Sixth Share
It is just sweltering. Dustbowl city. get out your maracas. start dancing for rain, everyone! we have been sprinkling as much as we can but there is nothing like a good soaking rain. the crops actually look surprisingly healthy, for the most part. we have had to continue to plant and seed and harvest and weed, of course. I apologize for letting you go a few nights with no description of what's in the box!!!
Let's see. . . . .
Basil. A pesto bunch. Of course you can use it however you want!!
Pesto: Rinse and dry the leaves. Place in a food processor. Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil over the leaves before you begin. Pulsing helps get all the leaves to incorporate. Add a pinch of salt. If you want to freeze it at this point I find this to be a versatile base for later recipes. You can add it to a pasta sauce, toast nuts and add cheese for a pasta, or use it under the skin of a roast chicken, or basted on some striped bass, or for a veggie lasagna, or for chips or pita or crackers. The key to making pestos and salsas and such is to taste and adjust. Lemon juice can be a good touch. Fresh garlic is almost essential - but for the pastas you can just cook the garlic in olive oil, add the cooked pasta, then remove from heat and stir in the pasta, basil puree, toasted pine nuts, walnuts or whatever, and finally the parmigiano and some fresh cracked pepper. One of our excellent roadside stand customers, and a member of the Wrentham Open Space Committee, sent along this nice recipe, which calls for pesto: “Christmas in July” Sugar Snap Peas
New Potatoes. I adore these little rubies. They are Dark Red Norland potatoes. This is a quick little peek into our potato crop. The plants have not matured all of their tubers yet so we are kind of like robbers digging into the earth for these beauties. They are excellent boiled and mashed with a fork and some butter, salt and pepper. Some chopped parsley is a great addition. I should mention that these are new potatoes - their skin has not hardened and they are not for storage. They should be dried and placed in a plastic bag in the fridge (as should just about everything in your share). I am a huge fan of warm potato salads. Variations abound! Be creative. Here is the potato salad recipe I discovered last year: boil whole, clean, new potatoes in salted water. Meanwhile, snap and unzip the sugarsnap peas and slice them in half. Put them in a colander strainer of some sort (preferably all metal and with a handle). Chop up some scallion greens and parsley and juice a lemon. get out some mayo and some leftover cooked bacon if you have some from breakfast. when the taters are fork tender, fork them into your serving bowl, use a fork and knife to cut them into quarters or whatever size you like. Now you can blanch your prepped peas - submerge them in the boiling potato water until bright green. lift them out and throw them into the potato bowl, add the parsley, scallions, bacon bits, salt and pepper. add a few good dollops of mayo. i'm sorry purists - I used Hellman's, but homemade mayo is top notch. mix it up, add the lemon juice. taste for salt and pepper and serve right away. yummy warm potato salad.
Pearl Drop Onions. I have been using them whenever I would use regular onions. We have been loving them thin sliced on burgers and sandwiches. They are really sweet on the grill. I suggest skewers of whole or halved onions and skewers of zucchini chunks to cook on the grill alongside whatever else is cooking. I'd do the separate skewers because the onions should take a little longer. Make sure to at least toss the veggies in some canola oil and salt and pepper before grilling - or use your favorite dressing as a marinade (Newman's olive oil and vinegar?) They are great halved and roasted in the oven. They could be part of a nice medley of roasted vegetables.
Zucchini. When they are still fresh, novel, and valued! Everyone knows that during the peak of the harvest season in Lake Wobegon, at least, car doors and screen porches must be locked or you will for sure end up with a grocery bag full of zuchhini placed inside. I don't really grow tired of zucchini, folks. It is versatile and can be featured on its own or included in lots of other dishes. It is great to throw on the grill - a quick marination in olive oil with salt, pepper and fresh herbs is good. They can be sliced lengthwise and grilled in strips, cubed for a skewer, or sliced for a grill basket. I sliced some fresh pearl onions, diced some zucchini, and sauteed pretty hot with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper to get a little browning and no sogginess. I put that on top of little tortillas, heated in the toaster oven with some slices of Cabot cheddar and scallions. I finished the little creation with chopped cilantro and hot sauce. I did a second round as we ate the first round. We find cooked zucchini adds itself easily to burritos, nachos, an egg scramble, whatever.
Cucumbers. fabulous on a salad. great on a sandwich. I love to make a little bowl of sliced cukes with a tiny spoon each of sugar and salt and several good dashes of seasoned rice wine vinegar tossed with them. the cukes seem to sweat a little of their water to the mix, so after an hour or so the liquid covers them. This is a great quick side to bring to a potluck or put out at a BBQ. Great for kids and adults to snack on. Keep covered in the fridge for a great fresh pickle. Cucumber spears are great for dipping in herb dip or hummus.
Carrots. Crunchy snack. great in a stir fry. Grated carrots are a standard addition to salads and tuna sandwiches and veggie wraps in our kitchen. Ditch those lathed "baby carrots" Take a few minutes to scrub these. Heck, even peel them and chop them into sticks for convenient snacking. Just keep them sealed and don't let them get dehydrated. Carrots and ginger are friends if you feel like cooking or juicing . . .
Sugarsnap peas. Barry's pea recipe, up in the pesto section, is a great one. My brother even added some sliced peas to the burritos he made for us tonight, along with zucchini, summer squash, mushrooms, and our first little eggplants. Delicious. I'm sure no one is having trouble going through the little pint of peas in the share :) This is probably the last week for them. Peas are fading, even faster than usual in this heat. The short, early varieties got untrellised, mowed and turned under yesterday, in fact. Today, our main crop of cucumbers took their place. The green beans are flowering and seem to making it through the leafhopper invasion. Perhaps those are our next leguminous veggie to be in the box. Seeds of soybeans, dry beans, and shelling beans went in the ground today. Pole beans should be in tomorrow. Really, get out the grass skirt, castanets, whatever it takes. We need you all rain dancing!
Lettuce. We hope you are getting to expand your horizons of lettuce varieties through this program. Isn't biodiversity awesome?
Beets. Roast em and put em on that lettuce. beet and avocado is another nice combo for a cold salad. If you're AC is making your kitchen arctic, perhaps you may be inspired to roast a meat with some carrots, new potatoes, beets, and pearl onions in the pan. Maybe in a foil packet on the grill?
I could be forgetting something. The heat has all but melted my brain. A kind customer stopped by the other day with eleven dollars, since I had given her the amount she was to be charged instead of her change at the stand. Good natured people in our community, I say! Please let me know if you are having a hard time finding a good way to eat any items in the share. I consider lunchtime our test kitchen time. Also, there have been two incidents I know of in which an item from the share was missing. We are not a mechanized assembly line, merely humans trying to make sure we have put each item in each box. It may be a good idea to root around in the box you grab, comparing it to the display share. If you find something missing, we probably can give it to you from the stand. Thank you again for returning your boxes! If you aren't sure how to break them down without ripping them, just leave them whole and ask me at the stand.
Thank you for your patience everyone!
Take Care!
Christy and Chris at White Barn Farm