Category: recipes

ARTfarm Saturday: Morning Mangoes!

Open as always on Saturdays, 10 AM – 12 noon. Travel south to our balmy microclimate and pick up your healthy fruit+vegg for the week!

We did the mango dance and now they are here!! 20140614-083459-30899429.jpg

Sweet salad mix, baby spicy salad mix, baby arugula, microgreens, crunchy cucumbers, purple long beans, carrots, beets, radishes, onions, kale, collards, sweet potato greens, dill, cilantro, chives, mint, thyme, recao, Italian basil, fresh-cut Zinnia flowers. Summer fruit season is definitely getting underway: pineapple, passionfruit, papaya, black sapote, tamarind, and and mamey apples and Julie mangoes from the amazing orchard of Tropical Exotics!
Raw local honey from Mr. Errol Chichester, happy hen eggs from Marti Gotts, artisanal bread loaves from Tess. Yummy yummy yummy.

If you haven’t yet experienced the sweet potato greens, they are a glorious accompaniment to any recipe, or perhaps as a side with a little mango on top. We like to cook the sweet potato greens by boiling them for 4–6 minutes, drain and then dress with olive oil, lime juice, and Braggs amino acids or your choice of soy sauce.

ARTfarm Wednesday, 3-6pm: Let’s talk Eggfruit

Thanks a bunch to our lovely volunteer Katie this morning, visiting St. Croix from Toronto.

Wednesday afternoon at ARTfarm: a bit of rain! Lots of teen sweet mix (lettuce salad mix mixed with micro), microgreens, teen spicy mix, baby arugula, lots of cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, papaya from Reuben at Solitude Farm, mangoes and eggfruit from Alex at Tropical Exotics, recao, garlic chives, Holy basil, Thai basil, Italian basil, lemongrass, figs, fresh baked hearty breads from Tess, local raw honey from Wanda at the Wright Apiary.

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Let’s talk about eggfruit for just a moment. It is full of niacin, vitamin A and C. So if you are suffering from one of these little summer colds that is going around, try adding a little eggfruit to a pie, dessert recipe, custard, or even your salad for a rich vitamin boost! While it can be enjoyed savory, diced and tossed with salt and lime juice or vinegar, one of the nicest ways to enjoy this slightly sticky-but-dry, bright orange fruit is in a creamy, ice cold milkshake.

Take about half of a large eggfruit and remove the large, glossy seeds. Scoop the flesh into your blender and discard the skin. Add a generous dollop of either molasses, local raw honey, maple syrup or your favorite sweetener. Add about twice as much ice as you just added eggfruit in volume. Add a cup or so of milk. Fresh creamy whole milk is really good in this. Next, I like to add about a teaspoon full of pumpkin pie spice blend, nutmeg, or cinnamon. Blend until smooth, and enjoy icy cold. Worthy experiments might be to substitute yogurt or creamy iced coffee for the milk. Yummmmmmmmm!

Throw any left over pulp in the freezer for next time! Or try this other recipe we posted a while ago for eggfruit pie!

Escarole-ing In Fresh Greens and Cucumbers! Saturday ARTfarmstand!

Today’s farmstand at ARTfarm features the freshest: tender teen arugula, arugula, sweet mix, spicy mix, microgreens, radishes, beets, cucumbers, Italian basil, Thai basil, holy (Tulsi) basil, sage, garlic chives, lemongrass, dandelion greens, escarole, lettuce heads, mangoes, zinnia flowers, honey and honeycomb. You’ll find some of ARTfarm’s organically grown cucumbers and lettuce heads over at Beeston Hill’s VI Farmer’s Coop this morning, too.

What do you do with escarole? It looks like a cross between a lettuce head and a bunch of arugula, with some snap to the leaves. When young, it can be eaten in a salad, although it can be on the bitter side. It can be steamed and dressed like other strong cooking greens – steam it until tender in a pan, then sauté it with garlic and hot pepper, or add salt, olive oil, and lime juice or vinegar. Lots of people like to make white bean classic Italian soup with escarole. Yum!!

A large head of escarole grows amongst young onions, lettuce and dandelion greens at ARTfarm.
Escarole is delicious in soups or sautéed as a side dish. A large head of escarole grows amongst young onions, lettuce and dandelion greens at ARTfarm.

Wednesday ARTfarm Cucumber Mango MADNESS… and Honeycomb

A pile of freshly washed cucumbers is topped with an orangey-yellow mango, sliced open.
Cucumber and mango salad, anyone? Sweet, crunchy, refreshing! If you dare, add a little crushed red pepper! Or make a mojito out of it!

Oh, the madness. Sweet mix, spicy mix, arugula, baby greens, escarole, lettuce heads. Radishes, lots of crunchy cucumbers, garlic chives, Italian (Genovese) basil, lemon basil, Thai basil, holy basil, lemongrass, sage, dandelion greens, zinnia flowers, lots of Haitian and Julie mangoes!! Wanda’s honey, Errol’s honeycomb, Patricia’s Super Dark honey. Probably other stuff available, but we’re Mangocentric and Cucumberized and we forgot!!

What to do with honeycomb? Oh baby, let us tell you!!

Honeycomb is an uncommon and delicious, completely edible treat. It is a chunk of the comb, cut from the hive, that the bees have built from beeswax. Its intricate and symmetrical repeated form is one of the great wonders of nature. 

  1. In the old country, people often enjoyed honeycomb as a condiment on bread or bruschetta. Take a slice of warm or toasted homemade bread, slather some fresh butter on it, and spread a chunk of honeycomb with a knife over the bread (fresh, “virgin” comb is soft enough to be spreadable). If desired, top with a piece of strongly flavored cheese, such as pecorino, and enjoy.
  2. Honeycomb can be eaten as candy. It is one of the original farm sweets for children! Simply cut off a small piece and pop it in your mouth. You can chew the wax and swallow it, or you can retain it like chewing gum. It is completely digestible, and like chewing gum, will lose its flavor as it is continually chewed.
  3. Honeycomb can also be used in its traditional forms; as a tea sweetener, drizzled over ice cream, in cooking and baking etc. Simply cut a chunk of the comb off, allow the contents to drizzle and drip into your drink or recipe, then use as a garnish or pop the rest in your mouth and enjoy!