sweet peppers

Boxing Day, September 26

planorcanLeave a comment

Dear John,

Between catching Covid and stomach bugs and broader health stuff….it has not been a month for cooking. Naps, yes. Kitchen, ugh, no.

We’ve made some meals that used our produce–tomatoes in blackened shrimp pasta, salads with tomatoes and carrots and peppers, pears and brie. Peppers are in need of dehydrating, because they have not been cooked quickly enough.

Today’s Box

  • Bosc Pears
  • Smokehouse Apples
  • Leeks
  • Mixed Yummy Peppers
  • Red Kale
  • Red Leaf Lettuce
  • Stripetti Squash

Things in the fridge

  • Watermelon
  • Plums
  • Asian pears
  • Lemongrass
  • Celery
  • Greens: Cabbage, chard, lettuce
  • Squash: Acorn, white acorn, Robins Koginut

In the Garden

  • Habaneros, jalapenos, fish peppers, other peppers, many peppers
  • Rainbow chard
  • Dried beans
  • Edamame
  • Beets
  • Parsley if we want
  • Rosemary
  • Oregano
  • Dahlias and cosmos and gomphrena for the table

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

We pulled the tomatoes and tomatillos. We have clover seeds ready to go (you’re understandably wary of rye), but haven’t gotten the cover crop sown yet. Hopefully later this week we’ll be well enough to make it over to the garden and get them in the ground.

Meals that sound yummy

  • We have a backup of squash. Last week brought lemongrass and I found two squash–lemongrass soups. This roasted squash lasasgna has been sounding so good and I bet we could totally put half in the freezer (which is looking rather lower on pre-made meals at the moment). I think we treat the stripetti like spaghetti squash and make more baked squash bowls.
  • This week’s box isn’t coming with potatoes, but a potato leek soup sounds pretty good. Maybe I’ll pick up potatoes at the grocery store.
  • Lettuce has been going in side salads. Honestly, that still sounds good. Yummy peppers and the last of the tomatoes to join.
  • One of the meals from the freezer that hit the right spot for me was the chard quiche. If there’s a day with energy to make a crust and a filling, then making a quiche either with chard from the garden or kale sounds delicious. And freezing slices if we manage to make two.

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, June [JULY] 19

planorcanLeave a comment
Missing: green peppers and cabbage that were forgotten in the backpack. (Which is one step better than the bread forgotten at the pick-up site. Memory is not our strong suit these days.)

Hi John,

The predicted contents for today’s CSA included corn, so I was all excited for the annual eating of Half Baked Harvest’s Grilled Corn and Basil Salad (with Blueberries). Then today’s email arrived and instead of corn we’re getting green bell peppers. Womp womp.

Maybe we’ll have stuffed bell peppers soon? (Help! My Apartment Has a Dining Room has a couple of recipes as do many other of the books on the shelf I’m sure.) And maybe we’ll buy corn at the market this week.

Supposedly in Today’s Box

  • Peaches
  • Blueberries
  • Celery
  • Green Bell Peppers
  • Green Kale
  • Green Savoy Cabbage
  • Malabar Spinach

Things I think are in the fridge

  • Blueberries (farmer’s market)
  • Peaches
  • Fennel
  • Cucumber
  • Cranberries
  • Lemon squash
  • Gold zucchini
  • Neighbor’s garden zucchini
  • Greens: Napa Cabbage, Kale
  • Black radishes, Purple Daikon radishes
  • Sweet potato
  • Jerusalem Artichokes

Growing in the Garden

  • Edamame
  • Basil
  • Kale
  • Tomatillas (surely ripening soon?)
  • Tomatoes should start to come in this month
  • Occasional ground cherries
  • Peppers? Soon?
  • Garlic? Perhaps
  • Dahlias and marigolds and nasturtium
  • Rosemary forever

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Lacto-fermented green cherry tomatoes
  • Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
  • Pickled banana peppers with oregano, basil, and black pepper
  • Plain pickled banana peppers
  • Pickled fennel stems with orange
  • Spicy pickled fennel stems
  • Radish kimchi
  • Green tomato chutney
  • Applesauce
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Meals that you can maybe make in the coming days (slash weeks)

  • Noodles with veggies! Peanut noodles + edamame and radish. Noodles with zukes.
  • We’ve somehow managed to stock up on eggs. Crustless quiche to the rescue! But maybe a veggie shakshuka is in order soon. Or maybe we should boil eggs for the snacking.
  • I’m intrigued by the popcorn on a salad idea. More purposes for that corn we’ll buy…
  • Continue with the beans and greens. (But maybe freeze some of the beans we cooked last night.) Also consider bean salad (compare to bean salad recipe in Simply in Season).
  • Cabbage summer slaws
  • A care package came with some maple-rosemary-almonds. Now I want more candied nuts.

