CSA-OK!

Instead of my regularly scheduled greenmarket shopping this week, I was a CSA tourist. My friend Meg couldn't pick up her Stanton Street CSA share Thursday, so she let me have it. My haul is pictured above (there are a dozen more nectarines inside the Whole Foods bag).

All in all, I took home:
1 head lettuce
6 beefsteak tomatoes
4 yellow plum tomatoes
35 cherry tomatoes
2 Italian frying peppers (?)
2 small yellow peppers
2 long skinny Thai-looking peppers
1 head fennel
2 slicing cucumbers
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch basil
1 lb. tongue of fire beans
13 nectarines

This for the low, low price of free ninety-nine (with a plan to buy Meg dinner in the nearish future, maybe at M. Wells, where I inexplicably still haven't been.)

The lettuce and chard are easy enough (salads; sautéed - last night, I had some with white wine and bacon), but there are a lot of tomatoes in this cornucopia for someone with serious tomato sensitivity. I threw caution to the wind and ate all the cherry tomatoes plain; I made tomato, cucumber, and basil salads with some of the plum tomatoes, and added others to green salads.

Most of the beefsteak tomatoes ended up in the ranchero sauce I made for this morning's huevos rancheros brunch with my friend Jane - I cooked them along with onions, garlic, cumin, the frying peppers (roasted) and yellow peppers, and a little cayenne and oregano, then threw it all in a blender. This sauce is killer - I'm excited to find out what else I can put it on - I'm thinking almost anything.

I still have a few tomatoes left, and I'm stumped, since I'm already paying for eating all the other ones. Maybe I can add them in small amounts to things here and there without causing too much damage.

As for the nectarines, which (of course) ripened all at once, I have been eating them as quickly as I can; I used four of them in some nectarine muffins, which I adapted from this recipe; I used half whole-wheat flour, used 1.5 cups sucanat instead of 2 cups white sugar, used melted butter instead of vegetable oil, and in addition to freshly-ground Ceylon cinnamon, I added 1 teaspoon vanilla. I'm not a big muffin person, because they're generally so dull, but these are quite moist and have a lot of flavor - switching to butter was definitely the right move.

I'm having a crew over for Thai curry Tuesday evening, so I'll throw in the rest of my basil (if it lasts), and if I'm feeling brave, maybe I'll toss in some slices of the Thai chiles. Or I could try sautéeing those with shallots, and tossing them with popcorn, maybe with lime and some curry powder? We'll see.

The tongue of fire beans are a bit of a stumper, but since I still have some tomatoes left, I might pick up some corn and make an improvised succotash for dinner one of these nights. I bet that ranchero sauce would be right at home on top!

Field trip!

Upon finding myself in Clinton Hill of a Saturday morning, I took the opportunity to be a Greenmarket tourist, visiting the petite but well-stocked (and refreshingly uncrowded) Fort Greene market. Plus the sun was shining and I found some vintage sunglasses at a stoop sale for $3: all in all, a magical, if drowsy, visit.

A well-balanced haul for two hours' sleep:
1 bunch collards
1 bunch broccoli rabe
1 bunch carrots
3 lbs. mixed summer squash
4 shallots
1 pint sungold tomatoes
1 1/4 lbs. nectarines
Total spent: $25

Naturally, the sungolds are gone - can't stop from eating those things like candy, as much as they wreck my stomach + the inside of my mouth. The first one of the nectarines to ripen was my first nectarine of the season, and I couldn't have asked for a better one: it was perfect, and started my lazy Sunday in the best possible way.

I'll quick-pickle the shallots, add the squash to everything in typical late-summer fashion, and sauté the greens - all per usual. Some of the carrots will go into lunches, but I have been thinking about this simple recipe for grated carrot salad from David Lebovitz since I saw the post, and I'll whip up my own version along with dinner tonight.

Otherwise, it's all catching up on sleep and biding my time until the rest of my nectarines ripen. It's a lush life, people.

