Garden Happenings: Harvest Spotlights, Subscription Updates, Veg-ED, & more!
#21: Summer Happenings @ Featherstone Garden
Welcome to Featherstone Garden’s Summer Happenings Newsletter! Each week we will share the latest volume of our newsletter; a variety of garden updates, heirloom seasonal produce features, veg-ed(ucation) content, farm stand updates, and plant-centered recipes and cooking tips. As a subscriber, you will be the first to know all about our Garden Happenings. If you’re not a subscriber but would like do be, you can click the button below to signup.
Harvest Spotlight
We continue to harvest a variety of summer veggies at the garden, here are a few favorites that are just starting to pop: red swan bush beans, lettuce leaf basil, & Waimea (Hawaiian) wild cherry tomatoes.
Featherstone Farm Stand
Our Farm Stand offers a variety of fresh seasonal fruits and veggies available for purchase on a weekly basis. Visit us on Wednesdays from 2-6pm at 4178 Lakepointe Street in Detroit’s MorningSide neighborhood.
Featured recipe..
This week our featured recipe comes from the culinary creators of our Stir Fry Kits, Jessi Patuano and Phoebe Zimmerman. It’s officially basil/PESTO season! Visit our Garden Goodness blog for instructions on how to create this delicious Summer Sunflower Pesto.
Weekly Veg-Ed(ucation):
Welcome back for Featherstone’s weekly Veg-Ed. As a vegetarian/vegan centered organization, we hope to inform and encourage our community to embrace plant-based cooking and eating in a way that makes them most comfortable. In June the NPR podcast Short Wave put out an episode called “Yep, We Made Up Vegetables”. It’s a quick and interesting listen, please consider checking it out. In short, it explains that the word ‘vegetable’ is actually a culinary term that we use to describe the parts of plants that we eat, rather than a botanical classification. Even the sweet treats that we call berries are often misidentified. For example, when you look at a strawberry, the berries are actually the little brown granules that we typically call the seeds!
Featured Community Organization
This week, we want to shine a spotlight on the non-profit Friends of the Alger Theater, an organization with a mission is to enrich our neighborhood by activating and restoring a historic theater to create a welcoming destination for programs created by and for our neighbors.
The Alger is currently raising funds to install an ADA compliant elevator to make their community rooftop event space accessible to all. You can also support the Alger Theater by renting out their prominent marquee on the busy corner of East Warren and East Outer Drive to broadcast the message of your choice. Visit their website to make a contribution that will aid in the continued activation of this historic community space. This week the Marquee is promoting our weekly farm stand!
Sunflower Pesto Assembly Instructions
For Stir Fry Kit Subscribers…
Bring 1 cup of water and 1 cup of quinoa with a pinch of salt to a boil over high heat. Once the water boils, immediately reduce heat to low (a gentle bubble). Cover pot and simmer until quinoa absorbs all of the water and is tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. If the quinoa still looks wet, continue to cook, checking every 5 minutes.
Heat 2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large pan and sauté pre-cut stir-fry veggies, season the veggies with salt and pepper and cook until desired doneness.
Remove from heat and toss cooked veggies in pesto.
In a bowl serve yourself some quinoa, top with pesto coated veggies.
Garnish with sunflower seeds and shoots.
We’d love for you to share your creations with us by tagging @featherstone.garden on Instagram!
Stir Fry & Breads and Spreads Kit Pickup/Delivery Reminders
Kit delivery is on Tuesdays between 4-7:30pm.
Subscribers, Please leave your insulated grocery bag on your doorstep this Tuesday. If you have an extra ice pack, we suggest putting that in the bag too!
Kit pickup is on Wednesday from 2-6pm at Featherstone’s weekly Farm Stand at 4178 Lakepointe Street, Detroit
Stir Fry Kits include a print out of our Kit Assembly Instructions, for your convenience! We will also continue to add those same instructions to this weekly newsletter.
Stir Fry Kit Subscription Signup is Still Open!
If you would like to sign up for the remaining 4- weeks of our Stir Fry Kit, we will continue offering member signups on a rolling basis. Visit our website!
Media We’re Consuming
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
We highly recommend this documentary, now screening in theaters.
A Writer, Chef, Traveler and admittedly imperfect human, Anthony Bourdain is an American icon. This new documentary, brought to us by filmmaker Morgan Neville, creator of Won’t You Be My Neighbor and 20 Feet from Stardom, highlights years of compelling footage of Bourdain’s travels and shares heartfelt and compelling interviews of the family, friends, and collaborators that witnessed a New York line cook grow into an internationally acclaimed writer and journalist. In 2018 Anthony Bourdain committed suicide, a tragedy that resonated as deeply personal for culinary and travel enthusiasts who, for years, lived vicariously through him. If you already saw the film, we recommend this New Yorker article as a little additional food for thought.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255.
Thanks for reading!
For more about our small-scale farm & garden, please follow us on instagram (@featherstone.garden), and check out our website. Don’t forget to share our newsletter with a friend by clicking the button below.
We hope you have a lovely week,
Annie, Aaron, Renee, Jessi, Phoebe, & Chili (the farm cat)
