Tomorrow is the first of the garden work days. Two weeks ago, we started poking seeds in the ground–peas and greens and carrots and radishes and turnips and johnny jump ups. Today, we spread compost over the garden plot. Yes, these steps are backward from ideal, but the compost wasn’t delivered at the time and we’re going to be putting more seeds in the ground soon anyway.
Hey! At least one fall seed has already sprouted and bloomed.
The rosemary looks like it had a rough winter. Branches were falling off. They got pruned and now our table looks like a “Millennial wedding circa 2010” in the words of the friend who came over for dinner this week.
I’m pretty sure the wedding table has fewer crumbs, and this was taken before the blooms opened, but the vibes are there.
The past few years, the garden goal has been not to fail out. This year, it’s feeling more like a working respite. It’s climate work and community building and getting grounded. It’s putting down roots and standing tall. It’s breaking down the pieces that have served their use and letting them nurture the soil again. It’s planting, and waiting for sprouts. And replanting. And planting another time. It’s dreaming of plans, doing our part to implement them, and adjusting when reality hits.
The clover we put down as a cover crop hadn’t taken off the last time we stopped by the garden. We scattered more seed. We’ll see whether it takes. Great if it does, and, ah well if it doesn’t.
This weekend we’ll put in one more hour of community service at the garden, and then we’ll have fulfilled our requirements to be invited back next year. Which means it was a success of a season! Truly, whenever I start obsessing about how to maximize our garden production, or worrying about something going bad before we consumed/processed it, I remind myself that we knew going in that this would be a busy season of our life and the goal is to not fail out. All the tomatoes and peppers and tomatillos and greens and beans and flowers and ground cherries and basil and parsley and radishes and turnip and beets are great; I’m pretty proud of our success this season. And I’m very grateful that other people are better farmers than we are and that we get to eat the fruit (and veg) of their labor.
Today’s Box
Asian Pears
Fuyu Persimmon
Granny Smith Apples
Collards
Green Bell Peppers
Red Butterhead Lettuce
Red Napa Cabbage
Spaghetti Squash
Things in the fridge
Apples
Plums
Pears
Asian pears
Lemongrass
Tomatoes
Fennel
Greens: Chard, lettuce, cabbage
Radish
Squash: Acorn
Yummy peppers
Poblano peppers
Hot peppers
In the Garden
Habaneros, jalapenos, fish peppers, other peppers, still getting peppers
Dried beans
Edamame
Beets
Parsley if we want (we should pop some on the dehydrator)
And we should consider the cabbage situation. Time to make more sauerkraut? Or wait until the cranberries and squash come in too? Glass noodles seem more promising this week. Polish potato casserole from More with Less also sounds promising.
I think it’s the season where we could cool the Lee Brother’s Collard Greens. And make a grilled cheese sandwich. That gets dipped in tomato soup. Or tomato pumpkin bisque. Oooooh, this is going to be good. Only problem is we have one bunch of collards, not four.
I’m loving the roasted apple salad. Maybe we should add a lentil apple salad to the mix too though. Maybe.
Lasagna is a lot to put together, I know. I’m so glad you made it last week because it was delicious. (And also, I’m glad that I told you to stop that one evening because actually eating dinner was good.) The combination of crunchy and soft noodles. The layers of flavor. The using up a lot of veggies and having leftovers.
All that said, the time commitment is substantial. And while I would like more crispy pasta soon, I have had the realization that maybe we could do baked pasta instead of full on lasagna? I’m definitely partial to Smitten Kitchen for these–I think I imprinted on Deb’s mushroom marsala pasta bake our first winter with this CSA. Perhaps using that gluten free ravioli you found for a skillet chard-ravioli (with broil time). I bet the broccoli rabe could be switched for any number of heavy duty greens. If you’d rather make it a mostly pantry meal, tomato sauce + pasta +cheese sounds pretty good; though, I bet you could reference this recipe too and add roasted veggies to use up whatever we have on hand.
So polish up your bechamel skills and figure out a favorite tomato sauce. It’s cool enough to turn on the oven and bake that pasta.
Quick note. Last year our ginger went moldy before we used most of it. We can mince it, freeze it, and have ginger handy for smoothies/stirfries/soups.
The roasted apple salad from Pulp was delicious. More of that please.
And try to remember to add radish and turnip to salads when appropriate.
Stuff those peppers! Rice and beans and tomatoes and spices.
The beets have been hanging around for a while. Maybe time to roast, puree, freeze. And use for all the beet yogurt dips and beet hummus dips I want a whim.
Speaking of beet yogurt. I’ve been making an open faced sandwich recently with almond butter, beet yogurt, and thinly sliced apple. It’s good. Feel free to mix in chevre and celery. Maybe some craisins.
Time to cycle through the peppers on the dehydrator. It’s amazing how much they shrink between getting halved and getting their water removed. The fridge full of peppers no longer feels obviously sufficient to make enough chili powder for everyone’s presents. We’ll just have to stretch things with one more batch of hot sauce.
Squash and kale soup? I think I want to get sausage to put in it. Something like this. Maybe a fennel and bean soup?
Though, also, fennel and lentils was really good in the spring.
And let’s just make fennel pesto with the fronds. Can be mixed with yogurt for a dip, and you know how I feel about dips these days. (I want them all the time.)
Between catching Covid and stomach bugs and broader health stuff….it has not been a month for cooking. Naps, yes. Kitchen, ugh, no.
We’ve made some meals that used our produce–tomatoes in blackened shrimp pasta, salads with tomatoes and carrots and peppers, pears and brie. Peppers are in need of dehydrating, because they have not been cooked quickly enough.
