Are you ready for some ARUGULA?

We are getting ready to plant some arugula and we wanted to do a little shout out to this leaf with a spicy kick. Arugula is a dark green, peppery leaf that works equally well in salads or as a cooked green. If you have purchased the Spring Salad Mix at the grocery store, then you have probably already tried arugula without even realizing it. Like most salad greens, arugula is very low in calories and is high in vitamins A and C. A 1/2 cup serving is two calories.

Different Arugula Leaves For Different Recipes

 

Photo © Molly Watson

Smaller arugula leaves tend to be milder, while larger leaves tend to have a more aggressive, peppery kick. It's perfect for using as a garnish, since just a few leaves give plenty of kick, and other raw preparations where its intense flavor can be appreciated. Since larger arugula leaves tend to have a stronger flavor, they can be cooked successfully without losing all their flavor.

Arugula Salad Recipes

Photo © Molly Watson

Arugula adds a peppery kick to salads of all sorts, pairing particularly well with sweet mild lettuces like Boston (a.k.a. butter lettuce) and Bibb lettuces. Dressings made with olive oil and balsamic vinegar highlight the assertive flavors of arugula, as do lemon juice-based dressings.

• Arugula Salad with Broiled Lemons
• Arugula Persimmon Salad
• Lentil Arugula Salad
• Arugula Salad Rolls

Cooked Arugula Recipes

Photo © Molly Watson

Arugula also works lightly cooked. Use it as you would spinach - in sautes, stir-frys, or added to soups - cooking it quickly. Be warned that it has a stronger flavor and tougher, more fibrous texture than spinach.

• Roast Chicken with Arugula
• Mushrom Arugula Soba Soup

Arugula as a Garnish

Photo © Molly Watson

Small or wild arugula leaves – with their bright, peppery kick – make pretty and delicious garnishes. A small handful on top of a plate of pasta or wilting gently into a bowl of soup adds flavor, texture, and color to a dish.

The connection between salt cravings, stress, and leafy greens

It is normal to crave salt from time to time. Salt is important to your body and your taste buds. In fact, your body needs salt to survive. The cells in our body float in a salty fluid and sodium helps balance the electrolytes in our body. In addition, food without salt can be almost unbearably bland and salt helps intensifies the flavor of food. Often, people crave salty foods when they are tired, stressed, or have a diet deficient in essential minerals. Other times, we reach for salty foods simply our of habit.

If you are craving salt as a result of being accustomed to consuming a lot of salt with your foods or enjoying lots of salty foods like potato chips, salted nuts etc., slowly cut back on your salt intake and replace it with herbs and spices to give you lots of flavor without the salt. An excellent way to get the salt taste you crave as well as  necessary minerals is to use unprocessed sea salt.

If stress and exhaustion are causing your salt cravings, you may notice that you can consume a lot of salty foods and never feel satisfied. Yes, it could be emotional eating, but stress can also deplete essential minerals in our body and our cravings can indicate that we should replace those essential nutrients rather than reach for junk food. Interestingly enough, stress can deplete our levels of magnesium in our body which can actually make us crave salty foods. Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in your body, a necessary co-factor for hundreds of enzymes, and the most critical mineral of all for coping with stress.
 
 In order to replace diminished magnesium levels and help ourselves stave off salt cravings when stressed, it is best to increase food rich in magnesium in your diet. Did you know that the chlorophyll in green veggies contains magnesium? So, stock up on spinach, kale, chard, seaweed, and other leafy greens. The best food sources of magnesium are  buckwheat,  lima beans, navy beans, kidney beans, green beans, edamame, blackeyed peas, broccoli, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, oats, whole barley, millet, bananas, blackberries, dates, dried figs, mangoes, watermelon, almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazel nuts, shrimp, and tuna. 

Wilted Spinach Salad

We have been experimenting with growing our own Spring 2013 transplants in our home, but we've had no luck getting our spinach seeds to germinate. We have heat mats, lights, and nutrient rich soil; however, there have been no tiny sprouts for 3 weeks. Since our other leafy greens are sprouting beautifully, we came to the conclusion that it must be our seeds. We ordered and received some new spinach seeds and are getting ready to plant some of our new seeds tonight. In order to get pumped about all the new spinach seedlings that we are hoping to see, we decided to make a delicious wilted spinach salad for dinner tonight. It is simple and delicious. Here is the recipe:


Wilted Spinach Salad

Ingredients:
6 cups (5-ounces) fresh spinach leaves, washed, dried, and chilled
3 slices bacon (regular or turkey bacon), cut into 1/4-inch pieces
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup minced red onion
1/4 teaspoon coarse or sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly-ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon granulated sugar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 boiled egg, cut into small pieces

Preparation:
Remove stems and veins from spinach and tear into bite-sized pieces; place spinach in a large bowl. 
 
In a small frying pan over medium heat, fry bacon approximately 5 minutes or until crisp; transfer with slotted spoon to paper towel-lined plate, leaving fat in pan. 