It's sunny and 75 - feels so good to be alive

If I ever end up in debtor's prison, it will be my orchard bills that send me there.
Everybody must get stonefruit:
1 3/4 lb. peaches
3/4 lb. pluots
3/4 lb. apricots
1 1/2 lb. cherries
1 pt. Tristar strawberries
1/2 pt. chanterelle mushrooms
1 bunch curly kale
1 bunch Swiss chard
2 1/4 lb. zucchini
1 1/2 lb. green beans
2 bunches carrots
2 bunches celery
1 1/2 lb. red potatoes
2 big yellow tomatoes
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch mint
2 lbs. onions
1 pt. shallots
Total spent: $62

So much fruit! Luckily I've already polished off about half of the insanely delicious Tristar strawberries, and I'm about to start in on the pluots from Locust Grove Farm, which I sampled last Saturday when I was lucky enough to be stationed next to their stand at the market. (I'm looking forward to eating the pluots in the privacy of my home this time, without any creepy guys staring.)

I'm especially excited about the chanterelles - reasonably priced for such a fancy mushroom. The pints were even more of a bargain ($7 with a half-pint at $5), but I wasn't sure I'd be able to use them all. I haven't decided the best way to showcase their flavor - possibly just sautéed in butter and served over pasta.

Tonight I'll be using the tomatoes in some chana masala, which will make a certain chickpea-lover in my life very happy. I'll bring out blended mint lemonade to start dinner, an idea stolen from Westville - but mine will be agave-sweetened.

In other news, my favorite Amish cheese vendor now has eggs, which is perfect timing, since Madura Farms just stopped selling them. Nothing else to report - time to give myself a stomachache from eating too much fruit!

NB re: photos. My camera seems to be slowly dying - I can't get the screen to work half the time, so I have to use the viewfinder, and I don't yet have Photoshop on my computer so my post-production options are limited. I'm hoping to remedy all these issues soon though.

What a crock!

The cute pickling crock I bought at The Brooklyn Kitchen a month ago is going to get its first workout, courtesy of the Kirby cucumbers I bought today!

A gorgeous, if humid, trip to USG today. Isolated thunderstorms have been predicted through the afternoon, but luckily the skies were clear this morning (last night, not so much). Couldn't buy nearly the amount of berries I wanted and stay within my budget, but I did manage to stuff my refrigerator to the gills.

Too much for the produce drawer:
1 bunch scallions
1 bunch basil
1 bunch Italian parsley
2 bunches carrots
3/4 lb. sugar snap peas
1 lb. shell peas
2 lbs. yellow onions
2 1/4 lb. zucchini
1 bunch French crisp lettuce
2 1/4 lb. Kirby cucumbers
1 3/4 lbs. mixed green beans & wax beans
1 bunch lacinato kale
1 bunch collards
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 pint Sungold tomatoes
1 lb. cherries
1 pint raspberries
Total spent: $56.50

Other progress has been made on the preserving front. Witness: seven jars of jeweltoned strawberry jam recently added to my pantry. The jam tastes wonderful but it's doing that weird solid/liquid separating thing that always seems to happen when I use pectin. I've got to figure that one out.

I also made a jar of the sugar snap pea pickles from Joy Of Pickling, which turned out really strong, even for me, after the recommended two weeks' curing in the fridge. The tarragon gives them a great flavor, though, and I think they'll carry us through the season tossed in salads (and possibly even added to cheese sandwiches).

Other than the pickles, no big plans. I'll probably make a salad of roasted zucchini, Sungold tomatoes, and chopped basil tonight for dinner. We'll inhale the berries in a couple of days - I've already got a head start on the heavenly raspberries from Terhune Orchards. And I'm about to make my favorite Wednesday lunch of sautéed greens (lacinato kale, in this case), fried eggs, and freshly sliced greenmarket bread. Yum!

Minestrone fixings and grapes

It was an undeniably chilly morning at the USG; there's no turning back from this fall thing, people.
The budget was tight today:
1 bunch chard
1 bunch kale (the same fancy kind I got last week)
1 bunch beets with greens
4 lbs. carrots
4 plum tomatoes
3/4 lb. mixed greens
1/2 lb. Lakemont variety seedless grapes
5 lbs. Concord grapes
1 Osage orange

Total spent: $56

I got a bug to make minestrone with fresh cranberry beans, so I bought some tomatoes that looked perfect for soup (it's the tomato equivalent of having a face for radio), a bunch of chard...and made quite a serviceable minestrone with whole wheat rotelle.

The grapes are for another batch of homemade jelly, but I have to find some Pomona's Pectin, since Brooklyn Kitchen is out. I really have no idea where else to look, but I've got to figure it out soon.

