One of the challenges of growing produce for the restaurant is cleaning and prepping it for their use. It’s easy to send a basket of zucchini with the chef in the morning, but harvesting, cleaning, spinning, and storing a 10 gallon spinach harvest is another thing all together. I wish I had a commercial 3 bay sink, but I did purchase one tool last fall that is a great help. I ordered a used commercial salad spinner off of eBay. I used it Thursday to triple wash and spin spinach, spinach, spinach, and raddhicio, chicory, mache, and arugula. The chef uses the spinach in many sauteed pasta dishes and the rest was blended together to be added to the leaf lettuce used for side salads. All of it gets washed again at the restaurant and gets used first. The chicory in particular is a delicate green and gets bruised easily. We want it to be as fresh as possible and use it the same day it goes to the restaurant. After I triple wash and spin, I bag it up and store on the back fridge (also indispensable (thanks dad!)).
Tag: spinach
Workday in the High Tunnel
It may have snowed last night, but in the high tunnel it is spring. The photo above is the “before” picture. Thanks to being ear infection free and Lily being back in school after strep throat, I got a very needed work day. For a glorious 2 hours I weeded, harvested, and planted in the high tunnel beds. It is amazing to me everything that made it through the extreme cold of this winter. Many of the seeds Lily and I planted on New Year’s Eve are coming up now. The very late fall sowings of arugula are now taking off.
Below is a video tour of each bed mad after the big cleanup and planting is done. The focus isn’t always great, but it gets the job done.
Small Wonder Nutrition 