Veggies veggies veggies

So we've hit that point. I have way more veggies than I can consume, and not enough time to prep them. I actually went out to Whole Foods today to get some sushi so that I'd be able to get some work done and then cook. So after some sushi and a few math problems, I tossed my laundry in the washer and started chopping. Unfortunately I forgot that my laundry was going for about a 1/2 hour, so I'm still awake now.

I made my typical cucumber salad, which is two thinly sliced cucumbers, 1 thinly sliced green onion, some dill, salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of Miracle Whip. If I remember I'll put some Hungarian paprika on before I eat it. I have a mandolin thing that I used for the first time today, and it appears to cut prep time for cucumber salads by about 80%.

My coworker suggested a different kind of cucumber salad, and this one includes cukes, slices of orange, thinly sliced fennel, and olive oil and vinegar. It smells wonderful, and tomorrow! We'll see how it tastes.

Then I made some pesto. I've never made the stuff before, but it made me love my food processor even more. I only used up about a quarter of my basil for a cup of pesto, so much more to be done this weekend. It turns out that if you freeze it, you should omit the cheese and add it in when you're ready to use it.

The farm gave out a recipe for a fennel garlic spread. Unfortunately, when I was reading the ingredients, I thought it said rice wine vinegar, which I have. But no, it was for mirin or rice wine. I read the description of mirin, and decided that the closest thing I had to it (since it was already cooking) was amaretto. Sweet, anyway.

I then cooked some tilapia in the leftover sauce. If the flavor of the tilapia is any indication, the spread should be pretty good. But then, anything in amaretto is pretty good.

I finished the evening off with a tomato, mozzarella, basil salad with olive oil and vinegar. Yay! Food to eat, for a couple days anyway. I still have zucchini, and I'm angling to watch the Iron Chef America zucchini episode one more time before I dive in...

Pesto party!

I have never before possessed so much basil. Kate at The Food Project told me that it was so that I could make and freeze a bunch of pesto. I've never done this, but I suppose this is the week?

Here was our take this week:

• 2 bunches of basil plants (to get some perspective on this, take a normal plastic shopping bag from Stop & Shop and just cram it with basil).
• 1 head of lettuce.
• 8 leaves of chard.
• 1 head of green garlic.
• 3 tomatoes.
• 3 ears of young corn.
• 1 bag of mix n' match. I choose four cucumbers, 4 green onions (with full bulbs), and a big piece of fennel with fronds.
• 2 quarts of pick your own beans.
• Herbs, and I picked some thyme, winter mint, dill, and cilantro.

The farm provided a recipe for a fennel garlic spread that I'm going to have to try, because I have all the stuff for it here. Then I guess there will be some pesto.

I completely slept through dinner after my violin lesson yesterday. This morning I got up early and made one of my standard stirfry stews...a 1/2 pound of steak, one potato, one pepper, one onion, and some worcestershire sauce. Not bad! I ate it all at lunch, and then, I fear, ate BBQ at a company event, and later had some mussels at a little Italian restaurant. I made up for my missed dinner!

hooray!

And today the season really starts to rock.

The share:

• 1 head of lettuce.
• 1/2 bag of mizuna.
• 1 quart of potatoes (they are little so this is like 10 potatoes).
• 1 head of green garlic.
• 10 collard greens.
• 2 red tomatoes.
• 1/2 bag of mix n' match, and I picked up 4 green bell peppers (!), 1 dark purple eggplant (they had light purple too), 1 pat-a-pan squash, and a bunch of carrots.
• 2 Sun Gold cherry tomatoes (just for kicks...).
• 1 pint of beans, including wax beans and flat beans.
• 2 bunches of herbs.
• And I was entitled to 45 stems of flowers that I did not pick, for reasons below.

And that reason would be that they had a cookout today! It is tough to go pick veggies when you are hungry, and pretty near impossible when you can smell bar-b-que. They asked everyone to bring a salad or dessert, so I brought my bean dip. I literally took the plastic wrap off the dip and was pouring in the chips when it was swamped. I wandered away to pick my herbs and beans, and when I got back there wasn't much left. Yay!

There was a huge tray of baked squash, a couple nice green salads, a lovely watermelon mint salad made by people I sat with, great zucchini bread, a nice fruit bread little cupcake thing, chicken, veggie burgers, and tons more. It was really well run and everyone was fun to talk to. I talked to a couple of the interns, and many of them have been on the farm for two or three years. It's about a 7 week internship, and you work a lot. But that's a great summer job, because it gives you a couple weeks to yourself. It sounds like they learn a ton about food and food production.