News flash: making grape jelly is tedious

I started with 4 lbs. of Concord grapes, and after mashing them, simmering them for ten minutes, running them through my food mill, and straining them through cheesecloth twice, I have 3 cups of grape juice and lots of middling grape almost-liquid that is dropping out of my cheesecloth-lined colander at approximately the same rate that microwave popcorn pops when it's time to take it out.

Once I've got the 4 cups of juice I ought to have, it should be easy enough to boil the stuff with pectin and agave nectar, check for jell, pour into jars, and process...but right now things are a bit dire and boring. Though I suppose I can use a bit of forced relaxation given the way things have been the past few weeks...season change being what it is.

Today is stretching out errand-free until I have to go to class at 5, so once I've got the jelly sorted I'm going to make granola, lentil pepper-pot soup, and start some yogurt. And tonight before bed I'll put in a couple sheets of tomatoes to slow-roast while we sleep.

That is the tempo

Until this week, I've been mostly successful in avoiding tomatoes, despite the gorgeous piles they make everywhere at USG - because they're nightshades, they cause inflammation, they give me canker sores - but yesterday I chanced upon this recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes, and I knew I had to make them, despite the whole "leaving the oven on for 10 hours" thing. And once I had bought the plum tomatoes, I thought I may as well try a lovely low-acid yellow heirloom and a pint of my favorite Sungolds - totalling about five pounds.

So much more than tomatoes:

1 (small) bunch collard greens
1 (huge) bunch kale
3 lbs. carrots
2 lbs. yellow cooking onions
1 1/2 lbs. green beans
1 head celery
3 lbs. mixed summer squash (avocado and cousa)
3 lbs. plum tomatoes
1 pint Sungold tomatoes
1/2 lb. mixed salad greens
1 large yellow low-acid heirloom tomato
1 head Rocambole garlic
2 pints strawberries
1 box raspberries
Total spent: $60

Incidentally, almost everything I bought today was organic. My four favorite produce stands are organic, and I bought everything from them. If I don't have the option of local and organic, I will always choose local, but it's nice to find both - especially because the organic stands (whether certified or not) tend to have the best-tasting produce.

The tomatoes are already in the oven at just over 200 degrees - here's a shot just before they went in. I'll check them at about eight hours, but I'm expecting to leave them in for 10-12, like most of the recipes I've found online have indicated.

Otherwise, a pretty standard trip to the market, tinged with a bit of summer's end gloom. Peaches are finally waning - the last few I've gotten have been a bit mealy, and green beans are no longer young and tender. I think I'll have to roast these to make them delicious, as they're a bit tough. Tonight I think I'll make a light pasta dish with tomatoes, summer squash, greens, and parsley. We'll start with a salad and have berries for dessert, in late-summer style.

The summeriest meal around

Tonight we had a gazpacho of sorts: shallots cut into whisper-thin salad slices and macerated in 2-3 tbsp. apple cider vinegar along with minced basil and salt; then added the seeds, juice, and flesh from a tomato I concassed and diced; let it sit for an hour or so at room temp while making the rest of dinner, tasted for seasoning, ladled into bowls, then drizzled with my fancy Pasolivo olive oil just before serving. It was on the magnificent side of wonderful, with the acid and salt countering the sweetness of the tomatoes and basil just so.

I got the shallot-vinegar-herbs idea from Peter Berley in one of our classes - he used it to dress roasted peppers, and mentioned that with tomatoes, it would make a nice gazpacho. And so it did.

Our main course was risotto with shelled peas (the biggest ones I've ever seen) and spinach, with Parmigiano and butter added to finish; I liberally sprinkled minced parsley over each serving, which really highlighted the fresh taste of the summer vegetables. An hour later, we upped the summeriness ante even more with a few handfuls of Tristar strawberries (eaten in front of the TV while watching House on DVD, naturally).

The gazpacho was wonderful! If only acidic foods didn't give both of us tummyaches, I would make it constantly this summer. But so it goes - this lovely healthful dish will have to be only an occasional treat.

Today I'll be making potato salad with the lovely "just dug" red new potatoes I bought at the Greenmarket yesterday, made with a dressing incorporating Mean Beans brine. More on this later.

Super-delicious pasta

This turned out to be way more than the sum of its parts.

