centercut squash

Boxing Day, August 1

planorcanLeave a comment

Dear John,

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
  • Communal blackberries and figs

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
  • Pickled kale stems
  • Pickled fennel stems
  • Radish kimchi
  • Green tomato chutney
  • Tomatillo salsa
  • Cran-kin kraut
  • Cranapple chutney
  • Watermelon rind dill pickles
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Garden glimpse

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.
  • The potato green bean pesto salad
  • Cinnamon basil and lime cookies.
  • 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.

Love,

Sarah

Boxing Day, August 16

planorcanLeave a comment
Big peaches. Smaller squash.

Hi John,

I had a surprise hospital stay since the last post. You were able to successfully pause the CSA for a week. And the family that came into town to help care for us in the recovery also helped us catch up on produce. I’m doing better, though you’re still going to be on cooking intensive. Plus, there’s new dietary restrictions to follow. If anyone has suggestions for very low fat desserts (beyond fruit or straight up spooning sugar into my mouth), let me know.

Today’s Box

  • Athena Cantaloupe
  • Canary Melon
  • Yellow Peaches
  • Bicolor Sweet Corn
  • Centercut Squash
  • Collards
  • Mixed Yummy Peppers
  • New Red Potatoes

Things I think are in the fridge

  • Fennel fronds
  • Watermelon
  • Cranberries
  • Edamame
  • Shisito peppers
  • Celery
  • Greens: Kale
  • Sweet potato
  • Jerusalem Artichokes

Coming in from the Garden

  • Basil
  • Kale
  • Tomatillos
  • Roma tomatoes
  • Occasional ground cherries
  • More peppers?
  • 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
  • Pickled fennel stems with orange
  • Spicy pickled fennel stems
  • Radish kimchi
  • Green tomato chutney
  • Applesauce
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Low fat ideas to eat the veggies

  • Collards and tofu. Probably with brown rice instead of the quinoa. Maybe with kale instead of the collards.
  • Speaking of collards and kale. Normally we save the stems for pesto. I can’t eat that! So pickled stems? Or dehydrate to powder them? Maybe I’ll like the kale in green smoothies better that way. Can’t hurt to try.
  • Similarly, no basil pesto for me. And since our freezer is full, I guess we’re dehydrating basil for winter use? So wrong, but so right.
  • There’s a recipe in the Indian cookbook for baby potatoes and tomatoes. We don’t have enough tomatoes at home right now, but I bet we will after the next garden visit. Cut most of the ghee though. Sad face.
  • Sweet potato, black bean, and corn hash from the Moosewood that I picked up from the Little Free Library.
  • Though Simply in Season’s stoplight salad could also use the corn and not much oil.
  • The squash wants to be grilled or roasted. (Or sauteed in a pan, but there’s that dang oil popping in.) Perhaps we stick to it as a side? Or in a bowl with some grains and a lime-basil-yogurt dressing? Topping for congee or risotto?
  • Save the melon guts and juice for my muesli fix. Honestly, I’m so glad that I tried Lindsay-Jean Hard’s recipe before I got sick. Oats + chia seeds + no fat yogurt + honey + spices prepped the night or two before, topped with fresh fruit when I’m ready to eat have been a great midnight snack/breakfast. Skipping the nuts and most of the seeds for now. Omitting dried fruit because there’s so much good fresh fruit.
  • Pie has too much fat in the crust. And crisps have the fat in the topping. But I think a fruit cobbler might work. Especially if we use the no-fat milk. So peach cobbler?

Love,

Sarah

Boxing Day, August 25

planorcanLeave a comment
The melons and the squash are the same yellow. The tomatoes and the peppers are the same red.

Hi John,

A week ago, we pulled over at a rest area for our final meal of the vacation. You pulled out the pocket knife to slice an apple. I unburied the last of the cheese and celery from the cooler, found the peanut butter and crackers in the food box. We took in views from the shade and then climbed back in the car for the rest of the drive. Home again, home again. To indoor plumbing, clean clothes, and freshly cooked meals.

But first, the garden…

The garden plot is even better at rooting us in community than I would’ve hoped. We don’t see our actual neighbors all that often, but there’s one family where the dad’s seen me headed to the garden a couple of times. The next time we ran into the mom, she asked about it and we encouraged them to go ahead and sign up for the waitlist.

When we were writing a note with the email address of the garden, I realized we could ask them to look after our plot while we’re gone. We haven’t seen them yet, but the thank you card they left convinces me that they appreciated doing us the favor.

The volun-beans are taking over whatever they can reach. We’re cutting them back to give the peppers and eggplant more light. I really hope that the tripod design for the soup beans works better. Dahlia looks like it’s budding. (But then it looked like it was budding two weeks ago and I don’t see any blooms.) The basil mostly went to flower while we were gone. We’ll have to decide whether we let it go to seed from here or try to cut it back.

