Happy Halloween and Fall Season! This blog chronicles my Medium Produce box that I get at the Greenbelt location.

There’s so much cooking related content on the internet at everyone’s fingertips these days that it is quite easy to find recipes for purple mizuna or patty pan squash or whatever. But hopefully I can help you wade through it. Use this blog as a starting point, the bridge between being initially overwhelmed by the bounty and searching the internet yourself. I’ll include some recipe links (some I have made myself, but many only look good to me at a glance without having actually cooked that recipe), but I also expect that people know how to search for things that sound interesting to them.

Use the “Tags” or the search bar to look for more tips and recipes from Summer 2023.

Bicycle delivery

I offer free delivery by bicycle within Old Greenbelt. It is unofficial and not offered through LFFC. While the CSA paradigm does improve many people’s carbon footprints, it is ridiculous that so many people drive less than a mile to pick up a box of vegetables. Last mile bike delivery is a way to be a little more sustainable.

This week’s contents

The contents of my Medium produce box this week:

• Beauregard Sweet Potatoes
• Butternut Squash
• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Green Mustard
• Green Savoy Cabbage
• Jalapeño Peppers
• Purple Broccoli
• Fennel

Storage: Potatoes, squash, and cabbage keep well, so I’ll leave this until later in the week or even longer with proper storage and focus on the more perish parts of the box first. Everything goes in the fridge except the sweet potatoes and butternut squash.

Jalapeños: In my experience, LFFC hot peppers are spicier than mass produced conventional hot peppers from the grocery store. Definitely wear gloves.

Mustard leaves: You can eat these like generally other greens, eg sautéed like spinach or chopped into salad. The taste has a bit of a bite and bitterness. When trying new greens, you can cook half-and-half with spinach or another green you’re familiar with, to ease into it. About mustard greens..

Broccoli: Are you making a salad with the lettuce and mustard leaves? Try thinly slicing up the stem of the broccoli and adding it to your salad.

Fennel: Some people like it raw (eg thinly sliced in green salad, or with a citrus dressing), but it also roasts nicely. Roast the white bulb and even the green stems but roasting the feathery leaves is overkill. Instead, cut those off and garnish things with it raw. Here’s a recipe for stovetop fennel with orange.

Cabbage: Savoy cabbage is visually distinct from common green cabbage by the textured leaves. The leaves are also a little thinner and softer than common cabbage. It can be cooked the same, just adjust cooking times accordingly because it doesn’t need quite as long to soften the leaves. The flexibility of the leaves also makes it great for cabbage rolls.

Here’s a recipe with lots of photos of prepping the cabbage for easy Polish cabbage rolls, with ground meat and rice wrapped in leaves and baked in a tomato sauce. Here’s a bunch of Ukrainian variations on cabbage rolls (holubtsi).