New Crops: fresh onions, carrots, husk cherries and tomatillos

The farm was a very busy place this past week: a lot of heavy harvesting and hauling it all in - once again demonstrating that even under the harshest conditions, farmers are some of the hardest working people on the planet!

We have a lot of new crops this week, a couple very familiar and a couple maybe not so for some of you.

Fresh onions - not much to say here - use them like any other onion, but like with the uncured garlic, these must be stored in the fridge in plastic. They will keep for at least a few weeks.

Carrots - store in plastic in the crisper drawer of your fridge - I know I don't need to say more - these sweet delights will not stay in your household for long.

Tomatillos - I think this is an underused veggie in at least this part of the country. They are in the nightshade family, along with tomatoes and eggplant. As such, they are very, very nutritious! As Derek shows in the picture, they are ripe when the husks start to split and you can find them toward the bottom of the plants. After the heavy rain, some may be laying on the ground - don't count them out, they may still be good. Ripe ones can be light green to almost a gold color and some even have a purple hue. They keep well stored in plastic in the fridge, lasting a few weeks at least. I say that because I often save up a couple of weeks worth of tomatillos and then make a large batch of sauce/salsa with them. They can be cut up and added raw into salads, grilled or roasted and made into sauce or salsa, used in soups (don't know that we want to go there right now)! As I enjoy mine, I will talk more, but for now, please check out the many recipes on this site - including Slow Cooker Chicken or Pork Chile Verde (slow cookers are a great way to go in the summer, since they don't heat up the kitchen), Cooked Tomatillo Salsa Verde and Chicken Stew with Tomatillo Sauce (one of my favorites).

Husk Cherries - another name for these tasty treats is ground cherries, because when they are ripe they fall to the ground. Also in the nightshade family these fruits are nutritionally packed. Husk Cherries have a tropical taste, some descriptions say they are reminiscent of lychee, pineapple, with a little grape and tomato flavor - I know their taste is unique. They are also unique in their storage - they need no refrigeration if left in their husks. I leave mine in a bowl on the kitchen counter and whenever we walk by we can just grab a couple. They can also be added to salads, jams and pies, and can be used alone or with other fruits in sauces for meats. There are a few recipes on this site but if you have one, please let me know at lindadansbury@comcast.net.