What you need for this:

• 3 bulbs of fennel
• 4 larger carrots
• 1/2 cup organic wholemeal quinoa 
• One orange
• 50 g roasted almonds
• 2 tsp olive oil
• Salt to taste
  
  

For the dressing:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 5-6 tbsp orange juice
• 1 tbsp maple syrup or honey
• salt and pepper
• fresh parsley to taste
  
  

It’s that simple:

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees
2. Wash fennel and carrots thoroughly, cut the fennel into slices and carrots into thin sticks
3. Season the vegetables with 2 tbsp olive oil and salt, place on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for approx. 30 minutes until golden brown
4. Cook the quinoa in the meantime according to the instructions on the package
5. For the dressing: pour all the ingredients into a container and mix with a hand blender or whisk
6. Chop the almonds and filet the oranges
7. When the vegetables and quinoa are ready, leave to cool and then place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix together
8. Finally, add the almonds, some dressing and chopped fresh parsley as a topping over the salad and voilà – the perfect summer salad is ready to enjoy!
   
   

Did you know?

Fennel is a favourite seasonal summer vegetable. Its essential oils are well tolerated and have an antispasmodic effect. Fennel is also rich in calcium, potassium, magnesium and iron – a perfect basis for a healthy meal when combined with quinoa.

For Eusapia, “Titina”, making food is something so simple, natural, almost banal… like talking or breathing. Her recipes, and her doughs, have always accompanied Vincenzo and his siblings, ever since they were children playing in front of her door. The ingredients of Eusapia’s recipes are local products, she cooks with whatever comes from the land. As the daughter of farmers, she has always made do with what her father and later her husband used to bring home from the garden and fields, or what produce was exchanged between neighbours.

Vincenzo’s grandmother often tells him that there must not be too many ingredients in a recipe, otherwise the dish will not be good.

Nonna Titina has been in our midst for almost a century of Terradiva’s history now, a history made up of the practices and habits of a southern Italian village, some long gone and others still present and felt. 

Here is the recipe for her beloved focaccia:

INGREDIENTS 

• 400g of durum wheat flour
• 350ml cold water
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 50g extra virgin olive oil (she usually uses our Terradiva’s Allegro)
• 10 diced cherry tomatoes or a handful of Rosemary, depending on the season
• Two dashes of oregano
• Half a cube of brewer’s yeast
  
  

STEPS

1. Combine flour, water, oil, salt, and yeast. Knead the dough mass until it is homogeneous and elastic.
2. Grease a non-stick baking tray with oil.
3. Roll out the dough mass by wetting your hands with water and place it on the baking tray.
4. Cover the dough with a towel and leave to rise for at least three hours.
5. Add the tomatoes or rosemary (depending on the season), oil and oregano on top of the risen dough. Place the focaccia in your pre-heated oven.
6. Leave the focaccia in the oven for about half an hour at 200 degrees.
   
   

Enjoy!

Small spelt is a great ingredient for bread recipes, as it’s super rich in fibres and has great nutritional value. Small spelt also helps regulate cholesterol and sugar levels in the bloodstream! Aside from its nutritional and health benefits, it’s also delicious with jam (check out our CrowdFarmer Carrie’s bergamot marmalade recipe here!)

Ingredients 

• 300 ml warm water 
• 2 packets of baker’s yeast
• 530 gr of small spelt flour 
• 1 teaspoon of coarse salt
  

Steps

1. Mix all the ingredients together until you get a nice ball of dough
2. Let sit for 1 hour, covered with a damp cloth in a warm place
3. Heat the oven to 240°
4. After resting, mould the bread into the shape you would like and let it rest for another hour
5. Bake the bread on a floured dish for 25 minutes
   

Tip: add a container of water to the oven to moisten the bread during baking.

The tartness of the lemon and the sweet and sour of the physalis combine to perfection, so this tart will delight you if you are a lover of “sweet but not too sweet”.

Recipe for the base

• 250 g speculoos biscuits – you can use Maria or Digestive biscuits as well
• 90 g butter
  

Mix all the ingredients until a homogeneous mixture is formed and put in the fridge while preparing the filling.

Recipe for the filling

• 830 ml whipped cream.  Cream with 35% fat content
• 80 g condensed milk
• Zest from 2 lemons – first use the zest for the cream then squeeze the juice.
• 75 ml lemon juice
• 1 pinch of salt
  
  

Mix all the ingredients until a homogeneous mixture is formed and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Recipe for the jam

• 500g physalis
• 250g icing sugar
• 2ml water
  
  

Before serving, serve with the jam and decorate with chopped and whole physalis.

