carrots

Boxing Day, October 21

planorcanLeave a comment
Offcamera, frustration at the squash that had been on display and is now rotting. Oooops.

Hi John,

It’s Wednesday and I am walking for my errands. I’ve wandered through to the next neighborhood over, because it is my favorite place to listen to episodes of a favorite podcast, and I am thinking about things I love.

I love Little Free Libraries, and pop-up protest art, and the Little Free Art Gallery that make each walk a hunt for treasure.

I love the sparrow splashing in the bird bath in the front lawn.

I love the feel of sunlight through green-brown leaves, and the shelf of fungus around the tree trunk.

I love all the different ways that parents are carting their kids on bicycles, from the dad walking his bike with his little in the seat clinging on the handlebars, to the full-on cargo bikes, to the back-wheel kiddo racks.

I love the way this neighborhood throws itself into holiday decorations and being a quaint little town, despite it’s actual location centered in the metropolis. I love the house that has become a pirate ship and the garden boxes crawling with spiders and the robotic raven that squawks whenever anyone walks by. I love the scarecrows and pumpkins and my memory of the chute that people built last year to deliver candy.

I love not knowing what the fruit is on the trees on the center of the boulevard, asking the guy who is also waiting for the light to change if he does, and the camaraderie of shared curiosity.

And you.

In This Week’s Box

  • Bosc Pears
  • Granny Smith Apples
  • Baby Hakurei Turnips
  • Jalapeno Peppers
  • Leeks
  • Mixed Carmen Italian Peppers
  • Red Dandelion Greens
  • Red Leaf Lettuce
  • Thumbelina Carrots
  • White Cauliflower

Garden Potential

  • Starfish pepper
  • Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
  • Lombok peppers if we want them
  • Last of the tomatillos, hopefully
  • Volunbeans for drying
  • Maybe a tomato? Maybe?
  • Dahlias
  • Radish sprouts when we thin them

Still in the Fridge

  • Apples: Gala, Empire, Jonagold U-pick
  • Bartlett Pears, Asian Pears
  • Greens: 1/2 a cabbage, 1/2 bunch collards, Savoy Cabbage, Romain lettuce
  • Herbs: Fennel tops
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Tomatillos
  • Broccoli
  • Edamame
  • Peppers: Yummy, Lombok, Starfish, Banana
  • Carrots
  • Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Spaghetti, Robins Koginut
  • Garlic
  • Potatoes: Blue, Sweet
  • Sunchokes

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Dill pickle juice
  • Lacto-fermented green cherry tomatoes
  • Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
  • Lacto-fermented habanda jalapeno hot sauce
  • Pickled red onion
  • Pickled banana peppers with oregano, basil, and black pepper
  • Plain pickled banana peppers
  • Radish kimchi
  • Sunchoke relish
  • Green tomato chutney
  • Sour cherry chutney
  • Blueberry peach jam
  • Apple sauce
  • Apple butter
  • Quince jelly
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Things we may enjoy eating

  • Soup of the week: Curried apple soup from Enchanted Broccoli Forest looks interesting. And can help keep our fruit drawer manageable.
  • The edamame’s been around too long wanting for the right moment. We gotta just boil it and snack on it. It is time.
  • It’s still looking like side salad season. Though greens + turnips + granny smith apples + blue cheese + vinaigrette = meal
  • Volunbeans and dandelion greens and fennel and miso! Basically follow the recipe from Cool Beans.
  • Time to roast up the last of the tomatillos, some onion, a few of those jalapenos for one last salsa verde. Freeze what we won’t eat immediately. It’ll be gone soon.
  • Broccoli should be tossed in salads or roasted or stir-fried. I don’t know how we want to use it, just that we really should.
  • Are the pomegranates looking good in the grocery store? My notes for the roasted cauliflower and hazelnut salad say to make again when the pomegranates are in season.
  • I think I’m going to hold onto the leeks for one week, in case we get potatoes next week (and make potato-leek soup). Or chard (and try to adapt the wheat berries & swiss chard with pomegranate molasses from Jerusalem).

