Remember that part last week about how sometimes you all might get different items in the shares? Well, here we go with that. This week some of you get Tah Tsai, some get Baby bok choi, some get Mama bok choi. See, in winter, when I was planning all this, I imagined CSA beginning the first week of June, so I started extra Tah Tsai for that week, which is now next week, and we had so many other things ready already that we began CSA a few weeks early. It’s all so delicious, I’m sure it will be just fine.
We always plant more of everything every week, or every other week, so that we can continue to harvest the same way. But the weather has a much bigger influence on how things grow than my planting schedule. I know ways to adjust my planting schedule to accommodate spring, summer and fall weather conditions, but it gets complicated, and I really need to keep it simple, so we just plant on a weekly basis, so we don’t get confused. That was a long way of telling you that we have four weeks worth of spinach rows all mature right now, so we are sharing that particular abundance with you this week. Spinach galore!!

Bok Choy, which may be written as bok choi, bak choy, or pac choi, is a traditional stir-fry vegetable from China. In eastern Asia, hundreds of plants in the brassica family are cultivated, many of them bok choy types. Only a few of these crops have transferred to use in the western workd and did not appear at all until the 1800s. We grow three kinds of bok choy here, one is called Tah Tsai, it looks a lot like spinach, one is Mei Qing Choi, our baby bok, the other one is called Joi Choi, or regular bok choy. All of the cooking ideas apply equally to all the bok choy types. Bok choy is a great nutritional gift and often touted as the garden vegetable highest in calcium. Whether this is the truth or not you can be confident that bok choy is an excellent source of vitamins A, B-complex, C, and some minerals. Bok choy can complement a stir fry with other vegetables, or it can BE the stir fry. Try sautéing onions until they begin to soften. Add the bok choy stems, tofu chunks, soy sauce, and grated ginger root. Add the bok choy leaves last. Serve with rice or noodles. Bok choy, like other leafy greens, can be simply steamed. Toss with a favorite marinade. Try an Asian flavor by tossing bok choy with a light coating of toasted sesame oil, soy sauce and rice vinegar.


I love the New Laurel’s Kitchen Cookbook. I just love to read it sometimes, even if I am not looking for a recipe, because it is so well written and such a pleasure to read. Here is a passage about spinach:
“It’s hard to figure out how spinach ever got such bad press, because fresh spinach is an enormous hit among the people we know, especially the children. Maybe the hangup is some primal recollection of canned spinach: grey, slimy, gritty stuff with its own unique bitterness.
Fresh spinach deserves to be handled with delicacy. Wash it carefully, especially if it is sandy or muddy, swishing it gently in a sinkful of cold water, draining, repeating until the water is clean. Don’t soak it or handle it roughly, or you’ll get dark, soggy places where the vitamins have up and gone.
Cook and serve it whole with just the roots taken off, or chop it before or after cooking to make the forkwork easier. Even a big pot of spinach leaves will cook in the water that clings after washing, if you stir from time to time. If you aren’t used to cooking it, you’ll be amazed to watch a bunch of spinach that makes 4 quarts of leaves cook down to a cup or so when it’s done.
Like chard and beet greens, spinach contains oxalic acid, which makes the taste slightly sharp. To minimize this, you can cook it in milk or serve it with a creamy sauce (real cream isn’t necessary), or accompany it with blander vegetables like potato or zucchini ior winter squash, or with other salty or tart foods like shoyu, tomato, or lemon. Beyond the flavor, however, there has been concern that oxalic acid may bind minerals like calcium, limiting their availability to the eater. Recent studies indicate that although this does happen in the lab, probably it doesn’t in the actual human digestive system. Still, if you depend on greens for your calcium-that is if you don’t include much milk in your diet- be sure to include oxalic-free greens from othe cole family: kale, collards, broccoli, bok choy, and the like.
Spinach and eggs seem to have an affinity, and for special occasions we like to make Spanakopita, Quiche, or Crepes. For simpler “nutrient dense” fare, garnish a serving of spinach with chopped hard-boiled egg along with a dash of vinegar. Or do it the way our friend Josh invented many years ago: Pile up a lot of cooked, diced potatoes, about as much as a nine-year-old can eat and still have room for apple crisp; dot them with Better Butter; add a layer of lightly cooked chopped spinach, and top with a poached egg. Perfect for filling a growing kid’s “hollow leg.”