Mint

Growing lots has been blessed with mint!  Well sorta…depending on how ya look at it.  Mint is a pervasive weed at our lot next to costal seafood. When we first started farming that lot a rogue patch of mint had almost entirely taken over our veggie beds.  With some persistence we’ve been able to get the weed pressure of mint under control, and have come up with abundant ways to use it along the way.  

 Mint can be used to flavor a salad, or make a dressing.  It can be used as tea both fresh and dried making the most refreshing drinks. It can also be pureed into dips and pestos.  My personal favorite way to use fresh mint is with ice cream!  Muddle mint in milk and make the best shamrock shake known to man, mince it up finely and mix it into a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream!  You can also make a mint simple syrup to not only cover ice cream, but to mix up into your favorite summer cocktail!

Cocktails

11 Essential Mint Cocktails

 Ice cream/ smoothies

Energizing Cucumber Mint Smoothie

Strawberry Mint Smoothie

Coconut Kale Smoothie With Ginger and Mint

Fresh Mint Chip Shake

 Salads

Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Radishes Mint and Ricotta

Mediterranean Tabouli Salad

Fennel Slaw with Mint Vinaigrette

James Beard Fennel Mint Salad

Spring Salad With Mint Walnuts and Parmesan

 Dressings/ dips/ spreads/ sauces

Spinach Yogurt Dip With Sizzled Mint

Mint Chutney

Pea Mint Fetta Dip

Yogurt Sauce With Garlic and Mint

Fresh Mint Dressing

Lamb Pasta With Kale and Mint Pesto

Fennel

Fennel bulbs are pungent and sweet like onions, yet reminiscent of licorice.  The subtle licorice flavor is where this veggie gets controversial.  You either love it or leave it!  Fortunately in the CSA crowd of adventurous eaters most people easily learn to love this veggie! 

 Fennel bulb is pretty cool because it is treated both as an herb and vegetable.  The frilly fronds that top fennel bulbs can be used as an herb to sprinkle on salads, garnish meals, or make dressings.  I once heavily sprinkled fennel fronds over the top cheese layer of lasagna and they sizzled up with the cheese to perfection!  You can use the stocks of fennel as a substitute for celery in stocks and soup!

 You’ll only find fennel in the spring/ early summer and Fall at Growing Lots because it loves cool temperatures.  In the spring it goes well shaved into salads with other CSA veggies.  You can braise or grill it on it’s own with just a little salt, pepper and parmesan.  It also makes great with other roasted spring veggies, or cooked up with a carrot soup puree.  I’m really excited about trying the fennel mint spring broth with salmon soup recipe I’ve included below!

 When Fennel appears in the fall you can use it as you would an onion in lots of pasta sauces and lasagnas!  It also goes extremely well with fall root veggie roasts!  

Pro Tip: There’s a lot of simple fennel recipes, but if you google fennel you will come up with a lot of gourmet seafood recipes. Growing Lots is located just a block from Costal Sea Foods which is one of the best places to access seafood in the Twin Cities! One of our lots is right next door to their store front and they are incredible neighbors who support us by letting us have access to their water free of charge!

Salad

Wilted Rainbow Chard and Shaved Fennel Salad

Radish Fennel and Parmesan Salad

Mushrooms Fennel and Blue Cheese Salad

Pastas

Lemony Kale Fennel Pasta

Olives and Fennel Pasta

Angle Hair Pasta with Fennel and Spicy Tomatoes

Sausage and Fresh Fennel Lasagna

Roasted/ Braised/ Grilled

Roasted Carrots and Fennel

Braised Fennel With Parmesan and Breadcrumbs

Fennel with roasted fall veggies

Soups

Fried Salmon With Fennel Mint Spring Vegetable Broth

Roasted Carrot Fennel Soup

French Fennel Lamb Soup

Seafood

Clam pan roast with sausage and fennel

Sea Food Soup with Fennel and Garlic

Cilantro

Funny story, an aunt of mine runs a trucking company out of Iowa.   For some reason an entire semi load of cilantro ended up in her possession as unclaimed freight.  “Now what could one possibly do with all that cilantro…it’s just for salsa right?” my auntie asks. No no no auntie there are endless ways to use cilantro…

 Cilantro is used around the world as a fresh herb to flavor all sorts of soups, salads, pastas and meat dishes.  It is often made into sauces that have extraordinary flavor that can be drizzled onto anything from tacos, yogurts, soft cheeses, rice, beans, lentils, to your morning eggs! Check out the link below! It’s a rabbit hole of over 100 ways to use cilantro!  

 If your still thinking about that ENTIRE SEMI FULL OF WASTED CILANTRO know that the thing you and I got going on right now… our small farmer/ CSA member relationship is one of the strongest antidotes to that situation.  For one there’s no trucking industry or long highways between us.  Everything we grow is distributed by us within five miles from the farm.  A lot of you even walk or bike to pick up directly at the farm!  Furthermore, I grow directly for my customers needs and we work together building a food culture to consume our farm’s produce. Because of the community we create very little goes to waste. The little we do not consume gets composted, and it gives back to the farm!

 91 amazing ways to use cilantro!

Lovage

I love lovage! I freaking love it!  I have been proselytizing about lovage for a long time and have maybe only won over just couple of folks!  Loveage is a very potently flavored perennial version of celery. It’s an abundant plant that will form beautiful hedges that can grow up to six feet tall.  The plant’s abundance is what makes it miss leading because its' flavor is so potent a few leaves is all you ever need in a dish! Even with my love of loveage I probably only use a few handfuls of it each year.  

 Used sparingly this herb can be quite delightful!  My favorite thing to do with it is to make loveage lemonade!  In fact it does well with all sorts of lemony flavors. A touch of lovage and lemon can spruce up a potato salad, or go excellent with a chicken or fish bake!  Lovage is also an old fashioned ingredient to potato soup!

 Pro tip: Lovage grows in thin hollow stems that make awesome edible straws for tomato juice, lemonade, or bloody Marrys. There is a hedge of lovage just outside the gate at our farm’s main site and you are welcome to pick your own!

 Potato Salad With Lovage

Potato Pancakes with Lovage Puree and Kale Cabbage Slaw! Add prawns to make it a fancy Brunch!

Curried Goat with Lovage Tomato Sauce

Old Fashion Lovage Potato Soup

Lovage Lemonade

Lovage Lemon Chicken