Camacho Watcho

This summer has been a complete whirlwind. I honestly don’t know where the time has gone. In particular, the last month has gone by really fast. I recall a trip up north to a friend’s cabin recently, but beyond that I am at a loss to account for most of my weekends.

The one thing that I do recall from this summer is an abundance of vegetables. We started the summer off slowly, splitting a CSA share with another couple that resulted in just the right amount of produce to keep me cooking healthy fresh meals at home without being overwhelmed. In fact, there was a couple weeks when I lived off this salad - I can’t get enough of it! Maybe I should whip up another batch today…

Then the garden started producing – we certainly have gotten some nice cucumbers and tomatoes. I missed the first harvest (where the cucumbers were much straighter – next year, we’ll need to use a cage), but was home to catch the second. There are a ton more tomatoes on the vine right now too and we also have a few green peppers, eggplant, watermelon, brussel sprouts and cabbage on the way. All in all – the garden has been a success!

Right now I am up to my ears in veggies, as the couple who we share our CSA with is out of town for two weeks. Pictured is the full share we got last week. I’ve managed to use about half of it and I’m due to pick up another full share on Thursday. Whew!

But having a CSA has been fantastic! I’ve rediscovered how much I love beets! Roasting them and tossing them in a salad with toasted walnuts, cheese (blue, goat or feta…whatever I have on hand) and balsamic vinaigrette is my favorite way to eat them. I adore, let me repeat ADORE, the sungold cherry tomatoes that we’ve received in the last four CSA deliveries. I eat them like candy – so sweet and tasty!

I still struggle with using my chard. In fact, I have a bunch right now that I need to do use up. Perhaps I’ll have to do a repeat of the best omelet of all time! And a surprise to me is how indifferent I am to yellow squash. Since I like zucchini so much I would think that I would also like the yellow variety, but it really doesn’t hold my fancy. I’ll have to research some recipes to see if I can fix that.

Also on the subject of veggies, last weekend I spent time with Tammy Wong of Rainbow Chinese. I tagged along as she toured the farmers market with a few of her Facebook fans and then spent time in the kitchen with her as she created a few recipes from the veggies at the market. Talk about another addiction – the Salt and Peppers recipe is so simple and ridiculously good.

As if that wasn’t enough, I spent the better part of day yesterday pickling and canning – cucumbers (spicy, dill and caraway) and peppers (jalapenos and banana peppers). I’m really not sure why I felt possessed to do this, but it was fun…really! I have a few more jalapenos that are begging for me to try my hand at making jalapeno jelly…but I’ll leave that for another day.

Tags: CSA, farmers market, Food, vegetables

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 9:07 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.