No, it’s not time to stoke the woodstove and dig up the scarves and wool socks just yet. But there’s no denying autumn’s gentle arrival. The first of the leaves are turning, the days are growing shorter, and it seems all of us who live and work here have outlasted the gnats and mosquitoes (a close battle till the bitter blessed end). Most days recently are real stunners: we wake and leap right into slippers as we put the coffee pot on, but as soon as the sun is up we’re down to shirtsleeves. But as the sun sinks below the horizon, it’s chilly again, and fast.  And when that happens, all I can think is: SOUP.

What a pleasure, then, that fall vegetables taste so good this way.

Hearty Potato Soup with Kale
adapted from Simply in Season

This hearty soup is just the thing for these early autumn nights.  Slurp it with a big hunk of crusty bread or alongside a fresh fall salad.  A mug of warmed cider is optional but highly recommended.  You can get most of what you need right out of your CSA share or off our market table, and you can find the rest at market too.  It’s a soup for right now.

As with most soups, you’ve got a lot of wiggle room here.  You could use spinach instead of kale – but we’re not growing spinach right now!  Use an onion or a leek.  Water, vegetable broth, and chicken broth all work great here.  Add more potatoes for a really thick soup.  Blend completely, before or after adding the kale, if you like a really smooth soup.  Add extra garlic if you want!  You get the idea.

1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
1 large onion, chopped, or 1 leek, roots and toughest greens removed, thinly sliced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large potatoes or 4-5 smaller potatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs), diced
5 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken broth
1/2-3/4 lb kale, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
black pepper to taste

In a large pot, melt the butter or warm the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onions and sauté until they begin to soften, and then add the garlic and sauté for another minute.  Add the potatoes and enough water or broth to cover by an inch or so – probably about half the broth.  Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are soft.  When the potatoes are almost done, warm the remaining water or stock in a separate pot.

Using an immersion blender, carefully blend the soup until it thickens but some chunks of potato remain – or, ladle out about half the vegetables and set aside, pureé the rest of the vegetables and the cooking liquid in a blender or food processor, and then return everything to the pot. Add the kale and the remaining (and now warmed) water or stock and cook until the kale is soft.  Add salt and pepper.  Taste to see if you need to adjust any seasonings, and serve!

It’s been way too long since we posted here. We hope to get some good stuff up quite soon. In the meantime, have a peek – or a long leisurely look, really! – at late summer and early autumn here at Frog Bottom. Click on any photo to see it bigger, if you like.

Coming soon: Soup! A cookbook giveaway! Our plans for 2012! Thanks for your patience.

On days like this one, when our shirts are soaked through by 9am, it’s a real challenge to remember what it feels like to pull on socks, to see our breath in the morning air while we pick cabbage, to frost-proof the outdoor spigots before going to bed.

But it happens every year, and yesterday we started preparing. It was a long, hot, deeply satisfying afternoon: Ali and the crew filled thirty-two 300-foot rows with 2000 collard plants, 3000 kale plants, and 4000 broccoli plants.  As the sun dipped below the horizon we watered them well, to prepare them for today’s triple digits.  Tomorrow: 3000 cabbage plants.

We’ll do it all again in late August for generation two.

We’ll tend to them all with sweat and care, and we hope all these numbers translate into bountiful autumn CSA shares and market tables, with enough remaining for a possible winter CSA or winter market.

Ali often remarks that getting in a full planting is one of the most exciting things that happens on the farm. You start with long expanses of bare ground, a greenhouse full of seedlings, and a hefty dose of determination. You spend a whole bunch of hours moving back and forth, back and forth, planting, sweating, joking, planting, stopping for water, planting some more.  And then you slowly uncurl and stretch your back and shoulders and there it is in the setting sun: a field full of promise.

I like to think of kale as a gateway green: although it may look a bit intimidating with all those ribs and ruffles, it’s actually quite easy to love.  It’s delicious chopped quickly and thrown into the skillet with some olive oil and garlic, and sautéed until it’s bright green and a little bit tender.  Eat it just like that, or squeeze a bit of lemon juice on top.  That whole process takes 15 minutes, tops.