Love,

Sarah

Boxing Day, October 7

planorcanLeave a comment
Cabbage is playing peek-a-boo.

Hi John,

This week I curled up with a storybook. Layers of tales, echoing past each other. Before the hardback was returned to the library, I’d downloaded the audio reading.

The next book I picked up is for book club. It is not a book for Sarahs. At least not yet. We discuss it in a week and I’m thinking there’s a good chance I won’t finish it.

That switch, from the story that I want to rehear over and again to the story that I struggle to get in, is so familiar. I think it’s why the beloved stories are treasured so. Their power to imagine a world that I want to experience, to explain a part of existence, to create the actions required.

In This Week’s Box

  • Bartlett Pears
  • Empire Apples
  • All Blue Potatoes
  • Collards
  • Edamame
  • Green Beans
  • Green Cabbage
  • Mixed Yummy Peppers
  • Spaghetti Squash
  • Sungold Cherry Tomatoes

Garden Potential

  • Starfish pepper
  • Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
  • Lombok peppers if we want them
  • Few tomatillos, hopefully
  • Volunbeans
  • Maybe a tomato?
  • Dahlias

Still in the Fridge

  • Apples: Honeycrisp?, Gala
  • Greens: NONE. We ate them all.
  • Herbs: Fennel tops
  • Peppers: Yummy, Lombok, Starfish
  • Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Carnival
  • Sweet onions
  • Garlic
  • Fingerling Potatoes
  • Celery
  • Sunchokes

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Pickled cucumber skins
  • Lacto-fermented & Lacto-fermenting 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 butter
  • Quince jelly
  • Veggie stock
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Garden Update

I pulled up the cucumber a few weeks ago. Then you helped turn the compost and rescued some volunteer greens.

They tried, but they didn’t survive.

We took out a basil and a tomato that were done. Stopped by the store to get some seeds.

And now we have sprouts!

Radishes. Carrots. Spinach. Stir-fry mix of greens.

I’m not sure what will make it. The soup beans we planted mid-summer are dying instead of climbing. I put a second batch of radishes in the center of their tent-poles. Willing the roots down deep.

I’ve been thinking about Rachel Held Evans’ posts on Madeline L’Engle’s reflections on planting onions. L’Engle was talking about planting onions in the spring being an act of faith in the future when she was afraid for our planet. But I’m considering planting them this fall, and the faith it requires that we will come through winter to more growth. (Confession: I did not heed the warnings in the emails and did not reserve shallot bulbs. Maybe we see if we can plant from the garlic the CSA sent last week? Maybe we let it go for this season.)

I’m trying to save seeds, even though we can’t do the isolated crops that are recommended. Beans are obvious, easy. Just don’t eat them all. Cilantro was straightforward. Basil’s proving fiddly to separate, since we don’t have a screen. I’m currently fermenting seeds from our volunteer cherry tomato. Doing the action that faith calls forth.

Faith-filled Meals During Changing Seasons

  • Dessert first! There’s enough pears to make baked pears with balsamic and goat cheese and so we will do that.
  • Our first taste of sungolds this season! So late. Still will use the “stuff my face” method of consumption.
  • The roasted potatoes and green beans with pine nut vinaigrette the other week was good stuff. Let’s consider that for our fall green beans recipe.
  • Edamame as a side
  • I’ve held off on decreeing it soup season. But consider making a sweet potato, peanut, and kale soup only with squash instead of sweet potato and collards instead of kale.
  • Similarly, is it risotto season? Because a squash risotto is always yummy. Can use Six Seasons recipe, but be mindful about the fat if we want to dehydrate for backpacking meals.
  • Cabbage season is starting up again I see. Using the cabbage is low priority, it’ll keep. But consider the braised glass noodles when we do.
  • It might be time to quickle the fennel stems. Though maybe that’s next week’s project. There are still a few fronds to adorn salads.

~s

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, 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

Boxing Day, September 23

planorcanLeave a comment
Welcome to fall. The watermelon have disappeared and the squash have arrived.

So John,

On Monday evening, I told a friend there was a 30% chance we’d end up buying a house by the end of the year. After a tour on Tuesday, I had our odds up to 50%–pretty likely actually. At least until we talked to our agent again today and decided not to write up an offer after all. Even in this market, 18% annual interest is a lot. Especially when it was just bought two years ago.

I’m thankful for working with an expert who tells us not to buy a place that’s overpriced. Or another place that will be awful to try to sell. Or that has more deferred maintenance than the price suggests.

I’m thankful that we have the flexibility to stay. Even if I never expected the housing search to take a year. Or if it did it was because we were losing bids. Not that we weren’t putting in offers. Nevermind winning bids and then failing inspections.

