On with the rest! Week 10:

Summer Squash-1 pound
Lettuce-1 head
Bright Lights Swiss Chard-1bunch
Romano Beans-1 pound
Cilantro-1 bunch
Sungold Cherry Tomatoes-1 basket
Lilac Peppers-2
Slicing Tomatoes-2 pounds
Orient Express Eggplant-2
Sweet Onions-2
Tomatillos-1 pound
Fennel-1 head

I finally have everything I need to make gazpacho (I have cukes leftover from last week) and I think I’ll whip up a batch tonight. The other thing I’m definitely going to make is gnocchi with sauteed eggplant, chopped tomato, and basil. We’ll just have to see with the rest.

yellow peaches
nectarines
prune plums

To eat the plums or make plum cake? These are tough decisions.

One of my favorite poems is “This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams and I can’t stop thinking about it as I sit here dreaming about the sweet plums waiting in my refrigerator. I’ll shake things up this week and show you the fruit first.

Yellow Peaches
White Peaches
Sugar Plums

A couple of the plums in the bag had split open and I felt it was my duty to eat them as I was putting the vegetables away. They’re delicious. The peaches need to sit for a couple more days until they’re a little softer.

Summer Squash-2 pounds
Cucumbers-3
Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage-2 heads
Dill-1 bunch
Scallions-1 bunch
Red Sails Lettuce-1 head
Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes-1 basket
Green Beans-1 pound

Mini Purplettes-1 bunch
Summer Squash-16
Red Ace Beets-1 bunch with greens
Bright Lights Swiss Chard-1 bunch
Sage-1 bunch
Cukes-4
Orient Express Eggplant-2

16 squash. That is a lot of zucchini, to be more specific. Luckily they were a little smaller this week than in previous weeks, which helps to get through them a little more quickly. Thursday night I made yet another batch of chocolate chip zucchini bread and I’m no where near sick of it – it’s that good.

To prove to you that I am indeed insane, I offer you this: I went to the farmers market on Thursday and bought tomatoes, parsley, carrots, bread, and cheese. I bought the parsley and tomatoes because I had all the nice cucumbers from the share and I’d been craving tabouli, which I made on Friday. I also made some roasted zucchini for dinner Friday night. I pretty much had the day off from cooking on Saturday but Sunday afternoon it was nose to the grindstone again. I made ratatouille (debated between Confit Byaldi of Ratatouille (the movie) fame and a simpler oven-baked version, went with option 2) and “Spinach” pie. I put spinach in quotes because I used beet greens and swiss chard instead, stems included. The recipe I followed (mostly) was from the Everyday Food tv show. I wanted to give it a try because it doesn’t use quite as much fillo or butter as my regular recipe, which is for cocktail-sized spinach pies. It’s FANTASTIC, but making the individual triangles does take a lot of time and is a better winter project than a summer one. Anyways, back to the everyday food recipe – I used half light feta and half regular feta and I don’t think the results were noticeable. I think the recipe calls for too much salt, given how salty feta usually is. If I make this again, I would definitely reduce the salt by a teaspoon or two.

Going away for the weekend means coming home to … a lot of zucchini. I made another batch of the chocolate chip zucchini bread. This time I substituted 1/2 C of applesauce for 1/2C of oil and because the applesauce I used was pretty sweet (I think I made it from macintosh apples and I know I didn’t add sugar to the sauce) I reduced the sugar by 1/4C. This version was every bit as good as the original and who doesn’t love things a little bit lighter? I’m going to try making the next batch with even less sugar. And there will be a next batch, because by the end of the evening I’ll have 20 zucchini in my fridge.

Kitchen Kabaret! Anyone? Anyone?

April showers bring May flowers.
What do May flowers bring?
ZUCCHINI IN JULY

Yes, we have lots more zucchini this week. I’m not yet totally tired of it, so I think that’s a good sign.
Here’s the bounty from week 5:

Red Norland Potatoes- 1 pound
Scallions-1 bunch
Summer Squash-15
Beets-1 bunch with greens
Bright Lights Swiss Chard-1 bunch
Genovese Basil-1 bunch
Sugar Snow Peas-1 pint basket
Cucumber – 1

annnnnnnnnnnd, it’s the first week of fruit!

Regional Blueberries-1 pint basket
Local Sweet Cherries-1 bag
Homegrown, organic Currants-1 basket

For dinner last night I made fettuccine with a deconstructed pesto, using all but a few leaves of the basil. For dessert, I washed the currants, took them off the stems, put them in two tiny white bowls, topped them with a couple of teaspoons of sugar, and served them with tiny spoons. Delicious! We ate the blueberries and half of the cherries for breakfast this morning and the rest of the cherries are in my bag for the airport. So is a generous hunk of the chocolate chip zucchini bread. Yay for nature! Yay for treats!

