Dear John,
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.
Today’s Box
- Cranberries
- Fuji Apples
- Yellow Bartlett Pears
- Orange Carrots
- Purple Gold Potatoes
- Radicchio
- Red Beets
- Red Butterhead Lettuce
Things I think are in the fridge
- Pears
- Apples
- Ginger
- Cranberries
- Green bell peppers
- Carrot and a bunch of carrot greens
- Honeynut squash
- Sweet Dumpling Squash
- Potatoes
Coming in from the Garden
- Basil
- Tomatillos, last of the season
- Roma tomatoes, green and red
- Peppers?
- The beans dried on the vine
- Dahlias and marigolds and cosmos
- Rosemary
Open Preserves
- Preserved eggplant
- Lacto-fermented green cherry tomatoes
- Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
- Pickled banana peppers
- Pickled banana peppers with oregano, garlic, and black pepper
- Pickled fennel stems with orange
- Spicy pickled fennel stems
- Radish kimchi
- Green tomato chutney
- Apple butter
- Applesauce
- Probably still more uninventoried
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.
Love you,
Sarah
Planning Inside The Box 