When lettuce is plentiful, we crave more creative salad based meals and we think of our Cilantro Lime build your own mexican inspired salad. This is one of our favorites and it ends up a bit different every time depending on what is in season and in our pantry. And other dressings would be great with it too!
Below are some general suggestions, but so many things can be chopped and offer up to top your taco/burrito or salad approach.
Cilantro-Lime Dressing
1 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil or other vegetable oil
1 small garlic clove
salt to taste
Whirl all of the dressing ingredients in a blender until smooth.
Salad building options
Our base: Lettuce, Kale or Napa Cabbage, chopped & dressed with the Cilantro-Lime Dressing (or some other green)
Protein hit: Chicken, chorizo, pulled pork and/or Morningstar beans anything else really simply cooked and then marinated in the dressing; or chicken or pork slow cooked in tomatillos
Marinate meats and/or beans in dressing for an hour ideally, for 15 min practically.
Additions:
Various veggies for crunch, spice and additions, depending on the season
radishes, shredded carrots, cilantro, other greens
scallions or onions, tomatoes, peppers and corn
Mexican Pickled Carrots
Cheese, grated
Chips, rice or tortillas
Sauces:
Salsas, fresh or canned
Hot sauces – the Green Chili Hot sauce is great on the meats
Pepperoncini
Pickled jalapenos (really great mixed into some sour cream)
Chopped cilantro
Assemble & enjoy!
Moosewood suggests, “This salad can be simple or piled high with colorful ingredients. Present it one of three ways: Make one large decorative platter, create individual composed salads, or serve it buffet style with each ingredient in its own bowl (and let the diners do the assembling).”
We love the last option — a great one with guests!
Ah, we are feeling the whims of the weather. Freeze & Snow a few weeks ago and now a heatwave…keeping us on our toes. Big spinach week and some other treats starting to come in while we finish off some of our storage items. And the fresh herbs are lovely! Add them to salads, make spreads and more.
The new online farmstand is running well. Let us know if you have any troubles or questions as it is a learning curve for us all.
All of the above is available for members and retail shoppers, but we also offer some specials for our members. To learn more about our flexible, free Choice Farm Share memberships, see the details on our website.
Spring sun and warmth seem to be settling in (perhaps I shouldn’t write this) and the plants are happy. Plenty of good fresh, stored and frozen eating from the farm.
The new online farmstand is running well. Let us know if you have any troubles or questions as it is a learning curve for us all.
All of the above is available for members and retail shoppers, but we also offer some specials for our members. To learn more about our flexible, free Choice Farm Share memberships, see the details on our website.
Watching our young animals with their sows, does, or hens over the years always makes us extra appreciative of all that mothers do around the world and across species to keep us all going.
Here are a few photos reminding us of all that the maternal side offers our world from this past week….and past years!
Giving your all….even when you are out numbered & out weighedNo personal space boundaries & double as jungle gymChauffeur…for allSupervision is the wild worldTeaching about the good lifeAlways a superhero!
By Laura|Posted in ARCHIVE|Comments Off on Thanks (Farm) Moms!
Nothing like May snowstorms & arctic cold…..to add some challenge to the early season.
It is at these moments we are grateful for our hoophouses and for our inclination to not push the season to aggressively. That said, we did cover the teeny onion seedlings that went into the field earlier this week….just in case.
And this week, we all get to add FarmHer Hannah at Field Stone Farm to our gratitude list (though she is always on ours!). Adding some diversification to our FRESH GREENS Bok choy & Tokyo Bekana. Hello Stir fry & Caesar salad (or at least our version!)
The new online farmstand is running well. Let us know if you have any troubles or questions as it is a learning curve for us all.
All of the above is available for members and retail shoppers, but we also offer some specials for our members. To learn more about our flexible, free Choice Farm Share memberships, see the details on our website.
The bit more warmth and sun is helping the greens move forward, so there is plentiful salad mix this week and a good bit of chard & spinach, more kal-sparagus and plentiful herbs as well as some kale (less than other things, but we do have some lacinato kale frozen).
Check out the new online farmstand! We think it should make ordering from the farm smoother and easier for us all. Let us know if you have any troubles as it is a learning curve for us all.
All of the above is available for members and retail shoppers, but we also offer some specials for our members. To learn more about our flexible, free Choice Farm Share memberships, see the details on our website.
