are grown without synthetic pesticides and are USDA certified organic. Interested in receiving produce that’s both organic and locally sourced all year round? Check out our Local Dogma Box.
Similar to a CSA or farm share, our Local Dogma Box is filled with the best organic produce from local and regional farms and brought right to your door each week. It’s the easiest way to eat like a locavore!
Change is in the air. And while the pile of snow outside our office might not agree, spring is in our minds and on the tips of our tongues.
Many of our farmers have already started seeds in their greenhouses and pretty soon they’ll plow under the winter cover crops to regenerate their soil’s nutrients and prepare their fields for the upcoming local season.
In a few weeks you’ll start to see even more organic vegetables from local farms, unless you’re a Dogma Box customer, in which case everything in your box is locally-sourced all year round!
Starting the first full week of April, you may notice some other changes in the content of your boxes. For the first time in seven years, we will be increasing the price of our boxes to adjust for the ever-growing cost of fresh fruits and vegetables. The price increase will allow us to ensure your deliveries continue to consist of exciting variety and uncompromising quality.
For more information, read our blog post on the topic and please feel free to email us at [email protected] with any questions.
What to Make This Week
St. Patrick’s Day, a perennial hallmark of springtime, is tomorrow and the Boston Organics Community is ready to celebrate—with plenty of cabbage and potatoes to go around.
Last week we featured a traditional Colcannon recipe from one of our customers and this week we have a Vegan Shepherd’s Pie perfected by our marketing manager, Tamara Monroe. This recipe requires a cup of quality organic lentils, so don’t forget to order a bag from Fiddler’s Green Farm for your next delivery.
Call it St. Patrick’s spirit or simply a coincidence, but everything in season right now seems to be green. We’re looking forward to crisp, organic bell peppers, broccoli, cabbage, chard and cucumbers this week.
Chard is one of those leafy greens that can intimidate inexperienced home cooks. The easiest thing to do is blanch a few leaves for a couple minutes or sauté them with garlic and olive oil. But if you’re looking to expand your culinary repertoire, you might consider making a Savory Swiss Chard Calzone with feta cheese.
Our cow’s milk feta from Neighborly Farms of Randolph, VT is on sale this week so it’s a great time to stock up.
A Memo on Mangoes
Spring has already hit Mexico where Ataulfo mango season is in full swing. The Ataulfo mango is smaller than the better known Kent and Tommy Atkins varieties, but its small pit gives it a higher flesh-to-seed ratio. The fruit’s flesh is also sweet and creamy without being too fibrous, making it easier to eat or puree.
Remember that Ataulfo mangoes don’t turn red as they ripen. Instead, you’ll know when they’re ready to be eaten when the skin turns to a deep golden color and small wrinkles begin to appear.
Enjoy your box and have a delicious week!