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.
Last week went remarkably according to plan. Black Futsu was stuffed with artisan (gluten free) bread cubes, Gruyère, Emmenthal, four strips of bacon, thyme, garlic, pepper, nutmeg, cream. It really was, oh so good. A couple of days later Kabocha with wild rice, mushrooms, cranberries, carrots, celery, shallots, raisins, rosemary, oregano, thyme. Still delicious, if not quite as decadent feeling.
Cabbage was shredded with carrots, apple ginger dressing, and the seeds for the squash that was on the table. Later more was shredded, doused with garlic-lemon-anchovy dressing, topped with toasted hazelnuts and sourdough croutons (for those who could partake).
Those who would miss turkey, missed the turkey. Those who are mostly vegetarian, surely didn’t. Except, it would be nice to have the carcass to make broth for all the soups of the season. Ah well, that’s what the veggie stock bag is for.
Leek and Potato soup! More with Less has a recipe as does Good Food Cook Book. Combine those for fun.
We have radishes. With greens! Carrots. With greens! Arugula! And, of course, cabbage. Let’s have fun with the greens that won’t last before settling into the months of cabbage and storage greens. One more batch of carrot top pesto. Salads with arugula and pear and blue cheese. Or arugula with roasted beets and goat cheese. Breakfast of roasted potatoes, fried eggs, and sauteed radish greens.
I’m proud we finished the last cabbage before this one arrived. (Barely.) We did cabbage and butter pasta this weekend. May be time for okonomiyaki. Or the Polish Potato Casserole of my childhood.
We have some left over stuffings that’ll go in the squash. Make the Thanskgiving cooking last.
But, let’s work on the cranberries. I think we have ~15 cups in the refrigerator right now. (To be far, about 10 came today.) We might have to candy some or string them with popcorn. Until then, more sauce? Newtons? Make cranberry curd and freeze it? Cranapple pie?
Twice as many cranberries as last week. We’re totally making cranberry curd soon.
Happy Thanksgiving John,
We took our Covid tests this morning, in anticipation of out of state visitors arriving this afternoon. Not quite as many as we planned for. Guess that means more leftovers.
We’re skipping the turkey in favor of a pumpkin, erm, squash stuffed with delciousness. Cranberry sauce. Cranberry relish. Cranberry relish variation two. Maybe just one pie tomorrow and another on Friday or Saturday?
I can eat fat now! Which includes coconut. We can make a pumpkin curry. Use red curry paste! Toss in tofu? Or mushrooms? Or cabbage? Peanuts? Cashews? The mystery peppers we gleaned from the compost pile???
The onions are huge. I’m tempted to make french onion soup. Need to remember what the vegetarian version that I liked was. Mushroom broth?
Avgolemono soup sounds good and meets the various dietary preferences we’re hosting this week. Might be worth buying greens to be able to make it. (So weird to be planning to buy produce!)
Something potatoes. Roasted potatoes as side dish? Potato salad? Mashed potatoes for the Thanksgiving table?
Need to use the fennel. Maybe roasted with apples? And beet. *seareches* Oh! Roasted with potatoes! That’ll do. Perhaps even do for tomorrow.
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.
Beet greens blending with dandelion and kale. But the squash stands out!
Dear John,
The radishes and turnips we planted have sprouted–we should put in more the next time we go to the garden. One of the edamame plants has emerged, the others I’ll assume were eaten by birds. Beans are starting to dry on the vine. The kale that we’ve been eating all season was getting covered in enough bugs that I just harvested it all. The new greens are sprouting. The chard seeds have been put in the ground. They’re spikier than I would’ve guessed! The tomatillos won’t last much longer. The tomatoes, might hold out a bit more. The peppers are dwarfed by the dahlia and the marigold. I cut back the flowers, but not sure it’s doing the peppers much good. I put some cilantro seeds in the ground. Wondering if we’ll eat any this fall, if it will be a spring surprise, or if it will sprout at all.
Little miracles all of them. Larger miracles all of us. And yet still, so incredibly small.
Kale + apple + red pepper from the garden + beet yogurt + chickpea croutons
I looked back at last winter and fall for other ideas of how to use squash with minimal fat. Really, soup is where it’s at, because the roasting wants the oil. Apple, squash, ginger soup from Simply in Season is a traditional easing in to soup season. Tomato butternut bisque (less tempting when I won’t eat grilled cheese). There’s risotto. AKA more rice porridge for me.
Was also reminded of the beet and pear salad with mustard vinaigrette. I think we’ll be out of greens before we’re through with salad plans this week.
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
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.
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?
From the box: Broccoli and Bok Choy. Lettuce and asparagus.
Dear John,
The past month has brought lots of heartburn and plenty of fatigue. Meal planning has been sparse at best, partly because it’s hard to know what I’m going to be up to eating.
I think we went three weeks between garden visits at one point? The radishes came! The spinach bolted! The cilantro is off to seed! The mixed stirfry greens have filled many grocery bags with their leaves already! The peas didn’t take off, but the nasturtium are looking pretty leafy. The dahlia that we neglected to dig up last fall has already started blooming.