Today’s Box
Bosc Pears
Smokehouse Apples
Leeks
Mixed Yummy Peppers
Red Kale
Red Leaf Lettuce
Stripetti Squash
Things in the fridge
Watermelon
Plums
Asian pears
Lemongrass
Celery
Greens: Cabbage, chard, lettuce
Squash: Acorn, white acorn, Robins Koginut
In the Garden
Habaneros, jalapenos, fish peppers, other peppers, many peppers
We pulled the tomatoes and tomatillos. We have clover seeds ready to go (you’re understandably wary of rye), but haven’t gotten the cover crop sown yet. Hopefully later this week we’ll be well enough to make it over to the garden and get them in the ground.
Meals that sound yummy
We have a backup of squash. Last week brought lemongrass and I found two squash–lemongrass soups. This roasted squash lasasgna has been sounding so good and I bet we could totally put half in the freezer (which is looking rather lower on pre-made meals at the moment). I think we treat the stripetti like spaghetti squash and make more baked squash bowls.
This week’s box isn’t coming with potatoes, but a potato leek soup sounds pretty good. Maybe I’ll pick up potatoes at the grocery store.
Lettuce has been going in side salads. Honestly, that still sounds good. Yummy peppers and the last of the tomatoes to join.
One of the meals from the freezer that hit the right spot for me was the chard quiche. If there’s a day with energy to make a crust and a filling, then making a quiche either with chard from the garden or kale sounds delicious. And freezing slices if we manage to make two.
We are having pepper success this year! Maybe we bought more plants? (I’d have to go back to the garden journal to check.) But more importantly we have them in an area where they aren’t being overshadowed by the taller plants.
Maybe we can add eggplant to that section in the future?
Cooking things down, before we leave town
So, with lots of hot peppers, comes lots of hot sauce? I have a pint jar with ~cup of peppers fermenting on the table. I made a serious eats hot sauce. And we still have a five cup container of peppers in the fridge.
It’s a lot of green beans. I’m copying from last week. Maybe the usual way with tofu. Maybe a variation. Oh! Maybe in a curry. It’s been a while since we’ve done a curry and now I want that. Add some peppers and some squash?
I was wondering how to do the corn and then looked at smitten kitchen and now I know. (Though corn enchiladas sound good too.)
I grabbed an extra spaghetti squash. You know how I like the baked spaghetti squash bowls. Bet we could do one with chard?
Saturday we had a garden workday–focusing our efforts on the communal areas instead of our plot. We did a quick harvest before we left. (I didn’t pick a bouquet, nevermind deadheading for the flowers.) When we got home from the garden, we weighed the produce we picked from our plot. Not quite ten pounds! The water from the tomatoes and tomatillos adds up. Good thing some of our cooking shrinks it way down.
Cooking things down, before we leave town
I made twotypes of salsa this weekend. Please note that when they are pulled from the freezer, they would both benefit from some cilantro.
I also made this ratatouille over the weekend. We got more eggplant today and I intend to make more ratatouille tomorrow. That should make a dent in our tomatoes and peppers and zucchini as well. Last time I added one habanero that was threatening with some bad spots. The oil was surprisingly spicy. Do it again!
We’re just about to finish off the last cabbage in lunchtime salads. Hurrah! Let’s do it again with this one.
These are the plums to dry for prunes. Because we have plenty of other fruit and enough other veggies that I’m not buying cauliflower to try out the recipe I want to test from Pulp.
Our next home project is on the horizon. (Pun intended.) As I finish brainstorming meals, you’re reaching out to different contractors to see about getting quotes for solar panel installation. As a child of the 90s who read and re-read 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do To Save the Earth, as an adult who now attends climate action protests, hopefully as an elderly adult far in the future, it feels really exciting to be able to make this visible step toward taking care of the planet.
It’s weird to enter the pricing process with a clear favorite, but part of me hopes that the bid through our community’s Solar Switch group is the clear winner. I really like the idea of group purchasing! I like feeling like part of a bigger effort, even if I’m not meeting with the other neighbors buying this year. It’s the type of action that gives me hope. And as I keepbeingreminded, the way through this is hope-fueled work.
Today’s Box
Orange Seedless Watermelon
Plums
Yellow Peaches
Banana Peppers
Collards
Green Bell Peppers
Italian Eggplant
Red Grape Tomatoes
Things in the fridge
Cinnamon Basil
Plums
Donut Peaches
Nectarines
Peppers: Green bell, banana
Bottom halves of Centercut Squash
Celery
Cucumber and lemon cucumber
Fennel bulb
Greens: Cabbage, kale
Red Potatoes
Green plums
Green tomatoes (starting to pink)
In the Garden
Early peppers. Another couple Cochiti and fallen Habanero.
If this keeps up, we’re going to need to make some tomato sauce/paste to can/freeze. But for this, the first week of tomato bounty, we are savoring them. The classic tomato sandwiches. The spicedtomato salads. Panzella made with cornbread so you can enjoy too. In tacos. With eggs. On sunchoke burgers pulled from the freezer.
Speaking of the freezer….tomato ice cream? This feels like the time in high school when we were thing to figure out how to use up a bunch of cushaw. Turns out pumpkin ice cream is really a thing. Why not tomato?
The cherry tomatoes are tempting to go ahead and pickle. Copy thecopycats of a restaurant dish that I still dream of?
Two weeks worth of bell peppers getting stuffed. (Adding extra tomatoes and chickpeas to the Greek filling mix from Help! My Apartment Has a Dining Room.)
I think there’s a good chance we’ll pick some zucchini from our neighbor’s plot while they’re out of town this week. If we do, I want to use the eggplant for ratatouille. If we don’t, the eggplant tomato cheddar stacks from Simply in Season.
