Share items- red and yellow tomatoes, yellow and red pepper, green tomato, spanish onions, Romanesco Cauliflower, Carrots, Celery, Corn, Mini Watermelon, radishes. We’ve cut the peppers and tomatoes into some burrito wraps. The watermelon is also very sweet. The weather has cooled recently, making for good running weather. There’s a peach festival this weekend coming up, as well as Taiwanese and Japanese cultural ( at JCCC) fairs.
Again, another late post. I’m hoping this doesn’t become chronic, but it might not be much of a choice once school starts up this fall. But alas the excuse that I’m too busy having fun and relaxing seems like an odd excuse. So here we are at week 12 with 12 corn, butternut squash, eggplant, purple cabbage, radishes, 4 tomatoes, 4 yellow gherkins, 2 purple peppers, bunch of carrots, box of potatoes, onions, green beans, and orange peppers.
The orange peppers were mixed in with a potato, sweet potato, onion hash/bake. The tomatoes were put into a vodka sauce, and the gherkins were eaten raw. I found that slicing them open first increased the flavour intensity of the insides significantly. The corn were roasted in the husk, and the carrots were roasted for a veggie side. Haven’t figured out what to do with the rest of the produce yet, but since A took half, less to worry about.
Yesterday, F and I went to the Garlic is Great festival up in newmarket. It was a beautiful day, driving up in air conditioning, because lord knows it was friggen hot. I felt bad for the vendors, as the parking lot area was like a giant hot stone. I went to this event two years ago and had been introduced to the wonders of garlic braids. The garlic had held up till spring, before I ran out. So this year, I decided to stock up. I’ve always disliked supermarket garlic that always go bad before I finished using them.
The garlic area was sectioned off, with only a few vendors. It seemed a lot smaller than before, as the garlic vendors had been integrated into the main market prior. There was a little stage and Ted Maczka was espousing his love for garlic. I went into the farmer’s market and couldn’t resist picking up some corn, carrots and tomatos. Then on my way out I bought a couple of braids from Big Ass Garlic as well as Arran Hill. It’s nice to see that they’re still around. some old timers were giving the vendors at Big Ass a difficult time, complaining about the high price of the garlic. It was funny, because not just a few minutes prior, they had been saying how great garlic was and saying how important it was to eat garlic. The garlic holds for 10 months in the braid, and sells for ~$8/ lb. Not sure if that is so expensive. but everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. I can’t remember buying anything that could last that long for such a low price. Anyway. I had fun remembering the days before school when I had time to go to these local events. I even stopped at the Clean Food store for some chai spice ice cream.
How about two postings for the price of one? In these recession times, we need all the bargains we can get. Just saw a commercial for slap chop, a manual food processing product. What an odd product, where you get variant sized chopped products, mashed together like baby food. I don’t think it was that appealing.
I can’t believe it’s corn season, always a signal for me that fall is around the corner. Corn and potatoes went into a chowder, and the beans went into a quiche M made. I’ve been eating the tomatoes raw with salt and pepper and a bit of chili oil from Spain. It’s been quite good. We’re at the half way point in our CSA share, and it’s been a good journey thus far. As Loblaws recently announced potential price reductions, due to the recession impact, and people being more price sensitive, it will become even more challenging to justify higher priced locally grown food.
Week 10 we got tomatoes, cauliflower, cream corn, green and purple beans, radishes, carrots, potatoes, brocolli, field cucumber and lettuce.
Week 11 Corn, canteloupe, red leaf lettuce, carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes, green beans, green pepper, potatoes, garlic.
It’s been a super busy week with a paper due end of last week. And of course exams this week. But I have hopes to make a triple berry pie with the gooseberries from last week’s share. Not much time to blog last week’s share. The field cucumbers were quite refreshing peeled and de-seeded. Two of the tomatoes were bruised beyond edibility and one of the field cucumbers were moulded. The brocolli stems, peas, and carrots went into a chicken fried rice. The beans were sauteed with beet greens as a side for curry fish.
4 Tomatoes – regular and heirloom, Black Kale, Green Cabbage, 3 Field cucumbers, green and purple Beans, Yellow and red potatoes, 3 green Onion bulbs, Carrots, 2 zuchinnis, small unit of peas, and 1 broccolli.