Part of the event was that they are raising money for a shed and need $12,000 to do it. The tractors need safe storage (which will really help them last longer). The Food Project is a a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit, even though we buy shares. The shares contribute to about 15% of their annual budget. It's worth a visit to their website, as they post tons of fundraising (like they've teamed up with Jack Johnson) and volunteer (picking squash anyone?) opportunities. They also work with other local farms on various events. I spoke with someone on the board, who suggested that I come and volunteer in the fall on Saturdays. I plan do that if math classes don't conflict.

Also, today I was convinced that I should participate in the winter share. I guess you get 40-50 pounds of produce at each of two pickups, full of squash and root veggies and garlic, plus breads and products made by the farm. Last year it was so sad when the share ended, so the winter share should really help. I wish I had a root cellar!

sleepy Sunday

It's remarkable how an entire day can be taken up by food if you let it.

First off, I forgot in my last post that we got our first pint of potatoes last week! That's because Layna hid them, probably hoping I wouldn't find them. But, as I was cleaning up the kitchen today, there they were.

Today I made four things. One was braised pork loin cutlets with thyme-lemon sauce. I used the nice pork cutlets from Chestnut Farms and herbs from The Food Project. I love it when the two farms come together in one skillet. I cooked up some mizuna and chard with the few fava beans I popped out of the shell. (I think I got 2 dozen beans from the bag I picked, not a good pull for the labor I put in but pretty yummy.) I sauteed the whole mess in garlic and the herbed vinegar from the farm, and the vinegar really sweetens the bitter of the greens.

I made up a big wok full of pat-a-pan squash. Iron Chef America had a zucchini challenge today, and they included pat-a-pan. "Notorious for no flavor." Bah on that. I cook it in a wok with garlic, olive oil, and saltnpeppa for a summery treat. I almost want to watch that episode again, though, or write down the recipes, because I guess ya can do a lot more with squash than I've tried. Zucchini wrapped around scallops, zucchini pesto, zucchini casserole, zucchini fritters...just beautiful.

I made pasta and meatballs too. I hope we get more ground meat next time so I don't have to do meatballs out of the bag...and we surely need tomatoes because I did tomatoes out of a can. But I cooked the meatballs with fresh basil, added a can of plain tomatoes and a can of garlic and basil tomatoes, two cloves of garlic, and a bunch of scallions. The secret was adding some crumbled lemon lavender goat cheese to the top. Finally, I figured out what to do with the stuff! Tangy!

carrots

Does anyone else love when Anne of Green Gables smashes her slate on Gilbert Blythe's head? Priceless.

Anyway, apparently there's a carrot shortage this year. I read that with the big flooding rains we had, some of the seeds have washed away. I wonder if that contributes to this carrot shortage.

So Tuesday's share was:

• 1/2 a bag of mizuna
• 1 head of lettuce
• 2 pat-a-pan squash
• 8 leaves of chard
• 1/2 a bag of mix-n-match, so I picked a summer squash, scallions, turnips, and all the carrots that I could grab.
• 20 stems of flowers, pick your own. I'm way into red this season.
• Herbs, including basil, winter mint, and, finally, thyme.

Elena cooked a ton this week. She made pizza with some of the basil, chicken pot pie with some beets and carrots from the farm, and this extremely awesome drink. Take a gallon of water, add a couple springs of mint leaves and some honey, and you have a cool summer's day. It changes day-to-day as the mint sinks into the water.

tidbits

I used to think that adding a mango to any dish automatically makes it wonderful.

So. Not. True.

I tried cooking my wonderful Greek lamb sausage from Chestnut Farms with some mango...and swiss chard. I thought it would be pretty. Instead it turned the mango flesh brown and the whole thing tasted like chard. Blech. I like chard, but context is important. So on the flavor combos to never use list: Swiss chard and mangoes.

I made a field greens risotto from a Food Project recipe the other day, to bring to the wild edibles potluck. Sadly, most people didn't stick around to participate. The dish came out the way I wanted it to, but I don't think most people agreed with me :-). According to Elena it wasn't a "real" risotto because it used brown rice. Hey, it was what the recipe called for. It used scallions, garlic, ginger, and a whole head of escarole and a bag of mizuna. So you ended up with a very green rice dish. A bit of asagio cheese and we're done. I never had asagio, and I found out that it's good on Chestnut Farm burgers too. I can has cheezburger!

