From Wellspring Charitable Gardens this Week - March 23, 2023
From the Garden this Week… Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Broccoli, Purple of Sicily Cauliflower or Green Cabbage, Onions, Arugula, Spinach, Salad Mix, French Breakfast Radishes, Beets, Kale Leaves & Stalks, Swiss Chard, Dill, Cilantro, Parsley, Lemons, Blood & Navel Oranges
Using your Produce… by Julie Moreno
We are back on track with lots of vegetables. We have Swiss chard, kale, and spinach. In addition, we are thinning the beets. These young and tender greens cook fast like spinach and are tender and sweet. There is purple and regular broccoli and purple cauliflower coming your way. This recipe for Broccoli Bars is like a quiche without the crust. You can feel free to use the cauliflower instead of or in combination with broccoli. The bars use flour to help stabilize the dish and make it easy cook and serve. It uses more broccoli than eggs that you would in a quiche. It is great served hot out of the oven as a side dish for dinner or serve it for lunch the next day.
Broccoli Bars
5 cups broccoli and cauliflower florets, leaves,
and stems, chopped into bite sized pieces
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup grated cheese
1/2 cup Milk
1 large or 2 medium size green onions, chopped
* In a small saucepan, place the broccoli and a ½ cup of water, heat over high heat and steam the broccoli for about 4-5 minutes, until cooked. Drain the excess liquid. In a mixing bowl beat the eggs and combine the flour, salt, cheese, milk. Gently mix in the green onions and cooked broccoli. Pour the mixture into a greased 9x9 baking pan. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Cut into squares. Serve hot or cold.
Dear WCG family,
Thank you for understanding our need for a “crop vacation.” The tropical sun and time to grow was much needed and the crops did have a “good time” (probably “too good” a time) cruising the Caribbean and visiting those “exotic” ports of call, especially Kokomo. On the whole, those tender vegetables fared rather well, with the exception of a few avant-garde haircuts, tasteful tattoos, and surprising piercings. They have recovered and are now settled quietly in their fields and rows awaiting today’s harvest and their place at your table.
We, as doting farmers, accept responsibility for our role in their wayward antics off the farm. We over-trellised them as tender sprouts, preventing them from fully developing their own self-supporting stalk system. Shade cloth interfered with their growing a substantial leaf support network to protect their tender fruit from the damaging storms formed in Bohemian surroundings.
Nonetheless, we have all grown through this experience. At times, crops do need a vacation offering more sun, time to grow, and a favorable influence. As concerned farmers, we have already chosen a more suitable, less provocative setting for that healthy need. For next year, we have purchased them tickets for a grand bus tour of sun-kissed Needles, Barstow, Baker, and Mohave, CA.
Sweet Veggie, take these wise words of Cat Stevens to heart:
“Just remember there’s a lot of bad
and beware…
Oh, Veggie, Veggie, it's a wild world It's hard to get by just upon a smile…”
Greens…
All our greens can be cooked in a similar fashion just adjust the cooking time. You can combine the different varieties depending on what greens are available. Spinach and baby beet greens cook the fastest, Swiss chard needs 2-3 minutes, and kale 4-6 minutes.
Sautéed Greens
6-8 cups chopped leafy greens, Swiss chard,
kale, Spinach, or collard greens
2 garlic cloves minced
sprinkle of red chili flakes
1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
salt and pepper
lemon juice or balsamic vinegar
* Wash the chopped greens in a bowl of water, let any dirt settle to the bottom and pull the greens out of the water and let drain, they do not need to be dry. In a large sauté pan with a lid, heat the garlic, chili flakes and butter over medium-high heat, until the garlic becomes fragrant about 1-2 minutes. Add the wet greens, salt, and pepper. Cover with the lid and cook for about 2-6 minutes. Remove the lid and stir the greens. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. For tougher greens, if the pan dries up, add a few tablespoons of water and cover, to help steam the vegetables. Finish the dish with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice or balsamic vinegar.
Metaphors of Soil and Soul …
Insights Gleaned from the Garden
Cindi J Martin
Have you been told you are “well-grounded”? Have you, like me, been told you need to be more “down to earth” and less “spiritual.” Perhaps you have been stung by the more flippant rendering of this sentiment: You are so “heavenly-minded” that you are of “no earthly good.” Hmmm, can I not be both “down to earth” and “heavenly-minded”?
I want to be well-grounded for the purpose of delighting our Heavenly Father and loving others as Jesus does. He is the most “well-grounded” person who ever walked on earth, or on water, for that matter. His incarnation reconciled these oft perceived adversarial perspectives; recall the Evie song lyric: “Some children see Him bronzed and brown. The Lord of heaven to earth come down.” Recall His parables recorded in the Gospels; they capture that divine balance between heaven and earth. In fact, the very definition of “parable” is “...an earthly story illustrating a heavenly truth.”
Metaphors, similes, allegories, and parables – indeed, all types of figurative language - are engaging and effective teachers. So please bear with me (all of us, really) as I share with you my favorite gardening insights in our newsletter’s reflections feature Metaphors of Soil and Soul…. Please send in your insights as well! I always feel that I have come across a treasure hidden in a field when God or friend shares a life lesson gleaned from cultivating soil and tending plants in the garden.
This week I want to share what I am learning from the rose buds in the garden. I contemplated what would happen if I tried to pull a bud open and into flower at that very moment. I could force the petals apart, but I would destroy the flower in the process. Immediately came to mind several matters that I am trying to “force open.”
Waiting on God’s timing is like waiting for the beauty in a rose bud to unfold. Too often I become impatient, wanting its beauty now. Restless, I force things open, and I am left holding a mangled bud not a beautiful rose. Gardening grounds me in reality: God’s delicate process of gentle unfolding in His own time far surpasses any results I achieve by impatiently pulling things apart in my own strength. Beauty cannot be forced. Like a flower, beauty can only unfold.