Love,

Sarah

Boxing Day, October 14

planorcanLeave a comment
It is not that the squash is that small. It is that the apples are that big.

Dear John,

We returned to the apple orchard on Monday. It’s the first time this year, and the first to this orchard. But we missed 2020, because, well, 2020. I’ve been finishing off the last of our 2019 apple butter and apple sauce in anticipation of new jars being put up. That might have been a mistake

I’m going to pause here to say that, although we did not have the excess of apples obtained from trips to pick many, many apples, in the past couple of years I have extended the trick of my veggie stock back to also include an apple stock bag. When I cut an apple (or pear) in half, I’ll core it with a melon baller. Drop that core in a bag that lives in the freezer. When it’s full, they all get cooked down and I make a jelly or a mostarda or a chutney. I might not have made applesauce or apple butter in two years, but had many successful cannings of apples. So it’s a bit of a surprise that my attempts this week have been disappointing.

First attempt, I was multitasking with the laundry and ended up burning the bottom of the applesauce pot. The bitterness from the burnt flavored everything, so I added sugar and spices and cooked it in the crock pot until it was thick. I think the caramelization process of making apple butter succeeded in muting the badness. And yet, it’s underspiced compared to the 2019 version. I must have been too nervous about already having ruined it?

Second attempt, I decided not to use the pot that I’d failed with the day before. Cooking everything in the crock pot from the start and avoiding burning things. But that is a slow way to get apples to turn to mush and by the time I processed it, the sauce was well on the way to thickening. To be clear, it’s not the flavor of apple butter. But it’s also not the consistency of applesauce.

We’re going to stick with those though. There are more apples, but they can go in tarte tartin, apple crisp, and apple ginger squash soup.

In This Week’s Box

  • Asian Pears
  • Jonagold Apples
  • Banana Peppers
  • Beauregard Sweet Potatoes
  • Broccoli
  • Green Kale
  • Green Romaine Lettuce
  • Green Savoy Cabbage
  • Orange Carrots
  • Robins Koginut Squash

Garden Potential

  • Starfish pepper
  • Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
  • Lombok peppers if we want them
  • Few tomatillos, hopefully
  • Volunbeans for drying
  • Maybe a tomato? Maybe another few weeks. Probably some cherry tomatoes.
  • Dahlias

Still in the Fridge

  • Apples: Gala, Empire, U-pick
  • Bartlett Pears
  • Greens: 1/2 a cabbage, 1/2 bunch collards
  • Herbs: Fennel tops
  • Sungold cherry tomatoes
  • Tomatillos
  • Celery
  • Edamame
  • Green Beans
  • Peppers: Bell, Yummy, Lombok, Starfish
  • Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Spaghetti
  • Sweet onions
  • Garlic
  • Potatoes: Fingerling, Blue
  • Sunchokes

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Pickled cucumber skin
  • Lacto-fermented 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
  • Plain pickled banana peppers
  • Radish kimchi
  • Sunchoke relish
  • Green tomato chutney
  • Sour cherry chutney
  • Blueberry peach jam
  • Apple sauce
  • Apple butter
  • Quince jelly
  • Veggie stock
  • Probably still more uninventoried

What to do with the food

  • Super Side Salad! Use peppers liberally. Add carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, broccoli as you wish.
  • First instinct is to make the carrot top pesto from Scraps, Wilts, and Weeds that I really like. But there’s a salsa verde on the same page that uses pickle juice and the dill pickles are pretty much consumed. Just a cucumber skin, a sprig of dill, and the garlic in brine. Let’s try this recipe to use both the juice and the carrot tops!
  • Simply in Season has a recipe for Sweet Potato salad that would use up our celery and make a dent in the peppers. I’m not sure how excited I am about it, but it’s on page 191 if you want to try.
  • Apple cabbage slaw. I thought I had a recipe saved from years and years ago. I do not see it in my bookmarks. RIP Delicious that was beyond the 1,000 that were exported?
  • Curdito if we feel like we have excess carrots. But don’t use the savoy cabbage for it. Green cabbage.
  • Now that we have broken into soup season, I anticipate the fridge continually having a jar of one leftover or another. (Currently it’s the squash-collards-peanut combo I suggested last week.) I have so many tabs open with soup recipes from threads where people share their go-to faves. It may be time to follow the crowds to Roberto.