I went to Victoria's Secret the other day, and if you get something from their Pink collection, you get a free tote bag. It's a huge bag, and it folds up tiny, so it looks like a good thing to bring to Whole Foods or the farm. I heard a rumor that plastic bags are going away in Massachusetts, but I can't find anything to confirm it. But they can go away in your own life. I found a Reusable Bags site, which has some interesting statistics on the amount of energy and waste caused by plastic bags. It also has information on who has done what to save energy. I did a research project in 2001 entitled "Paper or Plastic?" The clear answer was: neither! Use canvas bags. Plastic takes forever to break down naturally, and the process for making paper bags, or paper in general, is totally disgusting and expensive and smelly. The trick for me is remembering my canvas bags. The best solution so far is to hang them on my doorknob at night. It's difficult to miss it in the morning. Difficult...yet not impossible...

Foraging for wild edibles

Today my brother John and I drove out to Belchertown for Russ Cohen's Foraging for Wild Edibles workshop, sponsored by NOFA. It was an excellent way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon. We learned about mushrooms you should and shouldn't eat, nuts and berries that grow wild, roots to pick, how things smell, when not to eat certain plants, good picking etiquette. After being out in the sun for four hours and driving four hours, I'm kinda zonked, so will post pictures and a more in-depth discussion later this week.

But for now, if you are interested in foraging for wild food, here's some of Russ' info. As he said, foraging is one of the last free things left to do, and you walk away with good things to eat. Yes it takes time and effort, but that's part of the fun. And I'm dying for hazelnut season now that I realize that hazelnuts grow EVERYWHERE, and I can't but help thinking about the beach plum jelly my great-aunt Mil used to make. Might be worth a trip to Plum Island this year.

I purchased his book Wild Plants I Have Known...and Eaten. The book contains information on where and how to forage, some general guidelines, and a wealth of information on plants, including recipes. Cattail chowder and pokeweed frittata, anyone? Russ donates all his money back to conservation land, so know that your $15 goes to a good cause.

According to Tom from NOFA, Russ runs about 60 workshops per year. Take a look at his schedule, and note that there are workshops in Framingham and Lincoln coming up. It looks like some are walks and some are slide shows or cooking events.

Finally, here's Russ Cohen's bio.

I'll write up more later this week, not all my 10 pages of notes but a few highlights and pictures. Happy eating everyone.

I say tomato...

Not yet. I wait and wait, but at least this time there was progress. There was one (1) ripe tomato at the farm. Not for each of us, one on the entire farm. They said they didn't want to split it between the 340 shares they offer. That's a lot of shares! So when we get two heads of lettuce, does that mean that they've grown 680 heads of lettuce that week? Geez.

They all but promised tomatoes in 2 weeks. I remember that once tomatoes started happening, I was happy for the rest of the season. With tomatoes come many other good things, like onions and green beans.

And on to this week's share:

• 1/2 bag of salad mix.
• 1 head of lettuce (this lettuce thing is going to happen for the rest of the season, but occasionally we get two heads of it).
• 1/2 bag of braising greens (these looked suspiciously like the salad mix, but they gave us an interesting recipe for a risotto that uses 12 cups of greens, so I think it'll be ok).
• 8 leaves of beautiful chard.
• 2 squash (I picked a two-toned and a zucchini).
• 1/2 bag of mix-n-match, so I chose 6 carrots (the limit), some turnips, bunching onions, and garlic scapes.
• 1 quart of fava beans (pick your own, these beans grow up rather than hang from the plant).
• Herbs, I chose some dill and Thai basil.
• 10 stems of flowers.

Now, if you are driving home on rt. 2 one night in the pouring rain, start hydroplaning towards the guard rail, and hit the breaks so that you are lucky enough to shoot across three lanes of traffic and don't die, the thing to do is to get off four exits early and go to Trader Joe's. This is exactly what happened last Thursday. I bought their masala simmer sauce, because I didn't know what to do with my chicken legs from the meat share.

I cut up some bunching onions and fried them in olive oil in the wok. I took out the chicken legs, which were actually three large leg/thigh pieces. I seared both sides of the meat in the wok, then covered with the masala sauce and a can of coconut milk. This officially makes it bad for low-fat diets, but good for just about everything else. I then let it simmer for an hour and added a bunch of chard, basil, and mint for the last few minutes. The chicken had tons of its own flavor and the veggies melded well with the sauce. It's amazing what good ingredients do for your cooking. Thank you local farms.