We’ve also won over many a kale skeptic with kale chips, also known as roasted kale or crispy kale. Kale chips are quick and completely addictive.  Arrange kale on a baking sheet in a single (or so) layer, toss with a little olive oil and salt, and bake at 375° for 10 minutes or 15 minutes, giving the cookie sheet a shake or two if you remember, until the edges get crispy.  We usually do a double batch.

Colcannon is delicious too.  This is a traditional Irish dish of potatoes and kale or cabbage.  A fun Halloween tradition is to hide a ring and a coin in the dish — whoever gets the ring will be next to marry, and whoever gets the coin is assured good fortune in the coming year!

Sautéed kale, kale chips, and colcannon are really so easy and so delicious, and so for a long time we were lazy about trying anything new.

But we just discovered something wonderful.  We’ve been growing kale for five years and yet this surprising little dish slipped quietly into our lives just last month.  But make no mistake: massaged kale salad is here to stay.

We’d come across the idea before but jammed it into an already crowded file folder of “stuff to try at some point.”  It might have languished there for years if not for my mom, who’s recently been exploring Mark Bittman’s suggestion to eat vegan until 6pm, a creative idea for improving your own health and for depending less on the unwholesome way most meat is produced in this country. Through her I discovered Choosing Raw, a website full of ideas for a natural, unprocessed, plant-based diet.  Gena, who writes the site, is cheerful and encouraging and never judgmental.  She makes me feel excited all over again about all the vegetables we grow.

So I was happy to give her raw massaged kale salad a spin, but I didn’t know how crazy we’d be for it.  Since we started making it in September, we’ve eaten it no fewer than three times a week.  It’s light and filling all at once.  And like a traditional green salad, there are endless possibilities.  Here are three we like.  Try it!

Basic Massaged Kale Salad

3/4 lb curly kale, chopped into 1-inch ribbons
2-3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste
lemon juice
grated carrots
toasted sunflower seeds

Put kale in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.   Massage with your hands so that it’s well coated with the olive oil and it begins to wilt and darken, less than a minute.  Add the lemon juice (you might like up to a full lemon), grated carrots, and toasted sunflower seeds, and toss.  Yum! This is enough for two generous portions with some leftovers.  Doubles easily.

Massaged Kale Salad with Tahini-Apple Cider Vinegar Dressing

3/4 lb curly kale, chopped into 1-inch ribbons
salt to taste
1 Tbsp or so olive oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 Tbsp tahini
1-2 cloves garlic
2-3 dates, pitted
additional vegetables

Put the kale in a large bowl, sprinkle with salt, and drizzle with olive oil.  Massage with your hands until it begins to wilt and darken, less than a minute.  Set aside.  Put the apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, soy sauce, tahini, garlic, and dates in a blender or food processor, and process until smooth.  Taste the dressing; add more dates if it’s too tangy, or more apple cider vinegar if it needs a little more kick. Add about two tablespoons of the dressing to the kale, and massage again to coat.  Taste the salad at this point to see if you want to add more dressing.  Add any vegetables you like; we like grated carrots, sliced apples, golden raisins, and toasted sunflower seeds on this one.  Makes two generous portions with some leftovers. You’ll also have plenty of dressing left.  Store it in a jar in the fridge and use it on tomorrow’s kale salad!

Massaged Kale Salad with Avocado (our favorite!)

3/4 lb curly kale, chopped into 1-inch ribbons
2-3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste
1 avocado
lemon juice
additional vegetables, nuts, seeds

Put kale in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.   Massage with your hands so that it’s well coated with the olive oil and it begins to wilt and darken, less than a minute.  Add 1/3 to 1/2 of the avocado, and massage again so that the avocado coats the kale like a thick dressing.  Dice the rest of the avocado and add it, along with the lemon juice and any other ingredients (try grated hakurei turnips, grated beets, or grated kohlrabi).  Toss.  Eat!

(Find more recipe ideas for greens here.)

Sorry we missed yesterday — we’ll post two photos today to make up for it!

This, my friends, is Red Russian kale, recently germinated in the greenhouse.  It’ll show up in your CSA shares and on our market tables as the weather starts to cool.  And if you think you don’t like greens, we hope this is the stuff that will change your mind.  It’s sweet sweet sweet, and has won over many a greens-skeptic.  We’ll tell you more when we harvest it!