Most evenings you can find my fiance Carson and I in the kitchen catching up on our day while we make dinner. Or rather, I make dinner, and he does the dishes. While I was stirring a pot of decadent radish salmon pasta, he turned and said to me - “you know what in can't wait for? Shishito peppers. Blistered in the pan with sea salt. So good!”.
In that happy moment, I hoped that Farm Members were having the same conversations at home about what seasonal delicacies they are looking forward to enjoying this season. That's the joy of eating seasonally - anticipating the tastes of the the summer to come while we savor the bounty of spring.
By contrast, grocery store culture demands unlimited access to a huge amount of food at all times. We buy out of season berries + tomatoes and wonder why they taste like nothing. The limp, dirty greens attached to the selection of root veggies definitely do not look appetizing. Potatoes that have been bleached clean and in warehouse storage for over a year lack nutrients. we sacrifice quality in order to have everything is at our fingertips at all times. The magic is gone!
We often set the food we see in the supermarket as the standard for how all food should taste and look and be. Buying direct from a farm is not going to look like buying mass produced food transported thousands of miles to your neighborhood grocery chain, and it's all the better for that difference.
Eating aligned with the seasons is feast or famine. And right now, in the early days of spring, we're feasting on crunchy radishes on repeat, soaking up nurtients after winter hibernation from our vibrant greens, and sharing strawberries with sticky fingers. What joy to be a living, breathing part of the ecosystem around us! There's a lot of magic here...
This was one of those easy weeknight meals that I made for the first time last week that was so good, we're still talking about it. And plotting when we can have it again this week!
A great quality local steak (this one was from Foothills Butcher Shop in Black Mountain) is seared in the cast iron, and when flipped, quartered radishes and turnips are added to the pan with a bit of butter to caramelize in the steak drippings.
Pull the steak from the pan when cooked and let rest. Cover the veggies in the pan to let them get soft and tender in the residual heat. Use your radish tops to whip up an easy chimichurri: blend radish greens, scallions (or onion) with lots of good olive oil, crushed red pepper, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Serve with that chimichurri on your steak and root veggies alongside the simplest, most delish butter lettuce salad (dressed with Encompass Vinagrette of course)!
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