Summery wintertime hydropasta:
about 1/4 cup plain goat cheese
about 8 brine-cured kalamata olives, diced
2 tsp. olive oil (fancy and pungent if you have it)
1 hydroponic tomato (you could use a handful of grape tomatoes maybe)
fresh spinach egg linguine for two people (I used Knoll Crest Farms)

Put salted water on to boil. While it's heating, mix first three ingredients in a small bowl with a fork until cheese is smooth and olives are distributed. Dice tomato, removing seeds if you care. Cook pasta according to package instructions (2-3 minutes), drain, and immediately return pasta to pan. Toss pasta with goat cheese mixture, divide onto two plates, and top each plate with half the diced tomato. Add a few grinds of black pepper to each plate, and pow! Your awesome dinner is done in under ten minutes.

The olive oil flavor is really key here - the more "olive-y" the better. I used some of the Pasolivo I bought as a birthday present to myself. It's really good - if you've ever been skeptical about whether olive oil can have a real flavor impact, Pasolivo will convince you. It's quite strong, with lots of fruity, grassy notes. Plus Pasolivo is made in my homeland, the li'l old central coast of California. And look how lovely it is!

A skeptic relents: tomatoes in winter??!!

Another slim-pickins day at USG, which slimness was compounded by my late arrival (my usual vendor was even out of kale by the time I got there at 11).

I don't believe they were out of kale:
3 lbs. Nicola potatoes
2 yellow onions
1 1/2 lbs. carrots
1/3 lb. baby spinach
1/3 lb. baby red Russian kale
2 tomatoes
Total spent: $30

It was with a mixture of shame, hope, and confusion that I finally bought some tomatoes from the Shushan Valley Hydro Farm stand (this photo is from their website). Since they appeared a month or so ago, I've peered into their little plastic tent, even picked up then put down a bunch of basil once or twice, but haven't taken the plunge. Tomatoes in winter seem impossible, or at least ill-advised; I feel a bit like the sucker of a snake-oil dealer: "The taste of summer, yours year-round! Step right up, folks!" But today I needed inspiration (and I have had tomatoes on my mind since making the exquisite tomato soup from Veganomicon), so I went for it. I'm going to use at least one of them tonight in a quick sauce for Knoll Crest Farms spinach pasta, along with some black olives, spinach sautéed with olive oil and garlic, and Lynnhaven Farms goat cheese. So even if the tomatoes' soil-less cultivation has rendered them insipid, there will be enough flavor in the dish.

Other updates:
Pear pie = meh - I liked the pecan streusel topping, but the pear pie didn't quite work. Perhaps I needed more seasoning, or more lemon juice, or something: it was a bit overly sweet and one-dimensional, as my mother warned me it might be. Though it doesn't help that the pie crust was the toughest and worst yet! I am somehow regressing in pie-crust skill, and I don't know why. This week I will either go apple again or find a recipe for vegan banana cream pie.
I'm out of cinnamon so I had to order from Penzeys again. My order, which I am only listing because it's an eclectic bunch of mostly B-list spices I'm unsure about: allspice, cinnamon (Ceylon this time), vanilla beans (Madagascar), marjoram, zatar, tarragon, mustard powder (not hot), ancho chile powder, chipotle chile powder. I can't wait!
Veganomicon forays - So far I have made the chickpea cutlets, which are just as fabulous as I'd hoped, and the tomato soup, which is the type of tomato soup you'd get in a restaurant and say "this is why we go to restaurants - for tomato soup like this." But you're at home, so you just think "I am a genius," even though it's not your recipe. I still haven't made the autumn latkes - they'll happen this week.
More applesauce is on the stove, using last week's miscellaneous apples.

Away, away

We're on our way out of town for the weekend, but here's a quick recap of my greenmarket trip: scads of tomatoes (three colors) for tomato salad, corn and zucchini for the grill, kale, spinach, and green beans for home, strawberries, and piles of nectarines that will undoubtedly all ripen at once. No time for photos, but here are some shots of the lovely products from my dear friend Louise's San Francisco city-garden. Doesn't that lettuce just look mouth-watering? Is it a little crazy to feel that way about lettuce?

Early birds, early apples

While I recognize that at 27 I am probably still too young to begin bemoaning the fleeting days of my youth in earnest, I was nevertheless shocked by two distinctly autumnal phenomena at my early-morning trip to the USG today.
Item 1: It was really, really cold. Not just chilly - downright cold. I was ill-prepared for the temperature because IT IS SUMMER, though I did get there quite early today.
Item 2: Many vendors, including my beloved Terhune Orchards, were excitedly displaying their "early apples," which means that soon they'll just be "apples," and it will be fall. Where has summer gone?

