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Hellgate CSA Week 18

CSA Week 18

This week we still got what I think of as a summer-fall hybrid. Summer veggies like tomatoes, peppers, beans, and eggplant, then fall veggies like asian greens and beets, plus classic fall fruits like apples and pears. We also got some prune plums, which are beautiful. Well, everything is beautiful. We got:

1 pint mini tomatoes
1.5 small beets
1 pound green beans
.5 pounds eggplant
1 bunch asian greens
1.5 pounds sweet peppers
2 pounds pears
1 pound mutsu apples
1 pound yellow delicious apples

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Hellgate CSA Week 17

hellgate week 17 collage

This past week was a comparatively small share. We’re still seeing summer vegetables – tomatoes and green beans – and the onslaught of fall apples and pears is upon us. Good thing I like apples and pears!

We got:

1 bunch of mizuna
2 pounds tomatoes (not pictured)
1 bunch carrots
1 bitter melon
1 butternut squash
1 pound green beans
2 pounds bosc pears
2 pounds honeycrisp apples
1 pound empire apples

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Summer Preservation Review

lots of canningWhat a summer of preserving this was! Now that’s it’s officially fall, I thought I’d review the preservation methods I used this summer (and late spring). It was so fun to learn new ones, and refine my skills with the ones I’ve used over the years. And now I have a pantry (and freezer) full of delicious summer food to be used in winter.

There’s something very satisfying to have a pantry full of food you preserved yourself. It’s gathered when in season, so the flavor profile is going to be the best it can be. Having the taste of summer tomatoes, corn, and peppers will no doubt give us a boost when it’s dark and cold outside.

So, here is what I accomplished this year, and what you can accomplish next summer, too.

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Hellgate CSA Week 16

CSA Week 16 collage

This is week 16 of the CSA – that means we’ve been at this for about four months! We did skip a week because of Independence Day, but still. Four months! Awesome.

Last week’s share didn’t get documented, mostly because of laziness (yes, it happens). However, I will tell you – we got corn! I froze the niblets for winter. We also got an acorn squash, some seckel pears, and it was the second week of tomato shares.

I ordered another 25 pound box of plum tomatoes, which I think were actually romas. I used part of that tomato share for my tomato dehydrating project. I used the rest to can crushed tomatoes – 11 pints! I can imagine a tasty winter soup of tomatoes, corn, peppers, and chicken, made with my delicious and nourishing chicken bone broth.

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Dehydrated Tomatoes

drying tomatoes in the food dehydrator

This summer I processed 50 pounds of tomatoes – 25 pounds a week over two weeks The first week I canned beautiful organic plum tomatoes and the second week I canned beefy organic romas, and chose to dehydrated five pounds of those. It was a breeze to do this in the dehydrator compared to the oven, which I’ve used in the past.

It’s a very simple recipe: I cut each tomato in half and tossed them all with organic extra virgin olive oil. I placed the tomatoes, cut side up, on the dehydrator racks and then sprinkled salt on them. They spent time in the dehydrator for about 12 hours at 195 degrees, mostly overnight.

They didn’t dry out totally, which is what I wanted; they are soft. I ended up freezing them individually, then bagging them. This means I can take them out and use them as I like. They will be great on top of goat cheese, or chopped up into tomato sauce. Their flavor is concentrated and sweet. The epitome of a summer tomato.

I’ve preserved a lot of food this summer. I will write about it, so stay tuned for that!

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Hellgate CSA Week 14

CSA Week 14

This week we definitely got a glimpse of fall – enter the winter squash! Exciting, to say the least – I am a huge fan of winter squashes. Additionally, we got:

1 bunch carrots
1 pound green beans
1 head escarole
1 pound sweet peppers
1 pint mini tomatoes (not shown)
(1 acorn squash)
2 pounds apples
2 pounds pears
2 pound concord grapes

The carrots will be fermented; the green beans turned into dilly beans. The tomatoes have just been eaten out of hand pretty much. The escarole is quite bitter, so I’ll likely braise it somehow, perhaps with bacon!

I plan to pickle the grapes.

Apart from these fruits and vegetables, I received a tomato canning share – 20-25 pounds of plum tomatoes.

tomato share from hepworth farm

They look and feel great so far, and I plan to make crushed tomatoes with them. If they do as well as I expect they will, I’ll order another box for next week! Slow roasted tomatoes, yum.

This week was a meat & dairy week, so it was great to replenish my stock of ground beef and turkey sausage. I also ordered two cheese from Nettle Meadow Farm – Kunik and Three Sisters. Both are excellent, but Kunik is out of this world! A very luxurious cheese.

Also, I ordered a batch of “Battenkill Brittle,” which is a kind of crunchy, sweet, seedy brittle. It’s sweetened with brown rice syrup and maple syrup, though it’s not super sweet at all.

Quite a week this week!

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Garden by Gardenfreude

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of new friends in the neighborhood, WT and Erich; I met them at our last WHA blogger social. They are the forces behind Gardenfreude, a terrific Astoria blog about food, health, gardening, design, and knitting. I hear they are excellent knitters and make some amazing sweaters and things over the winters (I, on the other hand, can make a scarf and a hat, but that’s about it). They are also passionate gardeners, and we three connected over gardening and food especially.

Their garden is quite large, especially for NYC standards. They have an arrangement with their neighbors to use their yard, which gives them a lot of land to work with. In face, they currently only use half the yard, but have gotten the green light to use the rest of the space, so they have plans to expand next spring.

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