PS – The sweet Heavy Table pint glasses can be ordered via the site.
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.
I simply love our new CSA. The thrill of opening the box and finding out what’s inside is something that I have come to enjoy week to week. Of course, this time of year has brought mainly greens – lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, etc. But we also have had zucchini, sugar snap peas and beautiful bunches of basil (yes, technically “green” but more enjoyable than just greens).
I was pleased this week to find in our share some spring turnips. Small, milky white bulbs that are a little spicy when nibbled on raw and turn deliciously sweet when roasted. Admittedly, I didn’t do anything fancy with these little guys, just quartered them and tossed them into a foil packet alongside my usual new potatoes and yellow onion for the grill, but the result was perfect. We even sauteed their greens, which turned out to be tasty but a bit bitter for my liking. I preferred them once I paired the sweetness of the onion with the bitter greens.
I never tire of a simple lettuce salad with a little lemon or balsamic vinegar and olive oil, but I am running out of ideas for the kale and chard. I still love to find them in my share for the week, but I’m really looking forward to the veggies that we’ll receive in the height of summer.
Okay, so having a CSA isn’t exactly “gearing up for veggies” but there is something I haven’t yet shared. We have a garden, too. At the end of May, we planted a garden with some friends in their yard. This was a first for both couples, so we decided to go in together.
Small plants of tomatoes, squash, cabbage, brussel sprouts, watermelon, peppers, cucumbers went into the ground, testing my patience for when we could reap the benefits. With the traveling I’ve been doing, I haven’t been over to visit it in a bit, but when I did a couple weeks ago, they were growing strong (except for a sad little cucumber plant that didn’t make it).
Needless to say, once our CSA peaks and the garden starts producing, we will be up to our ears in veggies. I can’t wait to pickle, jam, can and cook it all!
Last week’s CSA share was another lush assortment of greens – spinach, swiss chard, lettuce – as well as a zucchini, sugar snap peas and broccoli. A beautiful share it was, but unfortunately I do not have a photo to share. (I know I took one, but as I write this I’m on the Oregon coast and can’t seem to find it).
I did make several great meals with my share, but I am most interested to talk about the swiss chard.
The previous week, I loved my kale so much that I was very excited to try a quick sautee of the chard to serve with another pork dish. I had consulted my sister, a chard enthusiast, and she confirmed her love for the greens sauteed in olive oil and garlic with a light sprucing of red pepper flakes and lemon juice. But, to me…the leaves were just too bitter.
I had made a swiss chard gratin in the winter, chard greens and stems in a creamy sauce with gruyere, that was fantastically good. But with my remaining chard, I wanted to make something lighter than the previous deliciously, heavy dish. After another consultation with my sister, we decided I should go back to my staple…and create a meal a creamy egg dish.
The result was, perhaps, the best omelet I’ve ever eaten. I started by caramelizing a quarter of an onion and then adding the chard leaves to wilt. In another pan, I crisped up two slices of bacon that had been cut into small pieces. These pieces were added to the onion and chard to await the filling on my omelet.
The omelet was cooked until the top was just barely set and then the filling added, as well as feta crumbles. The creamy eggs, salty bacon, and sweet onions were a perfect balance for the bitter greens. And the feta…well, everything tastes better with feta.
Last week marked the beginning of our CSA share season. This is our first time doing a CSA and we’ve heard that you get a large amount of veggies for two people, so we decided to share with another couple. I didn’t get a good photo of our share last week, so I’ll just list out the contents: lettuce, snap peas, broccoli, spinach, kale, green onions, arugula, basil.
As you can imagine, this bunch allowed me to make several meals with the veggies. Some were a hit and others need a little more work. And some veggies never made it into a meal (the snap peas were just crunched as a yummy snack.)
In addition to the couple meals below, we also made pesto to toss in pasta, a broccoli pasta (total flop) and several salads. I had a couple lunches of my increasingly favorite salad – arugula in a lemony vinaigrette. We also had a great salad of lettuce, cannelini beans, red onion, and kalamata olives. This was served for dinner with some stinky cheese and homemade baguette, this was one of the favorite meals of the week.
The best meal of the week, however, was the pork chop. I started with olive oil and chopped garlic in a skillet and sauteed the kale for a few minutes. I removed that from the skillet, then added some cannelini beans. Both the kale and beans were finished with a squirt of lemon juice and served with a grilled, juicy pork chop. The flavor combination was fantastic – salty pork, sweet beans and earthy, rich greens. I will definitely be making that dish again!
As for the sandwich – all I can say is that my eyes were bigger than my stomach. But I had a fresh baguette and I was starving…so please don’t judge me by the size of my sandwich.
