Laguna Farm

Temporary CSA Pick-up/Delivery Changes for 11/24 and 11/25 As this coming week is Thanksgiving, there will be a slight change in our pick-up/delivery days. If you receive your CSA box on Tuesdays, that will still be the day next week that your box will be ready for you. If you receive your box on Thursdays however, your box will be ready to be picked up/delivered to you on Wednesday 11/25. Same hours of delivery and pick-up apply. So hurry and make your orders today! Nothi...ng says a good meal like good veggies. Here is what is in next weeks box already.... Salad mix Carrots Sugar pie pumpkin Sweet potatoes Cooking greens Leeks And juice boxes will have... Carrots Persimmon Ginger Kale Navel oranges Apples Spinach

Sunday-Funday! (on a Monday!) This weeks odd veggie: the African Horned Cucumber Via Gastro Obscura-... With its spiky, orange exterior and seedy, green flesh, the African horned cucumber may look a bit otherwordly to those unfamiliar with it. Its appearance is so striking, it once moonlighted in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a Golana melon from the planet of Golana. On Earth, however, the fruit grows in the wild across southern Africa. It’s also cultivated in Malawi, Sierra Leone, Kenya, and elsewhere around the world. The immature fruit tastes a bit like a standard cucumber and can be pickled. Things get more interesting once it’s ripe: By various accounts, the gelatinous interior has notes of melon, banana, kiwi, and citrus. You can enjoy the fruit raw, roasted, sun-dried, or made into juice. Forage with caution: Wild versions sometimes contain bitter, toxic compounds. Commercially cultivated versions, however, are not bitter and do not contain this toxin The African horned cucumber is widely grown for international markets. You may find it outside Africa under the name kiwano (trademarked by growers in New Zealand) or melano (trademarked by growers in Israel).

Thinking about starting a fall veggie garden, but don't know what to plant? We got you covered! Thanks to joegardener- Growing a Greener World

Happy Tuesday! Now that things are cooling down, its time for some more cooking! And who doesn't love using some delicious quinoa in their recipes? And, with it being fall, lets toss some pumpkin seeds in there to add a little festive spirit.

Sunday- Funday! This weeks special veggie: Okinawan Purple Sweet Potato You don't find a lot of white or beige food in nature. Produce comes in a rainbow of colors, and there's no better example of this than purple sweet potatoes. ... Okinawan sweet potatoes are believed to have originally come from the Aztecs. The Spaniards then brought them to the Philippines, and then to China in the 1490s. Sometime during the 1600s, the potatoes made their way to Okinawa, the southern island of Japan. Okinawan sweet potatoes were soon cultivated throughout the country, and eventually made their way to Hawaii. Today, Okinawan sweet potatoes, sometimes known as Hawaiian Sweet Potatoes, are a part of the native menu in Hawaii. Okinawan sweet potatoes have a beige outer skin and a deep, blue-purple flesh. They have a mildly sweet flavor, and a very dry, starchy texture. Okinawa Sweet Potatoes are rich in an antioxidant called anthocyanin, which is what gives them their purple hue. It is the same antioxidant responsible for the color of the color of red cabbage, red wine, and purple cauliflower.

Did You Know? Did you know that Laguna Farm is a worker friendly family farm? We provide year-round employment, which offers employees and their families security and stability. Our living wages are enhanced with entrepreneurial opportunities, worker-owned crops, access to marketing through our farm-store, and steep discounts on bulk produce. Field-workers, market sales staff, administrators, delivery drivers, produce packers and both owners all work side-by-side in the spirit of comradery.

Something sweet to make with your raspberries. And appropriately themed!

Sunday-Funday Since it is our first one of October, lets see something a bit more themed this week for the weird veggie/fruit, hm? Black Sapote! The black sapote or 'chocolate pudding' fruit does not taste like chocolate pudding at all. It does however, look like chocolate pudding. The flesh is soft, smooth and a deep brown color. It has a great mellow taste when ripe and can be eaten plain or as part of a dessert or smoothie. The fruit measure 510 cm (2.03.9 in) in diam...eter. It has an inedible skin that turns from olive to a very dark, drab greeny brown when ripe. The fruit is horribly astringent before ripening and most new to the fruit don’t let them ripen nearly enough. The fruit should be very soft before it is eaten. Other common names include black soapapple and zapote prieto. This tropical fruit tree is native to Mexico, Central America, and Colombia. The common name 'sapote' refers to any soft, edible fruit. Black sapote is not related to white sapote nor mamey sapote.

Fall is upon us (yay!) so its time for some warm, soft harvest bread! Nothing pairs better with some apple cider on a crisp evening.

Ever wonder what its like (and how) to grow a pumpkin patches' worth of gourds? WIRED has you covered.

Sunday-Funday! This week's unique veggie are Fiddleheads. Well, residents of New England, especially Maine, may not think these are unique...they are a traditional vegetable dish throughout the region, occasionally served boiled, in a salad or with mayonnaise or butter. For the rest of the country, though, fiddleheads probably look more like like a cephalopods appendages than a vegetable. They are actually the furled fronds of a baby fern called the ostrich fern. One reas...on they're so rare outside of their native regions is that they are not cultivated. They are only harvested from the wild, and so are only found locally and seasonally. Foraging for fiddleheads is also for experts only: Much like with mushrooms, not all ferns are edible and some are poisonous. For the successful foragers, they will find Fiddleheads have almost no fat, and they're low in calories. These little beauties are also a good source of vitamin C, niacin, and potassium. Though they are nutritious, eating too many will likely cause digestive issues, so keep your servings small.

Sunday-Funday! Here is anther unique veggie for you: the Black Beauty Tomato, the worlds darkest tomato. A dark, meaty, very rich-fleshed tomato with extreme anthocyanin expression (same antioxidant in blueberries and blackberries). So dark that some tomatoes turn solid blue-black on the skin. Deep red flesh is among the best tasting of all tomatoes. Beautiful to look at, the flavor of Black Beauty is deep, rich and complex. Combined in a tomato salad with red, pink, orange a...nd yellow tomatoes - a real mind-blower! The fruits and the stems are deep dark indigo-black. Inside, blood red. The first photo is a not quite ripe Black Beauty, the second and third photos show the color change indicating ripeness. Keeps well on the vine and stores very well, and the flavor improves with room-temperature storage. (This weeks unique veggie was suggested by AliceAnd Ruben Ponce. Thank you!)