Look at these tomatoes!

Quite a pair, aren't they? (But seriously, these colors are outrageous. Just outrageous.)

I only bought enough to last through Wednesday:
1 bunch kale
1 bunch chard
1/4 lb. sorrel
4 zucchini
1 bunch celery
1 bunch Italian parsley
4 heirloom tomatoes (Striped German, Green Zebra, and another one)
1 pint black cherry tomatoes
1 pint blueberries
1 pint strawberries
1.5 lbs. peaches
2 lbs. nectarines
Total spent: $38

The blueberries aren't for me - they're for my blueberry-loving mother, who is coming to visit for a couple of days before she and I fly to the UK for a walking tour of the Lake District. I'm not sure why I don't like blueberries...could be early exposure to overly sweet faux-blueberry flavor...but they don't do it for me. Also in preparation for Mom's visit, I stocked up on peaches and nectarines: my love for fresh fruit is clearly inherited.

This week's was primarily a maintenance trip, just getting the basics, as I don't have much time for creativity in these last few days before my trip. Last week I stayed at the office until 8 p.m. almost every day, and went in on my Wednesday off...though there was that marvelous long weekend, which I spent poolside in the sunshine.

I'm looking forward to adding the sorrel into a pasta salad for lunch one day, because I think the sourness will add interest to the regular "greens, zucchini, white beans, pasta, tomatoes, olives" lineup (which is admittedly quite delicious).

Tonight, we'll have a salad of these gorgeous heirloom tomatoes along with plenty of Italian parsley, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The main dish will be sauteed chard with Tofurkey sausage and cheese grits on the side.

Unfortunately, my trip is timed so that I'll miss a lot of late-summer bounty; I'm afraid fall will have arrived by emphasis by my next greenmarket trip, which won't be until September 29. I hope there will still be fresh hull beans for me to try by then (I've seen more and more of them lately); at that point, I will probably be resigned to apples and I can start making applesauce. We'll see. I may still fight it.

A beautiful day, darkened by eggplants

Today's USG trip was harrowing for two reasons: 1) I hadn't had any coffee; 2) the place was lousy with eggplants, ranging in color from deep purple to pure white. Now, eggplants are lovely, I will admit, but I absolutely loathe them. Bell peppers, another non-favorite, are also very much in season, and mocked me alongside their eggplant brothers from every vendor's stall. The coffee problem made me impatient, so I didn't go out on any limbs (unless you count the sorrel, which I have no ideas for) - though I did go a little overboard. Since all I feel like doing lately is eating, that should work out just fine.



My shoulders hurt from carrying all this:
1 lb. shell peas
1 lb. green string beans
3 heirloom tomatoes
4 zucchini (2 green, 2 yellow)
2 poblano peppers
2 jalapeno peppers
1 bunch sorrel
4 ears sweet white corn
5 peaches
1 lb. apricots
2 Golden Delicious apples
2 Tydeman apples
total spent: $35

The shell peas were a great surprise, as nobody's had any for the last few weeks. I think I'll whip up a new version of my "summer veggie saute" using peas, corn, and zucchini. Since I'm not savvy when it comes to cooking peas, I'll probably blanch them first, then add them to the saute right before adding the corn, to make sure they get cooked but not dried out. The super-sweet bicolor corn was not available, but my usual corn vendor assured me that both his white and yellow varieties are quite sweet, so I chose white for how it will look in the pan.

Last week's black beans were missing something, and, though I included three roasted poblanos, I think that missing something was jalapenos. This week, I'll use both. (I also think the Trader Joe's organic black beans I bought were especially tough - back to Goya for me!)

The green beans I'm planning to boil for a couple of minutes in salted water, then keep them, cold, in the refrigerator, for lunches and snacks. Last week, I boiled some yellow string beans for dinner and forgot to serve them, so I had them cold the next day as a snack at work, and they were delicious. I'm hoping to repeat this with green beans while they're still sweet enough, as an alternative to carrot sticks (which certain members of this family refuse to eat).

The Tydeman apples are quite good, especially with (gasp!) a slice of good cheddar cheese. Otherwise, the apricots and peaches are from the same places as last week's. The Red Jacket Orchards folks, where I get my apricots, also had a golden variety this week, but after learning they're sweeter than the tiny ones I've been getting, I stuck with the usual, which are sweet enough for me. And I was almost tempted into plums again, at the place where I bought the peaches and apples - they had some beautiful tiny, purple ones - but I held off. Next week, I'll get nectarines and red plums, to keep things interesting.

Spinach and sorrel omelet

At a loss for what to do with the sorrel, I looked it up on Recipezaar, and found a recipe for "spinach, sorrel, and romaine omelet." I didn't actually read the recipe, but used the idea.

I used about 3:1 spinach to sorrel (probably about a pound total, though I only used half the cooked greens for the omelet), sauteing it with olive oil, three cloves of garlic, and a dash of salt, then draining the greens after they were totally wilted. I made an omelet for two with three whole eggs and three egg whites in a 12" nonstick skillet (with about a teaspoon of olive oil), and it came out just about perfect. The sorrel added a nicely lemony taste to the filling, without being overpowering or bitter like lemon juice can be. However, it did turn an alarming brown color when cooked, which stood out against the spinach's bright green.

And during my sorrel research, I discovered that sorrel is "sourgrass"...and tasting the raw sorrel made it obvious. I loved sourgrass as a kid - my neighbor would always pull out tons of it when she weeded her garden in the summer, and my friends and I would chew sourgrass stems 'til our teeth squeaked. Luckily, the leaves are more mild than those stems, and even more so when cooked.

For dessert: the rest of the (absolutely delicious) cherries, and two of the peaches, which were extremely juicy but quite bruised, having been comically dropped two times by two different people.

Basil plant update: Thriving - I'm going to use some of the leaves for fresh tomato sauce tomorrow evening. Lots of new growth!

Early to rise...

I didn't make it by 8, but I did get to the Greenmarket early this morning - around 9:30. It was already pretty crowded, but there were a lot more vendors with a lot more produce than on weekdays.


I went a little crazy:
2 heirloom tomatoes
3 yellow peaches
1 pint sweet cherries
1/3 lb. sorrel
2 ears bicolor corn
1/2 lb. sugar snap peas
1 bunch carrots
1 head rocambole garlic (w/ stalk)
1 bunch catnip
total spent: about $25

The cherries look absolutely amazing, and I can't wait for the peaches to ripen. The carrots were the same price as the ones I usually get, but for a bigger bunch of bigger carrots...better for carrot sticks in lunches, and sharing.

Garlic-wise, I couldn't resist the way the Rocambole looked and smelled, but wasn't quite ready for garlic scapes, which seemed to be everywhere. Maybe next week - I'll do some reading. I have no idea how to cook the sorrel (which came from the same stand as the fancy garlic), but i wanted a leafy green, and decided to be adventurous - the "great lemon flavor" description piqued my interest...I'll look it up on Recipezaar, but will probably end up just treating it like spinach.

The catnip has caused all sorts of disharmony in our family already, but in a really entertaining way.