Produce Overload: Week 9 CSA Pickup and Green Market Shopping

We can hardly get the refrigerator door shut this week. J and I have been very busy in the kitchen after a green market shopping spree earlier this week and yesterday's CSA pickup. I can't believe we've been picking our our shares for nine weeks now. Looking back, I realize that (not counting cherries and citrus products) I've purchased less than a shopping bag full of produce from the supermarket since late May - almost everything has come from the farm share or a local green market.

What were we up to this week? J and I headed into Manhattan on Wednesday to shop at the Union Square green market, grab some goodies from Chinatown, and meet some friends from work for good company and libations. We stocked the car with a cooler, a cooler bag, and several canvas shopping bags and headed out to take advantage of all of the amazing produce in season this time of year.

I was determined to find a real, honest-to-goodness, locally grown tomato. Yeah, I've gotten some small ones from my own plants, but some local farm had to have an early tomato or two for sale this week, right? Most of the tomatoes we found were hot house tomatoes. J and I were being obnoxious (well, it was mostly me being obnoxious) and stuck to our guns, holding out for the real deal. They were hard to find, but I came home with three funky lumpy but deliciously ripe tomatoes. Mmm...tomatoes...it's difficult to believe I'll be sick of them by this time next month. Until then, I am going to savor every bite.

The first of the three lumpy beauties found its way into a delicious tomato, mozzarella, and pesto sandwich on a fabulous baguette. Tomato sandwiches will become my daily lunch within the next couple of weeks, when I'm pulling the tomato right off the vine and slicing it, still warm from the sun, before wedging it into one of my homemade rolls. Oh my, I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

At the green market we also scooped up some fresh onions (both sweet yellow and red), leeks, dandelion greens (regular and red), escarole, cilantro, baby bok choi, some amazing scallions (two feet long), two more giant bunches of basil (can't resist its scent), a couple of kinds of bread, and some zucchini blossoms.



Aren't they pretty? They're incredibly delicate and were already getting soft by the time we got home. I battered them (I stuffed a few with some fresh mozzarella first) and lightly fried them for a crispy breakfast. I'm going to have to harvest some of my garden's blossoms to practice and perfect my recipe. They are tasty.


We ran down to Chinatown to get some noodles and a couple of cooking tools (including a new tortilla press - don't ask) and some produce one cannot get at the green market or farm stands on the North Fork. We needed some Chinese broccoli and other greens. We found even smaller baby bok choi - perfect for cooking (and eating) whole.

Fast forward to our Saturday CSA pickup and our goodies for this week:

Within seconds of snapping this photo, my wheels were spinning and I had plans for a lot of this produce.

The romaine would make lovely little lettuce cups for a spicy veggie meat stir fry during the week. The kohlrabi would add a tasty crunch to said stir fry.

The corn would be (part of - okay most of) dinner that very night (the ears were quite small - look!)
To give you a sense of perspective, the little ears in the front row were about 4 inches long. Note that there are only eight ears pictured here because we found some caterpillar friends in two of the ears (ah, the joys of organic produce!).

The kale would probably find its way into some quesadillas after being cooked down with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes.

The basil was a beautiful purple basil, which I processed into a tasty basil-parsley pesto (right after I processed the two big bunches of basil from the green market into a couple of pints of pesto). This was the pesto on our tomato-mozzarella sandwiches. The rest of the pesto found its way into our freezer.

The cucumbers will find their way into a salad with the remaining tomatoes and some of the fresh red onion. Maybe I'll toss in some of the cilantro. Most of the cilantro and fresh onions were blitzed up into a big batch of salsa this morning. I can't wait to make salsa with fresh tomatoes.

Zucchini...zucchini...zucchini...so much zucchini and my plants have just started producing fruit. The big zucchini we picked up this week will probably find itself either pickled with lots of sweet onion and jalapeno pepper or on top of a pizza with some caramelized onion and roasted garlic and fresh parsley. Said pizza might even have a couple gorgeous free-range eggs perched on top amidst freshly shaven shards of Parmesan cheese. Okay, I'm feeling it. Pizza sounds good!

The cherries and blueberries from the fruit share will find their way into my food dehydrator. I'm preparing for those winter Sunday mornings when J wakes up craving something sweet and I'm craving some extra heat from the oven. Scones and muffins will warm his belly and the oven will warm my toes.