My consolation came swiftly in the form of being early enough to snag the last basket of these Tristar strawberries - perhaps summer is not all lost.

FutureVeg/LoveFruits:

1 pint Tristar strawberries
3.5 lbs. white peaches
1 lb. nectarines
1 pint Sungold cherry tomatoes
4 heirloom tomatoes (two yellow, two crazy red)
2 ears corn
1 lb. green beans
1.5 lbs. spinach
4 zucchini
1 bunch carrots
1 lb. golden nugget potatoes
2 heads Rocambole garlic
1 bunch lemon basil
Total spent: $49

While I could probably eat all the peaches myself in a day or two, I bought so many because I'm going to try freezing some of them for smoothies. It would be amazing to have enough to last a few months once they're out of season, to cut down on my Trader Joe's frozen fruit habit...

All the other fruit will be eaten out of hand, the carrots will be chopped up for my lunches, and the beautiful/weird-looking heirloom tomatoes will be eaten in a "salad" with fresh herbs and a bit of cheese.

Lemon basil may be the best smelling herb in the universe; the freshness of the lemon brings the basil's spiciness to a new fragrance level. I'm really looking forward to using it. Monday or Wednesday I'll get a few pounds of "regular" tomatoes from the weekday USG and try my hand at some spaghetti sauce using fresh, rather than canned, tomatoes.

More on my sauce and freezing experiments later; right now, I've got some strawberries to eat.

Ho-hum (not the veggies, but me)

It was a tough week at work, which unfortunately translated into kind of a downer Saturday. While I had pledged that I would buy less at the USG this week since my photo assistant is going away for the week, and therefore I only need food for one, I didn't quite manage...and spent almost the same as any other week.

So much green, so little time:

1 bunch peppermint
1 bunch tarragon
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch Russian kale
3 small heads bok choy
3 zucchini
1 bunch (3) white onions
1 bunch leeks
1 lb. shell peas
4 white peaches
3 nectarines
4 apricots
2 yellow ("low-acid") tomatoes
1 pint orange Sungold cherry tomatoes
Total spent: $35

The tarragon is an experiment - I'm trying to get myself out of my fresh herbs comfort zone, which is made up entirely of basil, oregano, and parsley, though I've yet to find my tarragon recipe. I bought the mint to make this facial scrub from Urban Vegan, which actually calls for dried mint, though it worked wonderfully with the fresh herb. (My face felt amazing, but it was annoying to have to prevent the oats from going down the drain. I will make it again, though.)

Tonight's dinner was risotto with leeks, chard, and peas; Tofurkey sausage; and sliced Sungold tomatoes with parsley. The tomatoes were perfect - little sweet globes of warmth and light. I'd been planning to make a green risotto with the chard for the past few days, but when I saw leeks at the greenmarket, I realized their more-vegetal oniony flavor would suit the chard better than the shallots I had originally bought for the purpose. It turned out terrific.

I don't have solid plans for anything else I've bought this week, though I did recently make a new pot of black beans (with the poblano and jalapeno chiles I bought last week and didn't write about because I was in Baltimore to see friends at Virgin Fest), so the kale will probably end up in burritos, or with the beans over rice. We'll see what happens with the tarragon...and I've also got a ton of fresh mind leftover to find a use for.

Green vs. purple plums

People with luxuriant amounts of counter space have big, lovely, ceramic fruit bowls, which display the season's bounty to maximum effect. However, were I to allot so much space (12"+ in diameter!) to fruit, we would have to consider it a third roommate and charge rent accordingly. Instead, my fruit bowl is a Texas commemorative plate, which is luckily just the right size to hold these lovely Shiro plums.


I had to stop when the bags got too full:
5 ears corn
1 lb. "golden nugget" potatoes
1 pint heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 bunch rainbow chard
4 zucchini
1 lb. shell peas
1.5 lbs. green and yellow beans
1.5 lbs. peaches
1 lb. nectarines
1 lb. Shiro plums
Total spent: $44

Tonight I'm planning a multi-course dinner to use up the most perishable of my purchases: first will be corn on the cob, then tomato and goat cheese salad with salt and pepper, then for the main course, a plain omelet (using local eggs), peas, and roasted potatoes. I can't wait!

