chardgirl

Hello, it's Friday midday around here. I'm posting two promised photos and a bonus below. I'll be back later, hopefully with more vegetable photos. I'm taking Daughter Aged 8 to a playdate with her friend who is the farmers daughter at The Other Farm we do our CSA program with: I'll see if they have any gorgeous farm shots today... But Mr. Chardgirl has the camera so I'll limp along with the inferior, backup digital. #1: The Vegetable Cookbook Collection: We have more than this (ie Alice W's "Chez Panisse Vegetables which is in the (small) office of Mr. Chardgirl where he writes... but this is many of them. Most of them I don't use much, a few of them I love and use often: (the ones I use often include the Alice book (not photographed) the Shepherds Seeds ones, both of E. Schneiders, the Wisconsin CSA one (From Amaranth to Zucchini) and the Jack Bishop one. ) The Cute Goat Boy who is surviving despite the evil mother, here he's munching on some yummy frayed plastic twine, but Mr. Chardgirl and Son Aged 10 are wrangling badmama twice a day so he can swig and he goes for it with gusto! And the bonus shot for those of you who are TRULY nerdy about vegetables: the sous chef Brent at Zuppa (a new Italian restaurant in SF) enlightened Mr. ThinksHeKnowsMost about Vegetables/Mr. Chardgirl that we in fact have 2 kinds of cardoons, and he prefers the smaller, bianco version. If any of you know more about these two varieties, let us know. thanks (the larger is "Gobbo di Nizza", I may or may not have spelled that correctly...

It's Friday morning, the rain is mostly passed with a few lingering showers. Breakfast is still a good two hours away, it's likely granola and chai. I guess we tend to eat the same thing for a few-several days, then go on to the next thing. Mr. Chardgirl finished up that creamy cardoon gratin yesterday for lunch, thankfully. Here's a few photos of the aquarium visit (the Monterey Bay Aquarium) that I've not yet posted: they are food related: #1 in the tuna series: #2 in the tuna series: and #3 in the tuna series: text in case you can't read it: Tuna fisheries kill thousands of sharks each year because we haven't passed laws to protect them, like we have for dolphins. You can help protect sharks by choosing canned salmon instead of tuna.... 2 in the shrimp series: text in case you can't read it: Each year, tens of thousands of sea turtles drown when they're accidentally caught in shrimp nets. You can help protect sea turtles when you ask for shrimp that's been caught with traps, which don't harm sea turtles. and one last food-related photo: this 'diner' is another educational tool, where kids (all ages!) can push buttons for menu selections and then the chef and waitress come on the video screen to talk about that fish and why/how it's been overfished, and what a better choice would be. I'm impressed at the Aquariums efforts to educate the public on the environmental cost to 'cheap' food, there's a great amount of the same kinds of costs to 'cheap produce' that includes dumping ridiculous amounts of chemicals into the soil, etc. Ok, enough soap boxing, I just thought y'all would like the photos! cg

Broccoli di Cicco is an old-fashioned, (heirloom?) open-pollinated variety of broccoli, sweet and not at all bitter like rapini (raab, rabe, etc. ) It's sweet like the broccoli in the supermarket, but it doesn't hold up under ice for 4-6 weeks like the larger heads we all get at the market. Some say the di cicco is a bit nutty flavored, to me it just tastes like really fresh broccoli. and the stems and leave are great too. I just rinse it and chop the whole thing then steam or saute. With lemon juice and chile flakes... 'Broccolini'!? I think that's the patented product from Mann Packing, but I'll have to checkwith Mr. Chardgirl, he's been researching this forever. I'll either find his old article he wrote about this a few years ago or ask him tomorrow am. His sore throat is newer so he crashed early tonight to try to beat it. cg

This is Broccoli di Cicco: also called 'roman sprouting broccoli' and 'baby broccoli'... This is what I wrote for the caption on my website: "In the middle is Broccoli Raab. It's also called rapini, or just raab. See below for more information about it. It's the yellow/green spiky-leaf one. The blue green leaf is Broccoli di Cicco. The raab differs from broccoli di cicco in name, texture, color, and flavor being a good deal sharper in flavor from the mustard oil. Raab tastes like a turnip green because it is a turnip." Because we went away last week (all 4 of us left the farm for a whole week and shut the whole thing down. Manny and Lourdes house sat and goat sat: he's got more experience with goats than Mr. Chardgirl anyway! 2 were born while we were gone. I think it's supposed to stop raining tomorrow, and I'll take photos of the muddy darlings and post them tomorrow afternoon...) the broccoli and rapini didn't get cut. It's cold enough it didn't even think about going to flower: it means THIS weekend we have so much of it it's bordering on amazing. The goats will eat well on Saturday night after market! We did challenge the chefs to buy lots but they can only do so much with broccoli...