Ingredients (serves 4):

For the salad:

– 250 g whole grain quinoa

– 100 g halved cherry tomatoes

– 2-3 handfuls of rocket

– 150 g feta cheese

– 1 apple

– 1 chopped walnuts

For the dressing:

– 5 tbsp olive oil

– Juice from one lemon

– 2 tbsp sour cream

– 2 spring onion stalks or 1 shallot

– 1 chopped parsley

– 1/2 bunch dill

– 1/2 tbsp honey and mustard

– salt, pepper

Steps:

1. Boil 250 g Mudda Natur whole grain quinoa in salted water or vegetable stock. Our quinoa is free from bitter substances, which is why washing or swelling is not necessary. After about 15 minutes, drain the quinoa and leave to cool.
2. In the meantime, mix the olive oil, lemon juice and sour cream with the fresh ingredients of spring onions, parsley, dill and honey to make a dressing and season with salt, pepper and a little mustard.
3. Next, wash the rocket salad and cut the cherry tomatoes in half. Cut the apple into small pieces and chop the feta cheese and walnuts. 
4. Finally, mix all the ingredients with the dressing and the drained quinoa and season again with salt and pepper.
   
   

Enjoy!

We believe our direct contact to farmers is one of the most special things we can give back to our community of CrowdFarmers. They are the main witnesses of what our food production needs to face to keep food coming to our homes. Let us share some of the topics CrowdFarming’s agronomists and the farmers they support have been dealing with. 

Heat and hail across Italy

Sicily (Italy) has experienced a long-lasting heat wave. For a couple of weeks we had high temperatures, as far as 40ºC and even up to 48ºC. Heat waves are normal in Sicilian summers, however, the intensity and length of this wave was absolutely abnormal. One of the highest values recorded by the Sicilian Meteorological Information Service (SIAS) during these days belongs to the Monasteri station in Siracusa, with 47.8 °C, where our citrus farmer Angelo from Bio Agrumi Monasteri is located. Angelo found his lemons burnt on the plant – they literally got cooked hanging on the tree! The temperatures finally went down, but, sadly, the summer lemon harvest is all gone. “There is no time to look back, now we need to focus on the next lemon season this winter, and hope the heat waves give their lemon trees a rest.” — said Angelo. 

We travel up north of Italy to find quite the opposite situation. Farmers there have been hit by an impressive downburst, with hail as big as a mango. 

Heavy rains affecting Germany

In the Northern half of Germany, it literally hadn’t stopped raining for the past three weeks at the time we wrote this article – and there were still ten more days to come. After extremely dry May and June, this means many farmers can’t continue their harvest and neither enter the fields with any machinery as they would sink in and could harm the soil structure. A rainy summer might actually be closer to a “normal” German summer than the dry heat of recent years, but as always: too much of the same thing is usually not good. 

Some examples of the consequences of the long-lasting rains are that slurry can’t be brought out as the tanks are too heavy, cereal has been laid down by the rains and only barley is being harvested while rye, triticale, and wheat are still on the field. 

Those who dared to thresh in the weekend – like our agronomist Antonia’s family, who are also Farmers themselves  – had to leave the straw out on the field getting soaked, and “hopefully we can press it in 10 days when rain stops, if it dries off” says Antonia. 

Meanwhile, the conditions are ideal for grass to grow like crazy – 20 °C and abundant rain – good news, in theory, for all dairy farmers. Indeed, it’s time for the third cut, but there are hardly any dry time windows for harvesting. As you see, this unpredictable and unexpected summer is affecting farmers in Germany in different ways, and some, thankfully, have the solutions to face these inconveniences. 

Our blueberry farmer Uwe, from Biohof Wencker, tells us that, what saves them from worrying too much is a ventilator on their farm. Thanks to it, they can blow-dry the blueberries before shipping them to the CrowdFarmers, ensuring they don’t get ruined due to the humidity in the course of their journey. However, they need to take advantage of every minute without rain to pick the blueberries, using more baskets and filling them less so the berries don’t get mashed. 

Sylke, also a blueberry farmer from Bickbeernhof, is a bit less hopeful – “We are tired of the rain. We might see the season finish early, by the end of August instead of early September, as the fruit is getting too soft. But at least we had a great season so far and CrowdFarmers are delighted with our berries’ taste!”

Apple orchards are also being affected by the enduring rains in Hamburg region, but the farmer expects to save the seasons just with some light reminders in the fruits’ skin. Cord Lefers, from Bio-Obsthof Lefers, explained how the changeable weather this year resulted in strong growth of the fruit trees, however, the constant alternation of rain and sun favours the apple scab fungus. As a result, there will be a few black spots on the apples this year. The spots are a purely visual defect, but still a visible sign of the increased humidity. “Thankfully, CrowdFarming’s consumers understand that fruit is not perfect, and we won’t lose the whole harvest just because of some minor outside marks on imperfectly perfect apples.” — says Cord. 

Same as Italy, we find opposite conditions across the country. The farmers of the Southern half of Germany were desperate for rain, as most regions didn’t see any precipitation from early May until mid-July. Even though the wet spring led to a strong growth for crops like grains, they lacked water during the critical phase of development of other crops, such as corn, leading to it ripening and drying before being fully developed. This resulted in very low yields. Ulrike from ackerfrucht&bodenwerk is an example of this. She had to deal with the sudden heavy rains and even hailstorms after a long drought.Some of her ready to harvest grain fields were completely destroyed.  

