CSA 2011: Week 16

Every week, I feel like I'm trying to catch up.  With the hurricane coming, we really stepped it up and tried to use as many perishables as possible from the refrigerator.  (I'll keep the list to vegetables here.)  We started out with pita pizzas, using heirloom tomato, yellow squash, red bell pepper, and eggplant.  Those last 3 were roasted in the oven to make sure they would be cooked when they topped the pizzas.  We had leftovers of the roasted vegetable mix, so we used that in a "hurricane pasta."  I also threw in some cherry tomatoes and sliced garlic, plus basil, oregano, and chives from my herb garden, which was inside for shelter during the storm.  I made White Beans & Cabbage (and onion and potato) at least twice, and I still have so much shredded cabbage.  I don't even know what to do with it.  That recipe has to be the one of the cheapest meals one can make.  Anyway, when we still had power on Sunday morning, I threw together a Swiss chard & onion frittata, with some sliced potato thrown in there for a little more variety.  (I froze the chopped chard stems - they remind me of celery.)  Later that night, wanting to use up a block of Gruyere, we decided to make the Summer Squash Gratin, consisting of zucchini and potatoes tossed with the cheese and a pesto of sorts made from parsley, oregano, and of course garlic.  For a work-at-home lunch (the power's out at our office because of the storm) I steamed some green beans (or something like them) from Nonna's garden, tossed them with a clove of garlic, a splash of olive oil, and a generous pour of balsamic, a simple preparation that my Nonna always makes.  (Later my mom told me it didn't taste the same because Nonna uses red wine vinegar, which I will try next time.)  Since I'm working from home again today, I threw together some ratatouille - the delicious smell of eggplant, zucchini, yellow bell pepper, tomatoes, onions, garlic, rosemary and thyme roasting together in the oven was a welcome preview of the delicious lunch I knew I'd have.

This week, Haley brought a friend to the farm to help us out since mom was taking Deanna to the airport to move to Italy(!!!) for the year.  We sent her friend home with a vase full of sunflowers and a delicious watermelon.  

Our PYO this week was crazy!  We skipped basil, raspberries/blackberries, ground cherries, and okra.  We made up for it with tons of sunflowers.  I managed to find a jalapeno bush in the ridiculous and unorganized mess of a hot pepper field and picked 10 peppers off of it.

 Beets are for mom.

 We split the garlic.

 I managed to find 6 red peppers - I think they're called fryer peppers.  They're longer than bell peppers, and pointy.

 We split the shallots.

We split the zucchini.  We each got 1 regular dark green one and 1 bright yellow golden one.

 Tasty heirlooms... I waited and waited so I could get some firmer and less squishy ones.

 I think these were serranos.  I like those!

 

 I took 2 dark purple ones and two bright purple ones.  One dark purple one went to Grandma.

 Like I said... 4 watermelons.  2 we think are orange, which one of the ones we got last week was.  The other 2 we are pretty sure are yellow.  It's pretty neat.  We gave one (yellow I think) to Haley's friend and I took one (orange) home.

Tomatoes are always good to have around and they are fortunately a bit firmer than the heirlooms so it's OK when you're still trying to use up last week's.