Hopefully the pretty golden Shiro plums will be more satisfying than the purple variety have been. I've expressed my dissatisfaction with regular plums in the past, and last year the only plums I liked were Green Gage, which have been absent from USG thus far this season.

As I feared, this week cherries were, for my purposes, gone: a few stands still had a limited supply, but they were mostly mushy and mottled, not worth sorting through. Peaches are still gathering momentum, but apricots, too, seem to be waning, but luckily nectarines have just started showing up. However, I haven't found an east coast nectarine that can compare to a good peach...

Otherwise, my week's purchases are pretty standard: green beans for blanching and serving plain or for stir-frying, zucchini for dicing and steaming in pasta salad (and stir-frying, I suppose), chard for putting in everything possible. Next week I have to remember to buy two bunches, since the kale has been really tough lately, and spinach is nowhere to be seen. I should experiment with other greens, but I have had some unlucky results with collards that make me hesitant. Maybe I can get some baby bok choy or tat soi next week. The lovely legumes have distracted me from my greens so far this summer.

Love hurts

It seems that the cherry season this year has been terribly short; it seems like only a week or two ago I was enjoying my first summertime cherries, and now they're already obviously on the wane. Strawberries disappeared all at once, but cherries are slowly fading - fewer USG vendors this week than last, and fewer next week, and soon they'll be totally gone, along with sugar snap peas, which are also past their prime. I feel winter creeping into my bones already!...and yet, it's mid-July.

Today's nevertheless-lovely harvest:

1 lb. cherries
1/2 lb. apricots
1/2 lb. plums (little purple ones, not sure what variety)
4 peaches
1 lb. sugar snap peas
1 1/2 lbs. green and yellow beans
1 lb. shell peas
1 bunch rainbow chard
3 zucchini
2 cousa squash
5 ears bicolor corn
1 pint orange heirloom cherry tomatoes
Total spent: $42

The tomatoes are delicious - as my photo assistant said while enjoying them with goat cheese, salt, and pepper, they're "outrageous" - and the little cherry tomato size is somehow less intimidating than the big ones, which I'm afraid will go bad before I can use them. The tinies are easy to snack on during every trip to the kitchen, which is good since I won't refrigerate them and they'll only last a couple of days in our hot lair.

Corn on the cob is quite a good consolation for the loss of earlier-summer crops - it's getting sweeter every week. There are already two husked ears in the steamer for dinner tonight, along with my favorite cherry tomato preparation, named above, and some squash and tofu sauteed together with garlic and spices, over rice.

I couldn't resist the green and yellow beans; I bought them from the same organic vendor I got them from last week, and they were delicious, and so versatile. They'll be blanched and served cold and salted in lunches, chopped into 1" pieces and added to pasta salads, stir-fried, and probably other ways I haven't imagined yet.

My fingers are crossed that the peaches will turn out better than the last ones I had; these are from the orchard I bought most of my peaches from last year, so I'm hoping they'll be as flavorful. I've already tasted a few of the plums and I'm experiencing my usual "blah" feeling about them; perhaps the Shiro and green gage varieties will be more to my liking, as they were last year.

I also bought some non-produce: goat cheese from Lynnhaven Farm (wonderful!), and fantastic basil pesto from an herb vendor. It's the second time I've bought the pesto - you get about 1 cup for $5, which lasts through lots of pasta salad servings - and it's really wonderful. I haven't made my own because I don't have a food processor... and I'm happy to buy it from the cute young couple who run the herb stand.

This morning I went to the USG about half an hour earlier than usual, as I had to get home early to go to the Sunburn Siren Festival, and it seemed more crowded than when I'm normally there. I wonder if there are more people who show up for the market's 8 a.m. opening than are there at around 9:30 or 10...before it gets crazily-crowded with regular folks around 11 or noon. I'm thinking of trying to get there when it opens one of these Saturdays, to see if I can get it on any extremely special, sells-out-immediately, produce...or perhaps that's a myth?

Yellow and orange and sunny

USG was packed early this morning with folks who were loading up their weekender totes with ears of corn and berries. The morning was beautiful and sunny, and the fruits and veggies were orange and yellow, as if in homage. The bright yellow chard is breathtakingly lovely! (Also yellow, but not pictured: gold nugget potatoes, corn on the cob).