It’s counterintuitive that after having all the guests over the past week we have more lingering produce than usual. But between buying extra veggies for lunch nibbles and pre-preparing dinners, there wasn’t as much focus on using up the CSA and garden food. Some chard stems and green tomatoes made a chutney that was offered on the potato bar. Cooked chard leaves were offered with the pasta sauce. Tomatillos were chopped with lime juice and a pepper to top tacos. That was about it for three days?
Now I’m having the post-visit energy collapse. It feels entirely possible that we’ll order takeout an extra day this week. Possibly pull out a freezer meal without freezing a new one. All to say, watch out. Next week may get to overwhelming amounts of produce needing to be used if we’re not intentional.
Today’s Box
Donut Peaches
Nectarines
Centercut Squash
Green Beans
Green Bell Peppers
Mixed Heirloom Tomatoes
Sweet Onions
Cinnamon Basil
Things in the fridge
Plums
Watermelon
Sweet corn
Banana peppers
Celery
Cucumber and lemon cucumber
Red Spring Onions
Fennel bulb
Greens: Cabbage
Turnips?
Red Potatoes
Green plums
Green tomatoes (starting to pink)
In the Garden
The first cucumber!
Early peppers. Think Cochiti but maybe Fish.
A couple tomatillos
More tomatoes. Both ours and from the neighbors.
A few ground cherries
Rainbow chard (but gave half to the neighbors)
All the Genovese basil
Flowering dill if inspired
Rosemary
Oregano
Calendula and cosmos and gomphrena if we want another bouquet
Sad news this week. Our basil looks not great. I’m not sure if the browning is due to stress from heat and lack of hydration or a fungus.
I fear the fungus.
One plant was totally dead. I pulled it and another two that were browning. One last batch of pesto for us. And not planting basil in the same section next year out of an abundance of caution.
Team Empty The Fridge
Chop tomatillos + tomatos + pepper + salt + lime for the tacos that were dinner.
Need to pickle the banana peppers. (Just as we finished off last year’s batch.)
These bell peppers look good for making stuffed bell peppers. I’ve had this tab open for long enough that I forgot it existed. Calls for lamb, so we might not go that direction though!
I want panzanella and the spot that I picked up lunch from today didn’t have any. So expect to make that one of these days while you’re at the office.
I want pizza. Can we pizza? It’s hot, but not as hot as it’s been. (These are the weeks I miss apartment complexes gas grills.) Squash and red sauce and cheese and garlic. Corn and tomatoes and pesto and feta.
Also grabbed a savoy cabbage and some banana peppers from the swap box.
Dear John,
It’s a week of visitors. We’ve got plans for a pasta bar night, a taco bar night, and a potato bar night. Dips and crackers and veggies for lunches. And letting the hotels cover continental breakfasts.
We’ve got a red sauce and a green sauce (pesto from the basil above). Squash and corn taco filling. Black beans cooked up. Chard sauteed. Hummus hummed and dips ready to blitz.
The board looked a lot skimpier when it was just the peaches and blackberries. Thankfully, the missing vegetable share found its way back to us.
Dear John,
Let’s talk cabbage salad. Because when I said that you should take cabbage salads to work it wasn’t with the intention that you eat the same salad every day. It was the thought that shredding cabbage and a few other veggies is a fairly easy prep you can do at the beginning of the week. Mix up a few dressings, think through a few bonus toppings, and then you can choose your own adventure. For instance:
The tomatoes may need to be re-staked. They’re nearly falling over. I’m hesitant to damage roots and yet more wary of toppled over plants. (And very excited for them to come in.)
The volunbeans have shot straight up. One plant has reached all the way to the top of its pole and is coming down the cucumber scaffolding.
The peppers are looking promising. I’m hopeful that the set-up this year gets them better light and better yield.
The dahlia, planted late, is up and pinched. It will probably be a while before it starts to bloom. But it gets better light and is in better soil than the ones at our house, so it might catch up quick.
Eating now (aka clear counter space for Six Seasons)
Celery cucumber salad from Six Seasons (alternate adaptation here).
We will be eating the corn tomorrow Either as raw corn salad (alternate) or as creamed corn.
At the beginning of the box life there are more “wait, what is this?” moments. Learning all the different greens that are given, for instance. A decade of on-and-off, but mostly on CSA–half of which we’ve also be gardening in one community or another–three of them with this particular set of farms, that feeling is pretty rare. But I saw blue hyssop on the predicted contents list this week and the only thing I could think of is “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be white as snow.”
I know the Bible is a compilation of many different types of texts, but I generally think of Psalms as the poetry/music collection. Not a cookbook.
Masterclass mastered the SEO. So…..I dunno. Use as one of our herbs of the week? Toss in a salad with the cabbage? Blend with yogurt or hummus for a dressing? Sneak into the morning smoothie?
Today’s Box
Blueberries
Yellow Peaches
Watermelon
Blue Hyssop (unless it’s mint. Or sweet basil. But it doesn’t look like either of those.)
Celery
Gold Zucchini
Malabar Spinach
Red Cabbage
Things in the fridge
Cherries
Peach
Red Spring Onions
Fennel bulb
Greens: Cabbage, Chard, Collard, Beet
Carrots, turnips, beets
Green plums
In the Garden
Rainbow chard
Basil leaves getting pinched with flowers
Dill flowers
Calendula flowers still getting dried by the trayful
A few beet reds snuck into a smoothie and I think I liked it? Expect a repeat. After I finish my cucumber innards muesli (made with the seeds scooped out of cucumbers before making a salad last week).
We haven’t used those collards for too long. How about a salad?
We pulled the peas, and planted beans to take over the tent. Two volunbeans, four from the soup pack. Harvested the last of the spring planted radish and turnips. I’m debating if we plant something else short there, or wait for the cucumber and strawberry to spread as they grow.