I had been craving chocolate chip zucchini bread for a few days. Partly out of my desire to use up some of the zucchini from last week’s share before we get more this week and partly … I don’t know. I just really wanted it. I didn’t want an entirely chocolate bread or cake, which most of the recipes I had in my cookbooks were, I just wanted some nice zucchini bread, not terribly sweet, with a few chocolate chips for good measure. Yesterday afternoon I found a recipe online for Chocolate Chip Orange Zucchini Bread and it looked pretty good, so I used it as a jumping off point and made my own modifications. It turned out wonderfully.

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread – Sheri’s Modifications

INGREDIENTS
3 eggs
2 cups white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups grated zucchini
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS
1. Sift or whisk together flour, baking powder, soda, salt, and spices.
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and fluffy. Add sugar, and continue beating until well blended. Stir in oil, vanilla, zucchini, nuts, and chocolate chips. Blend in sifted ingredients.
Turn batter into two greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pans or 4 mini loaf pans or one big loaf pan and two mini …
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 50 minutes, or until bread tests done. Remove loaves from pans, and cool. Chill before slicing.

Today was the first delivery of CSA veggies for the season. I’m part of the Stamford CSA, which contracts with Stoneledge Farm in South Cairo, NY for delicious organic produce. Our vegetable season is 24 weeks long and our fruit shares run 20 weeks, starting 4 weeks into the season. The share is mostly greens for the first few weeks of the CSA, but that is just fine by me. Here’s what we got today:



Rhubarb-1 bunch
Boc Choi-1 bunch
Chinese Cabbage-1 bunch
Great Lakes Lettuce-1 head
Red Sails Lettuce-1 head
Mizuna-1 bunch
Arugula-1 bunch
Chinese Chives-also called Garlic Chives-1 bunch
Sage with Flowers – 1 bunch
*I saw some rhubarb in the swap box so I swapped my sage for the rhubarb

I think we’ll have the Red Sails lettuce as a salad tonight and we’ll dig in to the rest of the greens tomorrow. I’ve already made the rhubarb into a sauce and I’m very excited to have that as my little treat tonight.

butter & cream, cooking, cooking, done!

Cutting the caramels up wasn’t too difficult, except for the fact that I can’t make multiple straight lines to save my life. Let’s just say there were a variety of sizes available for sampling. Cutting up the wax paper squares didn’t go that much smoother, but the end result was some pretty little candies.

We bought more vegetables and fruit at the farmer’s market. 3 delicata squash (SO fabulous), 3 different kinds of apples and a gigantic head of cauliflower. This is on top of week 21’s bounty:

Carnival Winter Squash-2
Onions-4
Red Russian Kale-1 bunch
Collards-1 bunch
Cabbage-1
Parsley-1 bunch
Beets-1 bunch
Celeriac-1
Potatoes-2 pounds

and more apples and pears.

This weekend I made:

• sesame garlic collards – very light on the sesame flavor, sadly. They were tasty, nonetheless.
• roasted fingerling potatoes with rosemary from my garden. Delicious.
• roasted beets, carrots, and parsnips. Delicious.
• quinoa salad with balsamic, dried cherries, raw sunflower seeds, parsley, and peas. For lunch today. Seems delicious.

I was planning on making Tarte Tatin but I was tired yesterday afternoon. I could make it tonight but I really need to get some exercise a lot more than I need to bake. It’ll get made sometime this week.

It’s unseasonably warm today and it’s so tempting to pop out of the office and go get some gelato. Alas, I won’t do it since I want to leave on time so I can hand out candy tonight.
Saturday night I made pumpkin soup from the CSA pumpkins we got a couple of weeks ago. Peeling a pumpkin is no easy task, but the end result was worth the effort. We ate some soup Saturday evening and my feeling was “it’s an ok soup”. A little time in the fridge did the the soup a world of good and it’s really very delicious now. Besides that, we’ve been eating our greens in a tasty, uncreative fashion. Fine by me!

Here’s what we got for Week 20:

Acorn Winter Squash-2
Garlic-2
Gold Turnips-1 bunch
Winterbor Kale-1 bunch
Collards-1 bunch
Carrots-1 bunch
Austrian Crescent Fingerling Potatoes
Mint-1 bunch
Kohlrabi-1bunch (I’ve given up on liking kohlrabi so I traded it for an extra kale. Smart)
Golden Delicious Apples, JonaGold Apples, Anjou Pears, Bosc Pears.

Delicious foods and a wee glimpse of our new counter tops.

So guess where I had dinner Sunday night? Babbo! Guess who else was there? Gwyneth Paltrow. La di da. I was really looking forward to dinner and it did not disappoint; the food was fabulous. Ordering with 5 people was a challenge but it was good trying things I wouldn’t have normally ordered. On our waiter’s recommendation I went with the duck for my main course and it was the most incredible duck I’ve ever had. Perfumed with rosemary, it was tender where it should be tender and crisp where it should be crisp. The pastas, main course and dessert were all very good. The weakest spot, in my opinion, was the antipasti but even that was good. I’d definitely go back.