Fresh from Wellspring Charitable Gardens - February 1, 2024
Fresh Today… Butternut Squash, Parsnips, Beets, Fennel, Carrots, Broccoli Shoots, Green Butterhead Lettuce, Rosemary, Cilantro, and Citrus – Grapefruit, Eureka Lemons, Navel & Blood Oranges
Using your Produce… by Julie Moreno.
This week we have the first parsnips of the year coming in our baskets. Parsnips are related to carrots and celery. They are the only root that we send without the greens. They are known to cause a mild irritation to skin, and it’s advised not to eat them. The vegetable is sweet and starchy. It can be used as a replacement for potatoes in soups or use it in cooked carrot recipes. They have a fragrant aroma and flavor and go well with strong flavored herbs like rosemary and spices like chili powder and cumin. We are also sending out butternut squash this week that was stored from last fall’s harvest. I included a curried soup recipe to keep you warm over the rainy week ahead.
Curry Butternut Squash Soup
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons curry powder
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 cups peeled & chopped
butternut squash
1 14-ounce can coconut milk or
2 cups whole milk
3-4 cups vegetable broth or water
* In a large soup pot, heat the oil and onion, cook over medium heat until the onion is translucent, about 6 minutes. Add in the garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, curry powder and cinnamon, stir until fragrant about 1-2 minutes, don’t let the garlic or spices burn. Add the butternut squash, coconut milk and 3 cups water or broth. Bring to a boil stirring occasionally, turn the heat down to a simmer, cover and let cook for about 15 minutes until the squash is tender. Blend together with an immersion blender, or transfer to a regular blender and process until smooth. Taste and add more salt if desired. Adjust the consistency by adding additional broth or water. Serve right away.
Choosing Intimacy…
I am excited and proud to announce the publication of Cindi’s book Choosing Intimacy: Exploring Christ’s Model for Mutuality and Deeper Relationships. Her work is a labor of love born out her experiences as a psychotherapist, mother, wife, daughter, friend, and devoted disciple of Jesus (I can vouch for her birth pangs and contractions that delivered this baby!). Through the work, she offers wise insights and practical support on how to establish and nurture more intimate and mutually satisfying relationships – in marriage and friendship, and with family, colleagues, and fellow believers. She also exposes hurtful attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that leave us feeling unseen, unheard, unknown, or unloved in relationships that mean the most to us, but grievously, where we feel most wounded, unsafe, and alone. The title captures her message succinctly: Being intimate is a choice we must make to know and enjoy deeply meaningful, mutually satisfying, lasting relationships. I am so proud of you and this work, my Love!
Seasonal Vegetables…
Parsnips come around in the late winter and spring. They have a long growing season, and for our climate, this is the only time that we will see them. They are sweet, starchy, and great fried or roasted. Try this recipe seasoned with cumin and topped with cilantro.
Roasted Parsnips with Cumin and Cilantro
2-3 parsnips, peeled and chopped, remove
the woody center of any large parsnip
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ cup chopped cilantro
* Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Toss the parsnips with the oil, salt, pepper and ground cumin. Place on a rimmed baking sheets and cook in the oven until lightly browned and tender, about 30-35 minutes. While the vegetables are cooking, chop the cilantro. Remove the parsnips from the oven, sprinkle with cilantro, and serve.
Metaphors of Soil and Soul…
Unless It Falls
by Ronda May Melendez & Keith F Martin
Garlic has been my pungent tutor this week. Weeks ago, we gathered brittle garlic remaining from last year’s harvest and gave it a proper burial. Some simply discard those withered fragments that are useless for flavoring sauce or stew. Once juicy and pungent, the unsavory cloves are best tossed out with the trash…right?
While evidence seemingly supports this judgment, our faith in a seed’s unseen potential emboldens our resolve. Faith is “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” A seed’s unseen potential can only be released in its death and burial. Dark winter soil provides the tomb required for a spring resurrection. We are convinced that those shriveled bodies, now no good to culinary artists, will revive in the fertile soil, take root, rise up in strength, and grow to maturity in abundance. We planted those brittle remains with assurance that there would be a new harvest of fresh garlic in due season! Now sprouting from barren brown soil rises new life, green and beautiful, to stand in the garden rows.
Consider the condition of your life at the moment? Have you lost your juice or pungency? Do you feel dry, withered, useless, spent? Do not worry. What we deem dry and no longer useful is of extraordinary value to the LORD. He knows how to take the dead and restore it to life. The prophet Ezekiel saw the restoration in a vision:
“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord God, You know.’”
The LORD commanded Ezekiel to prophesy over the dry and breathless bones.
“O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the Lord.’”
The dry bones rattled and came together; then sinews, flesh, and skin covered the bones, but there was no life. Ezekiel then spoke to the breath:
“'Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.’”
Breath entered the fallen, lifeless forms, and they came alive and stood on their feet, “an exceedingly great army.” Our withered remains, too, will come to life in strength and abundance by the Word and the Spirit of the LORD.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.” (John 12:24-26)
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