week 2

Cooking in Season
week 2

It is only two days into the official start of summer and already the humidity and heat are rising. These are the delicate days of –to pick or not to pick- where one day could be the difference between perfect spring lettuce or bitter leaves that couldn’t take the heat and went to seed. I am looking at the kohlrabi with the same tentativeness, thinking that I should give it another week to fully mature, but risking it possibly splitting in the heat. I guess time irons everything out in the end.

I hope you all enjoyed your first week baskets. We had grilled asparagus for father’s day and I pickled whatever we had left. The asparagus patch now looks more like a miniature forest with wispy little green trees, all going to seed.
I forgot to reiterate last week that all of our stuff has no preservatives and should be eaten within the first few days or as quickly as possible. This also means that if you can’t make it to pickup day, send someone in your place or make arrangements with me to pickup as soon as you can.

Anyway, this week we are starting to see the change from spring to summer. The peas are coming in waves and my sister keeps saying how she just picked them all this morning and more keep coming ready almost by the minute. I am crossing my fingers and cutting the head lettuce, the best crop I have had… ever, hoping that it is still young and perfect. And we are starting to shift from the light spring veggies into the hearty summer ones with a couple early squash and zucchini. If my math is right, Jason has about 4 summer squash plants per basket this year so there is a lot more to come …as long as we can keep the squash bugs away.

Wrapping up our spring salads, here is a winning recipe from allrecipes.com that will add some zing to your lettuce and snow peas salad.

¼ c mayonnaise
1 tablespoon mustard
1 tablespoon honey
½ tablespoon lemon juice

Whisk ingredients together and toss with your salad. All flowers in with your lettuce are edible. Hope you enjoy!


~janeé

Week 1

Cooking in Season
week 1

Hi. Welcome Members! Over the next few months, we are going to move through the Ohio growing season where we’ll taste the crisp spring through the lettuce and berries, and really feel the summer heat through the tomatoes and sweet corn, finishing up in the fall’s preparation for winter with butternut squash, potatoes, and storable root veggies and apples. It is challenging to try to use things in your basket as they come, but I find that a lot of things that are in season together in the garden also go well together in the kitchen.

Anyway, here are a few things to remember as we start the season:
1. Wash your fruits and veggies. Everything is fresh picked and might still have some dirt on it, but before you eat it, definitely give it all a rinse.
2. Bring back your baskets from the week before. We reuse.
3. Some things such as cabbage and broccoli are so delicious that everything wants to eat it and since we don’t use harsh chemicals, I recommend a cold salt water bath before cooking just to be certain you are bug free.
4. There is still time to move up basket sizes if you would like more produce. We will pro-rate the remainder of the season. Just email me – janeehouston@gmail.com
5. Let me know if you would like eggs or herbs a day or so before pickup day and I will have them ready. Herbs are $2 and eggs are $3. – also, we love to barter! This week we would like to trade your old, leaky garden hoses for eggs or herbs. Our melon patch will thank you.

In your baskets this week, we have the last of the June strawberries. These tiny berries pack big taste, almost like candy, only good for you. Our asparagus is chemical free and delicious. Just bend them in half until they snap and discard the bottom part. Our celery is not blanched and really tastes like… celery. Also, some baskets have fresh lettuce and others have watercress, an “eat wild” sweet green that can be eaten like lettuce.

The veggie of the week is radishes. I love vegetables, but radishes are the one that make me cringe. Jason thinks I am crazy not to eat them fresh and my grandma eats them straight out of the garden with bread and butter, but I can’t stand them fresh unless they are sliced thin and hidden in a salad. So, here is a simple recipe from allrecipes that takes the bite out of them making them into a mild radish flavor that kinda tastes like a potato for those non-radish lovers like me.

20 ounces radishes, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Drizzle of olive oil
1 cube ice
Salt and pepper to taste

1 – preheat the grill for high heat.
2 – place radishes, garlic and ice cube on a double layer of aluminum foil large enough to wrap contents. Drizzle with olive oil (or a dab of butter) and salt and pepper to taste. Tightly wrap foil.
3 – place foil packet on the grill and cook for 20 minutes until radishes are tender.


Hope you all enjoy. See you next week as the beans, new potatoes, and kohlrabi start coming in and more berries turn ripe.

~janeé