You all know how important eating locally and seasonally is to me and Chris, and how much I love summer CSAs, pick-your-own strawberries (x2!), and picking and canning ridiculous amounts of tomatoes. But I won’t lie, it’s taken me a while to adapt to eating on Nantucket where everything is more expensive, the growing season is different, and there isn’t an awesome local dairy like we had in the Hudson Valley. Adapt I did, though, after much research, some minor adjustment to our family “food rules,” and the happy discovery of Bartlett’s Farm.
I kept meaning to blog about Bartlett’s over the summer (you know, in addition to all the other posts I already have mentioning them) because I felt like we had finally found the answer to our local summer veggie desires. This was our third summer on island and the third CSA we had tried since moving here. The first two summers on island we were sorely disappointed by our CSA experiences, most especially by the veggie-to-cost ratio; last year we tried Bartlett’s CSA for the first time and for the first time felt like we were back in the Hudson Valley experiencing summer’s true abundance. I had to freeze, can, and occasionally veggie-bomb my friends just to keep up with Bartlett’s abundance,
and we occasionally got surprises from their bakery or garden department, too. (Needless to say, after three years we will finally know the answer to amazing local veggies on Nantucket.) The other thing I loved about Bartlett’s CSA is that every week, we got a few recipes to help us figure out how to use up the huge amounts of vegetables. I loved how their recipes helped me think out of the box when it came to summer cooking (I’m definitely the lazy summer cook guilty of tossing everything in olive oil and a few herbs and roasting it all in the oven); I had a few awe-inspiring discoveries thanks to their recipes (like, if I roast radishes in the oven it gets rid of their spicyness and Nora will eat them too).
This summer’s discovery of Bartlett veggies and recipes is why I’m so excited about today’s giveaway.A copy of Harvesting Nantucket: The Taste of Bartlett’s Ocean View Farm. I love this cookbook. Not only is it full of some really delicious-looking recipes and gorgeous food photography,
but it also has a ton of great information about farming on Nantucket and the history of Bartlett’s. It’s a great book and I can’t wait to share it with one of you.
I’m trying something new with today’s giveaway and using Rafflecopter. Just as before, there are four ways to enter and you can enter one or all four ways. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or in your email, you will need to click over to my blog to enter, but the widget should make it easier to like my and Bartlett’s Facebook pages without having to leave my blog. Let me know what you think of this method of entry. Easier or annoying?
By the way, I have a few other recipes on my blog that utilize Bartlett veggies if you want to try one: Strawberry Crumb Muffins, Pumpkin Ricotta Stuffed Shells, and Tomato Pie. For more on Bartlett’s farm, veggies, and activities you can find them online at bartlettsfarm.com and also on Facebook. If you’re on island and want to try some of their veggies yourself, they still have a few weeks left in their late fall CSA and you can sign up for individual weeks (or all three).
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