Dear CSA-ers,

Today's Hunters' Greens Shares should include:

2 medium Italienischer lettuces
5 bulb/stalks of "living garlic"
One of the following: an extra lettuce, a bunch of radishes, 3-4 broccoli crowns, a bunch of turnips, a small bunch of baby bok choy, or a half pound of snap peas.

LIVING GARLIC.  As you may have imagined, this CSA season is off to an unusual start.  But this year's garlic crop takes the cake.  Garlic is "photo-periodic," which means that its growth phases are triggered by the length of the day (actually, the night).  Garlic starts to die back as the longest days arrive, sooner or later depending on the variety.  Our earlier variety started yellowing a couple of weeks ago.  The usual response on the part of the farmer to this sign is to withhold water, so the garlic will stop growing and begin to cure.  Well, withholding water wasn't an option this year, so we waited.  The other night, Jim went out to check on it, and found tiny little garlic leaves sprouting up through the stem of the garlic.  When he peeled away the stem, he found a leaf going back to each new clove of garlic.  Apparently, due to the moisture, the garlic skipped its dormant phase and started growing next year's crop.

So what to do?  Following the old "If life gives you lemons... " adage, Jim took a couple bulbs in the house and started peeling and cutting. He found that the individual cloves may need a layer or two of skin peeled off, but the new young leaves were tender enough to cut up and use.

Very fresh (not cured by drying out) is purported to be very mild.  Jim tried putting a little of the leaves in a salad, and used the rest for garlic bread with pleasing results.  Food adventurers may want to experiment with how much of the whole stalk might be palatable, but for the conservative, Jim's approach should yield good results.

ABOUT KALE.  (U.S Digital shares, this week, Hunters' Greens shares last week).  Kale appears to becoming quite popular these days as a healthy green, but when we started offering it in our shares, folks were a little intimidated.  In this spirit we offer a few suggestions.  Combining strong flavored greens with other rich flavors often mellows them, try sweet, sour or salty.  A little sugar or syrup, some vinegar or lemon juice, a little soy, oyster flavored or black bean sauce.  Also, kale can be hidden.  Mix a little into the spaghetti sauce, saute it up with some onions for a burger topping.  Your imagination sets the limits.

CSA PRIMER.  Based on a variety of comments we've received over the last few weeks primarily from newer members (which we have a lot of this year) we decided it might be appropriate to offer some "CSA 101" commentaries to bring every one up to speed on how this whole business works.

SHARE THE RISK, SHARE THE REWARDS.  When you sign up with the Hunters' Greens CSA, you agree to share the risks of the season.  A few of the risks you've already encountered have to do with the cool, rainy spring we have been experiencing.  Today for instance the shares are a little under our target value of $20- $22.  This is a result of crops maturing more slowly in the cool weather, and because rainy weather keeps us from cultivating the soil and planting additional crops.  Another risk has been slugs and slug damage, particularly in the lettuces.  If we were conventional farmers, or even organic farmers that were willing to use natural pesticides, we MIGHT be able to eliminate the problem.

This season has been the worst for slugs in many years, again due to the rain.  In past years our customers have shared how they dealt with slugs in their lettuce.  There seem to be two approaches.  Clean your produce as soon as you bring it home, or put it right into the refrigerator, where the slug seem to go into a state of suspended animation and don't do any further damage.  One member shared the laugh she had at the expense of a visiting relative who screamed when she saw a slug crawling out of a sink full of Hunters' Greens lettuce.

These are the kinds of risks you've all signed up for.  If that's not the deal you thought you had, speak now or forever hold your peace.

What we hope you will discover over the coming weeks is that these risks come with rewards that will make the risk worthwhile.  You will never get some of the varieties of lettuce we offer in any supermarket, and who has the chance to savor fresh uncured garlic right out of the field.

"IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE WHAT I GET AT THE STORE."  "And this is a bad thing?"  Seriously, you're right, our produce often won't look like what you get in the supermarket.  The super market is selling produce based on its appearance.  How many times have you brought home a beautiful box of strawberries or a tomato, only to find it tasteless.

Conversely, we don't worry so much what it looks like, and are much more concerned that it tastes great.  We don't know all the details, but farmers who sell to supermarkets grade their product, so that all the items they are selling in a lot are virtually identical.  We don't have the volume to do that if we wanted to.  So... sometimes you will get a lettuce on the small side, while another time you will get a monster.  If we know that there will be a large discrepancy between items in different shares we will compensate.  For instance in our U.S. Digital shares last week, some folks got a three to five pound chinese cabbage and no extra lettuce.  As the cabbage size decreased the lettuce size should have increased.  We figure that over time, people are receiving a randomly distributed share, and it will all come out in the wash.  So don't expect your share to look like it came from the grocery store, and don't even expect it to look like the one next to it.

Sometimes you will wonder at the size or quantity of an item we are offering.  We just divide what we have as best we can into equal shares, or as we did with the Hunters' Greens shares, we give each member something different of a comparable value.  Some got radishes, some got extra lettuce, one got peas and one got turnips.  It's just the luck of the draw.  But we try not to give you so little of something that you can't use it.  You may have to be creative, like adding it to a salad or a stir fry with other things.  But after all we call it a food odyssey for a reason.

So until next week,

Bon Appetit.