This week we resumed receiving CSA shares (last week there was no delivery due to the Independence Day holiday). The biggest surprise was a pint of cherry tomatoes in our fruit share! All in all, we received:
1 pound of fava beans
1 bunch of fennel
1 bag of snap peas
1 head of lettuce
1 bunch of swiss chard (broccoli rabe was another choice)
two apples
2 pounds of yellow plums
1 quart of sour cherries
I’ve already eaten a lot of this. The tomatoes are gone – last night I cooked half them with two of the zucchinis in olive oils and garlic, plus fresh herbs from my deck. Today I had them in a raw salad with more zucchini. The favas were sauteed in olive oil with garlic at the end and topped with a little fleur de sel.
The sour cherries will become cherry liqueur and hot cherry preserves. As I write this the cherries are macerating with dried peppers, vanilla bean, and sugar for preserves, and the liqueur is coming to be with cherries and sugar sitting in rum and vodka.
I may make a plum syrup with any of the plums we don’t eat simply out of hand.
Let me tell you – it is so great to have the veggies and fruit back!
The garden is green and plump and everything is working toward blossoming and fruiting. I’ve got plenty of tomatoes showing up, though most are green. However there are a couple of plants – the Mexican Midget and the Tommy Toe – that have reddening fruit. It’s very exciting to see them progress.
Various stages of the tomatoes in the garden
You can see the Tommy Toe in the upper right hand corner and the Mexican Midget in the bottom left hand corner. The plant with the overabundance of blossoms is the Blondköpfchen – I am so looking forward to seeing the tomatoes that come off this plant. The bottom two images in the collage are the Stupice on the left and the Silver Fir on the right. I’m so pleased to see so many tomatoes growing. I really don’t think I can have too many tomatoes.
My squash plant – which threatens to take over the garden with its crazy vines – is starting to produce!
Female squash flower with fruit
As you can see, there is a small fruit at the bottom. This is a volunteer, so I do not know which exact variety it is, but I suspect it is a tromboncino. We’ll see. They get huge.
The male flower has a thin stem and dies off after its usefulness (pollinating the female) is used up. Kind of brutal, but that’s nature.
Male squash flower
It’s hard to see the stem, but the flower is gorgeous. When the plant first started to flower, I thought the blossoms were so gorgeous. Then the next day, I’d go out and find them on the ground, seemingly cut off by some nasty. Turns out it was just the dropping off I mentioned above. Such a relief.
There’s some nice herb action going on at our place, too.
Many herbs grace our home
Friends of ours moved away (boo hoo) and offloaded their container herbs on me. They seem pretty happy on the back deck. There’s tarragon, thyme, rosemary, and basil. I’ve also got borage growing in the garden and they are flowering like crazy! I love their blue flowers.
Other stuff in the garden are melons, sour gherkins, peppers and ground cherries, which are coming along nicely. You can see more pictures in my Garden 2011 photoset on Flickr.
The other night, I had the pleasure of joining my friend Judith for the inaugural Fooditka Blogger Social. This was a really fun event organized by Judith (aka Fooditka), which involved a group of food bloggers gathering together for a meal in Astoria. We met at Ovelia, a popular Greek cafe/restaurant on 30th Avenue.
Often times, one leaves events like these having made some professional connections, but I felt like I really made some new friends: Lindsay of The Lunch Belle; Elena of The Gotham Palate; Erin of GlutenFreeFun; and of course my friend and writing partner at We Heart Astoria, Judith, who has just relaunched her Foodista blog as Fooditka. These blogs are excellent, and the women behind them are all really nice people.
One disclaimer – the food was comped, and Judith picked up the tab for the drinks. We also got quite a bit of attention from the staff. It was all very nice.
That being said, I’d eaten at Ovelia a couple of times before this (for brunch), and was very happy with my previous meals. So I did go into this eating experience expecting the dinner food to be delicious as well… and I was not disappointed. From the inventive sangria, to the feta cubes, to the barbecue, everything was delicious.
One thing we were served was the loukaniko, otherwise known as Ovelia’s house-made sausage. I’ve had it every time I’ve been at Ovelia, and frankly, I don’t want to have a meal there without it. It is so delicious.
Loukaniko is a traditional Greek sausage, made from pork and seasoned with spices, including fennel. It is also flavored with orange peel, which I absolutely love. It’s delicious on its own, but I love it with a squeeze of lemon (many dishes at Greek restaurants are accompanied by a couple of lemon slices). The lemon really makes the flavors pop – it’s fantastic! I also like how it’s served, sliced into pieces on a small plate.
We had a few other traditional Greek dishes – calamari, grilled halloumi, and Greek style pita (it doesn’t have a pocket), cut into triangles and grilled. But Ovelia has also created some really interesting and intriguing small plates. My favorite was probably the feta cubes, which were coated in white and black sesame seeds and fried. There was some honey in there, too. I also enjoyed the kafteri poppers, which were feta and jalepeño croquettes.
Additionally, there was chicken – grilled and buttermilk fried – and ribs, whose meat fell off the bone and into your mouth. It was a delight!
These savory treats were delicious and a lot of fun. I also wanted to mention that Erin, our gluten-free dining companion, did not go hungry, what with all the bread and such. The staff took very good care of her. They offered her cucumber slices in place of pita, provided the filling from the kafteri poppers without the breading, made these wonderful “crackers” out of halloumi cheese, and even slathered on some gluten-free barbecue sauce on a separate serving of ribs. We were all very impressed at how well our gluten-fee compadre was treated.