Return frying pan to medium heat; add 1tbs oil, onion, salt, pepper, and sugar. Cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onion is slightly softened. Add 1tbs balsamic vinegar; swirl to incorporate. Take off heat and add 1 more tbs of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  
Pour warm dressing over spinach and toss gently to wilt (when properly wilted, the leaf edges soften slightly, but the spinach retains some crunch). Sprinkle bacon and egg pieces over spinach and serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

Leafy Greens Farm 2013

It is 2013 and Leafy Greens Farm is about to kick off a new year of growing delicious vegetables! We plan to continue our mission of growing great produce using organic practices and sharing our produce with friends, family, and community members. We took a brief break from farming last year in order to move, but we look forward to sharing new stories and connecting with all of you during 2013.

We have big dreams for this year and also more space to get things started. Our new home offers us enough room to grow transplants in our basement until it is warm enough to transplant them outdoors. It may only be January, but many of the vegetables we eat can take 90 to 120 days to grow. We set up two shelving units of lights and heating mats and have already planted 250+ seeds. The only thing we need more of is electrical sockets. :) Today, we have cabbages, lettuces, snap peas starting to sprout.

After two years of growing vegetables, we are considering starting our own CSA this year. If your not familiar with a CSA, it is otherwise known as Community-Supported or Community-Shared Agriculture. You can think of it like "subscription farming." You buy a subscription from a local farmer just like you buy a subscription to a magazine or Netflix. Instead of receiving a magazine or movie each week, you receive a "share" of fresh, locally grown vegetables. We are a little nervous and still need to work out all the details about starting this new venture in farming, but we have the confidence that we can keep the vegetables growing and boxes of produce filled for our customers.

More news to come soon.

Garlic Pepper Glaze

Due to popular demand, we have added a section to our blog where consumers can purchase the Garlic Pepper Glaze online with Paypal and have it shipped to their home. Our Garlic Pepper Glaze was a St. Louis Garlic Fest "favorite.” It is a sweet and spicy glaze made with our organic garlic that goes great with chicken or pork. It also can be served as a delicious appetizer when poured over cream cheese and served with crackers. Check out this link to purchase your jar of Garlic Pepper Glaze online: http://blog.leafygreensfarm.com/p/products.html.

St. Louis Garlic Fest

Leafy Greens Farm kicked off their 2012 Summer festival season with a booth at the St. Louis Garlic Fest. It was a fun, family event in south St. Louis started by a bunch of urban garlic farmers. Last November, we had planted about 180 cloves of garlic and early this June we harvested all of them. Yes, garlic takes about 8-9 months to grow! After we harvested the garlic, we cleaned it, cut the stems off, and let it cure -or dry out- in the barn for about 4 weeks. Once the curing process is done, it is ready to be eaten, sold, or stored until the next planting season. Since we planted about 10 different speciality varieties of garlic, we wanted to find the right venue to sell them at. Luckily, we found out about the garlic festival so that we could sell them directly to consumers interested in trying fun, new garlics.

Our garlic varieties we sold

It was exciting talking to so people about garlic - which is considered both a vegetable and an herb. We brought other vegetables to sell, but garlic took center stage. Many people didn't know that garlics came in so many varieties and frankly we didn't know either before we started growing garlic. At the grocery stores, we typically just see one variety of porcelain white garlic, but we have read that there are over 600 cultivated sub-varieties of garlics in the world. The varieties range in flavor from mild to hot and spicy. We had a small range of flavors, but enough to intrigue some of our customers.

We shared and learned new garlics recipes as well as talked about how we prepare the soil for growing garlic. Damian used his amazing selling skills to our garlic and we ended up selling 90% of what we took to the festival. According to one consumer, we had the "cutest" garlics of the festival. We even had two celebrity sightings at the Garlic Fest, Mayor Francis Slay dropped by our booth and Garlic Man came over for a rare photo opportunity!

Mayor Slay and Garlic Man



Baked goods and canned items

One of the most surprising parts of the festival was how quick our baked goods and canned items sold. We had made garlic flat bread, zucchini bread cookies, and garlic pepper glaze. Garlic pepper glaze was the biggest hit of the day. I am not sure if it was the free sample or the awesome recipe, but we sold out of the garlic pepper glaze by 11am!

22 Days of Temperatures above 90°F

Summer 2012 has proved to be a scorcher, but it is not stopping the vegetables or bees at Leafy Greens Farm. We are thankful for the well water and drip tape irrigation system we installed. We have been going to the farm every couple of days, watering for an hour or two and harvesting the hardy summer veggies. We found that kales and chards are the hardiest leafy greens around. Our other vegetables that seem to love the heat include the following: beans, zucchini, squash, okra, and cucumbers. We had to harvest all of our broccoli and cabbages because they started to flower and get burned by the sun.

One of my favorite things to watch at the farm is the zucchini and squash leaves come back to life after watering. In order to produce the zucchini and squash, the plant uses the water stored in the leaves to create the vegetable. In high heat, the plant's leaves become wilted and sad looking; however, they bounce back with a small amount of watering.

As for the bees, we were worried that the heat might make them swarm and disappear to a cooler place. Inside the bee hive, the temperature is normally higher than the outdoor temperature due to all of the busy activity going on inside. During the summer it is essential to have a water source for the bees nearby so that they can take it into the hive and help the hive cool down. We have two buckets of water near the hive. We also placed the hives under a shade tree for added protection from the scorching sun.