Peek-a-boo eggplant and funny looking onions

Two new crops are ready this week, both eagerly awaited by us on the farm crew. The fat, glossy eggplants we're picking for you on Tuesday and Thursday have been sizing up sloooowly over the last several weeks, seeming to take forever. The broad, fuzzy leaves of the plant hide the developing fruit from the strong summer sun, and from us, but we've been peaking in on them every few days to check progress. We're happy to report that it's time!

Across the field from the robust rows of eggplant, our bunching onions are also ready to be enjoyed. These red, oblong onions are an early variety that's best eaten fresh--they need to be refrigerated and eaten within

2 weeks. Storage onions that have been cured and are happy to be left on the counter for months will come later in the season. Bunching onions are just as versatile as regular onions and can be used in any recipe that calls for onions. However, grilling them with olive oil and salt until slightly charred remains my all-time favorite way to eat them. Halve or quarter them lengthwise, leaving the tops on, and the roots on too--that'll help hold the layers together while you're flipping them with the grill tongs. Brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and grill until very soft and slightly charred--YUM!

Despite being in full summer mode, we're still thinking ahead to fall and to fall crops. Last week our main crops of fall carrots and fall beets germinated, pushing through damp, heavily-irrigated soil to send their tap roots down deep, searching for the trace minerals they need for healthy growth. Fall broccoli and kale crops have been growing in their cells on tables outside the greenhouse and are ready to go out into the field and soak up the summer sunshine now, ahead of the shorter days of September and October. Over the coming weeks we'll seed more and more fall root crops and plant out our other greens and brassica crops, piecing together the fall shares a little bit at a time.

In your share this week: more new potatoes, squash and cuke, eggplant, red bunching onions, and more PYO sunflowers. Enjoy your veggies this week--I hope they contribute to some memorable dishes!