I forgot to mention that J scooped up twelve pounds of cherries this week. (J has a cherry problem.) A couple of pounds found their way into a big bottle of Cherry Bounce and I need to thank Merideth for this fun recipe. In a gallon container (I used an old growler that once held some stout) combine a couple of quarts of cherries with three cups of sugar (yeah, that's a lot) and a fifth of whiskey (not the expensive stuff - not necessary with all of that sugar). Every day for ten days, give the container a bounce to incorporate some of the sugar. Store the bottle away for four months and try not to obsess about it. I can't wait for this sweet cherry and whiskey liquor to be ready to mix cocktails. J loves Whiskey Sours, so how can we go wrong with a Bouncy Sour? I'm dreaming of a Bouncy boozy cherry cola. How about a blend of Bounce with some chocolate soda for a Black Forest Bounce? Oh yeah, this is going to be some good stuff in a few months.

The yellow plums were tiny and deliciously sweet-tart. I cooked them down with some simple syrup until they were soft then stirred in a generous glug of Triple Sec before chilling it down to make sorbet. This will hit the ice cream maker tomorrow morning. I know it's going to be fabulous because J and I attacked the bowl of the food processor after I poured out the sorbet mix. It's sweet and tart and orangy (from the Triple Sec) and wonderfully sunshiny.

We took the pups for an extended ride after our CSA pickup (check out Holdy in his Doggles).


Our destination? Harbe's Family Farm for another bag of their sweet corn. We ate six ears last week and they were amazingly sweet. Since we had ten ears of organic corn from our CSA already, the bag of a dozen ears from Harbe's was destined to be cut off the cob and frozen for all sorts of dreamy winter recipes - corn chowder, a lovely maque choux to serve along side my favorite Malaysian-style potato curry, corn and black bean quesadillas with black bean soup. I don't want to rush away my summer, but these winter dishes sound good. At least I have something to look forward to during the dark, cold months of winter. Maybe we'll get another big storm and a snow day (or two) to give me some quality cooking time! Before any of that can happen, though, the corn had to be de-cobbed.

Twelve ears of de-cobbing later, I had three lovely zip top bags of sweet corn nestled in my freezer, dreaming of blizzards and snow days and chowder.

Speaking of chowder, my corn cobs did not go to waste. I boiled them up with some water and salt and pepper and made a couple of quarts of homemade corn stock for a big pot of corn chowder. The stock is nestled into my freezer, next to the corn. I'm planning on using my own home grown potatoes in that recipe. But that's another blog entry for a much much later date. I've got a refrigerator full of summer goodness to cook through before the door pops off!

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.

Green Day

It had been a while since we had a nice sunny and dry day to get outside. Noticing all of the weeds in my garden while looking out the window over my morning cup of decaf (sad, I know, but I'm far too hyper without fueling the fire), I decided to head outside and survey the garden. J set up the lawn chairs and tethered out the pups and settled in to read (yes, J does read - books even!) while I puttered around the tangle of leaves and stalks and shoots.

The peas have finally gotten big and firm and plump like the peas I've been seeing in the farmers' markets. They are so adorable hanging from their thin, fragile-looking vines. I harvested about three cups of fat pods and started contemplating dinner.


Next to the pea plants are the string bean plants. I've never grown string beans before and I was giddy when I found lots of big beautiful beans hanging from their vines like icicles off of the house in winter. I greedily picked the biggest and fattest beans, leaving the little thin beauties to plump up some more. I got two big hand fulls (in my little hands - or one big hand full in J's meaty mitts).


The peas, green beans, and a bag of local spinach in my refrigerator were all calling out to me to be cooked - that night - and the zucchini wouldn't shut up either. A very green meal was to be the order of the day.

The menu:

Fettuccine Pesto (with spinach and pistachio - more green - pesto and freshly shelled peas)

Sauteed Green Beans (simply blanched then sauteed in olive oil until they just began to brown and get nutty)

Smothered Zucchini (cooked down with long strands of onion until incredibly soft and just a bit of sweet caramelized brown appearing on the unctious coins of squash)

I contemplated making a salad, but I thought it would be green overkill and just too much food. That, and the leaves were tipped with red, spoiling my fabulous green color scheme.

I had never made a spinach pesto before and found it creamier than a basil pesto. Maybe the leaves had more moisture which emulsified with the oil. I had also never used pistachios in a pesto. We had a big bag of salt and pepper pistachios sitting on the counter and I couldn't help but wonder how they would taste in a pesto. So, fifteen minutes later (with some sore fingertips), I had shelled a large bowl of pistachios to blend up with my big bag of L.I. spinach, some garlic, a tasty chunk of Parmesan cheese, and my favorite olive oil. We had enough pesto for dinner and a pint to freeze for later.

I knew people when I was a kid who wouldn't touch any green food on their plates at all. I wonder how they would have reacted to a plate of nothing but green food?