Bountiful Fall Food

September is the transition month for us – from summer to fall. At the beginning of the month there were still tomatoes in our CSA share. Now we have lots of leafy greens (mizuna, arugula, kale, bok choi, lettuce, cilantro, great beans) with color variety from peppers, winter squash, and garlic. There are so many ways to prepare these goodies.

I always cook the winter squashes whole (pricking the skin with a fork) then take out the seeds just before I eat the first serving. Left overs are easy to use up. I like spaghetti squash in salads and stir fry. Any leftover acorn squash, sweet dumpling or butternut squash is well suited for making muffins or custard.

One of my husband’s favorite sides for meat loaf of hamburger patties is sautéed peppers, onions, and garlic. I like the peppers in salads but recently have used them all in the side dish – the colorful peppers are the highlight of the plate.

Of course – sometimes all the bounty is overwhelming and I revert to my favorite snack, anytime of year: popcorn. We don’t buy the packages of microwave popcorn anymore since the Nordic Ware bowl for popping the kernels in the microwave works very well for us. When I am dieting, I only add a little salt. Yesterday (pictured), it was buttered and salted!

Raw, steamed, stir fried, baked…I like these fall veggies so many ways. I am savoring the bounty and fresh flavoring now - trying not to think about when the CSA will be done for the year at the end of October.

Beautiful Food – August 2016

August is full of tomatoes and peppers – both very colorful foods.

My favorite way to eat tomatoes is in salads. Early in the month, the CSA share also included a sun jewel melon (to me the taste is between a cucumber and a melon…so I use them in salads) and scallions that went into the salad pictured below along with edamame for protein. I used a lemon vinaigrette dressing.  The lettuces are not at their best in August so most of my salads are full of colors other than green!

Of course I have so many tomatoes that I have to do other things with them besides eating them raw in salads. I am freezing the small ones whole, making salsa (some to freeze), and probably going to freeze some larger tomatoes – whole - with the top core cut out. Last year I discovered that freezing whole tomatoes in Ziplocs was the easiest for me and it was handy to take out the number of frozen tomatoes I wanted for soups or sauces.

As we moved further into August, the peppers started. I like the colorful snack peppers; they are perfect for salads because they are so easy to prepare – just cut the tops and bottoms off and chop the rest (seed and all)! I like the bell peppers too…the hot peppers not as much.

It’s easy to incorporate lots of veggies in my August meals!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations – August 2016

August has been hot and humid…punctuated with thunderstorms and downpours of rain. There has been plenty to celebrate:

Lots of tomatoes – Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) provides so many different kinds – heirloom, cherry, yellow, red, orange…and I am celebrating the bounty for almost two meals a day. Last week we got a bundle of basil and I’ve had it on the counter all week; I add it to salads and sauces so frequently that I don’t think I’ll have any left to dry at the end of the week.

Homemade salsa – I had a jalapeño pepper from the CSA and combined it with tomatoes, cilantro, dried onion flakes and lemon juice/pulp in the food processor. Yummy. We’ve eaten up the first batch and I’ll be making a second one soon. It’s good food worth celebrating.

Lemon Vinaigrette – I discovered a new favorite salad dressing. I’m celebrating the change – even though I still keep a supply of my previous favorite: Green Vinaigrette.

Clean cabinet doors -  I found some Murphy’s Oil Soap that we’ve had for years and cleaned the cabinet doors. There are times that ‘cleaning house’ becomes a celebration of the place we live and this was one of those times.

Home in the 1990s – I scanned pictures we had taken as we moved into the house we live in now…and the rest of the decade. Seeing the pictures again were a celebration of that time of our lives.

New Kitchen Floor – The new floor makes the whole room look new to me. I’m celebrating the end result…and that our decision to ‘do it now.’

Wood Floor – We got the wood floor in the foyer refinished and matching wood in the office to the side of the foyer and the powder. Wow – the whole area of the house looks very clean and full of light, bigger than it looked before. Now we are thinking about where else we will put wood flooring…while we celebrate the success of this project.

Goldfinches – Every time I see the goldfinches enjoying the zinnia and sunflower seeds it is a little celebration of color and motion.

Monarch butterfly – There are not very many Monarch butterflies in our area so the one I did see near our house was a celebration.

Tree hike – The tree hike at Belmont was something I committed to do months and months ago so when it finally happened this month, it was a milestone of 2016 to celebrate.