The beans we planted (two weeks ago?), have all popped up. The chard keeps getting thinned, so even though it’s growing, I feel like we might not be totally overwhelmed. Nevermind how loaded the bike was before we left.
I checked the internet’s horticulture wisdom and realized we needed to prune all of our tomatoes – it’s an indeterminate year.
Meals to make to celebrate summer
Internet browsing brought me to a newsletter with a series from Pandemic Part I. There’s this salad that looks great for cleaning out bits and ends. I made it last week and it was a hit. Not sure it’s calling me again so soon, but wanting to save.
It’s been so long since we made smashed cucumber salad. I miss it. We are making it this week. (I spied the first baby cucumber fruiting today. Maybe we’ll have some of our own to harvest.)
We just tossed fennel pesto that had gone moldy. So we can make some again. But learn from our mistakes and FREEZE it. Also, toss fennel on a salad of lettuces + peaches + toasted pecans.
How to use this week’s beet greens? (The beets will keep. Fine dice and roasted. Sliced on pizza. I’m not worried about them.) And what about the supply of chard? Last week brought a quiche with a mix of parm, cheddar, and gouda. Another quiche, but this time with chevre sounds potential. Honestly, it’s been a bit since we had pizza. That sounds kinda good. So does having it with pasta in a tomato sauce.
Last thought, if we have extra cucumbers, maybe this salad but with fennel.
Love,
Sarah
PS The wedge salad was as good as I dreamed and makes me want to get iceberg lettuce again. The toppings we used–roasted beets, toasted nuts, green onions, parsley, blue cheese dressing–feel so similar to my autumnal salads. But those are served with kale and that makes all the difference.
The days where it rains, those are fine. We can sit on the porch and still feel a bit of space from being outside. The days when we’re sick, not great. But being inside feels appropriate then. And we can sit on the porch and feel sun on our face. (Can you tell I like having a porch?)
But these days where it’s smoky. When the haze obscures the view down the street. When we put on masks to go outside, and try to stay indoors. They get hard.
The concerns of climate change continue to mount.
We advocate for change at a structural level. We have conversations and try to model small shifts at a social level. And we do what we can to care for each other. To share abundance with it comes and to buffer blows as we are able.
Today’s Box
Red Seedless Watermelon
Yellow Peaches
Fava Beans
Green Cabbage
Iceberg Lettuce
Thumbelina Carrots
Sugar Snap Peas
Things in the fridge
Blueberries
Watermelon
Cherries
Radishes
Peas
Fennel bulb
Greens: Cabbage, Chard, Collard
Green plums
In the Garden
Rainbow chard
Turnips + greens
Beets + greens
Peas for the sampling–snap, snow, and shelling
Lettuce, when we’re ready
Basil leaves getting pinched with flowers
Dill flowers
Calendula flowers getting dried
Rosemary
Oregano
Calendula and cosmos and oregano bouquet supplemented by Black Eyed Susans someone tossed in the compost
We’re wrapping up the turnip and radishes from the spring plantings. They’ll be back in a couple of months. Expect we’ll be pulling the pea plants soon, so we can be a second batch of beans in the ground. (The first batch have all sprouted! And there was rain so I think we’re looking promising.)
Meals to consider and pickles to prep
Good news. I pickled a pint of cherries and that salad only used a cup, so we get to have the snap peas and pickled cherries salad again.
Last week’s watermelon rind + dill flowers + garlic have started a slow ferment down in the basement. It was so easy! The hardest part was peeling the rinds. They taste like dill pickles! Expect more experiments all summer long.
Toast + almond butter + chevre + cherry halves
I snuck a leaf of the iceberg lettuce that had fallen loose in the box. And promptly spent the whole walk home day dreaming of a wedge salad with a good blue cheese dressing. Maybe we can roast some beet lardons to be a topping instead of bacon?
Summer means interns. And this year, interns in residence (vs remote). So for the first time since March 2020, we have five days a week working separately. I was so stressed out when work-from -home began. Too much together time! This side I was anxious about the time time apart. What can I say? Change is scary.
Spoiler: It’s been fine. We need to make sure you take salads to the office so we don’t get too much of a backlog of produce. Buying your favorite of carrots and celery is just too much with the CSA and garden plot producing.
Today’s Box
Dark Sweet Cherries
Mini Watermelon Seedless
Broccoli
Green Zucchini
Red Romaine Lettuce
Sugar Snap Peas
Things in the fridge
Blueberries
Breakfast radishes
Fennel + stems still waiting to get pickled
Lettuce
Greens: Cabbage, Chard, Collards, Kale, Lettuce
Zucchini
Green plums
In the Garden
Rainbow chard
Radishes + their greens
Peas for the sampling–snap, snow, and shelling
Lettuce, when we’re ready
Basil leaves getting pinched
Calendula flowers getting dried
Beets if we want them
Rosemary
Oregano
Calendula and cosmos and oregano flowering for a wild bunch of a bouquet
As I type this part, on Wednesday, the window is open to the porch and the cool breeze that accompanies rain is teasing round my shoulders. We need the rain. The plants were doing better than I expected when I last got by to water them with the hose. But spigot is not the same as a good, daylong sprinkle.
Meals to consider and pickles to prep
Between the CSA and the garden, I think we’ve tipped the line to a chard bounty this year. We’re pickling some stems. I asked some friends for their favorites to add some variety and got suggestions for green shakshuka and quesadillas on the stove to maximize crispiness. I saw a recommendation for a chard salad a la the kale salad that Joshua McFaddan popularized. There’s also chard hummus, but I wasn’t especially impressed with the white bean and beet green dip last week, so maybe we save that for later in the year.
