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!

This week your bag will contain lettuce, french green beans (haricots verts), tomatoes, papayas, sweet potato, and dandelion greens!  We also expect to have a new supplier of tomatoes (Nalo Farms), so you will be receiving a second bag of tomatoes and hope you’ll let us know what you think of them.

This week we are proud to feature dandelion greens from Nalo Farms.

Spring is a wonderful time to try new things; dandelion greens are a perfect start.  They can be added to salads or sauteed with garlic and onion.  Like many greens that are slightly bitter tasting, they pair well with a splash of vinegar or wine at the end of cooking.  Dandelion greens are very nutritious, with high levels of beta-carotene, calcium, iron, and many vitamins.

Sauteed Dandelion Greens This recipe calls for boiling the leaves first, and is for a few pounds of leaves.  Adjust the ingredients down for the amount you have.

Other ideas on how to use dandelion greens

Dandelion Greens with warm balsamic vinaigrette

This week you’ll also find haricot verts in your bag.  These are also known as French green beans; they are younger and thinner than common green beans.

Haricots verts with herb butter You could also order some herb butter from our  specialty items page to make this recipe REALLY easy!

Haricots verts with shallots Another easy recipe, and from the looks of it, delicious!!

This week’s bag will feature a rare item:  pohole, or Hawaiian fern.  Pohole is also known as warabi, ho`io, or fiddlehead fern and is eaten in salads and often with tako and dried fish.  Below we are featuring a recipe from the best recipe source there is:  grandma!   There will also be japanese cucumbers, hydroponic lettuce, corn, avocados, and braising greens in your bag.  Enjoy!

Grandma Toribio’s recipe  for  Ho`io Salad

Ingredients

1 bunch warabi (aka pohole/ho’io/fiddlehead fern)

1 onion – sliced or chopped

1 package kamaboko – julienned or chopped

1 package dried opae

Hawaiian Salt – salt lightly, to taste

Sesame oil – to taste

Shoyu – to taste OR 1 1/2 tsp. of patis (fish sauce)

Sesame seeds

**Some people prefer to eat the warabi/pohole/ho’io UNCOOKED/FRESH, without blanching. These steps optional if eating uncooked.