We just used a light homemade vinaigrette and made a salad bar, so everyone could choose the salad components they liked — yard salad with herbs and flowers, a spicy mix with cress and sliced radishes, and a not-exactly-from-our-yard mix that includes cucumber, romaine, celery and pea shoots. I wasn’t sure if they mesclun would be too spicy for the kids since some of it had bolted in the warm weather but it turned out to be tame enough for their palates.

The kids picked some small not-quite-ready-yet french breakfast radishes while I cut the mesclun mix and cress (cress, tiny radishes and mesclun in spinner acros the top of the picture). I also gathered (going clockwise for rest of picture) parsley (far left), lambs quarters (pick them young — you can eat the stems if they’re young enough, or just the leaves if they’re woodier), some merveille de quatre saisons lettuce and bronze arrowhead lettuce, two varieties of kale and just a pinch of basil.

These pictures are from a couple of weeks ago, and the rest of the radishes have poked their ruddy shoulders out of the ground and were eaten already. Our lambs quarters are at the point that I’m only picking leaves, and our parsley, which had overwintered, is starting to flower. The lettuces are offering up more than just a couple of small leaves, and the chard is also big enough to harvest so we’re still enjoying yard salad in all it’s seasonal variations. The chive flowers have passed, though i’m wondering if I’d chopped them all off and not allowed it to set seeds, if it would keep producing flowers — anyone have any experience with this? We’ve started adding rose petals and wood sorrel which are out now that earlier “weeds” like chickweed are also past their prime.

What do you scrounge from your yard for your salad?

You can order until Tuesday, she contacts the farms on Wednesday to let them know what she needs, she picks up at the farms on Thursday and Deb, her husband and 3 other drivers delivers to you  on Friday. She operates out of East Haddam, so the delivery charge is based on your town’s proximity to EH, and ranges from $5-$15. She communicates very well via email about what you can expect and what you need to do — which is basically leave a cooler big enough for your order near your door, and a check to cover the invoice that was emailed to you on Thursday.

I placed my order before arranging the Aiki Farms field trip, so the first item I put in my cart was the Aiki Pea Shoot 8oz bag (big bag at far right of picture). Oh my gosh, we LOVED these. I did the usual things with them like top my salads or just dress with some oil and vinegar, but Luke found some creative ways to use them,  putting chopped sprouts into the eggs he made for Lucia. They are crunchy and juicy and LOVELY to eat.

We also ordered microgreens from Two Guys from Woodbridge (small plastic box in center of pic), not having tried them before. These have a light peppery flavor and again, I loved the added dimension they gave to my salads. Given large quantities (I only ordered 1oz) I could find myriad uses for these little greens with the small bite. Microgreens are densely nutritious and have a much more delicate flavor than their full-grown counterparts.

Next were the greens, which were all intensely flavored and blew anything I’ve gotten from the grocery store out of the water. The lettuces (romaine next to pea shoots going counterclockwise, then Shisho, Lettuce Bouquet, Sorrel, lastly arugula with a generous wad of fresh cilantro in the bag just under the microgreens)  were more flavorful and less like iceberg than the romaine I get at shaws or even whole foods. There is a sense of fragility to these leaves, in that I don’t think they would travel 2000 miles very well like their counterparts in the stores, but since the farmers don’t have to concentrate on shelf life, flavor is the priority and it shows. We made a simple green salad with just the romaine, pea shoots and slivered onions with a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Great flavor, simple food. Doesn’t get much better than that!

I’ve got some sorrel seeds to sow this year, and while I’m familiar with wild varieties of this plant, I haven’t tasted the cultivated forms. OH MY! Run to your computer or local farm and get your hands on a head of this absolutely fantabulous lemony green. Succulent and sweetly sour, it was gone in minutes. What I hadn’t added to the salad, that is. And the lemony tartness sent our green salad to heretofore unattained heights. If you come across sorrel, definitely pick it up and try it.

The arugula was as tasty as that we grew in our yard last year, so it’s lovely to have an off-season source until we build a greenhouse. The shiso was a new flavor, and its deep purple leaves looked pretty admist the sea of green, tho they all seem to have gotten tossed beneath in the picture. Quoting Dante upon taste-testing a leaf “This tastes like nothing I’ve ever had before”. It’s in the mint family, and the purple shiso is used to dye umeboshi red. High in calcium and iron, this “green” is definitely worth a try. It can be used whole or cut into strips in salads or stir fry.

We also ordered a bag of potatoes, but had some that needed using up first, so I stashed them in the basement and will be bustin into the bag this week. Organic and local — gotta love that!

We have tasted the Two Guys from Woodbridge mesclun and pea shoots at a friend’s who kindly fed us between acrobatics and skating this past weekend (Thanks, Marcella!) and the pea shoots from there were very different, so I recommend trying both.

Food starts to lose nutrients and flavor shortly after harvest, so it makes sense that this option for local food is a good thing. And CTFFE makes it as easy as pie! Have you tried CTFEE or a similar service? How was your experience?

Happy local fooding!

Merry Tri-greenberry

• 1 apple
• 3/4 cup blueberries
• 1/2 cups strawberries
• 1/2 cup sweet cherries
• 1 banana
• 2 beet greens
• 2 romaine leaves
• 2 kale leaves
• 1/2 small container coconut water
• 2 Tbs hemp seeds

1. You know the drill. Rinse, chop and blend.

You can see that most of our smoothies are topped with crunchies. Both kids love this aspect of smoothies and we tend to use then nearly every day if we have them. They’re super easy to make and have on-hand, and keep for ages in the cupboard if dehydrated properly. I buy raw buckwheat groats (not kasha, or toasted buckwheat) and soak them for an hour or two in a bowl. The soak water gets very slimy and sometimes you see tiny bubbles form on the surface, almost like when you cook beans but not as foamy. I imagine this happening in my stomach if I ate unsoaked/sprouted buckweat… blech. After soaking, rinse really well until they no longer feel slimy. You can let them sprout for a day or so or pop them straight into the dehydrator for a couple of hours. They don’t take too long to crisp up nicely.

Before I had a dehydrator, I would spread them on clean kitchen towels in the hot summer sun, stirring them up a bit now and then to ensure even drying. I still do this during warmer months, but am glad to have the dehydrator to keep us crunching our smoothies throughout the winter. Last week I made a superyummytastic granola bar with the soaked buckwheat. I only made a bit to try it out, but they were gone in seconds. A hit with everyone in the house, and a perfect on-the-go snack.