This week’s zucchini looks young and tender. Perfect for eating in a salad where it’s mandolined, salted, and dressed. Use the basil flowers that I pinched at the garden.
And we could combine the chard and the zukes if there’s time for a more involved cooking project.
A mix-up meant that we didn’t get our cherries last week. So we got a special delivery of two weeks worth of cherries this week. We could devour them by the handful, no problem. But I’m excited for the excuse to try the snap peas and pickled cherries salad.
While we’re mixing the pickling brine, go ahead and make a batch of radishes. They’ll be great on tacos later.
At a party this weekend, I passed on a bag containing the last of the dahlia bulbs we thought were likely viable. To be fair, there’s still a package left to be taken to the post office. And the package to your brother is puttering around the postal system–at least now it looks like it’s in the right zip code. I am late sending my parents the last of the calendula seeds. But also thrilled to have grown things to the point of sharing no only the produce but hopefully some future plants.
Guess the next test is if any of it actually grows for anyone.
In the days when the sky is eerily orange. When the rain is too little, or far too much. When the heat keeps me inside with air conditioning (that helps me now, but maybe only makes everything worse?). When I find another dead bee as I water the plants. It’s hard not to obsess about the challenges of creation.
So we care for our flowers. And try to share a bounty of blooms. Continue the work. Share life’s glories.
Today’s Box
Blueberries
Dark Sweet Cherries
English Peas
Green Cabbage
Green Kale
Red Leaf Lettuce
Red Chard
Things in the fridge
Breakfast radishes
Fennel stems waiting to get pickled
Lettuce
Collards
Zucchini
Green plums
In the Garden
Lettuce, still pretty, still with slugs. And earwigs
You found cucumber starts! We got more stakes! So there’s now a mound with bush pickle cukes where the turnips and a couple of calendula plants used to be. And a mound with a trellis and burpless cukes where the edamame was. I attempted to transplant the edamame to the center of the new bean tent. Soup beans by the thick poles, volunbeans by the thinner ones.
So….I think we’re done planting for a little bit. Time to let things grow. Hope for rain. And tend what we can in the meantime.
Meals to consider
So much chard getting thinned. Let’s consider the chard and PB banana wraps. They’re a curiosity to me.
The snap peas and shelling peas got shelled, zapped in the microwave. There was enough for us each to have a spoonful. We don’t have much more of the snow peas, but maybe we can add them to a stirfy.
Summer rolls with lettuce or chard, and all the other veggies?
Happy Birthday! It was around this time two years ago that we got our garden box built and filled with the starts we got from the neighborhood seedling shop. Which makes me feel better about not yet having gotten a cucumber start yet this year (hopefully we’ll find one soon!). Or bought poles for this year’s bean tent. Nevermind, plant the beans around the tent. We do however have peas coming up around their tent. So, y’know, there’s plenty going on.
Today’s Box
Cherries
Mini Red Seedless Watermelon
Strawberries
Broccoli
Green Romaine Lettuce
Green Zucchini
Green Chard
Things in the fridge
Breakfast radishes
Fennel (I think just the tops)
Some bitter greens from the neighbors
Red Lettuce
Collards
Scallions, Green Garlic, Garlic Scape. Honestly not sure what all is in the green alliums bag
The peas flowered! And they formed pods! We might get to eat some! Maybe!! Not many mind you. But any is still exciting.
Meals to consider
Chard + chevre omelettes
Chard spaghetti a la Six Seasons. And with the goal of having enough leftovers to make the frittata.
Fennel salad dressing to go on salads of lettuce and turnips. Perhaps with some diced watermelon tossed on top.
I see the zucchini and the Six Seasons tuna melt is gonna happen. So many other good things to do, but that one is calling.
Meanwhile, I’m not immediately yearning for one broccoli recipe or another. It’s the time of year when I’ve often done the velvety broccoli and feta pasta. So maybe that that’s the way.
Sometime last week, I took the fennel stems, chopped them up, and put them in brine with a few sprigs of rosemary, replenishing our fridge supply of pickled fennel. On Memorial Day, I pulled out our apple stock bag from the freezer, tossed in the cherry pits we’d stashed in there too. Ended up with one batch of apple scrap jelly from the juice. Then I took the solids, pulled the cranberries from the back of the fridge, and now we have a chutney. Last night, I made Artichoke Relish that I’m labeling “Relish the Sun ’23.” That (plus a giant batch of sunchoke burgers assembled last week, now stocking the freezer) used up our sunchokes for the season.
New Saturday. New starts. We’ve added Gomphrena flowers and parsley and dill. Brought the cilantro home. Pulled some more calendula and passed them to another gardener to transplant. (By the way, the ones we transplanted to our house look great now that we’ve gotten some rain. I mean, look at that picture. Don’t you agree?) We came home and made a lunch of lettuce and turnips and thinned rainbow chard that were freshly picked.
I made a fennel pesto from the fronds that we ate on our sunchoke burgers. It was good. And worked really well thinned with yogurt and lemon juice as a salad dressing. Since we’re looking at a lot of lettuce and turnip and radish salads, maybe try making more of that.
Collards, huh. I kinda want to make the Lee Brother’s collard grilled cheese sandwich, but their recipe calls for way more collards than we have. Still, I might end up going that way with them.
Though, alternatively, I keep having a sense memory of a dish that involved some sort of greens rolled up. Spirals of greens. I think, maybe, it might possibly be the shanu chaats from Hut-K in Ann Arbor. Described as “Spiced crushed chickpeas rolled in colocasia leaves surrounded w/ mixture of baked multigrain papdi, topped w/ mixture of potatoes, peas & chickpea, hut-k special sauces & garnished w/ chickpea flour savories. Allergy information: contains wheat, chickpeas. Vegan.” (The restaurant is closed. I do not trust the internet to save this information for me.) I’m wondering how I can go from that to a collards dish.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS UPDATE! I searched for colocasia and got a recipe for colocasia pinwheels. Which is getting absurdly close to my spiraly memory. Maybe this can happen after all.
