Essentials Box | December 4, 2021

This week’s lineup is all-organic with a couple of locally sourced items:

• Cameo Apples (OPMA)
• Beets (Sound Sustainable Farms)
• Carrots (Sound Sustainable Farms)
• Avocado
• Lemon
• Leeks
• Red Leaf Lettuce
• Zucchini
• Sweet Potato

The DGC is also selling a chef’s mix of mushrooms (with Shitake, Oyster, and others), which makes it the perfect time to make Meera Sodha’s vegan recipe for leek, mushroom, kale and pea subji. We made it last week (after getting Meera’s book, East), and it’s a tasty, quick meal for midweek that’s also nicely low-carb on its own.

Essentials Box | October 16, 2021

Here’s this week’s all-organic Essentials Box lineup with several locally sourced delights:

• Green Leaf Lettuce (Sound Sustainable Farms)
• Spaghetti Squash (The Crows Farm)
• Honeycrisp Apples (OPMA)
• Bosc Pears (OPMA)
• Bananas
• Red Onion
• Gold Potato
• Red Pepper
• Zucchini

Here’s a primer on how to cook spaghetti squash from Love and Lemons, as well as a few recipe starters:

Essentials Box | September 25, 2021

Here’s this week’s all-organic Essentials Box lineup with several locally sourced delights:

• Zucchini (Sound Sustainable Farms)
• Carrots (Ralph’s Greenhouse)
• Sweet Corn (mix from Alvarez Farm and Hedlin Farm)
• Gala Apples (OPMA)
• Green Leaf Lettuce (Dharma Ridge)
• Avocado
• Bananas
• Green Onion
• Gold Potatoes

Here are a couple of recipe starters to get you going on this week’s box contents:

  • Zucchini, Corn, and Carrot Fritters from Betsy Life
  • Below is an easy, peasy curry sauce from Jamie Oliver that’s adaptable to just about anything you’ve got in the fridge or pantry (it was the first curry sauce DGC volunteer Agen ever made and was long in his repertoire before he started to get even more adventurous with Indian dishes). The curry recipe starts at 27:44:

Essentials Box | June 5, 2021

Here’s this week’s all-organic Essentials Box lineup:

• Red radishes (Sound Sustainable Farms)
• Spinach (Sound Sustainable Farms)
• Pink Lady apples
• Bananas
• Navel oranges
• Garlic
• Zucchini
• Red onions
• Broccoli

Recipe Starters

This week, DGC volunteer Agen Schmitz provides some starting thoughts for what to do with the contents of this week’s produce box.

  • When broccoli is available, the first thing that I think of is making the Forbidden Burger from the Veggie Burger Atelier. The burger itself combines black rice, black beans, and shitake mushrooms (you could also use the Chef’s Mix of mushrooms available at the DGC storefront this weekend). But what makes this really special is topping it with spiced up broccoli florets (I prefer to roast, not steam). [Recipe via Recipe Wisdom]
  • A favorite one-pot recipe that’s easy to prep during the week is this all-in-one sticky rice with broccoli and squash dish (which looks to be adapted from the Vegetarian Dinner’s in the Oven book, which is where I got it).
  • One of my few kitchen gadget treats during our COVID year was a spiralizer, and our family enjoys “zoodling” zucchini, beets, and carrots to add a little something special to salads. (We might even try to spiralize the stalk of the broccoli this week.)

Meet the Producer

As we move into the spring and summer growing seasons, our DGC Essentials Box will feature more and more local growers, and we want to introduce you to the folks who are filling our boxes with fresh produce.

Founded in 2017, WSDA certified organic Sound Sustainable Farms was launched by Cedar Grove, who picks up and processes our compost every week. Cedar Grove brought its organic compost to a dormant farm in Redmond to restore soil health and initiate productivity on land that was protected for farming. They grow their beautiful vegetables on 60 acres of farm land, right here in King County!

Sound Sustainable Farms is devoted to building and maintaining healthy soils by using compost, cover crops, rotating crops and reducing tillage. They reject the use of synthetic insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers.

We’re looking forward to partnering with them more throughout 2021.

Jamie and Arturo showing off some of Sound Sustainable’s colorful carrots

Essentials Box March 27, 2021

Here’s what you’ve got coming in this week’s Essentials produce box — all items organic!

  • Fuji Apples (from Honeybear Brands in Brewster, Washington)
  • Bananas
  • Grapefruit
  • Baby Bok Choy
  • Yellow Onion
  • Yellow Pepper
  • Red Potato
  • Radish
  • Zucchini

Agen from our DGCEB team brings you a couple of thoughts for what to do with this week’s box contents: 

Get some mushrooms on your next grocery trip and make this easy-peasy stir fry with your bok choy from The Spruce Eats, or kick it up a notch with this recipe for glazed shitakes with bok choy from the New York Times (log-in be required).

The kid in our house is choosy about apples — he goes for Honeycrisp or Fuji, and nothing else. We’re in luck this week, but here’s an idea for when you’ve got a lot of apples hanging around: Apple Dutch Baby! Here’s a classic recipe from Bon Appetit. We like to top it with a bit of skyr (Icelandic yogurt), and it’s the perfect vehicle for using up some of the recent Sidhu Farm strawberry jam add-on.

I’m trying to be less carb-focused, and I’ll often prepare a zucchini-feta frittata for lunch that’s quick, full of protein, and filling (I got it from 5:2 Vegetarian by Celia Brooks). This recipe is for two (with 175 calories per serving):

  1. Slice the zukes thinly (1/8-inch) and start frying them in an oiled or buttered non-stick, grill-proof pan (with salt and pepper to taste).
  2. After softening and turning GBD (golden brown delicious), beat two eggs and pour them over the evenly spread zucchini.
  3. Crumble about 2 ounces of feta over the top, and add any of your favorite herbs (dill, parsley, or thyme).
  4. While the eggs set on your stovetop, turn on your oven to broil. When the frittata has started to firm up, place the pan in the oven and cook under the broiler for about 2-3 minutes.