Week 7: A Farm Run and Some Fun

I’m so behind. I had a feeling this would happen sooner or later. I knew I’d start to let the summer get the best of me and I’d start slacking off on my farm run updates. How far behind am I? I’m currently in the car on my way to pick up this week’s farm shares and I haven’t blogged about last week’s shares at all. The horror! The horror!

So here’s what we got:

The lettuce and mesclun mix were easy. We dined on a couple of tasty salads with yogurt ranch dressing that I had zipped up with some bacon salt. (Keep giggling, Di, I did say BACON salt!). Speaking of the vegetarian-friendly bacon-flavored seasoning, I might mention that the Bacon Salt guys are having an anniversary sale, so you might want to check that out.

The broccoli found its way into the noodles I made for Donna’s party last week. It was smaller than a grocery store head of broccoli, but it was tasty indeed and made friends with some of the farmer’s market baby bok choi and the Chinatown Chinese broccoli. If you’re interested in the noodle recipe and you haven’t been keeping up with my blog, be sure to check out the Nikki’s Noodles post from earlier thiis week.

The rainbow chard found its way into a braise with some of the braising mix. Cooked down with some onion, garlic, vegetable stock, and curry powder, the greens softened up as much as they could before I stirred in a couple of packets of curried lentils (Heavens! Prepared food in her kitchen?! Um, yeah!). We gobbled up this fiber rich dish with some naan. Curry-licious.

The flowering cilantro is pretty useless, honestly. I tasted the leaves (few as they were) and flowers and there wasn’t enough flavor in them to bother using it. It was pretty, though. Sigh.

I’ve got plans for the kohlrabi. I need to grab an apple or two and some carrots to make a slaw. I’m thinking of a yogurt based blue cheese dressing for the slaw. Maybe I’ll toss in some grapes. I’ll let you know when it happens.

I keep forgetting I've got raddichio in the refrigerator. Got to get to work on that. Hmm...

Although I have a plethora of recipes for zucchini and squash, I just can’t get myself excited about cooking and eating them. They’re just not registering as sexy to me this year. Don’t know why. I know I’ll be getting more and more zucchini in my shares and some of the plants in my garden are showing little tiny squash, so I’d better get over it and get cooking soon.

The cherries and blueberries are still sitting in the fridge, waiting for inspiration to strike. I think I may dry some in my new food dehydrator. They’ll be great in muffins and scones in the fall.

We downed the eggs in two meals. Half of them were used in the noodles I made earlier this week and the other half were turned into huevos rancheros with the last of my homemade salsa. Mmm….homemade salsa. Time to make more of that. Memo to myself…stop at farm stand for more cilantro.

So, where’s the fun part from the title, Nicole? Ah, the fun. J and I decided to keep heading east after our farm pickup to our favorite North Fork stop for roasted corn: Harbe’s in Mattituck. Have you ever been to this place? It’s like a farm meets a florist meets a fun park. They’ve got lovely produce, delicious roasted corn, tomato and mozzarella sandwiches, pony rides, rabbits, plants galore, a lovely picnic spot, and some wooden play structures for the kiddos. We grabbed a couple of ears of corn, which we shared with the pups. That’s right, we’ve got a couple of corn dogs here.

Note Holden’s superior technique. He’s training Riley. Maybe I’ll be able to convince J to take us back today for more corn dog training. Ah, no wonder I get so lazy in the summer. I’m having way too much fun.