Food crops get viruses also, as well as bacterial and fungal infections. Often insect pressures on plants piggy back on such stressors, along with nutritional imbalances. Chemical agriculture attempts to cheat these forces with fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Their positive impacts are short lived and myriad negative impacts can be lasting. Regenerative farming alternatives are often more labor intensive and costly. But have a glance at the immediate gratification evident in this season in the hoop houses as a result of intercropping and mulching!
In nature plants work together with their different root
depths and types to interact with their surrounding networks of fungal life and
other organisms to grow well and stay healthy. Our farming methods attempt to
mimic nature by intercropping multiple plants together.
Having not only different plant types but also plants of
different ages together make our gardens work like a well-functioning village.
Elder plants throw up flowers which invite pollinators into the space and give
us a chance to add color, texture, flavor and nutrients to already splendid
salad mixes and other dishes.
Limiting disturbance of our soils to enable the vibrant
biology to help plants have all the nutritional balance required to develop
immunity to pests and disease. Intercropping helps interrupt transmission of
disease and insect pressure. Covering bare soil with a variety of mulches from
living systems (not plastic fabrics) feed and add diversity to the soil
biology.
Staying healthy is hard work! We hope you all are hanging in
there and that the visual joy from the hoop houses fills your screens with
color and hope. And that the fresh veggies that emerge from the unheated hoop
houses bring you diverse punches of nutrition for your own microbiology, even
as they also form a 3-dimentional joy committee on your plates!
Keeping us on our toes. We have a nice mix of fresh greens this week, but we need a bit more sun and warmth for them to totally take off. But we also still have lots of frozen kale & spinach for those recipes where you’ll cook it anyway!
Check out the new online farmstand! We think it should make ordering from the farm smoother and easier for us all. But do let us know if you have any troubles.
Thanks to Mark & Nichole at Artesano we are restocked with a wider range of their vinegars, including the Maple Balsamic per requests and their Daily Tonic! All so great for enhancing our farm fresh food.
All of the above is available for members and retail shoppers, but we also offer some specials for our members. To learn more about our flexible, free Choice Farm Share memberships, see the details on our website.
Perhaps with folks spending more time at home, eating even more meals together, the phrase, “Don’t Eat Like a Pig” has been repeated more often.
There are many disparaging sayings that reference pigs, some I believe are unwarranted. And for years of raising pigs, I even thought this one was a bit overstated.
Then came Grizabella, a lovely Large Black Sow we bought as a youngster from Hogwash Farm. She defines the source and meaning of this phrase.
When we have multiple sows & litters of piglets together, it is evident around eating time which piglets are hers, they get marked with her meal.
This week we came into a load of organic milk (due to a minor truck accident, driver is fine, milk boxes were not), which we shared with the sows and it just highlighted Grizabella’s eating style.
So Laura captured these images at chores and we figured all could use some amusing visuals.
While the snow has cleared from the fields, and our hoophouses are full of amazing colors, it is still only mid-April. This means all of our fresh greens are coming ONLY from our 2 hoophouses, and as you’ve all noticed it has been a cold early April so while the plants are doing great, they aren’t yet growing at gangbuster pace.
All this to say, it is not yet the moment to endulge in only fresh greens, we just don’t quite have that volume. So mix in our frozen greens, also packed with great nutrients, for some your meals. And the days of crazy abundant greens are just around the corner!
We have a new online farmstand to make ordering from the farm smoother and easier for us all. Though note, this week is our shakedown cruise, so let us know if you have any troubles and you can send us an email this week instead based on the list below.
All of the above is available for members and retail shoppers, but we also offer some specials for our members. To learn more about our flexible, free Choice Farm Share memberships, see the details on our website.
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Ah, we are feeling the whims of the weather. Freeze & Snow a few weeks ago and now a heatwave…keeping us on our toes. Big spinach week and some other treats starting to come in while we finish off some of our storage items. And the fresh herbs are lovely! Add them to salads, make spreads and more. 
Spring sun and warmth seem to be settling in (perhaps I shouldn’t write this) and the plants are happy. Plenty of good fresh, stored and frozen eating from the farm. 
Welcome May! 
Ah..April Sun, Rain & Snow! 
Mid-April!