And I must write a bit about the Ambrosia Sangria. This was an unusual take on the classic mix of wine and fruit – the base was a dry rosé wine populated with bits of strawberries and kiwis. It was beautiful, and yes – a bit girly, but I like girly drinks (I’ve enjoyed many a cosmo over the years). We were all delighted by this drink.
So, judging from the delicious brunches I’ve had there, as well from as our social night together last week, I can wholeheartedly recommend Ovelia for great Greek food and more. Astorians especially – if you haven’t had a meal there yet, definitely stop on by. They have some outdoor cafe seating, which is terrific in the summer for both relaxing with a good meal and people watching along 30th Ave.
For more on our meal that night and Ovelia’s food, please click on over to the posts written by Judith, Erin, Elena, and Lindsay:
During last week’s canning workshop, I learned that all along I had been using my jar lifter wrong! Basically, I’d been using it backwards – using the black roller handles to grip the jars… which was always a bit precarious in hindsight. Here’s the way I was using it:
Wrong way to use the jar lifter (it's upside down)
And here’s the proper way to use it:
The right way to use the jar lifter
It makes sense to use it this way, because the red parts grip better, so there’s less chance to drop the jar. And they are curved to better fit the jars. I’m going to use my jar lifters properly this year, which I expect will make the process quite a bit easier.
And as far as the confusion as to which side is the handle and which is the gripper, I’ve learned that I am not alone in this respect… many thanks to AJ for setting me straight.
Last week, I hosted a canning workshop with my CSA… and it was a great time! We learned how to make strawberry lemon preserves, perfect for this time of year. It was a small turnout – 4 people plus myself and the teacher – but that made for a nice intimate gathering. We all learned a lot, and even after three years of canning, even I learned some important tips (and some in hindsight that seem like no-brainers). Canning 101 techniques are always good to revisit.
Our teacher, AJ Simone
AJ had already combined the strawberries, lemon, and sugar and let them macerate for a day before the workshop. He mentioned that the CSA strawberries he used made a huge difference in the end product – they were far superior to supermarket strawberries. Of course, the strawberries we got from Hepworth Farms were simply incredible, and were probably the best strawberries I’ve eaten outside of the ones my grandfather used to grow in California.
Strawberries and lemons cooking
This collage shows the strawberry-lemon mixture from the initial draining, to the resulting juice that will boil down to a syrup, to the fruit cooking in the syrup.
The kitchen sure smelled amazing during this whole process.
Processing the strawberry lemon preserves
This collage shows the processing of the preserves, from spooning them into the sterilized jars, to screwing on the lids, to processing them in the hot water bath. I’m fortunate to have a nice big pot for processing – a 16 quart stockpot! It gets used pretty much in the summer only (I bought it years ago on sale).
This is the final product:
The finished product - strawberry lemon preserves
This was one delicious batch of preserves. And look at that color! I loved the pure strawberry flavor combined with the tang of the lemon – it’s definitely not too sweet. And that’s understandable with the proportions in mind – 3 pounds of strawberries, 2 whole lemons, and only 1 1/2 cups of sugar. One can get away with a relatively low amount of sugar because pectin isn’t being used in this recipe.
This recipe makes about five half pint jars worth of preserves, but sometimes it can come out to 4.5, which is what happened to our batch. We ate the .5 amount, yum. AJ was an excellent teacher and I’m hoping we’ll see more workshops led by him in the future.
This week was a lighter week, with only four things in our share. We got:
1 head green leaf lettuce
1 head mustard greens
1 bunch beets with beautiful greens
1 bag of snap peas
There was an herb share this week, but I don’t partake in that. Our fruit share is on hold for a couple of weeks because this week the harvest was iffy and next week is July 4 holiday week and we won’t have a delivery from anyone that day. I’m really looking forward to more fruit.
In my head, I’ve been formulating a recipe for the mustard greens. Stay tuned for that.
Our CSA canning workshop went great! The CSA strawberries used made amazing preserves. More on that soon…
The last time I tried making yogurt was a lackluster experience. It was eons ago, in another life, and we had a Salton yogurt maker. It had 6 ceramic cups and made unremarkable yogurt – it was extremely runny, even moreso than the raw yogurt I am accustomed to now, which is thin compared to commercial yogurt. We abandoned the project after a couple of tries.
After culturing
Fast forward a couple of decades and to this raw milk yogurt tutorial. I was really inspired by it – it sounded so easy to make. And it was! Basically, I stirred a tablespoon of nice raw yogurt into a pint of fresh raw milk (I did not heat it), put the lid on, wrapped the pint jar in a towel around noon and set it in a cabinet above my fridge that gets nice and warm (but not too warm). I checked it around 10am this morning, and it was yogurt!
It had the curds that I’m used to, and the beautiful separation of cream and milk. It’s easily mixed back together, so no worries there.
Yogurt texture
It’s fresh and tangy and lovely. I’m thrilled! I’ll be making this regularly and experimenting with the recipe a little. I think I’ll try straining some at some point, which makes a thick, creamy wonderful product. Next time I might use cream as well.
A few things – from what I’ve read, the milk should not be older than 5 days to be effective in making yogurt. Also, I am not sure if this recipe would work with pasteurized milk. And with any kind of preserving/fermenting, make sure your jars and lids are sterile. If you have observations to share on this, please leave a comment!
This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
