Aloha Oahu Fresh members!

This week’s bag has great salad items including fresh young celery from Pit Farms, wonderful papaya, and long beans that will be delicious in a number of ways!

Bulgur, Celery, & Pomegranate Salad an exotic salad and great website!

Celery Salad Recipe everything for this one should be readily available in your bag and in your local market…you can eat this one alone or over your lettuce or nalo greens.

Long Bean stir fry an Indian stir fry…check for curry leaves in specialty stores, they smell wonderful when sauteed.

Yin Yang Papaya Dessert Tapioca and papaya…yummy gooey comfort food!

This week’s bag will have pineapple, arugula, corn, lettuce, & kirby cucumbers!

Here are a couple ideas for using your items, and all recipes today are from the blog Smitten Kitchen, which is a wonderful read and a great way to inspire yourself in your kitchen!

Arugula, Potato, & Green Bean Salad This dish looks…well, delish!!

In case you’re in the mood to bake, try this Pina Colada Cake using your fresh pineapple.

If you feel like baking something savory, not sweet, try this Tomato and Corn Pie.

Probably after all that baking you are looking for something easy to make, so try this  Viennese Cucumber Salad.  It would be a great side to some grilled meat or fish.

Use your hydroponic lettuce to wrap up this fantastic feta salsa…kind of a salad of sun dried tomatoes, herbs, olives, and feta.

Enjoy this week’s recipes and be sure to check Smitten Kitchen for more inspiring ideas and recipes for creating simply wonderful simple food!

ciao!

Green salads are wonderful alone but can be even better (and healthy) when you build them into a meal.  With this week’s bag items, you’ll be able to create a few salads that will make a great lunches or dinners.   We’ll provide you with some inspiration here, and please share with us what you come up with for your fresh meals!

Tips to a great salad:

Choose fresh greens!  If you run out of your spectacular Oahu Fresh salad fixins, when you do have to buy salad greens at the store, look for fresh, seasonal, crisp greens.

Wash carefully and dry well.  Greens wilt when the leaves are crushed or handled roughly, because the cell walls of the plant break.  Wash them in a bowl or sink of cold water, using your hands to gently raise them in the water and rinse them of any sand or soil.  Drain carefully.  Use a salad spinner or dry them on towels.  If you are not using them all right away, roll the leaves in damp towels, store in a ziploc bag or tupperware container, and store in the veggie drawer at the humid level.  They’ll stay crisp and well hydrated for several days.

Choose your toppings and dressing carefully!  Sometimes just greens is plenty, especially if you have a variety of flavors in the greens mix.  For dressings, bottled is convenient but they have a lot of preservatives and sugar; a homemade oil and vinegar dressing is easy and healthy.

For some ideas on how to use your salad greens in this week’s bag, try these:

Simple Green Salad with Vinaigrette with an easy dressing you can make

Simple Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

Pears, Cranberries, and Mixed Greens Salad

Orange, Walnut, and Gorgonzola over Mixed Greens

Buffalo Chicken Salad

Your bag will include lettuce, nalo greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, & papayas.

This week we’re happy to bring you the taro we hoped to have last week.  Due to the wet weather many of our farmers are experiencing difficulty harvesting and keeping their products from getting washed out.  We’ll also have dandelion greens and kale, tomatoes, longan, and the always wonderful hydroponic lettuce.  We hope you enjoy, and please let us know what you think of the items!  While we cannot deliver customized bags, we do like to hear what you want to see in the bag and we’ll do our best to find that produce.  Mahalo for continuing to support local farmers and their businesses!

Herb Crusted Turkey Cutlets and Taro Chips This is from a blog I’ve recently come across that I am a big fan of already.  The taro chips are EASY!!

Dandelion Greens Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing Bacon makes everything yummy!

This week we’ll be featuring the usual and wonderful hydroponic lettuce from Maunawili Greens, Ho farms tomatoes, Nalo Farms spaghetti herb mix, High Mountain farms avocados, and Pit farms daikon and corn.

You have probably also had daikon in kimchi, but it can be used in other ways and we’ve found a few recipes to share below using this as well.

Pasta with Fresh Herbs Try using your Nalo Spaghetti Herb Mix with this dish…add a glass of wine and you’re set!

Sliced Steak with Roasted Corn Salsa easy and excellent

Oven Roasted Corn on the Cob

Rice Stew with Daikon

Quick Daikon Pickles

Chicken simmered with carrots and daikon

Enjoy your bag of produce this week, and please let us know what you like or don’t like, and what you’d like to see in the upcoming weeks.  Bon appetit!