Summer CSA Week 11 and Tomato Recipes

Mollie waiting for the bus today

I know that it is still summer, but to me it feels like fall.
Today changes everything around here.
Mollie is off to school again, Emily left for university tonight and either at the end of this week, or perhaps next, another change.
Maris The Amazing will finish up his stint as my farm intern and I will again be a one woman show.

I like the thought of a bit slower pace, but that won't come for a while yet.
I have the greenhouses to plant for the fall/winter and also winter/spring CSA periods, winter rye to sow, lots of harvesting yet to do, crops to put up for the winter and seeds to harvest and organize for 2013 sales. I'm busy, bet you are too. Seems everybody is.

It's all good and will get done.

For me though the biggest thing is to figure out what I will be doing for the 2013 season.
There will be seed sales, Seedy Saturday to organize, transplant sales, and in all likelihood a smaller year round CSA.

I am imagining I'll be working solo next year, so the downsizing is inevitable. I'm enjoying the thought of a bit slower pace too, and that is my goal next year. The girls laugh when I tell them this. They think I am incapable of it, but I am.

Todays baskets had a definite focus on tomatoes.  Ya-definitely-hoo!
I did get my tomatoes in later than most people I bet, so it is now that they are coming on strong. I'm super happy to see them and I hope you are too.

Also now is pepper time and I didn't put any super hots in the baskets today. Most are sweet, with a few mild hots on the side.

Most veggies in the baskets should be recognizable.  I hope people are happy to see the salad too.  I sure was. It was a tough go getting it to germinate in the heat and dry conditions, but I watered and watered and today's salad is the result.

I am going to throw in a few simple ideas for the tomatoes.
My salad all summer tends to be a tomato one. I cut up my tomatoes in chunks, or halve the cherries.
I tear up some basil, possibly add a bit of onion, dress it with olive oil and vinegar of my choice (a good balsamic if Mollie isn't here), add a bit of sea salt and freshly ground pepper and BINGO!

Mama's tomato salad.

Last night I did this...

I sliced some tomatoes thinly and put them in my cast iron skillet. I tossed on some basil, rosemary, thyme, licorice mint, onion, garlic, sea salt and drizzled a few tablespoons of good olive oil over it all.

I broiled it for about 10 minutes and it was delicious over pasta.

I noticed this recipe on the internet tonight and this will be my next (minor) effort....a simple  tomato jam.
Check out the recipe HERE

4 weeks of summer baskets left!

More Cool Stuff in the Garden

I always enjoy having people come over and visit my garden and take the tasting tour.
It's been fun this year, as always showing people some of the interesting things I'm growing.
There are always some things I take a chance on...rice, cotton, farro, sesame seeds. Who knows if these things will grow?
It's fun to try. I mean for the price of a packet of seeds I amuse myself immensely.
It was particularly fun to show Karen, from The Art of Doing Stuff blog around my garden. Turns out we went to the same high school and all. Could be she's younger than me. Just could be.
She did a blog post about some cool things she enjoyed seeing in my garden-read that HERE!

Here are a few more cool things, and one not so cool at all.....
(Thanks Precious for your great pictures!)

Hairy Balls

Amish Cockscomb

Purple Artichokes

Tinda (rhymes with Linda) squash

West Indian Gherkin

Mouse Melons

Peter peppers

Not cool, not cool! This is the Tomato Horn worm moth

Summer Snowflake Marigold

Our new ultra cool boy-Basil Rathbone

Stupid Hots-Peppers That Is!

I don't know WHAT I WAS THINKING!

I planted so many hot peppers this year.  I mean SO many. 

And they have done so well. 

Pickled chiles, hot peppers paste, hot pepper jelly, hot sauce, dried peppers...oh man.

Die hard hot pepper lovers in my CSA are saying "hold the hots!"

But no matter. 

They are beautiful!

Bulgarian Carrot-not too hot

The stupidest hot I've got-Trinidadian Scorpion

Aji Crystal, Thai Hot, Rooster Spur, Georgia Flame

So pretty, Trinidad Perfume

Red Mushroom

Fatali

Hot Jamaican Yellow

Chapeau de Frades

Naga Morich

It's evil-Butch T

Yellow Ghost-(Maris broke a sweat)

Texas Bird-small and fiery

Need hots? I've got them-lots more varieties too!

