The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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The Kansas Rural Center has announced a program for this summer called “Savor the Season.”

The idea is to encourage people to grow, buy and eat 10 featured crops in an effort to broaden our choices and improve nutrition. According to a press release, the Kansas Rural Center is a non-profit organization founded in 1979, the Kansas Rural Center works to strengthen rural communities and cultivate grass roots support for public policies that encourage family farming and stewardship of soil and water. Savor the Season is part of Our Local Food, a program of the Kansas Rural Center made possible by a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant from the Kansas Department of Agriculture. Our Local Food is a network of local farms, farmers markets, food businesses and consumers committed to helping Kansans eat better, and to re-building a sustainable local food economy.

The Center offers a kind of press kit, featuring a variety of promotional materials, recipes and grower training information. They even offer mini-grants up to $250 and other assistance to interested growers, if they sign up by March 15.

For shoppers at participating farmers markets, Savor the Season will have informational recipe cards for shoppers to pick up when they purchase some of the featured foods, and they are accepting recipes to go on these cards through March 1.

Interested? Visit www.kansasruralcenter.org for more information.

The Savor the Season specialty crops for 2012 are:

• Spinach

• Arugula

• Snow Peas

• Rhubarb

• Basil

• Bell Peppers

• Garlic

• Spaghetti Squash

• Turnips

• Pumpkins

That’s a nice group! I love all of that except for rhubarb. Many of these are easy to grow, and can even be grown in containers. I have basil on my window sill right now, and grow turnips in a container each season. I have not been as lucky with spinach, but I usually land a bumper crop of bell peppers and my first attempt at garlic is starting to peep up from the dirt right now.

An excellent spread can be made with spinach, basil and garlic. It’s a sort of pesto, and could be tossed with pasta or used to spice up a turkey sandwich.

GREEN SPREAD

1 cup of spinach leaves, firmly packed

1/4 cup basil leaves, firmly packed

1/2 pod garlic, roasted

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Blend the spinach, basil, garlic, cheese, salt, pepper, lemon juice, lemon zest, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a food processor until nearly smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula as necessary. With the blender running, drizzle the remaining olive oil in. Keep refrigerated when not using.

Not clear on the roasted garlic bit? Roasting garlic turns a pungent, often hot, raw bulb into a soft, mellow, rich treat. It’s easy to do, and will keep in the refrigerator for quite awhile.

ROASTED GARLIC

1 or 2 bulbs of garlic

Olive oil

Tin foil

With a sharp knife, cut off the tops of the garlic bulbs, so that a majority of the cloves are exposed. Arrange in some tin foil or a baking dish. Drizzle the tops with olive oil and seal in the foil or cover with a lid.

Bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. The bulbs will be soft.

Let the garlic to cool enough so you can touch it without burning yourself. To make pretty garlic cloves, use a small knife to cut the skin slightly around each clove and a cocktail fork to pull the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins. Otherwise, just squeeze the bulb from the bottom and the garlic will squirt out of the cut tops.

Roasted garlic is delicious spread onto a hot piece of French bread. It’s also great mixed in with mashed potatoes, or combined with softened butter for a spread or thrown in with a nice pasta dish.

Most of us only see sow peas in our Chinese food, but back in Memphis, Fascinating Foods Caterers made a delicious hors d’oeuvres with fresh, raw snow peas and some herbed cream cheese. A narrow pastry tip made the job easy.

SNOW PEA APPETIZER

1/2 pound fresh snow peas

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 Tablespoon each of fresh minced garlic, dill, parsley, basil, thyme and/or rosemary

A dash of milk

Blanch the snow peas by plunging into boiling water for one minute. Then plunge them into cold water, drain and pat dry.

Make the spread by combining all of the herbs with the cream cheese and moistening with milk to achieve a spreadable consistency. If using dried herbs, us a teaspoon and a half.

With a sharp, small knife, slit one side of the snow pea open from just below the stem end down to just below the tip.

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a narrow, flat piping tip, with the spread. Pipe a wavy layer of spread inside the snow pea cavity, so that it rests inside the pea and holds it open slightly to reveal the spread. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Spaghetti squash is a real hoot to work with, because it works just like spaghetti. It’s hilarious. You get a nicely sized squash and cut it in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Place it cut side down in a glass or ceramic baking dish and pour in water to a depth of an inch. Bake it at 375 until tender. Then use a fork to rake out the flesh, lengthwise — it will break into long strands of cooked squash, ready to toss with a marinara sauce. Leftover squash can be combined with beaten eggs to make a kind of squash cake for breakfast.

There’s just a bit of things to savor for the upcoming season. Let’s get cooking.