Full Swing

Yellow plums and juicy, sweet cherries were among the shares we got this week. 

Zucchini, squash, and eggplant.  I immediately grilled these and then served them cold with grilled chicken, later in the day.  The beets, I cut up like matchsticks and added to salad.  Yum.

These beans, above and below, were delicious lightly steamed.  After cooking though, the purple ones were no longer purple!  They looked the same as the green ones.  So strange. 

Can't resist the pesto.  I took all the basil we got and made a batch.  So good, in every way.

Iced Coffee, Redux

If you start your morning with this,

it's going to be a great day - guaranteed. 

I learned a little about making amazing iced coffee.  How?  My friend Lisi posted this on her blog, and so I followed her link and went here.  Follow the instructions, and you will have the perfect coffee with which to make the best summertime treat ever.  Even my 10-year-old daughter clamors for this.  No more watered-down, diluted coffee taste for me.  The sweetened condensed milk should not be omitted.  Go for it.  This is possibly one of the best finds ever. 

Enjoy!

Sunny Fruits and Whimsical Vegetables

A bright spot in our week, last night, was getting our shares.  Such a surprise with each delivery, it's a true delight to lift back the flaps on those boxes and discover our farm share fate.  Boy, do I have some pictures to share this week. 

Take a look at these apricots, Rainier cherries, and sour cherries.

A veritable bounty, and it's too darn hot to bake a pie.  My solution:  the freezer.  Here, I pitted the sour cherries, and laid them on a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.

After I spread them evenly, I slid the tray in the freezer.  Once frozen, I zipped up the cherry halves in a freezer bag, and there they will stay until my pate brise can come out of the fridge without practically liquifying in the summer heat. 

Now, onto the veggies.  Here's some squash, and some purslane.  A new one for me.  I'm going to steam some, and serve it with some brown rice.  Might just plop it on my lunchtime sandwich, too. 

Look at this pretty eggplant.  

And these peppers are delicious.  So much better than Stop & Shop produce.  Green beans, fresh off the vine.  "Snap!"

Melanie held up this fennel to me and said, "High five, Mom."  Such a joker.

I'm thinking of sauteing the fennel, eggplant and squash together (like my friend Ann did) to get a makeshift ratatouille.  Mmmm. 

Remembering Through Baubles

This past weekend, we went to visit the kids' great-grandparents.  All of ninety years old, they're in better shape than some seventy-year-olds.  But don't tell them that; they will not believe you.  One of the things we did during our visit, was go through my grandmother's jewelry.  Some pieces were trendy, whereas other pieces were strikingly beautiful.  Mel has no love for jewelry that is worn.  She just appreciates its shine, its jingle, or even its history.  And history is what her G-G has a lot of.  So we heard all about some of the items:  a ring her mother bought - after saving for its hefty price for so long - almost 100 years ago; a pair of earrings purchased for my great-grandmother, on the occasion of my grandmother's birth; and a charm bracelet to beat all charm bracelets.  Each piece had a story, and meaning behind it.  Mel soaked it all in.  I remembered this bracelet, too.  It has a working mini slot machine that I used to tink, tink, tink all the time.  A gold bicycle with working wheels, and I'd ride it all along the tablecloth in front of my place at the table.  My favorite piece was the mini U.S. Mailbox, and when you pulled open the top slot to "insert" a letter, you saw two extremely miniature red ruby hearts.  So dear.  Also, there was a regular old wheat-back penny, dated 1954, that was bound in a gold setting, and attached to the bracelet.  I'd forgotten, but my grandmother reminded me that she volunteered for an organization long ago that helped developmentally challenged young adults.  She spent many hours there, and the head of the organization, after lamenting that he could not pay her for her time, offered her that single penny as a token of his gratitude.  It must have been an extremely special token, for her to have set it and attached it to this bracelet, upon which dangles a lifetime of memories. 
It was a very special vist, with so much joy in remembering. 

First Fruit Share

This week we got more greens, fava beans, another gorgeous head of red leaf lettuce, plus some cucumbers, and zucchini and squash.

And, drum roll please, we got our first taste of fruit - some sour cherries and regular sweet cherries. 


See the difference?

Sour cherries on their own leave me wanting, to be quite honest.  But bake them in a little pie-cup, like I did here . . .

. . . and all I'm wanting is more.  I'm sorry, but pie making is not my specialty (maybe because I never measure anything that goes in a pie - ever), but I think I tossed about 3 cups of the pitted sour cherries with about a cup of sugar, a quarter cup of flour, and some lemon juice.  I used Mark Bittman's Flaky Pie Crust recipe.  I am the lousiest roller-outer of dough, even with my zip-up plastic circle that is supposed to yield a perfectly even, round pie crust.  Plus, it was almost ninety degrees in my kitchen, and the butter was melting far too quickly, even with putting the pan in the freezer in between filling each muffin cup with the dough.  I ended up just smooshing dough globs in there.  Then I took my foil pieces (that I had pre-fashioned in the shape of the cups before inserting the dough), and greased them and put them on top of the moulded dough.  Then I filled the foil cups with beans.  See?

Then after these baked at 425 degrees for 12 minutes, I discarded the foil and beans, and filled the semi-baked cups of dough with the cherry/sugar mixture, and baked that at 350 degrees for about 45 mins.  After letting them cool (not too long, or you'll never get them out), I just scooped them out of their cups, and put them in little ramekins.  Of course I ate one.  Had to.  And did you know that a baked sour cherry is a taste that can alter your life?  Now, take many baked sour cherries, with sugar, and inside a crumbly, buttery, crust - well, that can just blow any other taste experience out of the water.  Hands down.  The most wonderful, delightful thing to come out of my oven.  And a LOT of things come out of my oven. 

Well, I steamed the zucchini and squash tonight.  The greens, I blanched again, and will saute them later in the week.  But the sour cherry tartletts - they may not last a day.

Choco-Love. Seriously.

These were the cookies for today's game. Really good, chunky, chewy chocolate-y. And the Oreos act as a casual injection, because cookies really should not be taken all that seriously. Perhaps that's why I like baking them so much! I mean, really - they're small, individually-sized mounds of delight. Nothing more than that. But these brought smiles all around. And that is definitely the reason I like to bake. All the smiles. A good cookie just brings us back to the center, where we hold it all together. Hmmm. Perhaps I should take cookies more seriously . . .

Here's the link to the recipe at How Sweet It Is.

Last Week's Veggies - Gone!

We greatly enjoyed our veggie share last week. We have been so very busy, I almost forgot to take pictures.
Almost.

More kohlrabi, a beautiful head of red leaf lettuce, some favas, gorgeous zucchini and squash . . .

. . . more greens, garlic scapes, and some garlic.

I roasted almost all of this, all together. Bathed in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, I laid all the thickly cut and diced veggies out on two pans, and roasted at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. I even wrapped the garlic bulbs in foil and let them roast in there. Then I squeezed all that goodness over the roasted veggies. Absolutely divine. See?

The greens, I blanched, and then later sauteed them in garlic and olive oil, then added some bacon and placed on top of some brown rice. We do love our bacon. Can't let that go around here.

After eating out so much over the holiday weekend, it was great to have some superbly fresh food in our bellies. Yum!

More S'Mores

I made these again. Boy are these always a hit. Always. Here's the recipe.

Enjoy. I know you will.

As American as Baseball and Apple Pie

This Independence Day weekend, we spent our time cheering on some pretty swell ball players, if I do say so myself. Very fun indeed.

And, yes, we did enjoy some homemade apple pie. Thanks bro!