In This Week’s Box

  • Canary Melon
  • Red Seedless Watermelon
  • Centercut Squash
  • Green Beans
  • Green Chard
  • Italian Eggplant
  • Lemon Verbena
  • Red Carmen Italian Peppers
  • Red Tomatoes
  • Spaghetti Squash

Garden Potential

  • Ground cherry
  • Few tomatillos
  • Volunbeans
  • Cherry tomatoes for days
  • Roma tomato if we want
  • A couple of lombok hot peppers
  • Jalapeno or three
  • Bell pepper or two
  • Maybe a cuke

Still in the Fridge

  • Blueberries
  • Carmen Pepper
  • Herbs: Fennel
  • Onions: white and red
  • Celery
  • Sunchokes

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Dill pickle
  • Pickled red onion
  • Radish kimchi
  • Plenty of others that I just haven’t inventoried

Considering the options

  • I think I’m feeling cheesy eggplant tomato instead of a roasted eggplant dip. It’s a debate between the eggplant tomato towers from Simply in Season or eggplant parmesan.
  • Though there is ratatouille.
  • Half Baked Harvest’s approach to stuffing spaghetti squash and then baking it was my best success with the vegetable last year. Maybe pop cherry tomatoes in whole and let them pop til they sauce? Maybe cook up the chard to a green sauce?
  • Lemon verbena to tea now. And maybe straight to the dehydrator for tea later.
  • There are some potatoes remaining from when I bought at the store before the CSA delivered more. So green bean potato salad. Maybe something more vinegary this time.
  • We should do something with the peppers before they start to pile up too much. Peperonata from Six Seasons?
  • Before we left, I ended up blending half the watermelon with mint and basil. Poured into yogurt containers and popped in the freezer. Letting them spend a morning thawing, before blending again has been a lovely agua fresca. Bet we’re doing more of that.
  • There are some green cherry tomatoes on the stems I cut back. Time to try lacto-fermentation with the special lids you gave me for my birthday!
  • Smoothie of the moment: bit of coconut milk, splash of oj, handful of frozen cantaloupe (from before we left), and a bit less of frozen papaya. Served with whole blueberries.

~s

Boxing Day, July 15

planorcanLeave a comment
There are six ears of corn hiding in the back.

Hi John,

I’m hoping that the maintenance team is successful with today’s dishwasher repair. I was hoping to be baking a pie right now (unless I was collapsed taking a nap), but with a team of three in the kitchen, I think we’re going to wait another day.

I know today is a minor inconvenience. But it does convince me more that I don’t want to buy a house where we anticipate a kitchen renovation. I’m happy to live with dated cabinets, and changing out hardware is no big deal. Appliances that are halfway through their lifecycle, well, I’d rather get five years out of the dishwasher than have it disposed prematurely. To the extent that we can avoid a remodel though, that’s not a project I’d like to take on.

In This Week’s Box

  • Blackberries
  • Yellow Peaches
  • Asian Cucumbers
  • Bicolor Sweet Corn
  • Carmen Peppers
  • Centercut Squash
  • Green Kale
  • New Red Potatoes
  • Sweet Fresh Onions
  • Sweet Thai Basil

Garden Potential

  • Occasional ground cherry
  • Volunbeans–I thought they were green beans when I picked six on Monday. I went back today and they looked like they might be a shelling bean. At least the ones I picked had more like beans inside and I wouldn’t have thought that it’d been long enough for them to be overgrown.
  • Tomato? You picked three cherry tomatoes from the volunteer yesterday!
  • Basil! Thai or lime or purple or Italian
  • Cilantro

Still in the Fridge

  • Cherries
  • Peaches
  • Blueberries
  • Herbs: Fennel, Dill
  • Greens: Dandelion, Savoy Cabbage, Lacinato Kale
  • Onions: white and red
  • Zucchini
  • Celery
  • Beet
  • Sunchokes
A different type of baby pepper. Think this is the paprika.

Considering the options

  • If we get enough green beans, then I want to make the green bean potato salad (I even bought potatoes before we heard we were getting them in the box in anticipation of this). But if we decide not to treat them as green beans then maybe not.
  • The corn and blueberry salad from Halfbaked Harvest. Need to buy an avocado for this! Soon! Before too many of the corn sugars have converted to starch.
  • Maybe we roast the peppers with a corn and rice stuffing. Or maybe we roast them and freeze.
  • We have the long cucumber and the pickled radish and the seaweed and rice to make gimbap. Especially if we use matchsticks of zucchini instead of carrots. Flavor substitute, not at all. But veggie switcharoo that might really work. Perhaps served with another Korean cucumber side?
  • Or this smashed cucumber salad
  • Or the Chinese Pickled Cucumbers from Woks of Life
  • Or the cucumber and celery salad from Six Seasons that we ate at the picnic on the 4th of July
  • More kale in my morning smoothies, I think. I don’t love the flavor, but it does help us get through the greens. I bought some extra bananas for me to consider while doing this.
  • Kale and chickpeas. What doesn’t get eaten to be dehydrated.
  • Squash and basil and parm. My dad made a side dish back in the day. Panfry/steam the squash. Add the basil near the end. Sprinkle with parm from a jar when serving. I wonder if actual cheese will replicate the taste of memory.

There are several cucumbers, so we can probably do two or three of those cucumber options. Once we can get in the kitchen again, I’m going to cook up the kale and beans in the hopes of clearing out some space. Otherwise, we probably want to focus on dishes that will help us consume the CSA basil early on. All the more reason to grab an avocado from the store to make that corn salad ASAP.

~s