A perfect morning:
2 ears bicolor corn
1 lb. yellow Swiss chard
1 pt. orange heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 lb. green and yellow beans
1 lb. sugar snap peas
1 bunch red kale
1 lb. gold nugget potatoes
1 head Rocambole garlic
4 zucchini (2 green, 2 golden)
1 lb. apricots
1.5 lbs. peaches
1 lb. cherries
Total spent: $45

The peaches (tree-ripened) are lovely and juicy, but still working up to perfect flavor - it's still early in their season. Last week's apricots were so delicious that I got twice as many this time. If only I had taken that canning class at Brooklyn Kitchen last week...but it was a Sunday, and I had to work. They assured me they'd have another one soon, though...fingers crossed it's in time for me to put up some peaches, tomatoes, and apricots.

I've already got the whole head of Rocambole garlic on the stove in tomato sauce (with last week's basil - oops!). All the snap peas and most of the beans will end up blanched in lunches, but I will sautee some of the green beans with garlic and red pepper for dinner tonight - paired with the potatoes, and preceded by corn on the cob and a salad of sweet, juicy tomatoes with goat cheese and Italian parsley.

That chard! It's so lovely - the contrast of the fresh green with that bright yellow - that I want to come up with some way of showcasing it. Perhaps I can combine it in a recipe with some of the golden zucchini to highlight the sunniness of both vegetables.

Last week I had a bug for pasta salad, probably due in large part to the delicious pesto I bought at the USG, as well as the excruciating heat. Here are two variations I made, both great for packing in lunches, because the flavors blend in the fridge - they're not recipes as much as assembly suggestions:

Tortellini Pesto Salad
tortellini (I used Trader Joe's artichoke tortellini, but your cheese would work)
pesto (1-2 tbsp per serving)
kale
cherry tomatoes (as many as you want)
goat cheese (2 tbsp per serving)
salt and pepper to taste

Tear kale into approx 2" pieces, steam it, and set aside. Don't throw away the water you steamed it with - add more water and use that to cook the pasta (saves nutrients). Drain pasta and rinse gently with cold water until cool. Chop kale into thin strips; halve cherry tomatoes. Add pesto, pasta, kale, cherry tomatoes, and about 3/4 of the goat cheese to a bowl; season with salt and pepper and toss. Just before serving, crumble the rest of the goat cheese on top.

Penne Pasta Salad
penne
pesto (1-2 tbsp per serving)
summer squash (about 1 medium zucchini per serving)
Italian veggie sausage (Tofurky andField Roast are my favorites)
goat cheese (2 tbsp. per serving)
salt and pepper to taste

Dice zucchini, steam it until just barely tender (err on the side of crisp) and set aside. Again - use the steam water for the pasta. Drain pasta and rinse gently with cold water until cool. Dice and sautee veggie sausage. Add pesto, pasta, zucchini, sausage, and 3/4 of goat cheese to a bowl; season with salt and pepper and toss. Just before serving, crumble the rest of the goat cheese on top.

Going overboard...

...was my greenmarket m.o. today. Though strawberries are already gone, the amazing July selection at the USG today more than made up for it.

I love summer:
1 quart cherry tomatoes
1 lb. sugar snap peas
2 cousa squashes
1 bunch red Russian kale
1 bunch rainbow chard
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch basil
1.5 lbs. cherries
5 apricots
Total spent: $34

The plural of "squash" is giving me a headache. Does "squashes" mean only "multiple varieties of squash," or can I use it to mean "two fruits of the squash plant"? I think my point comes across regardless.

I'm very glad sugar snap peas are still here - they're our summer staple vegetable so far. I've been blanching them for 75 seconds, shocking them in ice water, then packing them in lunches with a few grinds of sea salt...and then, more often than not, we have them again (prepared the same way) with dinner.

I'm excited to have bought my first tomatoes of summer! One of my plans is to have them in a pesto pasta salad with cousa squash, goat cheese, and Italian parsley - with fresh basil to garnish. I bought some pesto at the greenmarket because I don't have a food processor to make my own. The basil will also go into some homemade tomato sauce.

Most of the other veggies are self-explanatory - greens for adding to burritos, pasta, and anywhere else I can fit them in, and the carrots for having raw or steamed with lunch. The cherries are from Terhune Orchards, which is also where I get my apples in fall - they have the best cherries at the greenmarket (they also had the best asparagus when it was around). I'm very happy that apricots are starting to show up; a few places even had peaches. Though these are two of the fruits I most want to can this summer, so that clock is ticking quickly. We'll see if I can fit in a class and get the gear in time to put up some fruit this summer.