We bought starts for peppers and tomatoes and tomatillos and ground cherries and herbs. They’re in the ground in the garden and in pots at the house. The sunchokes are in giant pots and earlier today I thought I saw the barest beginnings of a sprout. (The potato that had sprouted went mouldy before we got it in a pot. It is in the compost instead.)
At the house, the lead service line is finally replaced. Without having done any soil testing of our yard, I don’t want to plant edibles there. Flowers sound lovely. A couple more dahlia bulbs. Seed bomb from a friend’s CSA. Extra zinnias and nasturtium. Why not? We can see what wins out in the rocky, bricky, soil + weeds underneath the mulch.
In The Most Recent Box
Asparagus
Bok Choy
Broccoli
Head Lettuce
Still in the Fridge
Strawberries (farmer’s market)
Cranberries
Greens: Kale
Alliums: Green Garlic, Garlic Scapes, White Scallions, Red Scallions
Black radishes, Purple Daikon radishes, Rainbow radishes
Turnips
Potatoes: Sweet
Jerusalem Artichokes
Growing in the Garden
Radishes
Stirfry greens
Nasturtium leaves (as we thin the plants)
Open Preserves
Preserved eggplant
Dill pickle juice
Lacto-fermented green cherry tomatoes
Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
Pickled banana peppers with oregano, basil, and black pepper
Meals that use the greens when heartburn makes things tricky
Still trying to eat salads. This week was greens + potatoes + hard boiled eggs + radishes or turnips + parm + mustard vinaigrette. Also arugula or other greens + strawberries + turnips + chevre + almonds + rosemary infusing olive oil. (It’s a new batch and the rosemary flavor isn’t strong yet.)
Omelettes. Scrambled eggs with greens. Breakfast tacos with greens. We haven’t made a quiche yet, so I think that’s coming soon.
Summer rolls (aka salad you can eat with your hands) with peanut butter dipping sauce
Coconut turmeric rice (if coconut milk is available. *sighs at supply chains and decades old planting decisions and climate change and sighs*) with added beans and greens.
Saag aloo, nearly omitting the peppers. Womp womp. But it meant I could sleep at night.
Do not make pizza. Even if it’s kale stem pesto instead of tomato sauce and has plenty of cheese. It took a couple of days to recover an appetite after that single meal.
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!
July 29: Purple peppers and cucumber disguised as a very ripe mango.
Dear John,
This August is our month of summer adventures in the time of covid. Hosting family who it has been far too long since we’ve seen. Backpacking in the hills. Visiting friends with kids who are at ridiculously different life stages than when we last saw them. Attending the burial for the funeral we tried to livestream months ago. Paddling in our local rivers. Looking for parts for bicycles*. Finally, meeting our plot neighbors at the garden.
A couple of weeks back I realized I probably wasn’t going to be comfortable with the plans to eat indoors during our travels**. We talked it over, set a threshold for case rates where we’d push through the discomfort and take the risk. Then, we checked the numbers for the county in question and went on a dehydrating spree. It worked for clearing the leftovers out of the fridge at least. And for keeping us from eating in situations where we don’t feel safe. Somedays it feels like enough.
Off-camera, an extra cantaloupe and bonus bunch of beets bequeathed by the guy picking up his veggies at the same time as me.
In This Week’s Box
Athena Cantaloupe
Nectarines
Orange Seedless Watermelon
Anaheim Peppers
Bicolor Sweet Corn
Fairytale Eggplants
Mixed Heirloom Tomatoes
Purplette Onions
Red Beets
Red Grape Tomatoes
Garden Potential
Ground cherries!
Volunbeans–Yesterday, I harvested the two bean pods I was letting dry. Now we get to cook nine beans and see what we think.
Cherry tomatoes!
Cucumber
Tomatillos, haven’t been picked yet. I think they’re still growing.
Basil! Thai or lime or purple or Italian
Cilantro/Green coriander
Figs from the community tree
In Last Week’s Box
* = In the fridge right now
Athena Cantaloupe
Donut Peaches
Little Baby Flower Watermelon
*Indian Cucumbers
*Islander Pepper
*Italian Parsley
*Red Potatoes
Red Tomatoes
*Sweet Onions
Yellow Straightneck Squash
*Jalapeno Peppers
Still in the Fridge
Blackberries
Peaches
Blueberries
Herbs: Fennel, Dill
Onions: white, red, sweet
Kohlrabi
Sunchokes
Meals for now (and maybe then)
Raw corn salads. Picnics using each of the corn salad recipes in Six Seasons. One with tomatoes and one with walnuts and peppers. Both with all the herbs.
While I’m writing this, you’re working on the letter to friends who will look after our garden plot. I confess, I’m a little jealous of the produce they’ll get. The eggplant might ripen! And the jalapenos! And the paprika! They’re just starting to blush.
But, I know there will be more when we return. And besides, food is better when it’s shared.
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 cucumberside?
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.
Planning Inside The Box 