chard

Boxing Day, September 30

planorcanLeave a comment
I wasn’t expecting garlic and picked some at the store before I got the CSA. On the one hand, whups. On the other hard, it’s not like we won’t use garlic.

Dear John,

It’s been a busy week of writing for both of us as we usher papers out the door. Reading an evergrowing stack in the search for the right citation. Banging angrily on keyboards. Sighing heavily. Sending off to colleagues when the words are as good as they’re going to get that day. Fitzing with formatting like a student trying to match a teachers’ page requirements. Neither of us are getting graded, but the spirit remains more or less the same.

My paper’s back to the editor’s inbox. You’re about to begin the process for publishing yours. Weekend’s coming early today, and I am so ready.

In This Week’s Box

  • Gala Apples
  • Kiwiberries
  • Carnival Squash
  • French Breakfast Radishes
  • Frisee
  • Green Mustard
  • Mixed Yummy Peppers
  • Rainbow Chard
  • Yukon Gold Potatoes
  • White Garlic

Garden Potential

  • Starfish pepper
  • Paprika
  • Jalapenos
  • Lombok peppers if we want them
  • Few tomatillos, hopefully
  • Volunbeans
  • Maybe a tomato?
  • Dahlias

Still in the Fridge

  • Apples: Honeycrisp
  • Greens: Arugula
  • Herbs: Cilantro, Fennel tops,
  • Peppers: Yummy, Habanada, Paprika, Red Jalapenos
  • Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Butternut
  • Sweet onions
  • Fingerling Potatoes
  • Celery
  • Sunchokes

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Pickled cucumber skins
  • Lacto-fermented & Lacto-fermenting green cherry tomatoes
  • Lacto-fermented blueberry 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
  • Peach jam
  • Apple butter
  • Apple sauce
  • Quince jelly
  • Strawberry freezer jam from your mom
  • Veggie stock
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Comfort Food for Mindful Meals

  • The writing took up all the time, which meant I never made the mole verde squash last week. Hopefully tonight!
  • So many greens this week! Mustard greens make me hope for palak paneer or saag feta or chana saag. Frisee for salads, with radish to emphasize the kick.
  • We’ll see how the weather plays. But it may be time to start soup season. Squash Apple Ginger soup from Simply in Season, perhaps?
  • Chard garlic spaghetti from Six Seasons until we choose something else to do with it.

And a few more plans

  • I think I want to try drying paprika and grinding it to a powder. Fingers crossed!
  • Let’s roast the jalapenos and combine with the habanadas for a brine mash ferment. It’ll be another experiment.

~s

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