I love peppers! And dinners!

Saturday afternoon, I roasted peppers and called my mom. When I told her what I was doing while we were on the phone, she said "weren't you doing that last time we talked?" She was right - I roast peppers pretty much every week now, and I talk to my parents on the phone every week. They're easy things to do at the same time.

This time, I was roasting the three poblanos, two Anaheims, and three "El Diablero" peppers. The Anaheims were hotter than I expected - about the same as the El Diableros - so I ended up only using the poblanos, Anaheims, and one of the El Ds in my big pot of black beans (5 cans; I make extra to freeze), as well as three small, unroasted jalapenos. So I have two leftover roasted peppers for the next giant pot of black beans. This batch was especially great. The combination of all the different peppers made the beans spicy and smoky - just extremely flavorful. Otherwise, just shallots, garlic, cumin, and oregano - the chiles did most of the work.

So for dinner Saturday night, we had black bean tacos with garlicky chard and golden tomatoes. Wonderful! I suspected that the chard's hearty texture would work well with the black beans, and I was right. Usually I add spinach to my black bean tacos, but the chard was even better in this case; its natural bitterness was mostly masked by the flavorful beans. I would have taken photos of our colorful plates...but everything smelled too good to wait.

Sunday night we went to Diner in Williamsburg, where I hadn't been in a long time. Their menu is quite meat- and seafood-heavy, but can always be counted on for some excellent vegetable dishes. We shared a cheese plate, and I had a brilliant tomato salad with black olives and grilled haloumi, a Greek cheese I've wanted to try since reading about it in a cookbook, as well as a side of greens. The tomatoes were terrific on their own, but the salty/meaty olive tapenade and the smoky grilled cheese combined to make the salad spectacular. We were so pleased with ourselves for our healthy restaurant dinner (he had tomato-eggplant soup and a green salad) that we went a bit crazy and got the chocolate bread pudding for dessert. Of that, the less said the better - it was extremely delicious, what with the fresh whipped cream and all.

Thursday I'm planning the tofu and tat soi wraps, or maybe we'll just have a simple stir-fry over rice. I hear spinach is back some places, but I've been meaning to try new dark green leafies regardles...

Drool-worthy heirloom tomatoes

These lovelies were harvested by pal Matthew Taylor in his New Mexico garden (not only a green thumb, but a talented member of rock band Bellini). Tomato varieties include black plum, green zebra, roma, yellow pear, and sungold.


Here's a shot of some of his tomato plants and basil plants (he grows three varieties!) growing together.

How can I miss you if you don't go away?

Back to the dear, dear USG today after weeks of questionable eating. But while in Cali, I had some really delicious strawberries and pluots (sexy hybrids like that never make it eastward, it seems), as well as all the ripe, buttery avocadoes I wanted, which was lots.


I came home with:
4 "Early Golden" apples
2 Macintosh apples
2 zucchini
1/2 lb. yellow snap beans
1 1/2 lb. green beans
3 peaches
1 lb. "Yellow Egg" plums
2 ears yellow corn
3 tomatoes
2 Poblano peppers
1 Anaheim chile
1 lb. fingerling potatoes
Total spent: about $30

The peppers will go in a pot of black beans, the tomato, corn, and zucchini will comprise another (late-)summer saute, and I'll roast the potatoes in the oven with olive oil and salt (as the sign over the bin recommended). I usually try to avoid the simple starches, but the potato vendor had so many beautiful varieties that I couldn't resist, and it was easy to choose fingerlings of the same size for even roasting.

I'll boil the green beans quickly with salt, and keep them cold for lunches, as a substitute for edamame (we eat quite enough soy in this family) - and, of course, the apples will be slices for lunch. The Early Goldens are absolutely my favorite - so crisp and sweet-tart! - so I hope they stay around for awhile...but I'm going to try a different variety also each week.

The plums were a total gamble - I have no idea what they'll be like, but their color was similar to my beloved Green Gage plums, so I went for it. You'd think my spotty plum history would advise caution in this type of decision, but I was still dizzy with joy at my return to the greenmarket when I hit the Red Jacket Orchards stand. The yellow snap beans were $6/lb., but I couldn't resist getting a few - and, once again, the boy who sold 'em to me was a bright-eyed cutie of about 22. What is it with snap beans and good-looking boys?