mama urchin

Summer veggies are winding down here. The tomatoes are getting fewer and smaller and this is the first week in a long while we don’t have basil. Instead, we’ve gotten sage, such an autumnal herb — it has me thinking of Thanksgiving. It was nice and cool last week but we’ve returned to warm weather here although the nights and mornings are definitely cooler. I’m looking forward to permanently cooler weather and making soups and roasts and stews to put all the squash and potatoes and leafy veggies to good use.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Sage, Celery, Eggplant, Beets, Peppers, Potatoes, Flowers, 1 doz. eggs

Are these posts getting too boring? I’m certain pumpkins and squash will be coming soon. There are two new veggies this week though. Blog readers, may I introduce edamame and celeriac. They’re the weeds and gnarly roots there in the picture. Seriously though, the celeriac is very good — we usually use it for soup — and the edamame is very popular. Unfortunately the edamame heads right to the garbage in our house since Stefan is allergic to soybeans. I could eat them I suppose but I’m not personally a big fan. We’ve been pretty good with keeping up since the fridge purge except we have a ton of eggs. I actually think we are approaching a ton in egg weight. I seriously need to start making fritattas, and quiche, and meringues.

In other news, I did a post over on urchins about the abysmal state of our back yard. I’m hoping to make great progress in the next week or two in cleaning it up. I’m sure you guys will be hearing all about it.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Basil, Celeriac, Edamame, Peppers, Potatoes, Green Beans, Flowers, 1 doz. eggs

Our farm offers a lot of options when it comes to the CSA. First you can choose a regular share or a robust share (ours is regular). The second option is for a summer share or an autumn share (or both). We do both which means we’ll be getting veggies until Thanksgiving. Next you pick your shares, of course you get the veggie share but you can also add a flower share, an egg share, and an herb share — we added all three this year. So anyway, back to this week’s veggies. It was pouring rain most of the day today so no flowers but plenty of yummy stuff. Some of that yummy stuff turned into this…

…curried lentil soup which Katrina inhaled for dinner.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Yellow Cherry Tomatoes, Basil, Summer Squash, Peppers, Potatoes, Green Beans, 1 doz. eggs

Well I had to throw away a bunch of cucumbers and tomatoes over the course of the last week. They had started to go bad and I decided it would just be better to clean them all out and start with a clean veggie drawer. Well, the tomatoes don’t actually go in the refrigerator but you know what I mean. Anyway, I decided to forgo the extra tomatoes for canning and I’m glad since this week has been crazy. Hopefully I can just get through what we’ve got.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Basil, Garlic, Summer Squash, Red Peppers, Rainbow Chard, Potatoes, 1 doz. eggs, flowers

So, like I’ve said before we’re not so into okra around here but we’re really trying to use what we get from the farm each week so I decided to make some gumbo. We were having friends over for dinner so it was the perfect one pot kind of meal and turned out quite well. This picture is once again a re-enactment — I didn’t want to put off the dinner guests by taking photos — but it looks the same as it did last night. We served the gumbo with white rice and then for dessert we had homemade ice cream topped with homemade hot fudge and homemade cherry sauce (jam that didn’t gel). Do you think that was homemade enough? Really though the hot fudge was really easy to make and delicious — this coming from someone who is not a hot fudge fan. Katie stood over the ice cream maker yesterday morning saying, Mommy, when is it going to be ice cream? so I think she enjoyed making it and we’ll be doing it again in the future.

The gumbo recipe is from an old Penzeys Spices catalog — which is, incidentally, where we buy all our spices. The ice cream recipe was just a basic vanilla ice cream recipe (no eggs) that came with our ice cream maker. And the hot fudge recipe was from an old Fine Cooking holiday magazine. I’d be happy to share the recipes — just drop me an email (mamaurchin AT gmail DOT com) — but since I didn’t create them myself I don’t feel right publishing them here. In the meantime we’ll just be here licking our spoons.

So, a lot of tomatoes this week. I think I’ll try to oven dry the big ones tonight and then freeze them. Okra again — hmm, maybe I can make gumbo. I really don’t know any other way to use okra that we like. And melons, yummy. Stefan is allergic to these so Katie and I will have to eat them all ourselves. I don’t forsee this being a problem. I may get some extra tomatoes next week and do some canning, we’ll see.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Juliet Tomatoes, Okra, Eggplant, Thai Basil, Celery, Watermelon, Cantaloupe, 1 doz. eggs, flowers

Well, we got pretty caught up this week as far as veggie consumption. I gave away a dozen eggs and some tomatoes and then used a bunch of both for our family dinner on Sunday. Now the only thing we’re swimming in is cucumbers. We still have eggplant from last week so I think we’ll be having ratatouille tonight. By the way, don’t you just love those zinnias?

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Basil, Zucchini, Peppers, Garlic, Rainbow Chard, Potatoes, 1 doz. eggs, flowers

Well, here is what we got in our bag this week. I was totally jealous of Alicia’s photo styling recently so you’ll notice I totally copied her with the colander and all. We got fennel, I’ve been thinking of making tomato sauce so maybe I’ll use this in some bolognese. Don’t you just love the color of that eggplant? And okra, well I’m not so sure that will be getting used. I must find something to do with all the cucumbers. We used to do diced cucumbers with feta but hubby says that’s bothering him this year. I wish we could pickle them but they just aren’t that type of cucumber. Maybe I’ll leave them on unsuspecting neighbors’ doorsteps.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Basil, Zucchini, Cucumber, Eggplant, Okra, Onions, Fennel, 1 doz. eggs, flowers

Wow, CSA Tuesday, actually on Tuesday this week. It seems some people in the CSA are getting overwhelmed with squash, not us. I think we could get twice as much and still use it. However, eggs, we are getting really behind on them.

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Basil, Potatoes, Cucumber, Green Peppers, Beans, Rainbow Chard, 1 doz. eggs, flowers

Wow, what a delay in getting my CSA Tuesday posted. We had bible school this week and I was teaching so things were a little crazy. Anyway, here’s what we got from the farm…

CSA Bag Contents: Tomatoes, Basil, Potatoes, Onion, Squash, Cucumber, Celery, Gypsy Pepper, 1 doz. eggs, flowers