CISA

As you head out to western MA, you'll see more and more cars with the Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown bumper sticker on their cars. This campaign is run by Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). Tracie from CISA posted a comment on my blog, and I'm happy that the blog's gotten around like that. CISA is a western MA organization that links local farms to local communities.

I admit that I haven't visited their site for a long time. I lived in Amherst and Belchertown until the economy made me flee to the Boston area. I still miss my trees, Antonio's pizza, and Bueno Y Sano burritos. But the site has grown into a wonderful resource for all of Massachusetts. You can click on their Local Food Guide, select a region from the map in the upper right of the screen, and it displays where to get local food products. It also tells you what is in season for the area and when and where local farmers' markets are.

Also, check out their Store. They have a Local Delectables cookbook available, which was written by a Hampshire grad and is sorted into recipes by season. They also have resources for starting a local food campaign and promoting agritourism on your farm. I also like their Eat the View notecards. Yum.

By the pound

I forgot to mention that if you are interested in trying the Chestnut Farms meat, they have a stand set up at the Arlington Farmer's Market. Not sure if they do it every week, but they deliver the first and third Wednesday of the month there. I suspect they are there at least those times. I think the prices start at $6/pound for ground meat, and go up from there.

Hunting

In the old days, men were men when they hunted and farmed large animals. These days, men are men when they cook large pieces of meat. The other day I was watching Emeril "kick it up a notch" Lagasse and he was doing a special for men only. So you had this whole group of guys, and Emeril would say, "now let's add some garlic" and the men would all grunt in agreement, and "now let's add some sausage" and they all whooped. Oh yes.

I'd like to point out that I've not yet dated a guy who knows much more about cars or fixing toilets than I do. But they certainly all cook a better burger.

Anyway, the moment you've all been waiting for, my second meat share from Chestnut Farms! Here we go:

• 1 rather massive package of chicken thighs and legs.
• 2 packages of 4 hamburgers each. (I have one package defrosting as I type.)
• 1 package of 3 pork breakfast patties.
• 2 beef rib Delmonico steaks.
• 1 package of that awesome Greek-flavored lamb sausage.
• 2 packages of pork loin sirloin cutlets.

One question people keep asking is, are all the shares the same? And today I found out that no, they aren't. First off, Kim is good about packing "special" shares. One woman wanted beef liver, so she got a big piece of beef liver. More power to her.

I was actually also picking up a share for a friend of mine (a lot of people were interested once I started talking about the meat shares). There was a bit of a snafu with the share, but Kim was kind enough to construct a pork-free share for him at the last minute. So he ended up with all beef hot dogs, porterhouse and top round steak, and so on instead of what I got. I figure they cut the animals into lots of pieces, and they allot a fair amount to each.

I also caught the last 15 minutes of the Arlington Farmer's Market. I picked up a chunk of lemon lavender goat cheese (who knew you could get that?), some organic eggs since, sadly, Chestnut Farms ran out an hour before I got there, and some raisin cinnamon bread ($2 because she thought it may have gotten a little wet...it looked good to me). I think I missed the fish, so I will try again next time. It's a cute little market, probably 15 stalls when I went, but I went late.

I have a couple burgers frying, better go keep an eye on them.

Greens...

OK, so around now in Massachusetts farmshare land, ya just start getting sick of greens. Especially since the strawberries have passed. I eagerly await the return of the tomatoes!

Today I picked up:

• 1 head of lettuce.
• 1/2 bag of salad mix.
• 8 stalks of especially beautiful swiss chard.
• 1 head of escarole (this is an interesting bitter green that grows in a head like lettuce, and it's fun to stuff the head with cheese, capers, and olives, and then tie up and steam).
• 1 summer squash (could not resist the pat-a-pan).
• 10 garlic scapes.
• Mix n' match! 1/2 bag of whatever I want, so I picked up bok choy, scallions, a couple beets, and a couple turnips.
• 1 pint of snow peas (pick your own, took plenty of hunting).
• 1 bunch wintermint.
• 1 bunch basil.
• 1 bunch dill.
• 3 flowers, which I squished beyond recognition by the time I got home...I need to start bringing a vase.

Luckily I managed to get to Wright's Pond to do a few laps before I went home. Tiz a good thing, to go to the farm then go for a swim.