10/14 box

Salad Radishes - Thomasville Heights Elementary School and Pi Farm

We're having radishes for the second time this week! These radishes are delicious simply washed, cut, and eaten with salt or thrown in a salad. If they are too strong for you raw, try this recipe for roasted radishes that can just as easily be used with your hakurei turnips. (season with what you like).

Or, if you've done that already last week and need new ideas, here's another take on roasted radishes using the thyme from your herb bundle, here's a simple sandwich idea, and if you're craving something sweet, snack-y, and radish-y at the same time, there are even recipes for cinnamon sugar radish chips.

Sweet Potatoes - Women's Metro Transitional Center

This sweet (what else?) root vegetable can be, like with all our other fall root vegetables, roasted with a bit of oil and seasoned to taste for a delicious side dish. But its sweet flavor makes it suitable for both savory and sweet recipes, depending on how you season it. Want it savory? Try this recipe for sweet potato fries or baked sweet potatoes with garlic, black pepper, paprika, and the like. Want it sweet? Glaze them, marshmallow them, or, especially in the fall, make sweet potato pie, that Southern holiday dessert staple.

Hakurei Turnips - Thomasville Heights Elementary School and Pi Farm

These delicately-flavored are making a reappearance this week. Unlike other turnips, they are delicious raw or cooked and pair well with a variety of different foods. Eat them raw (whole, or chopped/grated in salads), make pickles, roast with olive oil and salt, or sauté with their greens to enhance their natural sweetness.

Click here for a simple sauté recipe, and here for a sweeter, but still simple, recipe for glazed turnips. Or, for an Asian twist, sauté with ginger and soy sauce.

Collards - Pi Farm and Women's Metro Transitional Center

Everyone and especially their grandmother has a different way of preparing this Southern staple vegetable, but if collard greens aren't your thing, these sturdy vegetables can also be chopped up and added by the handful to soups and stews, stir-fried in the place of spinach or kale (de-stem first), cooked with pasta, eaten raw in salads, or even as a leafy, gluten free replacement for bread in wraps.

Or, if you are a collard greens person, check out this popular recipe. (Sorry. It's not your grandma's, but feel free to share your family recipes for collards with us!)

Here's a list of even more ideas for eating your collards.

Swiss Chard - Women's Metro Transitional Center

Swiss chard is not, in fact, Swiss in origin. Like collard, it is a fairly sturdy vegetable and can be cooked in many of the same ways. Try substituting it for the collard in the recipes above, or even cook them together. The striking rainbow hues of this vegetable are sure to brighten up any stir fry, soup, or pasta.

Here's a simple sauté recipe that can also include some of last week's garlic. Collard can be easily substituted.

Herb Bundles - Pi Farm

All these aromatic bundles contain rosemary and sweet basil. Depending on the bundle, it will also contain either oregano; Mexican tarragon and garlic chives; or sage and hot peppers. These herbs are perfect for flavoring all your savory fall dishes.

See last week's post for more on hot peppers.

Eggplant - Community Herd

A versatile and hearty vegetable, this eggplant is this week's offering from Community Herd. Whether baked, grilled, stir-fried, or mashed, eggplant has been cultivated since prehistory in some parts of the world and is used in many cuisines. Here are some recipe ideas: a simple baked eggplant, baked eggplant parmesan, easy Middle Eastern baba ganoush, Greek-style eggplant stew, Korean eggplant stir-fry, and even eggplant fries. The possibilities are truly endless.

Some recipes ask that you salt your eggplants beforehand to break down bitter enzymes. Here's how.

Read more about Community Herd and the work they do here, or find out more about them under Partners.

Strawberry Preserves - Pi Farm

The last of Pi Farm's summer strawberry crop has been transformed into these delectable jars of strawberry preserve that will be this week's extra item. Spread it on the fresh bread from Root Baking for breakfast, or serve them with these classic British scones with clotted cream for an afternoon treat.

ALSO in this week's box:

Sourdough Batard from Root Baking

Eggs from Tiny Joy Farm @Berea and Riverview Farm

Mountain Fresh Creamery 2% Milk from Candler Park Market

See In Every Box for more detailed information.

Note: There may occasionally be last-minute changes to box contents depending on the goods that are available from the farm. While we try to keep this website up-to-date as possible, we cannot guarantee that what's in your box will exactly match what's on the website.

Food Feature:

Here's a simple recipe for Sautéed Collards from a Paideia family friend.