It's 8pm, and I've just finished sending out our newsletter. Here's a photo essay I put together with some of the photos I took last night at 'cardoon class'. So this leads into the question and answer "What do you do on the farm?" I've already touched on this. I like gardening but I wasn't hankering to be a farmer when I married Mr. Chardgirl... My role is nearly entirely in the office because that's where my skills are. When I've been dispatched to go and cut a pound of rosemary here and 12 bunches of thyme there I've never managed to do a good job. I cut the wrong stalks, I cut them too short, I make the bunches too skimpy, I whine about the scratchy weeds: I don't make a good farmer or farm worker! (which is good because Mr. CG has fired me from even cutting herbs) BUT I've learned how to update our website, I do a fairly good job at farmers market, and I've learned how to do all the bookeeping in the office. Every other Thursday we send out our Ladybug Letter: Mr. Chardgirl writes the article (usually, but tonight he still didn't have anything he was happy with so we inserted info and a link to this blog! a perfect substitute) (Here's a sample from 2003, I really should update this!) info We started doing a CSA newsletter: a paper note with recipes for our veggie boxes: that was in 1997. Members LOVED Mr. Chardgirls funny, occasionally snotty essays on farm life and the vegetables themselves. Around that time I was getting interested in email and whatnot... sometime later (98 or 99) we started also Emailing our CSA newsletter. Then I had the bright idea to email out a special letter to all our farmers market customers, with Andy's same articles. I had already started quite a recipe index and photogallery, it was a natural. Fastforward to tonight: we have over 2000 live email addresses that have requested the Thursday night 'market' letter: many folks don't live around here or attend our market, so we now call it the "Ladybug Letter" and try to make it more general so that folks all over can enjoy it. On another subject: our food this week! There are many recipes I've dreamed of making, thought of making, hoped to make. I still hope I get to some of them. Tomorrow I plan to try that Italian Wedding soup (Italian Albondigas!) and maybe corn bread with the kids. I also bought sushi rice and fresh nori paper today, so maybe I can get a bit of Japanese kid cooking with with Son aged 10. Tomorrow Lourdes and I have to make the plan for all the non-goat food for Sunday's goat roast: sopa, frijol (de Rancho Gordo of course!), unas ensaladas? y mas. Stay tuned. and yes, my camera is working again, so on Saturday we'll both be armed with cameras: Mr. Chardgirl and Son Aged 10 might get a couple more great photos on the restaurant route. I'm off to invoice for tomorrow's harvest and packing: we have WAY too much broccoli di cicco. I'll go load a photo to image gullet and then post it... cg

Hello, it's Thursday evening...and I need to go get my daughter from her 4-H meeting: tonight it was crafting. She's going to start her bunny project in the spring. (she loves goats, but she's not old enough to sell a raised up goat for meat, the bunnies are shown but not sold or neccessarily eaten...) Here's dinner, I'll be back in an hour or less The Italian Wedding Soup will have to wait til tomorrow, but I do intend to try. I guess the reality of my world keeps showing up: I've wanted to cook so many things but there are so many hours in the day. I spent over an hour cleaning and tidying the kitchen (much preferable while cooking!) and I put some sore-throat chicken soup on, then I made my grain/vegetable salad and voila it was dinner time! I"ll post recipe-ish text on both a little later.

oooooh, I have this cookbook too: I'll look it up. I use Alice's Chez Panisse Vegetables lots. I like the alphabetical cookbooks: I can look up recipes for my vegetable-in-abundance at that time. I'm all out of roast pork and lamb though...

I LOVE this cookbook/vegetable book. I will look it up and maybe I'll try this tonight!. I don't look up recipes enough in this cookbook. I have many vegetable (not nec. vegetarian, but 'vegetable') cookbooks, I'll try to gather many and post a photo or two: Please do post any of your favorite vegetable cookbooks here. Thank you.

THANKS this is what's for dinner. I have all the ingredients, that's a key factor around here... Lunch today: kids ate some cheese, crackers and carrots in the car en route to art/pe class. (every Thursday for 2 hours at their 'school' they're enrolled in, they also go on Tuesday for 4 hours...) I had chai cup # 2 for the day and a half broiled salmon sandwich with tapenade and arugula from Carried Away in Aptos: a little charcuterie (I don't spell in French well at all, apologies) that we occasionally sell to: I needed to get them their turnips and chard... and I forgot to take a photo. But it was a delicious sandwich.

