What’s In The Box? January 8-14

Fresh Start
Happy New Year! Get 2015 off to a healthy start with this week’s box featuring a rustic, produce-packed soup topped with our own silky Grana cheese, nutty 7-grain bread and fresh, seasonal vegetables including Lacinato kale, parsnips, and more. Coupled with a robust Italian wine, golden wildflower honey and farm-fresh eggs from our flock of heritage breed hens, this beautiful winter menu is both richly flavorful and resolution friendly.

Here’s what you’ll find in your box this week:

Winter Vegetable Soup

This hearty, healthy soup boasts richly-layered flavor, packed with gorgeous local produce—crisp-tender cauliflower, carrot, kale, cabbage, potato, celery and onion—and simmered in our housemade chicken stock.

Whole-Grain Bread

Crafted in nearby Snohomish by one of our favorite bakeries, this fresh round loaf is perfect for dunking in this week’s soup, made with Shepherd’s Grain flour and 7 different whole grains, plus a hint of honey and toasted sunflower seeds.

Grana-Style Cheese

Made in our farmstead creamery, this Grana is crafted from part-skim cow’s milk to allow for longer aging of 24 months or more. Wonderful grated over soup or dipped in honey as part of an appetizer (see this week’s recipes), the hard, drum-shaped cheese is turned and rubbed with olive oil during aging to create a smooth, golden rind.

Wildflower Honey

Sweet golden honey from the apiary at Bella Luna Farms.

Ruggeri Corsini Dolcetto d’Alba

Coming from Italy’s Piedmont region, the Dolcetto grape can perhaps be characterized as Nebbiolo’s kid sibling: Easier-going, and much more approachable, Dolcetto is meant to drink young and is a great match for Italian-inspired cuisines featuring roasted vegetables, as well as meats such as pork or duck. The winery, Ruggeri Corsini, is located within the Piedmontese village of Alba, where they farm Dolcetto vines planted as far back as 1978. This wine is fresh and bright, with notes of red currants, plums and wild berries and hints of anise and chestnut.

Farm Fresh Eggs

As they spend more time snug in their coop during the cold winter months, our heritage breed laying hens are enjoying an extra helping of grain to supplement their diet, in turn supplying us with eggs in beautiful shades of brown, blue and green.

Cranberry-Hazelnut Fruit Crisp Topping

An all-organic blend of hazelnuts and hazelnut flour, all-purpose flour, cane sugar, sea salt, butter and a touch of cinnamon, plus tangy dried cranberries.

Orchard Apples

Beautiful Arkansas Black apples from the trees at Ponderosa Orchards.

Seasonal Organic Fruits & Vegetables

This week’s produce selection also includes Red Kuri Kabocha winter squash, green kohlrabi, Desiree red potatoes, Bolero carrots, parsnips, Gold Ball turnips and Cipollini onions.

Seasonal Organic Greens

Hearty Lacinato kale and Savoy cabbage.

Fresh Garden Herbs

Fresh shallots, thyme and parsley from the walled garden and greenhouse at Bella Luna Farms, plus giant German Hardy white garlic grown at Local Roots Farm in Duvall.