Guest Post-Jo's Summer and Stir Fry!

I think my favourite part of the basket in recent weeks has been the head of cabbage.  I grew up in a Slovak family where the smell of boiling cabbage very nearly turned me off it for life.  But a fresh head is a magical thing.  And it's as delicious raw as it is stir fried.  I wouldn't be caught dead boiling any vegetable, quite frankly, knowing that most of the flavour is boiled away, and why on earth would anyone want to boil away flavour?

Never mind the stench of boiling cabbage.

I just stir fried up some of the vegetables in this week's basket, including carrots, garlic, cabbage and beans, and added pine nuts and some other goodies.  I'll include my recipe at the bottom.  It came out delicious!

So the summer holidays are almost over.  I took a few multi-day vacations in late August, one to Algonquin Park on my first ever backcountry hiking experience!  It was fantastic, but this weekend warrior is *STILL* feeling the pain in my knees, a week and a half later.  Alas.  I also experienced what it is like to bring in on your back under your own steam all your food and necessities for the days you are away.  I had done a lot of prep work, and knew enough to bring lightweight things, such as Mr. Noodles, packaged oatmeal and boil-in-the-bag camp food.  So was I ever happy to get back to my fridge full of greens after the excursion!



There is nothing quite like the serenity of Provoking Lake, though, and the still of doing your dishes in the lake and pondering life.  Even if you just only ate Mr. Noodles.

Then this weekend, I decided to do a quick overnight jaunt to check out the community gardens in Detroit, and see the famous "Eastern Market" that I'd heard so much about.  In the last few decades, Detroit's population has dwindled from 2.2 million in its heyday to about 600,000 now.  Huge swaths of the downtown core are abandoned, and the city decided to raze the houses and leave the greenspace intact.  Locals have taken over the land (sometimes illegally, but no one seems to be complaining) to create local community gardens in 'food deserts' -- areas in Detroit where there are no grocery stores (or much of a popluation) around for miles.  A lot of this food is used by community residents, but some is sold at the Market under the "Grown in Detroit" banner.  It's very inspiring.


http://www.detroiteasternmarket.com/

The market itself is mindblowing -- hundreds of stalls, tens of thousands of shoppers and six huge sheds on six blocks of real estate.  My host was a fellow named Greg that I'd connected with on couchsurfing.com, and he gracefully took us down to the market and showed us around.  I'd arrived the day before on his doorstep, gift in hand -- a small container of some of Linda's vegetables.  I know how thrilling it is when friends of mine see the amazingness that is heirloom vegetables, and I thought it would be a nice gift for a vegetarian.  Sure enough, he opened it up and smelled the basil and sighed with delight.  He said, "You will see a lot of this sort of thing at the market tomorrow" and I didn't actually believe him.  I rarely see heirloom vegetables in these parts.  In fact, I'd never seen candlelight peppers in my life until I'd seen them in Linda's garden, and I squealed with delight, as they are almost surreally beautiful.

But sure enough, heirlooms were everywhere at the Eastern Market!  It's amazing to see so much diversity in a place like Detroit Michigan... a place everyone rolled their eyes at when I told them I wanted to check out their market.  It's nice to see the resurgence in people who care.  Really nice.
So I'm looking forward to next week : tomato time!  I've ordered some extra tomatoes from Linda, as I'd like to take at canning or freezing some sauce.  The summer that I had my own tomato garden, I only managed to pull one pot of tomato sauce out of it, so hopefully this year, I can get a bit more.

Jo's Veg Stir Fry

ingredients: 

sesame oil
garlic
onions
teriyaki sauce
coriander

green beans
cabbage
carrots
spinach
pine nuts

In a hot skillet, add sesame oil, garlic and onions.  Brown and add spices.  I used about a teaspoon of coriander and about a tablespoon or two of teriyaki sauce

Add chopped carrots and beans and stir fry until they soften a bit.

Add pine nuts

Add chopped cabbage and spinach, and stir fry until they reduce.

Serve on a bed of rice!