10:40am Breakfast for kids = eggs and granola (not together!) for him, granola and orange for her. Mr. Chardgirl had leftover cardoon gratin with eggs. Me? green tea again, lecture all you want on the importance of breakfast: I only eat when I'm hungry, which is often enough. I plan to drop off kids at their art class then have a great sandwich or something else that might catch my fancy in that area. Dinner is still undetermined, I'm thinking albondigas soup would hit the spot: I still have plenty of ground beef from our quarter cow in the freezer, both Grownups in our household are pondering sore throats, and it's raining. Any advice on soup with vegetables and ground beef? cg

I took a few photos that are food related at the Monterey Bay Aquarium with darling daughter: This is Daughter under the surround-sound Sardine room. And I had 3 Monterey Bay Sardines for lunch so... I know, no politics, but the Aquarium is a leader in fish-consumer education: And my lunch from yesterday, it's a terrible photo, sorry about that. It's a brandade with house-cured halibut (I think that's what it's called, like a potato pancake) with avocado mousse and and yummy oozey chard gratin. NOT a light meal, so when Martin showed up with his creamy chard gratin... Well, while the kiddos are at art class today I'll be on the treadmill at the spa since it's pouring rain. Otherwise it would be to the beach for walking with me! Spa?? A farm girl needs a spa? Yes for 2 larger reasons: I like to take the small humans swimming and since our home ranch has so little water I take my showers there to conserve: far more important to irrigate herbs. I'd rather wash myself out and do laundry at home.

first: the milk: we don't milk goats at this point in our lives. Maybe someday, maybe not. Mr. CG first got goats when I was nursing our daughter, I felt like a milk goat at that point, and I had a toddler running around in diapers. It's a blessed thing to have adorable young children, but I've never been so exhausted in all my life before or since, not even chemo was that tiring! Well... maybe about. But the kids were only aged 2 and 4 during chemo so who knows which made me more tired! I'm enjoying being healthy and having kids that can do chores and make their own lunch and tie their own shoes. Whoa: wasn't I talking about goat milk? I also trade vegetables at farmers market for some great goat cheeses most weeks, and I buy cow milk (Claravale raw or Straus in glass or Trader Joes organic: none of it is homogonized: our kids roll their eyes that their family is so weird to have to shake up the milk.) Abra: come on down the coast and set up camp here: we have the goats, we just need a twice a day milker! I would even do it once or twice a week for you in case you wanted to go to the movies or take a hike in the local forest... CARDOON: Martin's gratin was great: but yes, it was heavy on the cream (he asked I get cream, I cheated and bought half and half!) and parmesan cheese. Maybe it could be done with chicken broth and parmesan? I thought it tasted a bit like artichokes and I liked the texture. HOWEVER: today was a much 'heavier' day than yesterday. I must do pennance. Yes, egulleteers: I admit it: I've been on a path of getting smaller, I HATE the 'd' word (diet) because I want this to be permanent. So some days I drink more tea and eat more/mostly vegetables and other days are like today. But I had very small portions of the dinner, and medium portions at lunch, and I skipped the bread wine and dessert at both meals. I'm now officially rambling, I'm signing off and will post a few more photos tomorrow am when I'm brighter and shinier. cg

No, we don't ship at all, we only sell the three ways in the Bay area: CSA, farmers market, and restaurants.

sigh, I wish I had a CSA that only delivered to egulleteers. We tried one season to have an 'adventurous eaters' box with all the fun stuff, but very few folks were interested, (although those that were were VERY interested!) and it was difficult getting the 'regular' box people to not pick up the special ones. In the end we had to simplify. However: the restaurants and the farmers market public love the radicchios. Verona Radicchio Photo

Here is the more official cardoon gratin recipe submitted by bleudauvergne!

Yes! thanks for reminding me: Martin did add the juice of half of a lemon to the water. I couldn't find the cider vinegar but I had a bunch of lemons sitting around....

Yes, I thought it was 4 lbs of sugar, but after a couple of our newsletter readers pointed it out to me, it's now obviously 4 TBS sugar! We're referring to the recipe card written out decades ago by Mr. CG's grandmother. He wrote a story about it here and her recipe card photo is here.

yes: the hurry up dinner was really a hurry up. The only 'cooking' was the turnip greens: I sauteed in olive oil a bit of chopped garlic for 5 seconds over med. high heat (really NOT long, you don't want the garlic to burn) then added washed, sliced turnip greens. you could use washed baby spinach, beet greens, kale, chard........ Then I cooked it for a short time then season with S &P and I've got my greens for the day! The escarole/grated raw turnip/feta salad was dressed with lemon juice, oil, and S & P. cg

The cardoon and artichoke seed somehow got mixed up when they were planting so the plants are all together in a random pattern in the field. I'll see if I can get a photo of that little field. I'll also ask Mr. CG how he blanches the cardoons, if he does at all. At the Saturday Ferry Plaza farmers market we are in the back plaza. We're across from Star Route Farm: They are looking into Ghandi's face, we're looking at his backside.