Other crops such as grapevines coped well with the drought but now struggle with the ongoing rain. Our German winemakers Fabian & Laura from KORE were optimistic at first, grapevines cope very well with heat and drought.  The high temperatures and abundance of rain experienced in May and June were the perfect conditions for a good harvest and high quality grapes. However, this dry period suddenly stopped mid-July and it hasn’t stopped raining ever since. Wet climate increases the risk for fungal diseases, which are difficult to combat respecting the organic EU normative and especially tricky in grape varieties with a thin skin such as Riesling, since they could burst under heavy rainfall and hail. 

Animal farms such as Vulkanhof are more affected by the drought than the rainy period they are experiencing now. The wet spring has led to an above-average hay harvest, but as rain stopped after the grass was cut, it never regrew. In standard years, farmers are able to cut their grass up to three times a year to feed the animals, but, this year, Vulkanhofs farmer, Manuela, is afraid she won’t be able to harvest enough hay to feed her goats throughout the coming winter.

It’s resilience season

As consumers, we might have taken our seasons for granted – and these last summers have brought either too little rain, or too much rain, or extremely high temperatures, or even mango-sized hail. In this context, farmers strive to adapt because their life’s income depends on it. So, this summer, we celebrate our farmers’ perseverance. This summer, more than ever, we will look at the peculiarities of their harvest as a reminder of the battles they fight to deliver their products at our doorstep. 

Grilled goat cheese with a spicy honey marinade is their favourite side dish. It takes no time at all to prepare and this meal replaces any piece of meat! 

This recipe is even more delicious when prepared with Johanna’s honey, Bioland organic BBQ goat cheese from Hof Rösebach and the delicious extra virgin olive oil from Bardomus.

Ingredients

• 450 g grilled goat cheese 
• 10 Tbsp. olive oil 
• 1 Tbsp. honey 
• 4 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 2 garlic cloves
• a handful of fresh mint
• one fresh red chilli
• salt & pepper
  
  

Steps

1. Mix the olive oil, honey and lemon juice and blend together with the garlic cloves and chilli pepper. 
2. Then stir in the chopped fresh mint. 
3. Before serving, brush the hot grilled cheese with the marinade. 
   
   

Enjoy! 

Enjoy!

This recipe is a family classic with our farmer Stelios, who grows organic olives on the Greek island of Crete with his wife and three children. We got this recipe from his daughter Kyriaki. She can’t remember exactly when her parents, Meropi and Stelios, first made these vegetable fritters for her and her siblings. But she knows that they are a classic with the Zacharioudaki Apelidou family. Today Kyriaki lives in Hamburg and often thinks back to the taste and wishes she could enjoy some fritters with tzatziki in the family garden right. 

The Greek “Plouti” organic olive oil from Stelios and the fresh organic winter vegetables from Jakob, make for the perfect ingredients for these delicious veggie fritters. Jakob grows a variety of different vegetables on the organic farm “Hof am Weiher” in Rhineland-Palatinate and is happy to contribute fresh ingredients for this recipe.

The vegetable fritters  are perfect for any weather and even taste great cold!

Instructions:

1. For the tzatziki, wash the cucumber and cut out the seeds. Grate coarsely into a bowl and sprinkle a little salt on top. Leave to rest for about 10 minutes. 
2. In the meantime, chop the dill and squeeze the lemon. Squeeze the liquid from the grated cucumber and add the yoghurt, dill, lemon juice, salt & pepper and some extra virgin olive oil. Stir everything together and store in a cool place until the vegetable fritters are ready.
3. To make the vegetable fritters, wash the vegetables and peel if necessary –  If you are using organic vegetables, you can leave the peel on – it adds vitamins and colour to the vegetable fritters. Coarsely grate all the vegetables, add salt and, if necessary, a little more flour and oat flakes so that the vegetable mix is just a little liquid. If you decide to add an egg to the whole thing, feel free to tip away most of the liquid from the vegetables before adding the dry ingredients. 
4. Chop the dill and mint and add to the vegetable mix along with marjoram, basil and thyme to taste. Stir until an even mix is formed. 
5. Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. For each vegetable fritter, take a heaped tablespoon of the vegetable mix, place in the pan and press down gently. Fry until one side is crispy and flip to the other side. If necessary, top up the olive oil after each portion of vegetable pancakes and remove the leftover vegetables from the pan.
6. Serve the vegetable fritters with the tzatziki.

Enjoy!   

 

STEPS

1. Cut, peel and pit the avocado. We recommend cutting the avocado in half and removing the flesh with a large spoon.
2. Cut it into chunks and place it in a bowl where you are going to beat it.
3. Add the milk, sweetener, and cinnamon. If you want to try it with banana, now is the time to add it too.
4.  Whisk everything together (carefully so it doesn’t splash).
   

Tips:

– If you find it too thick or liquid, you can correct it by adding more milk or avocado.

– We recommend using cold milk so that the “baticate” is more refreshing.

– Optionally, you can also add a banana to give it a very tasty touch.

Enjoy!

Discover Nazaret’s avocados