This week's share is heavy on the veggies and doesn't include any herbs or fruits, both of which were prominent last week.  Such is the way of a CSA; we ebb and flow with the harvest throughout the season, adapting our diets and staying flexible about what we cook at home.

Do you know what comes from the purple flower pictured here after pollination?  This is the flower of an eggplant and after a bee or the wind pollinates it, a baby eggplant starts to form on this stem.  It takes about 2 weeks once the baby eggplant start to from for it to be ready.  It's best to pick them young before they start to develop lots of seeds inside.  Knowing when to pick eggplant is a skill that comes with practice because they don't change color for the most part.  A farmer watches his crops daily and knows exactly when the fruit are done growing and picks them just before they start to make seeds inside.  This vegetable, which is a fruit botanically speaking, can store for almost two weeks in the fridge, but it's best when prepared within a week.  Eggplants have a very rich earthy flavor that is complimented by spices like paprika, curry and other vegetables in the nightshade family like peppers and tomatoes.

Speaking of tomatoes, you'll be enjoying roma tomatoes from Worden Farm this week.  Perfect for roasting with your eggplant along with onions, garlic and olive oil.  See the resemblance between tomato and eggplant flowers?  Besides the color, the flower structure is exactly the same.  Did you know that plants are organized into families together based mostly on their flower structure?  Sometimes a single plant family can include trees, vines and shrubs which all look completely different, but their flower structures, hence their reproduction cycle, are similar.  Botanists have discovered that plants with similar flowers have many other things in common, including things like containing certain compounds, antioxidants, oils and saps.  Plants in the nightshade family sort of have a bad rap because they contain alkaloids which can be poisonous.  Most of the nightshades we eat have such small amounts of alkaloids that they aren't harmful, but people with certain sensitives and immune issues sometimes choose to avoid them.  Want to learn more?  Check out this quick, but precise article about nightshades and their pros and cons.

Recognize those silvery blue leaves?  Those are kale plants that have bloomed.  Most people never see kale bloom because it takes a really long time to get there and the growing season in most places just doesn't allow it.  Kale plants continue to grow leaves for us to harvest for months on end, making them a very efficient crop on the farm.  They are usually planted once at the beginning of the season and harvested continually until the end.  French Farms has decided to give his kale plants a little break so you'll be enjoying kale from a small organic farm in Homestead called Cool Runnings.  They also grew the broccoli in the large shares.

....and these are the flowers of a blooming radish plant.  Again, a sight not seen very often because radishes have to be harvested way before the plant starts to bloom in order to get crisp juicy radishes for dinner.  Once the radish plant starts the blooming cycle, the bulbous root (the radish) becomes hollow, woody and tough.  Kale and radishes are in the brassica family, sharing lots of similarities including lots of super food nutrition facts.  Did you know you can eat radish leaves?  They are nutritious like kale, but have a more mild flavor like spinach.  One of my favorite ways to eat radish tops is to eat them with the actual radishes themselves.  Here's the prefect perfectly simple recipe to do just that!