CSA Week 10
This week you MAY have tomatoes!! red or yellow onions, sweet or hot peppers (jalapeno, serrano, Hungarian wax, cayenne…), eggplant, Paula Red apples, celery -if you did not see it last week), kale or chard 🙂
Get your tomatoes!! We have a special price for CSA members of $32/.case (non-members pay $37+ depending on the week). Do you need something else for preserving? Send me an email at stillmans@verizon.net and we will fix you up; it is a little harder to get tomatoes to you if you ick up at a location we are not…but we will try.
I should have scheduled a canning tomatoes workshop here at the farm! Halley took some good shots today, so we will get those posted.
Since I have spent the ENTIRE day canning tomatoes, I am rerunning last year’s recipes sorry, I am wiped.
Recipes
Peach Salsa
3 peaches diced
2-3 medium tomatoes diced
1 bell pepper finely diced
hot peppers of your choice finely diced – you are in control of the heat!
1 small onion (I used 1/4 of one of ours) finely diced
2 T cilantro chopped (I just threw down this amount, use more/less/none depending how you feel about cilantro…I sub parsley or basil based on crowd)
2 Tbsp lemon or lime juice
S & P to taste
Toss all together and enjoy with chips, on fish or pork. Fish tacos anyone?
Baked eggplant
This recipe goes into every year’s eggplant letter…it’s simple, not slimy or greasy, and very tasty.
Slice thinly (the long way or the round way), lay on lightly greased baking sheet, thinly spread mayonnaise on top, sprinkle with parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and pepper and bake in hot (400) oven for 10 mins, or until fork tender. If you’re a purist with garlic, omit the powder and mix minced garlic in with the mayonnaise. And, really, the garlic is not necessary at all, it is simply another excuse to put garlic on something. Everyone has time for this recipe!
I freeze eggplant made this way on a baking sheet and then package up after frozen…it is fabulous to have on hand in the winter to re-bake and serve with red sauce and pasta for a quick vegetarian meal. Baked Eggplant
Eggplant Pizza
Yep! It’s just what you are thinking 
Slice eggplant the long way (1/2″ +), top with your favorite tomato sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, whatever else you have laying about; bake 12 minutes at 400. Yummy!
Vegetale al Forno
This is one that appears in the boxletter yearly, by request, and contributed by member Lisa. It is always yummy…even better when you think you have overcooked it. My tips: don’t undercook. Also, I have been told if you omit the soy sauce and wine, use margarine and low fat, low salt cheese, it is not very flavorful (surprise!), 2. make substitutions wisely. I love to tweak a recipe with the best of them, but you have to substitute within reason. On a no or low sodium diet, try substituting potassium chloride. Not into butter fat? Use a nice olive oil. Skipping the soy sauce and the wine? At least use a really flavorful chicken or vegetable stock and try out the or coconut aminos. (Did I tell you about the time a member substituted water for chicken stock when making my lettuce soup recipe?)
On the bottom of a nice sized baking/serving dish place a layer of thin-sliced eggplant, on top of that a layer of thin-sliced zucchini, then a layer of sliced (or canned whole) tomatoes. Use plenty of vegetables. Layer it twice if you have enough room in the pan.
Then take a cup of red wine, mix it with half a cup of melted butter, about four tablespoons of soy sauce, pepper, garlic, oregano and basil. Pour it over the vegetables and top with a thick layer of grated Swiss cheese. Bake uncovered in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the dish. The cheese should be crusty on top, and the liquid should bubble. The vegetables should be incredibly tender. It should not be swimming in excess liquid.
This is a nice one dish meal or side dish with meat. I like this on a nice baguette.
A similar style dish, but WITHOUT all the fun booze and soy Summer Tian
Check out:
Fresh Salsa
Toasted-Oat Shortcakes with Basil-Scented Peaches
There will be pick up on Labor Day!
Farm Dust
It is pretty dusty here these days, I don’t think we have had more than 1/4″ of rain in 40 days…might be longer with less rain than that. Quite the opposite of last year. Nature has quite a way of evening things out. My Biology teacher used to say there were actually very few people who were actually the average height, it takes the 5′ people and the 6′ people to make a 5’6″ average, right? While we could sure use some rain for the winter squashes and other fields we cannot get to, Glenn has been busy today masterminding where the irrigation will be/can be moved to next. We will save as much as we can!
The guys got the last transplants in this week and today they are wilting down onto the plastic. Glenn is chatting with Curtis about how he gets water to his far afield crops.
You know what is fun? Picking apples! Paula Reds now, and I saw some Zestar, Sensa and Molly Delicious today. I know there are Paula Reds this week and Glenn tells me there should be Molly Delicious next week. Molly Delicious are a heritage apple variety also known as Sheepnose. I love their crisp sweetness. After the Molly’s we will be picking Redcorts, Cortland, McIntosh, Macoun, Golden Delicious, Empire, Ida Red, Ben Davis…not necessarily in that order.
While I was lamenting school starting soon, the weather managed to change just in time so that I had an extra cover on this morning. It still managed to feel gross canning tomatoes, but nothing like other years when we were in the middle of a heat wave when Halley and I decided this was the only day ever to can tomatoes, LOL. We got quite a bit accomplished today and decided we won’t have to revisit tomatoes this summer. 33 quarts and 24 pints. HOW ON EARTH did my grandmother do it! And many of you may remember my retelling of Stephanie Benoit’s mother-in-law canning 10 basket of peaches in one night, on a wood stove….that’s 186 quarts!!! By herself!!! In one night!!
Eat well,
Geneviève Stillman
