Week 22 Veggie List & Ideas

Our First Apples: Worms & Bugs Removed

The last day of August already, and Labor Day on its way. Although it didn’t get very warm here in coastal California this year, summer is winding down. Days are shorter, and leaves are beginning to turn red and gold already. September and October are often our sunniest months, which hopefully will prolong the tomato season that just started. Bruce picked our first windfall apples off the ground and removed various insects. They’re tart and will make great applesauce and apple cakes. Stay tuned for fall recipes!

Tomatoes with Basil and Balsamic

Easy, Fast & Delicious

Recipe by Debbie from Live Earth Farm (?)

This morning my husband commented that our menu is totally dictated by this blog.  I hope that was a joke, or at least an exaggeration. He said it in response to me wanting to make this recipe “because it’s easy to blog about.” Actually, this is one of my favorite things to do with ripe garden tomatoes.  It’s easy to make and requires little time and few ingredients. Since our ambitious menu idea to make tomato sauce with squash and peppers over pasta never materialized, and  we ate steamed squash and roasted peppers instead, this recipe is the logical thing to make tonight, in addition to being totally bloggable.

Vegan Cilantro Pesto

Pesto with Garden Tomatoes

Recipe by Sheryl Crow and Chuck White

Finally a vegan pesto, with no cheese whatsoever, and not much oil! Made with cilantro and almonds instead of basil and pine nuts, this seems more Cali-Mexican than Italian. It’s from the cookbook If it Makes You Healthy: More Than 100 Delicious Recipes Inspired by the Seasons by Sheryl Crow, her chef Chuck White, and Mary Goodbody who probably did most of the writing and editing.

Lemon Herb Sauce for Fish or Veggies

Lemon Sauce over California Sea Bass

Recipe by Mom, Dad, & Robin

Another recipe inspired by my parents. They’re both gone now, but in their day loved eating fish, befitting their New England heritage. One of their favorites was Atlantic swordfish. According to NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Service, both Atlantic and Pacific swordfish populations are now at sustainable levels and not in danger of overfishing.

Week 21 Menu Plan

This Week's Tomatoes

Featuring tomatoes, radishes, hot peppers, cilantro, and greens

This week we didn’t get the lettuce that we anticipated from our CSA. Instead, they substituted what looks like hot peppers. This calls for some serious creativity, so Bruce is going to make a variation on my Zucchini with Fresh Tomatoes, another dish inspired by my mother. We tried a great vegan Cilantro Pesto recipe last week that we’ll make again this week and share.

No-cook Raspberry Vinegar

Vinegar After 24 Hours

Adapted from Sissymae at Allrecipes.com

Raspberries are my favorite fruit. Often when I pop one into my mouth, I immediately go back in time to a summer morning long ago in my grandmother’s back yard. Gram is gathering berries for breakfast and I am holding a bowl for her. Every now and then I’ll put a berry into my mouth. The taste and texture are exquisite, like nothing I’d ever imagined or tasted before.

Week 21 Veggie List & Ideas

Lots of Leftover Radicchio

The summer coastal fog has been light the past few days and I’m hoping for warmer weather through September, not just for my cold toes, but for the delayed tomato crop. Dry farmed tomatoes fresh from the farm…could there be a more delicious summer food?

Mom’s Old World Beets

Mom's Recipe from her Polish Ancestors

Recipe by Mom

After my last post about Mom’s fresh dill pickles, I became nostalgic for other foods that she used to cook. One of my earliest memories is of Mom cooking a Polish beet dish back in the early 1960s, and I’d wanted to recreate it for some time as part of exploring my Polish (cooking) roots. I’d hesitated because the first ingredient was salt pork—not very healthy, hard to find, and I have no idea how to cook with it.

Fresh Cucumber Pickles

Mom is Gone but her Recipe & Bowl Still Come to the Table

 Recipe by Mom

When my family moved from the country to suburbia, my parents continued to cultivate a vegetable garden, unlike the neighbors. While keeping the lawn neatly mowed and green, in compliance with an unspoken code of conduct for the neighborhood, my parents could not comply with accepted practice of using the back yard for only social purposes. They kept a garden—not for showy flowers, but for food, and I am a better person for it.

Week 20 Menu Plan

Comedian Turnip from Last Week

Featuring tomatoes, sweet peppers, potatoes, cilantro, and greens

Our CSA didn’t deliver the green beans as promised this week (Mother Nature apparently had other plans), but we’ve got the first of both tomatoes and some sort of sweet pepper, maybe Anchos. We’re going to make a simple sauce for pasta after eating as many as we like on salads. Since the Pesto Dressing recipe was so delish, and we have tons of cilantro, I’m going to try it with cilantro in place of basil.