Here are some photos of the making of the gratin: This is the way the stalks were prepared to start before the blanching: The mixing of the gratin: The recipe is here in recipe gullet

Dinner tonight: cardoon gratin class then a great dinner. A bit heavier than last night... The cardoon-potato gratin came out beautifully. The 10 year old refused to try it, but then he was tired from a long day of working. The 8 year old didn't make it that far, she was already sound asleep when it came out of the oven. We also had fried green tomatoes (Martin is also a farmer, and they were the very last last of his 2005 tomato crop.) I ate 1/2 of one: it was tangy. Martin said it was crying for aoili (sp?) but we didn't get that far, THANK GOODNESS. We also cooked up some fillet of beef I had thawed. We bought a quater section of a cow from our friends who sell their grass fed beef directly to the public: Morris Grassfed Beef out of San Juan Bautista. And to cut all that grease everywhere on the plate I cut up some delicious oranges I buy at farmers market every week. They are from Riverside and they taste like an ORANGE should: sweet and juicy yes, but also with a tang that has flavor. CardoonGratin Recipe

Captions for those last three Monterey photos: 1) Daughter with her house-made sausage pizza: "It's the best pizza I've ever eaten" she declared. 2) Mise en place (I wonder if I spelled that right?) in the kitchen 3) Monterey sardine crostini with a parsley/egg sauce. It was delicious. stay tuned for more today may not seem like much of a 'farm' day: but part of how we make our farm a success is by direct marketing everything, so some days we're in the city doing just that. It's been fun getting to know the scenes in the kitchens we sell to. And the Aquarium visit was part of homeschooling, below is one photo of a few food-related ones I took today: That's a plastic bat ray and a tray of what THEY like to eat!

I'm going to start to document our day in photos. My favorite of the day I think: This is Son Aged 10 standing with Mike's homemade DRIED pasta at Quince. Many restaurants do make their own pasta, but their own dried pasta? I'm impressed. But so is San Francisco, I think it's difficult to get a reservation at this place. He dries the pasta in a sunny window on the side of the restaurant that people/neighbors can look at when they walk by. BTW: I usually don't name the restaurants we sell to as a general rule, but until someone tells me STOP I will for reporting today and also on Saturday, I hope that's kosher. It seems germaine to this blog.... This is at 4:45am at their first stop: the only restaurant south of San Francisco we sell to on the route: Piatti Santa Clara. That's son hauling the produce, as Mr. Chardgirl documents the day in photos. The pastry gal at Greens after Son Aged 10 shmoozed her: he got apple huckleberry charlottes for he and his sister for dessert tonight. They didn't know about this blog, he just scores stuff like that.... Mr cg said he wants this to be an honest blog: they stop at Safeway just before dawn (after a few stops) and get a donut, fresh off the racks! See childhood weight issues thread nearby for more info This is son aged 10 on the truck with the invoices with the transamerica building trying to show it's outline in the background. The light wasn't cooperating with Mr. Photographer, but he wanted you to know he tried. I've more to try, but first to clean up the kitchen to prepare for CARDOON CLASS. Thanks to all for posting recipes/ideas/experiences with the cardoon. I'll put more photos up later. ok 3 more of the Monterey part of our day: Daughter Aged 8 and I ate at Stokes Restaurant after delivering our produce...

We'll be cooking those for this weekend. Would 5 pounds do well for 30-40 people? I'm about to post lots of photos of our day... cg

Cardoon-Potato Gratin My friend Martin made this, it was delicious! Of course, anything with 1/2 & 1/2 and cheese could be delicious... 8 stalks cardoon 2 medium potatoes 8 oz grated parmesan cheese 1 pt half and half or cream Salt Pepper Blanch the cardoon stalks in water that has a splash of vinegar or lemon juice until medium tender. You can peel them if you like. We don't. Cut the cardoon stalks in 1/4 inch crescents, across the grain, like you would celery. Peel the potatoes. Cut the potatoes into batons, about like a french fry. Toss the cut, blanched cardoon stalks with the potatoes directly in a gratin dish. Reserve a handful of the cheese for the top and toss the rest of the cheese with the cardoon/potato mixture. Add the pint of half and half (or cream if using.) Season with salt and pepper. Bake in a 425 oven 40 minutes or so: until golden brown and the potatoes are all the way through. Keywords: Vegetables, Vegetarian, Easy, Side ( RG1512 )