Recipes for High Summer

This week we'd like to introduce Ali Price, ​a Root 5 Farm CSA member and local food educator. Ali provides group and private cooking lessons to folks in the Upper Valley. She's also an aspiring Health Coach and born and raised vegetable lover. 

This season Ali is creating a series of weekly recipes that work with the ingredients in her CSA box. Her recipes are clear and easy to read, with lots of step-by-step photos. We're excited to share these fantastic recipes with you on our website. Look for links in our weekly newsletter, or just check out Seasonal Recipes under the 'info' tab on our website. 

Many people find that being a CSA member or shopping at the farmers' market and working with seasonal ingredients fosters a new approach to cooking. You can enjoy delicious meals and save time and money by adapting recipes to use what's freshly harvested and what else is on hand. Many recipes can be made successfully with substitutions or omissions, and vegetables are especially suited to this approach.
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When you're looking for a substitute, think about plant families. For example, main courses often call for at least one member of the onion family (scallion, onion, garlic, leek, chive, etc). Alliums can usually be substituted for each other with excellent results. Members of the diverse brassica family can often stand in for each other. Kohlrabi, for example, could fill in for broccoli or cabbage in a variety of situations, because their flavors and crunchy textures are similar.

Ali is working on a series of master recipes that use some basic staples and flexible combinations of vegetables and spices, rather than a fixed set of ingredients. Check out these delectable examples- Grilled Summer Vegetables and Simple Summer Bites. 

If you want to learn more about keeping your produce fresh once you get it to your kitchen, check out the storage tips on our website. Not all vegetables should be stored in the same way. For example, did you know that the best way to keep basil fresh is in a glass of water on your counter top, not in the fridge? Or that if you take the tops off your fresh carrot, beet, and radish bunches and store the roots in a plastic bag in your fridge, they will stay crispy and keep for months? Or that tomatoes should never be stored in the refrigerator? Learn more about the ideal temperature, humidity, and expected storage time for different  vegetables on our website.