Otherwise, we need to cook some of these greens down. Serve with beans and be done for a day.
Not a meal! But, I do want to try collecting and drying some of our calendula this season. Especially from in front of the house, it should be easy to get to. We have Resina Calendula, which is especially high in resin which is good for making the salves and oils and what have you. Apparently.
A week ago, not long after we’d picked up our lettuce and bok choy for the week, some neighborhood friends texted. They’d gotten a CSA and now had a fridge full of greens that would surely go bad before they ate them all. Would we like some?
So, I came back home with a bag full of chard and kale and fennel and I don’t even remember what else. I suggested asking around to find someone to split the share for the rest of the season. And also sent an email with a few of our favorite ways to cook up greens, when salad won’t go through them quickly enough. I have a feeling we’ll be needing these in the coming weeks, so for easier searching.
Turmeric black pepper stir fry – Okay, not vegetarian as written. We sub the chicken for tofu and asparagus for greens. or green beans.
Braised cabbage and glass noodles – They have some other cabbage and glass noodle recipes that we also use. Dried mushrooms are a kitchen staple for us now. Also, this is one that we haven’t tried with other greens.
Steamed greens and tofu in a glaze – In case you have a health struggles and suddenly go on extra low-fat watch, but are still allowed sugar. But really, I’ve used this one for years. Usually with brown rice.
Sweet potato, kale, and quinoa fritters – Maybe more in the fall when sweet potatoes are in abundance. definitely served on top of salad, using even more greens 😉
Tacos! – Cannot vouch for this recipe. I read the list above to you and you said tacos were missing.
Enfrijodlas – Ooooh. I do like this recipe though. And would totally stuff them like enchiladas, but with wilted greens
We bought starts on Saturday. Put them in the ground on Sunday. When we arrived, I was surprised at how green our plot already was. The radishes and turnips (pictured) were thriving–we left with a shopping bag full. The lettuce was actually forming. The calendula row from last year was quickly becoming thick with plants, so we’ve thinned and tried replanting at home. One edamame was actually recognizable. The peas were tall enough to think about training them on their tent poles. I think we have cosmos volunteering, but who knows, maybe those sprouts are actually weeds.
Beyond the greens
Look, I picked up extra fennel from the swap box before we got fennel from the neighbors. We’ve already had fennel with braised lentils. Twice. And turnip yogurt poppy salad with fennel fronds as our herb. I’m eyeing this fennel and bean casserole. Planning to pickle up some stems (because we’ve actually used up the previous jars). Contemplating a fennel pesto vs fennel fritter.
We have yet to make lettuce soup, but it has been mentionedpreviously. This might be the week for it. (Especially since the lettuce from yesterday’s box hasn’t made it to the refrigerator yet….)
Meals, so often, don’t actually turn out the way I expect them to. Inspiration and actualization shift during the week. Different things come in from the garden, or the farmers market. Or time constraints get realized. Or what we’re in the mood for shifts with the weather and moods.
Last Wednesday, I took my sister to the garden plot to show off the dahlias. (After all, she gave us the tubers.) I was getting the shears to harvest some basil when another gardener approached with a veritable handful of basil (no space in hands for any more!) and asked if we could use it. Sure, here’s my bag. Oh, yeah, I can take your scrawny green peppers. Yes please, I’ll use your tiny eggplant nubs. Why not take your green tomatoes too? I sent them home with dahlias and best wishes for their international move two days later.
So I made green tomato chutney with green bell peppers from not our plot and Kung Pao peppers from my sister’s plot. We all ate omelettes with fresh basil as the greens and chevre that tasted of decadence. The honeynut squash pizzas were made with pesto (the squash was mostly there for color, turns out basil is strong when you use a lot of it). And there’s basil frozen in olive oil for some summer brightness (fall color?) in the depths of winter.
It took until last night for us to make the radicchio beet cranberry salad. I know why we didn’t make it when we had company, but if we wouldn’t serve it to my sister I’m not sure who we’ll break out this experiment of a meal for. Eating it, I remembered my impression from the first time, that this was my fanciest salad. The thing that I have cooked most likely to end up on a restaurant menu. Because who’s serving radicchio and cranberries at home on a Tuesday night? And at a (pretentious) farm to table place, because that is where you get the beets and hazelnuts and chèvre on a salad. It’s so good. Maybe next time we’ll share with company. (Or maybe we’ll eat it all ourselves.)
Today’s Box
Bosc Pears
Jonagold Apples
Green Kale Hearts Swapped for Celery
Purple Broccoli
Romanesco Cauliflower
Stripetti Squash
Things I think are in the fridge or on the counter
Pears
Apples
Beets (but not their greens)
Cranberries
Carrot (but not their greens)
Radicchio
Lettuce
Green beefsteak tomatoes, but baby-sized
Roma tomatoes, mix of green and reddening
Eggplant
Sweet Dumpling Squash
Potatoes (purple and gold)
Straggling in from the Garden
Basil
Dahlias and marigolds and cosmos (gather seeds as we go!)
I wanted to swap the kale for the celery because 1) we’ve had a lot of kale already and 2) the apple, celery, date, and parm salad sounded so good in my mind. Adapt from Six Seasons.
While Six Seasons is out, flip over to cauliflower. Let’s try the cauliflower steaks with provolone and pickled peppers please.
Debating about the broccoli. I recently remembered Friday nights 15 years ago, cooking up Mollie Katzen’s peanut-butter molasses broccoli tofu stirfry (Enchanted Broccoli Forest), and am craving it. But we made that with frozen broccoli and this looks so good for the roasting. Maybe in a soup?
