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!
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!
The weather’s warming up and while spring is still several weeks away, we’re getting a sneak peek this week thanks to the sustainable greenhouses at Happy Valley Organics and Deep Root Organic Coop.
Crunchy English cucumbers are making their way down from Deep Root Organic Coop’s headquarters in Vermont. The coop is made of about 15 farms in Vermont and southeastern Quebec, including one with a greenhouse that runs through the winter using geothermal heat.
Meanwhile, Doug Coldwell is bringing us bunches of fresh, organic basil from Happy Valley Organics. This fragrant herb used to only be available in the summer, but Doug uses his solar-powered greenhouses in central Massachusetts to grow basil even when the ground is frozen solid.
Locavore Recipe of the Week
English cucumbers are a long, skinny cucumber variety particularly suited for greenhouse growing. They also happen to have thin skins and very few seeds, making them ideal for salads and mixed drinks.
One of our favorite summer cocktails, Cucumber Basil Mojito, just happens to highlight a few of the local organic items in this week’s boxes.
Fill your mason jars with a handful of organic basil and kick back with a refreshing blend of local ingredients while we wait for summer to arrive.
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!
March is one of the most difficult months for Massachusetts locavores to find fresh organic fruits and vegetables. While California may already be showing early signs of spring, New England is still in the depths of winter.
Even the most prepared homesteaders are scrounging through the back shelves of their pantries to find the items they stored at the end of the last local season.
Fortunately, because Boston Organics works with a network of organic farmers, we’re able to continue to fill our boxes with a smattering of local produce by getting the best items from each farm.
This week, we have a profusion of organic root veggies like parsnips, potatoes and rutabagas. We also have a medley of fresh organic herbs from central Massachusetts!
Locavore Recipe of the Week
Polenta is one of the coziest dishes you can make in the wintertime.
Braised root vegetables provide an excellent topping for this baked polenta, with its deliciously crusty edges and gooey, cheesy center.
Slowly cooking your parsnips, carrots and kohlrabi helps draw out these roots’ natural sweetness and creates a buttery melt-in-your-mouth texture that will have everyone asking for seconds.
This Week’s Local Produce
Potatoes
Picadilly Farm
(Winchester, NH)
Rutabagas
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!
The organic shallots in this week’s Dogma Box come from Emylou Farm, a family-owned organic farm that’s been a member of the Deep Root Organic Coop for several years.
Though shallots look kind of like oversized garlic cloves, they are actually more similar to a white or yellow onion. While you can use an onion in place of a shallot, if a recipe calls specifically for a shallot, it’s for a good reason.
Shallots are generally sweeter than onions and pack a lot of flavor in a small space without the acidic bite of a fresh onion. They also have a slightly softer texture, which allows them to incorporate more smoothly into soups and sauces.
Locavore Recipe of the Week
One of our favorite things to do with organic kohlrabi in the winter is to shred it into a crunchy slaw. We especially love this recipe for Purple Slaw, and we’re in luck because Red Fire Farm is bringing us a few heads of red cabbage and big bulbs of purple kohlrabi this week!
A food processor or mandoline makes this recipe extremely easy to make, but it’s also entirely possible to shred the vegetables by hand. This Purple Slaw goes great with burgers and sandwiches, but you can also use it in salads, spring rolls and tacos.
This Week’s Local Produce
Potatoes
Picadilly Farm
(Winchester, NH)
Rutabagas
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!