Happy Valentines Day!

Calling All Coolers!

We seem to have spread a few around the Charleston area while delivering delicious organic and local food to our customers. If they are stacked up in your garage, and you don’t need them, it would be to our benefit to retrieve them. We are happy to make a stop by on our rounds and pick up coolers if you will let us know. Thank you so much! It helps us and the planet!

News from the Farm

• The winter garden – while it is somewhat difficult to grow vegetables of any true abundance in the winter months, we have managed to keep covers on a few things that we continue to enjoy harvesting and delivering to our favorite restaurants in town, Husk and McCrady’s. I know it seems like a long time until the CSA season begins, but to whet your appetite, head down to one of these fine restaurants and get a taste of our winter garden. You will find such things as arugula, beautiful red bibb lettuce, petite braising greens, winter bitter lettuces such as escarole and radicchio, baby spinach and kale.
• As the days lengthen and our garden growth rate increases, you will begin to see these items showing up in the weekly vegetable bags that we have been offering on KTC. We are thankful for the beautiful organic vegetables being grown by our farms to the south. I think you will agree we have access to amazing winter produce here in the southeast. I hope you are enjoying these beautiful vegetables.
• Lowcountry Local First’s Growing New Farmer Incubator Program to work with Our Local Foods at Thornhill Farm again this year. We will provide instructional farm work to two interns for the spring and summer as a we continue to work to grow the local and regional food system by encouraging organic farming!! It will be great to work with Lowcountry Local First again this year.
• Our Spring CSA is just around the corner, and we are soon sending out to you a request for your designated pick-up location for your CSA. Thank you for cooperatively getting that information back to us as soon as you can after it s received by you.

Place Your Kitchen Table Cuisine Order Today!

A note about beef availability…

The coordination of processing beef for our customers is influenced by a few factors. The timing is most advantageous if we can anticipate our customer orders. We communicate with the processing plant in advance to secure a position in their schedule. We speak with the farmer regularly to ensure our supply is in the pipeline.

Our next delivery of grass fed beef from our supply farm, McCutcheon Grass Fed Beef, is due to arrive at the farm in about 10 days. It is aging at the processing facility now. We will have a good selection of steaks in our KTC online market for you in two weeks.

It’s the nature of eating local! Thank you for your patience.

KTC Take Home This Week!

Seared Asian Kebabs with Stir-Fried Bok Choy and Sweet Onion

- Four delicious generous servings
- $19.95

Escarole and White Bean Soup

- Hearty and satisfying for any meal!
- 32 ounces
- $9.95

Now Available in Kitchen Table Cuisine!

Sparkman’s Cream Valley Drinkable Yogurt: Available by the quart in four delicious flavors (natural, mango, peach and strawberry) for $3.89 or in 6-packs 8 ounce individual servings for $7.95. This is a wonderful source of calcium and is great for a snack, smoothie or with granola.

Tips from Jacqueline…Using Your Greens

Eat your vegetables! We’ve been hearing that for years. Now that we know why, it seems more important than ever. We have an abundance of winter veggies available this week in our Seasonal Vegetable Share Box. Here are some ideas to incorporate these luscious (yes, luscious!) greens into your family’s diet.

Wilting Greens
(adapted from “In the Green Kitchen” by Alice Waters)

Leafy greens
- of all sorts are good simply wilted, cooked by a combination of steaming and sautéing. Sturdy greens such as the ones available to us in the vegetable box this week take only a few minutes to cook. These are best cut into ribbons, or shreds and covered to steam during cooking. It helps to have a good size shallow pan that can accommodate a large quantity of greens with a tight fitting lid, and a pair of tongs to stir and lift the greens to keep them moving and cooking evenly.

- Try the Greens with Ginger and Chili from our new Menu Spotlight!

- Blanching Greens
Blanching vegetables means cooking them briefly in rapidly boiling water. Blanching is suitable for all sorts of leafy greens: chard, kale, beet greens, turnip tops, collards, cabbage, spinach as well as broccoli. Blanched vegetables can be seasoned and served warm; chopped and added to stuffings, meatballs, soups, and stews or dressed and served cold or at room temperature.

Try the Kale with Oil and Garlic from our new Menu Spolight.

Also featured in the Menu Spotlight is Broccoli with Anchovy Sauce.

Kitchen Table Cuisine Now Open for June Orders

As you place your orders for the month of June between now and 11:59 pm on June 7th, you will notice changes in the organization of our online catalog that we hope will make ordering easier. Please let us know your comments about these changes.
We have two great new items:

• a wonder summer Chicken and Corn Chowder
• and a new flavor of ravioli from Rio Bertolini Pasta the Bacon, Corn, and Crab Ravioli

We have removed a few items from our inventory that have proved difficult to procure.

Last month, there were some difficulties and disappointment with the dairy products. Happy Cow Creamery has asked us to apologize and to explain that there is a seasonal decrease in milk production every year as their cows take the time to calve. This year that decrease coincided with a large increase in retail sales from their farm store in Pelzer, SC. This is a temporary set back for us and, with the help of the dairy, we will do everything we can to have your milk for you this month.

We appreciate your patience and understanding of the nature of farming.

Store Inventory Increasing

More at the Farmer’s Markets as well

We are broadening the selection of regionally grown certified organic produce that we will have for sale both at our farm store in McClellanville, SC and at our booths at the farmer’s market. We’ll have more items such as potatoes and onions.

Thank You Lowcountry Local First and Charleston Cooks!

On Thursday May 27th, Maria attended a wonderful CSA cooking class hosted by Lowcountry Local First and Charleston Cooks! She brought two large CSA boxes with her and the class developed several great recipes right out of the box! These recipes will be sent to you as bag notes in an email later today.

This Week’s CSA

Your CSA box this week is truely a transition from spring to summer: the last of the spring greens, potatoes, beans, summer squash, cucumbers, and fresh herbs.

There will be eggplant, tomatoes, sweet corn, and blueberries ripening for your CSA boxes in the next couple weeks.