Seeing the eggplant has me craving eggplant with soba noodles. You can’t eat soba noodles. This should be my lunch on the day you go to the office.
The internet says stripetti is a cross between spaghetti squash and delicata squash. I vote we use it the same as we would spaghetti squash and bake them as bowls.
We made it through surgery. And, as I write the letter part of this five days after pickup, support visits from family. I think I won’t go back to the dishes everyone made. A decision completely separate from my lack of remembering what those dishes were…..
Then garden’s coming to the end of it’s time. We planted greens (Kale! Swiss chard! Mustard greens!) and they’ve sprouted. We’ll see whether they make it through the cold ahead. Ditto the radishes and turnips that are growing bit by bit. When we went to the plot this weekend, I had you pick most of the tomatoes off the vines. There might be a bit before they frost comes. Maybe. Or we can make more chutney and ferment. And enjoy the green from the end of the season.
The dahlias, however, are a delight. We didn’t prune as much as we should’ve this season. And they ran wild. Enough to have a bouquet on the table and on the counter and to give to a friend and hand out blooms to strangers just because.
Meals to eat with company when we have our own food restrictions
Those beet greens are gorgeous, but take up a ton of space. We should use them tonight! Coconut rice?
Speaking of greens, we still have carrot tops from last week. And new ones. Make both the pesto and the salsa verde from Scraps, Wilts, and Weeds.
Getting radicchio and beets and and cranberries reminds me of this salad, which we first made with rhubarb and later made with frozen cranberries and can totally make with cranberries this go around.
We used the leek bottoms, but still have many leek tops. Scraps, Wilts, Weeds recommends cutting them into skinny strips, about three inches long and stir-frying them. Let’s try that! Along with tofu?
Have some radishes and turnips from our garden plot. They have greens, but it’s just a few roots, so fewer leaves. Cook up some lentils an for a salad with some of the greens stirred in at the end?
Honeynut peeled into strips and topping a pizza crust with lemons and goat cheese, a la Melissa Clark.
Let’s go ahead and get the sour cream and onion to make Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish. It can wait in the freezer until Thanksgiving.
Golden reds and oranges and yellows in the peaches and tomatoes
Hi John,
Saturday we walked to the garden, a feat unto itself. We pulled up some weeds and nibbled on berries from the common area. And we harvested. Edamame! Kale! Tomatillos! Roma tomatoes! And, some beautiful beefsteak tomatoes. That night, I snuck into the kitchen and cut the tomato into thick slices. Sprinkled with salt. Set on plate with knife and fork in hand. One of the moments of sheer, summer perfection.
Today’s box makes it clear that we are IN tomato season. And honestly, a few more meals like that Saturday night snack sounds just right.
Actually in Today’s Box
Yellow Peaches
Red Seedless Watermelon
Bicolor Sweet Corn
Malabar Spinach
Mixed Cherry Tomatoes
Mixed Heirloom Tomatoes
Things I think are in the fridge
Blueberries (farmer’s market)
Peaches
Fennel
Cucumber (farmer’s market)
Cranberries
Lemon squash
Green peppers
Celery
Greens: Savoy Cabbage, Kale
Green Daikon radish
Sweet potato
Jerusalem Artichokes
Coming in from the Garden
Edamame
Basil
Kale
Tomatillos
Aunt Ruby’s German Green (Beefsteak) tomatoes
Roma tomatoes
Occasional ground cherries
Shishito peppers
Jimmy Nardello pepper
Dahlias and marigolds
Papalo when we want it
Rosemary
Open Preserves
Preserved eggplant
Lacto-fermented green cherry tomatoes
Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
Pickled banana peppers with oregano, basil, and black pepper
A meal of appetizers/sides. Edamame. Blister the shishito peppers. Maybe this tomato salad (note the ginger substitution). Or maybe the tomatoes and eggs. Side of rice.
Yesterday I called you from the garden. Should we try to find row cover before the forecast freeze? Went to the closest plant store, they don’t carry it. Decided that we have enough going on in the next few weeks that maybe it doesn’t make sense to put in more effort and extend our work. Sorry summer plants.
So we’re saying goodbye to the tomatoes and eggplant. Been separating basil seeds at the dinner table. We picked the first fall radish and the pink bulb feels like magic.
In This Week’s Box
Asian Pears
Empire Apples
Garden Gem Tomatoes
Green Acorn Squash
Mixed Carmen Italian Peppers
Pink Celery
Red Leaf Lettuce
Garden Potential
Starfish pepper
Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
Lombok peppers
Volunbeans for drying
Final tomato, possibly to ripen on counter
First radish, when we want it
Still in the Fridge
Apples: Who even is able to identify the apples filling the fruit drawer?
Quiche? On the one hand, I like the idea of an eggy dish that has leftovers. Shredded beets and goat cheese? It’ll all be pink. Sliced tomatoes, sauteed peppers, and cheddar cheese?
Nominating this acorn squash for being stuffed come Thanksgiving.
Celery or cabbage salad with chickpeas, a garlic anchovy dressing, croutons for me
Celery and apple salad. (There’s a celery, apple, peanut salad in Six Seasons that we haven’t tried yet. It also uses medium-hot chilies. The star peppers could be fun.)
Cabbage fried rice
Reminders of Meals Already Brainstormed
Pizza with delicata squash slices
Soup: Ginger, apple, squash OR leek and potato
Dandelion greens with beans and fennel (I have now cooked the beans. We just have to cook the meal.)
This week I curled up with a storybook. Layers of tales, echoing past each other. Before the hardback was returned to the library, I’d downloaded the audio reading.
