Crop Talk, October 24

Help Us Serve You Better   

   As we catch our breath after the 2016 CSA season, we'd like to thank all of you for joining our program this year, and we'd be grateful if you would take a couple of minutes to answer a few survey questions while the season is still fresh in your mind. Your responses will help us understand what's going well and what needs improvement. This link will take you to the 2016 Survey. Thanks for your membership and your feedback! 

Butternut Squash Quinoa with Kale, Cranberries, Walnuts, and Goat Cheese

From Gimme Some Oven, by Ali   

   What’s not to love about a vegetable that has butter and nut in its name? It practically screams “cozy!”

   This hourglass autumnal squash is basically the love child of the sweet potato and the pumpkin. When roasted, its flesh becomes tender and sweet, the sugars in it yielding a natural caramelization. It’s vegetable candy, and we’ll be obsessing over it all season long.

   One of the things I love most about butternut squash is the versatility of it — it’s awesome in pasta (as a healthy, but still incredibly tasty riff on mac & cheese), but also translates beautifully into a silky, sweet pie. And don’t even get me started on the soup!  We’ve got an exciting roundup today, of 15 of our favorite recipes starring butternut squash. With recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert dishes, this veggie covers all bases — from a healthy breakfast hash, to a carbonara that will knock your socks off, we truly can’t get enough.

   Still intimidated by peeling and seeding a butternut squash? It’s not as painstaking as you think. Check out Ali’s tutorial here, and get cooking!

Read More here.

Could Rosemary Be the Secret to a Long, Healthy Life?

By Dan Nosowitz; From Modern Farmer

   A recent New York Times article points us to research done on the spectacularly long-lived residents of one small Italian village.

   Researchers from the University of California, San Diego are camping out in the small town of Acciaroli, Italy, to study the remarkable people who live there. This is a town in which one out of every 60 people is aged 90 or older—compare that to the entire United States, in which only one of every 163 Americans have hit that mark. In fact, around 15 percent of the 2,000 people in Acciaroli are actually over 100 years old. Even weirder, they have very few incidences of many diseases which disproportionately affect the elderly, like cataracts, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.The possible reasons for their longevity are hard to nail down; a small town could possibly have some concentrated genetics, which are tricky to test, but lifestyle choices could also make a huge difference.  

   Read more here.

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