Happy Sunshine Sunday!
This week in Fresh Roots neighborhood grown groceries CSA members received..
Fava beans!! Bunches of beets, scallions, leeks, carrots, kale, a bag of our Schoolyard Salad mix, mustard greens, zucchini, radish pods, and a handful of specialty basil.
The sunshine is out, the plants are glowing, our summertime compost is curing, and Fresh Roots happenings are growing. This week Gray, our compost specialist, gave a tour of our various backyard composting systems to a City of Vancouver neighborhood backyard composting pilot. The tour was fantastic (cuz Gray’s systems’ are fantastic) and the feedback was awesome.
We’re almost looking forward to slowing the season down so we can turn the black gold into our fields, in preparation for next year 
Attached are some photos from the tour.
For fun shots from the Fresh Roots fields check out our new fickr site! http://www.flickr.com/photos/65742536@N05/.
You can also find Fresh Roots on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Fresh-Roots-Urban-CSA/347503614537
Recipes
What to do with your delicious favas?!
First of all – what are fava beans? Where do they come from? Check out a piece of fava bean history from wikipedia.org
“Broad beans have a long tradition of cultivation in Old World agriculture, being among the most ancient plants in cultivation and also among the easiest to grow. It is believed that along with lentils, peas, and chickpeas, they became part of the eastern Mediterranean diet in around 6000 BC or earlier. They are still often grown as a cover crop to prevent erosion, because they can over-winter and because as a legume, they fix nitrogen in the soil.”
For the simplest and still absolutely delicious. Pop the favas out of their pod. Boil them for 5-10min. Let them cool, then pop them beans out of their shells. Stir fry them in a pan with carmelized onions and garlic, add the beet thins, let it simmer for 5 minutes covered, mix ‘em, add the mustard greens, eat and enjoy!
Otherwise, other sassy fava recipes are…
1. http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/3623/fava.aspx
2. http://www.seasonalchef.com/recipe0506b.htm
Radish Pods – throw into a salad, or top any dish to impress. Crunchy and delicious, if we let them sit on the plant they would turn into seed – instead we pick them fresh and enjoy their juicy crunch.
With a fistful of cured compost!
The Fresh Roots Farm Team