The next book I picked up is for book club. It is not a book for Sarahs. At least not yet. We discuss it in a week and I’m thinking there’s a good chance I won’t finish it.
That switch, from the story that I want to rehear over and again to the story that I struggle to get in, is so familiar. I think it’s why the beloved stories are treasured so. Their power to imagine a world that I want to experience, to explain a part of existence, to create the actions required.
In This Week’s Box
Bartlett Pears
Empire Apples
All Blue Potatoes
Collards
Edamame
Green Beans
Green Cabbage
Mixed Yummy Peppers
Spaghetti Squash
Sungold Cherry Tomatoes
Garden Potential
Starfish pepper
Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
Lombok peppers if we want them
Few tomatillos, hopefully
Volunbeans
Maybe a tomato?
Dahlias
Still in the Fridge
Apples: Honeycrisp?, Gala
Greens: NONE. We ate them all.
Herbs: Fennel tops
Peppers: Yummy, Lombok, Starfish
Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Carnival
Sweet onions
Garlic
Fingerling Potatoes
Celery
Sunchokes
Open Preserves
Preserved eggplant
Pickled cucumber skins
Lacto-fermented & Lacto-fermenting green cherry tomatoes
Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
Lacto-fermenting habanda jalapeno hot sauce
Pickled red onion
Pickled banana peppers with oregano, basil, and black pepper
I pulled up the cucumber a few weeks ago. Then you helped turn the compost and rescued some volunteer greens.
They tried, but they didn’t survive.
We took out a basil and a tomato that were done. Stopped by the store to get some seeds.
And now we have sprouts!
Radishes. Carrots. Spinach. Stir-fry mix of greens.
I’m not sure what will make it. The soup beans we planted mid-summer are dying instead of climbing. I put a second batch of radishes in the center of their tent-poles. Willing the roots down deep.
I’ve been thinking about Rachel Held Evans’posts on Madeline L’Engle’s reflections on planting onions. L’Engle was talking about planting onions in the spring being an act of faith in the future when she was afraid for our planet. But I’m considering planting them this fall, and the faith it requires that we will come through winter to more growth. (Confession: I did not heed the warnings in the emails and did not reserve shallot bulbs. Maybe we see if we can plant from the garlic the CSA sent last week? Maybe we let it go for this season.)
I’m trying to save seeds, even though we can’t do the isolated crops that are recommended. Beans are obvious, easy. Just don’t eat them all. Cilantro was straightforward. Basil’s proving fiddly to separate, since we don’t have a screen. I’m currently fermenting seeds from our volunteer cherry tomato. Doing the action that faith calls forth.
I’ve held off on decreeing it soup season. But consider making a sweet potato, peanut, and kale soup only with squash instead of sweet potato and collards instead of kale.
Similarly, is it risotto season? Because a squash risotto is always yummy. Can use Six Seasons recipe, but be mindful about the fat if we want to dehydrate for backpacking meals.
Cabbage season is starting up again I see. Using the cabbage is low priority, it’ll keep. But consider the braised glass noodles when we do.
It might be time to quickle the fennel stems. Though maybe that’s next week’s project. There are still a few fronds to adorn salads.
Before: Blurry photos from an email before we saw the plot. After: The view today. Clearer and cleaner. Still at the beginning.
June 9, 2021
Dear John,
“We have a garden plot!”
Three Fridays back you happily announced that we had an email that there was a plot available and we were, finally, at the top of the waiting list.
Saturday morning, we went to look at the plot and started weeding. The member coordinator said it’d be a lot of work, and they’d keep us at the top of the waitlist if we couldn’t commit. I was a little hesitant, but knew that we’d waited long enough.
We weeded. Left the volun-beans alone. Pruned rosemary. Cut and dried oregano (so much oregano). Uncovered a tomato plant. Identified dill. Harvested onions that were no longer underground. Took pictures to try to determine if that sprout is a squash. The algorithm says 40% sure it’s a melon. We haven’t pulled it yet.
It took a ten days to get the wood to rebuild.* A few more weekdays to assemble and fill with soil.
Meanwhile, we plotted about what to plant, interviewing your mom about square foot gardening and looking through websites that sell heirloom seeds. It’s late to start from seeds here, so we asked around until we found a source for ground cherry and tomatillo seedlings. While we were there, we picked up heirloom tomatoes–cherry, roma, and beefsteak–and peppers–both hot and sweet. Basil and cilantro and Mexican mint marigold and basil. Eggplant and cucumber.
By this Sunday, we had everything in the ground.
Now we water and wait. And keep weeding.
Love,
~Sarah
Then: Weeds and mystery. Now: Beans, tomatoes, basil.
Produce This Week
We’re still working on cutting back the oregano and rosemary. I expect they won’t thrive as much in the humidity of summer.
It’s worth stopping by the berry bramble as you leave the garden. When I looked yesterday the raspberries were darkening from pink to purple. Soon, they promise. Soon.
We have dried so. much. oregano.
Plans For the Produce
There’s more of the herbs than we can use right now, so they’re getting dried. Honestly, a peanut butter jar filled with oregano is more than we will use in the coming year, so we’re already on mission give things away. For the herbs, I’m thinking we’ll package them in snack bags and offer them at the food pantry.
I don’t expect any more of the onions to need to be pulled. But if I’m wrong, they’ll probably end up getting chopped and tossed in the jar with the others already quick pickled. Check the recipe on Budget Bytes if they need more brine.
*I have a full on rant about how in a community garden the physical structure of the raised beds, and the soil to fill them should be community maintained over the fall/winter. Rather than putting the full cost and labor on whoever is the unlucky plot sharer who happens to get the plot in a year when it needs to be rebuilt. And, honestly, I think I’d still have this opinion even if lumber prices weren’t rocketing up.
Planning Inside The Box 