ecoyear

OK, I'm falling down on the job here - no photos of Cure Farm's vegie share, no recipes, no menu plans for the week... The schedule has changed, so we get back late on CSA pickup day, too late to arrange the vegies on the table on my deck and take a photo of them. Instead they get put away in the tiny spots left in one of the two refrigerators I have - I unplugged one in early summer, but it is full now!!

This I can say - my life is still full of food.  Yesterday was the last Wednesday Farmer's Market.  It was hopping and bursting with produce.  Please plan to go on Saturdays and plan to spend!  I don't know what the farmers are going to do with all the extra produce given that fall has been so warm!  Even in my community garden, neglected and dejected as it is, there was basil, parsley, lovage, borage, broccoli, zucchini, corn, tomatoes, green beans and carrots to be had.  I finally picked the single slowly ripening butternut squash, and the aroma from the grapevine was just overwhelming.  I discovered whole new spinach plants (either that or a weed I am completely unfamiliar with) spontaneously sprouting from something I must have scattered 5 months ago - or volunteering from something I let go to seed last fall???

So winter will be here soon enough, but the season for locavores to plan ahead is far from over.

Oh!  Don't miss October peaches - by far the most flavorful of the season so far.  And Honeycrisp apples and red Bartlett pears from First Fruits.  Look for San Marzano tomatoes, they make great sauce - $2 per pound from Cure Farm.  If you haven't had tomatillo salsa, drop by Jay Hill Farm - you don't want to miss it.  There's lots of parsley available, and it is a nice change from basil in pesto.  I am using basil pesto as salad dressing by the way, as well as sandwich condiment.  It's also great a tablespoon or two at a time in soup, so it's a great item to stockpile right now and freeze, either in half-pint jars or in ice cube trays.

Menus this week:

Butternut squash or delicata squash soup - there's a recipe that involves stir-frying three perfectly ripe pears first - I promise to look it up when I have an extra minute.

Leek and potato soup - leeks at the market were availalble from a single vendor - a couple of stalls down from Morton's Orchards.

Corn soup - I am really tired of corn, but the soup freezes well. That will be a good use for the small ears I got from my "late" Silver Queen corn planting, which I abused by hesitating too long to thin the plants - not to mention forgetting (as usual) to fertilize.

Green beans, of course,  Omelets with zucchini from my garden and fresh eggs from Cure Farm.  No the kids won't touch this, but they eat omelets, and our four 4 year old has grown to love what he calls "big egg", which is hard-boiled egg...  On Wednesdays when I am scheduled to get another dozen from Cure Farm, I boil whatever is left from the previous week and keep them for fast food or short order cook item in the door of the fridge.

Pepper casserole with sour cream and melted cheese on top.

Roasted garlic.  We Bee Farms made a brief appearance at the market a couple of weeks ago, as the owner was on sabbatical this year.  I bought their variety bag of garlic, and it has been enormous fun preparing different varieties and discovering the range of tastes available - they have great names too!

My tomato sauce collection is pretty nice, but not up to the goal I had set just yet.  To my surprise, tomatoes continue to appear in my life, now at a reduced price.  The recipe I use most commonly is from Alice Waters and involves a quarter cup of oil and 5 cloves of garlic for each 2 lbs (5 cups) of tomatoes.  She recommends cooking tomatoes for no more than 25-30 minutes. Most of the work is in peeling and seeding them.  I've been playing around with the tomatoes I can find and now have yellow sauce, orange sauce, and red too - I might look for Green Zebras at the market Saturday!!

Another fun thing to do with tomatoes is to freeze them first, which makes them easier to peel, and makes their liquid separate - the result is a very thick tomato sauce.  I might try my hand at ketchup again.  The kids dismissed my last attempt, but my husband liked it...

In summary, this is a great time for the food obsessed!  However, the election is around the corner.  So I say freeze it all for later processing.  Volunteer for the campaign instead!!  There'll be plenty of time to make tomato sauce a month from now.