What we got this past week in our Hellgate CSA share
This week was marked by a huge fruit share – awesome. Summer veggies are still with us, but fall arrived with some amazing crispy apples and succulent pears. In total, we got:
2 pounds of tomatoes
1 eggplant
1 pound green beans
1 pound peppers
1 bunch leeks
1 head lettuce
1 pound plums
2 pounds peaches
1 pound nectarines
2 pounds apples
2 pounds pears
I’ve been enjoying the tomatoes in quesadillas, with patties of turkey sausage (from the CSA), and I’ve also eaten them with the eggplant and peppers for a delicious saute (punctuated with home grown basil). I’ve been snacking on the apples and pears. The nectarines turned into a fruit crisp, the recipe for which I’ll post next week – it’s all naturally sweetened, with sprouted flour in place of the white flour.
I may end up making another shrub with last week’s peaches – needless to say, things got crazy last week, so no Week 12 will be posted.
One of my favorite salads is the caprese salad. Usually it consists of tomato, basil, and fresh mozzarella, and I’ve seen it in myriad configurations in restaurants around NYC – sometimes with greens, mostly not; more often than not stacked, but sometimes not. I love ordering this dish in part to see how different restaurants construct it.
At Il Punto last week, the caprese salad came in a configuration I wasn’t accustomed to – big wedges of yellow and red tomatoes surrounding a half a ball of fresh mozzarella – in this case, it was buffalo mozzarella, so extra decadent. The balsamic vinegar that dotted the plates was a nice touch – it mixed perfectly with the shimmer of extra virgin olive oil. The fresh and chopped basil finished off the flavor palate.
This past week brought us many delicious vegetables and fruit. We got:
1 pound japanese eggplants
2 pounds tomatoes
1 bunch leeks
1 head lettuce
1 pound summer squash
1 pound green beans
2 pounds apples
1 pound nectarines
1 watermelon (missing)
Sad news about the watermelon – it kind of died. Hard to describe, but it was very sad. I’ve also been on an apples and peanut butter kick, which is a terrific, satisfying snack.
The tomatoes went into tomato jam. Everything else has been eaten as is, sauteed and such together – all these summer veggies go so well together! Except the lettuce, which is languishing in the fridge. So much lettuce.
Now that it’s August, the tomato plants have really started producing. This is what I collected over a few days. There are Stupice, Blondköpfchen, Tommy Toe, Silver Fir, and Mexican Midget tomatoes in this bowl. Everything has been delicious. I’ll likely make some of this into jam. Lacto fermented salsa is on the schedule once more of the larger tomatoes ripen (or I purchase a tomato share from my CSA).
This is the share we got a couple of weeks ago, on August 2. This was the day before I left for Washington, so I left most of it for our housesitter. So, we got:
1 head of lettuce
1 bunch radishes
2 pounds mixed of summer squash and cucumber
2 bell peppers
1 pound white peaches
1 pound plums
1 pound donut peaches
I ate half the tomatoes the night before I left. I took a few donut peaches and plums with me on the airplane, and they were a welcome change from the starchy snacks I was offered there.
I ended up fermenting the radishes with carrots from the week prior, and am excited to see how this mixture comes out. The white peaches ended up going into peach thyme jam this weekend.
The following week, Week 9, will not be documented, for a variety of logistical reasons. Week 10 is this week, though!
I’ve been writing a lot about my garden, but not much about the harvest. Well, it’s been kind of small so far… I expect that will change as we get into August. However, I have gotten to eat a few homegrown tomatoes, and some ground cherries, as well as plenty of apricots.
The first tomato I harvested was a Tommy Toe, which is a large cherry tomato.
Tommy Toe tomatoes
These tomatoes are a large cherry tomato with firm flesh, balanced tomato flavor, and there is a creaminess to them that is just delightful. They are super delicious. I’ve harvested a half dozen of these tomatoes.
I’ve also harvested a half dozen or so of the Mexican Midget tomato. This was one of two plants given to me by my friend Alex.
Mexican Midget tomato
This is a small cherry tomato, almost what I’d consider to be a currant tomato as far as its size goes. It’s small but packs a big flavor punch. So delicious. Their size is perfect for snacking, and when I see ripe ones out on in the garden, I usually just pop them in my mouth and eat them right there. Super tasty.
Apart from the tomatoes, ground cherries have just started to become available for harvest. They are ripe when their husk dries out (the texture reminds me a little bit of onion skin paper) and they drop onto the ground.
Ground cherries
I think of ground cherries to be an old fashioned sort of fruit. It has an unusual flavor, kind of a combination between a tomato and a pineapple. The fruit are about 1/3 inches in diameter and they’re full of seeds, sort of like tomatillos (which they also look like, and are related to). Some people consider ground cherries to be much like the cape gooseberry.
They are delicious to snack on and also make good jam, so I’m told. I have a lot of them out there, so jam may be in my future.
The apricot tree also produced enough apricots for jam.
Apricots on the tree
More on the jam later, which is quite delicious. I picked about 4 pounds of fruit, one pound of which was not usable (blemishes, mostly), but 3 pounds was just enough to make 4.5 pints of delicious apricot jam! It will be nice to have that taste of summer in the winter.
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.