For now, I’m putting our chances of 2021 homebuying at 29%. The listings posted today weren’t inspiring. That’s okay. We’ll keep looking.

In This Week’s Box

  • Honeycrisp Apples
  • Kiwiberries
  • Arugula
  • Butternut Squash
  • Cilantro
  • Fennel
  • Mixed Yummy Peppers
  • Purple Fingerling Potatoes
  • Sweet Onions
  • Habanada Peppers

Garden Potential

  • Starfish pepper
  • Paprika
  • Jalapenos
  • Lombok peppers if we want them
  • Few tomatillos
  • Volunbeans (let ’em dry!)
  • Last of the Roma tomatoes?
  • Vorlon tomato
  • Dahlias

Still in the Fridge

  • Cucumber
  • Figs
  • Greens: Butterhead Lettuce
  • Peppers: Banana
  • Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Acorn
  • Sweet Potatoes
  • Fingerling Potatoes
  • Herbs: None
  • Celery
  • Sunchokes

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Quince jelly
  • Dill pickle
  • Lacto-fermented & Lacto-fermenting green cherry tomatoes
  • Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
  • Pickled red onion
  • Radish kimchi
  • Sunchoke relish
  • Quince jelly
  • Kicky cranapple chutney
  • Peach jam
  • Apple butter
  • Quince jelly
  • Veggie stock
  • Probably still more uninventoried

Starting points

  • I’d forgotten the cucumber. We should use the cucumber! It’s the last cucumber from the garden. Classic cucumber, onion, and yogurt side?
  • Squash + cilantro = we can do the mole verde butternut squash. Or acorn squash. Or Kabocha squash…
  • Other cilantro + tomatillos + jalapeno for another green salsa.
  • Apple fennel salad. Because this fennel cannot last as long as the previous one did.
  • I want something light for the lettuce. Tomato and sweet pepper with a sweet vinaigrette.
  • Whereas, I thin the arugula can go loud. Blue cheese and honeycrisp and roasted sweet potato with a balsamic.

~s

Boxing Day, September 2

planorcanLeave a comment
Confession: The cherry tomato box was half-filled from our garden before the CSA’s topped it off.

Dear John,

It’s been another week. Another food pantry distribution date. Another protest to stand in solidarity.

Another game night. Another book club. Another small group meeting.

Another tour. Another storm. Another meal to feed body and nurture soul.

In This Week’s Box

  • Bartlett Pears
  • Red Seedless Watermelon
  • Artisan Mixed Cherry Tomatoes
  • Cubanelle Peppers
  • Green Beans
  • Green Kale
  • Jalapeno Peppers
  • Mixed Sweet Peppers
  • Orange Carrots
  • Yellow Tomatoes

Garden Potential

  • Ground cherry
  • Few tomatillos
  • Volunbeans
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Roma tomatoes (The Amish paste plant is doing better than the San Marazano)
  • Sad-ish eggplant
  • Jalapenos as we want them
  • Bell pepper
  • A final cucumber (or two?)

Still in the Fridge

  • Blueberries
  • Figs
  • Canary Melon
  • Green Chard
  • Centercut Squash
  • Kohlrabi
  • Herbs: Fennel
  • Onions: white and red
  • Celery
  • Sunchokes
  • Spaghetti squash

Open Preserves

  • Preserved eggplant
  • Dill pickle
  • Lacto-fermenting green cherry tomatoes
  • Pickled red onion
  • Radish kimchi
  • Plenty of others that I just haven’t inventoried

Make something with it all.

  • Red curry with tofu and green beans and cherry tomatoes adapted from Dinner (but online version here)
  • Pickled jalapenos? Just a question of doing it in vinegar or lacto-fermenting them. Maybe some more peperonata with the cubanelles. The batch from last week was delightful on corn mush and on eggs.
  • Carrot greens! Let’s do the carrot top walnut pesto from Scraps, Wilts, and Weeds. (Just because the granita took us forever to use up last time. It was good though.) Carrots themselves are being saved for your birthday cake.
  • Spaghetti with cherry tomatoes for a sauce! Six Seasons has a recipe.
  • Speaking of, do we have enough tomatoes to make a sauce? Do we want to make a sauce? A salsa? (My tomatillo salsa verde last week was too little for the blender, so I’m waiting for more tomatillos than what we have so far.)
  • Gonna roast that eggplant and blend it up. Baba ganoush style? Hard to be too sad with roasted eggplant.
  • Some of the centercut squash from last week got roasted for tacos. Repeat of something like that? Or roast it with zaatar and serve with hummus?
  • Kale starts feeling like we might be heading toward salad possibilities again. Let’s try cooking some of the dried volun-beans to go with it.
  • I picked three figs from the community tree. Pair them with pears for a tart. It’s that or make a fancy looking cheese tray with some of the pickles to round out the meal.

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