~s

Boxing Day, September 16

planorcanLeave a comment
Peppers pale, peppers dark, and peppers bright.

Hi John,

Last week, was not a week when sitting down and considering ingredients actually happened. Instead we learned about iNaturalist (fun for identifying plants/critters AND the data can be used by scientists). We rode our bikes up a long hill, and later whizzed back down. We (yes, both of us) worked on a white paper about open source software licenses. (To be clear, you wrote. I revised.) Food was cooked and consumed, my only prepared food orders were pastries and bagels. It just wasn’t planned.

In The Box

  • Kiwiberries
  • Stanley Plums
  • Celery
  • Green Acorn Squash
  • Green Butterhead Lettuce
  • Mixed Bell Peppers
  • Mixed Cherry Tomatoes
  • Mixed Cornito Peppers
  • Rattlesnake Beans
  • Russian Banana Fingerling Potatoes

What We Ate

  • Spaghetti squash was stuffed with kale stem pesto, cherry tomatoes, and a gluten free white sauce.
  • Carrot cake from Flavor Flours. I tried to make Stella’s cream cheese frosting, but did not read the comments and ended up with soup. I am still baffled that mixing cream and cream cheese could end up with a texture closer to cream than cream cheese. It was just so thin!
  • The failed frosting did turn into a success though. Made a crust with pistachios, oatmeal, brown sugar, and butter. Patted into the bottom of a 8×8 pan and prebaked it. Frosting got blended extra goat cheese and a couple of eggs. Poured it into the crust and baked at 325 for a while. Topping with slices of figs from the garden. I’d probably try the drizzle of honey on top, but it’s already on the sweet side from all the sugar in the frosting.
  • I did a pepper cleanout by making a big pot of pepperonata. Some of it’s been frozen. Some went on a grits bowl. Some has teamed up with sliced delicata squash to top a pizza.
  • Variations of celery salad with chickpeas. My favorite was making a recipe from Six Seasons and adding chickpeas.
  • I wasn’t sure if the rattlesnake beans would be better served as shelled beans or string beans. Started shelling, then decided that was the wrong choice. Ended up roasting them in the oven along with potatoes (and once a hot pepper and chopped tomato). Topped with a soft boiled egg and the pine nut vinaigrette from Six Seasons.
  • Popped the plums on the dehydrator to make our very own prunes. I’m eating them so much quicker this way!

Garden Update

The rosemary’s flowering. And the basils, all going to seed. Peppers feel like they’re just getting going. The volunbeans are spreading everywhere, pulling down any pole they can reach. And, wow, does it feel like they can reach every pole.

I pulled up the cucumber plant one day. A few days later, you turned the compost and tried to rescue some kale volunteers. Placing them where the cucumber was. I was doubtful on Tuesday. But on Thursday, three of them had a sturdy-ish leaf. Wait, water, and see.

I’ve scattered carrot seed (it all fell out of the packet and just adds to the crumbly dust at the bottom of the garden bag). The are sprouts where I tried. Maybe carrot sprouts? Maybe weeds? Who can say when it’s the first two leaves.

Some of our fall beans are already producing, tiny as they are. Alas, the one that was the largest looked extra sad yesterday. We’ll see. Even if we only eat seven of its bright red beans, it’s still a miracle. I only planted three.

The tomatoes are slowing down. It may be time to pull most of them and make a green tomato chutney. Visit the local shop and see what Brassica starts they have for fall. Consider garlic bulbs or shallots or onions. Radishes or beets. We signed up for a smaller CSA share for fall so we shouldn’t be overtaken by the produce. Which means we can plant even more!

~Sarah