SAUTÉED COLLARDS

Ingredients: collards, garlic, red pepper flakes, olive oil

Sauté chopped garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil
Wash and shred the collards
Add to the sautéed garlic mixture on the fire and keep turning over until they shrink down
Cover and simmer for about 10-15 minutes

If you ever have a recipe/preparation ideas you'd like to share from your CSA box, please email paideiacsa@gmail.com. We would love to see what you're cooking!

Here's one Paideia family's CSA box dinner from last week:

Profile: Pi Farm

From left to right: Leah Clement (MTC Urban Farm), Erin Cescutti (Pi Farm), Tania Herbert (Pi Farm), Eva Dickerson (Thomasville Elementary School Farm)

Whether it’s food justice and the social implications of food, sustainability, the landscape of urban agriculture, science of all kinds, or even topics as specific as Medical Botany, Pi Farm provides a living, outdoor classroom for students of all ages. Beyond being a unique educational platform that provides hands-on opportunities for students to dig (often literally) into the curriculum, it also acts as a bridge to connect us to the other communities. 90% of the produce Pi Farm grows goes to food pantries and food co-ops around Atlanta as part of their efforts to address food insecurity in Atlanta in a concrete way. And of course, as part of the Grassroots Growers Alliance, they provide the majority of the delicious, fresh produce that makes up the core of our weekly sliding scale CSA.

Select Partnerships and Programs:

Here’s a small selection of the many, many programs and partnerships that Pi Farm facilitates.

Grassroots Growers Alliance (GGA): A partnership between three urban farms from a small independent school, a group of women in a correctional facility, and a Title One elementary school (Pi Farm, MTC Urban Farm, Thomasville Elementary School Farm) to address food insecurity. The GGA farms work together to connect, learn, grow, and feed over 130 families on a bi-weekly basis.

Gangstas to Growers: Gangstas to Growers is part of The Come Up Project. It works to empower at risk and formerly incarcerated youth through agriculture, employment, and entrepreneurship. Pi Farm grows the turmeric for their Sweet Sol hot sauce, which G2G makes and sells to fund their program.

Sweet Potato Harvest/Revolution Donuts: Each year, Pi farm works with students and parents to harvest a massive crop of sweet potatoes. The ugly and damaged ones, instead of being thrown away, are then transformed into delicious sweet potato donuts with help from Revolution Donuts chef/owner Maria Riggs.

Urban Recipe: Pi Farm donates produce to Urban Recipe, a community food co-op promoting food equity.

The Farmers:

Erin and Tania are the two full-time farmer-educators who work on Pi Farm. In addition to the normal work of growing crops, they also run a cornucopia of educational and community outreach programs as part of Pi Farm. These range from running the Community Garden, to the annual sweet potato harvest with both students and parents, to plant sales, to partnerships with other urban farming organizations, to classes of all kinds.

Celeste Padula is a Paideia 2016 Alum and Occidental College 2020 grad. She has returned to help run the new greenhouse and community garden program. In Los Angeles, Celeste worked on Occidental’s school farm as a greenhouse manager and later as Director. She is excited to be back in Atlanta for the year!

WHY I FARM: ERIN CESCUTTI

I've been farming for 10 years now and as much as I hate having to write about myself, it's good to slow down, reflect, and reevaluate why I farm. The reasons I became interested are not exactly the same reasons I continue. Not that 10 years is really that much time in the grand scheme of things but so much of my identity is tied to farming that, to be honest, I sometimes forget why I do it. It reminds me how lucky I am to have the privilege to do what I love to do and see the food go to people that really need it.

I had the privilege of knowing 3 of my great-grandmothers, in addition to my grandparents, who were all avid gardeners that loved to grow both edible and ornamental plants. I can’t help but think it had a huge influence on me. I had a connection with plants pretty early on and decided to major in Horticulture. After several years of doing various jobs in the horticulture industry, I found myself working at a restaurant that sourced from local farmers around the time the farm to table movement was just starting to take off in Atlanta. My focus had always been on ornamental plants so switching to food crops really merged two things that were of interest to me at the time. In 2010, I started looking for work on local farms and ended up at Love is Love Farm. I learned so much not only about farming but also about our country’s broken food system and the importance of sustainable farming. What started as an interest in growing for restaurants became an interest in growing food to help combat food insecurity while recognizing the important role that education plays in changing our food systems. On the most basic level, I’ve always wanted to work with plants because it keeps me grounded and connected to the earth while also being therapeutic, in a way that has a positive impact on the environment and people. Joining Tania with the Urban Ag program allowed me to do the work that I value so much, but also to share that experience and knowledge with students and the communities we work with. I don’t want to romanticize farming too much. It is very difficult and challenging most of the time but it is very important work and that's a big part in what motivates me to continue. I want to be a part of the solution and not the problem. It’s my form of activism.

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