Tantre farm share, Fall extension, week 1

Bottom row (left to right): big chunk of a massive winter squash, spicy salad mix, turnip greens (and a few wee turnips attached, 1 qt beans, Brussels sprouts, big bunch of parsley
Middle row: beets, onions, purplish broccoli, red peppers, purple potatoes
Top row: Easter egg radishes, bag of spinach, bag of baby greens, Italian kale, carrots, russet potatoes

• I still have some eggplant and red peppers leftover from last week which, when combined with this weeks' red peppers and onions will become roasted red pepper and eggplant soup. With a salad of spicy greens and Zingerman's farm bread (on sale this month) it should make a comforting meal now that the weather is cold.
• The broccoli will go into broccoli cheese soup--I might freeze this if we are all souped out from the previous soup.
• Spanikopita with radish greens, turnip greens, and spinach will make good use of those greens, served with a salad of baby lettuce, parsley and roasted beets.
• The kids will get homemade pizza while Brian and I have calzones with turkey Italian sausage, feta, kale and roasted red peppers.
• The radishes were a bit strong when eaten raw last week so this week we'll be eating them cooked--braised radishes to be more specific, served with mashed russet potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts, and pork chops.
• The green beans look a little tough, so they'll get slow cooked with a slice of bacon and onions and served with hot sauce.
• I'm going to steam the big hunk of winter squash and puree it; I'll freeze some and use some in pumpkin turkey chili.

Tantre farm share, week 20 (plus interlopers)

Bottom row (left to right): Sweet dumpling squash, buttercup squash, red peppers, Easter egg radishes, spicy salad mix, red torpedo onions
Middle row: Tongue of Fire shelling beans, turnip greens, baby lettuces, hot peppers, garlic, cilantro
Interloper's corner (upper left): doz. eggs, huge bag of Asian eggplants, Roo's French Roast, qt Concord Grapes.
Top row: savoy cabbage, spinach, sweet potatoes and yams, carrots

For a lot of people this is the last week of the Tantre farm share, but I signed up for the three week extension so I'll be blundering along for another three weeks.

• Southwest style buttercup squash soup with chopped cilantro (recipe from Cook's Country which makes you pay for on-line access to their recipes, but the library subscribes to the paper version which is where I got this), corn bread, and salad with spicy salad greens, baby lettuces, radishes, red peppers and carrots.
• I can't decide what to do with the shelling beans--there are lots of tempting recipes out there, like this one for a lamb/cabbage/bean stew, pasta with beans, or fried gnocchi with shelling beans. Do you have any favorite recipes for shelling beans I should know about?
• Thai style eggplant/tofu/red pepper/cabbage/basil with red curry and rice.
• The rest of the eggplant will be made into Nasu Dengaku (Japanese eggplant broiled with miso), with rice, it should make a nice light lunch.
  
• "Cheaters" palak paneer (replace the paneer with tofu) with spinach, turnip greens, radish greens, hot peppers and (separate dish) stir-fried cabbage with cumin seeds. Maybe some daal too if I have time.
• Sweet dumpling squash stuffed with quinoa, with salad and probably something meat based or the meat lovers in my house will rise up in fury at the quantity of vegetarian proteins I expect them consume this week...

The yams/sweet potatoes are supposed to "cure" for at least a week so I won't be doing anything with them yet.

Snacktime

I don't remember Summer asking my permission to be excused.

That's how I feel, like a grumpy mama whose kid ditched the table with their plate half-full. (This is a feeling that I am all too familiar with since both critters continue their disinterest in food...)

Perhaps it's because we had an extraordinarily wonderful summer (for humans, not so good for tomatoes) that I didn't really look forward to Autumn the way I usually do. Usually by the end of summer, I'm so beaten down with sweating and mosquitoes and sick of feeling dehydrated no matter how much water I drink that Autumn feels like bliss.

This year, not so much. I'm loving the critters both being in school full day (finally) and they are thriving, so it isn't as though Autumn hasn't brought good stuff with it. Somehow, I just wasn't expecting it so soon. (In fact, I'm not really clear on where August and September went...I remember about a week of each.)

So in order to make myself feel better and to be a wee bit more accepting of the present, I've been indulging regularly in my favorite snack/desert/even (ahem) breakfast:

One Jonathan apple and one square of dark hazelnut chocolate.

Jonathan apples are my favorite variety by far. They don't last long because they don't store well, but when they are freshly picked they are just what I'm looking for: crisp, spicy, tart and not insanely huge. They remind me of Cox's Orange Pippins--an English variety that, when we went on hikes up to Captain Cook's Monument or Roseberry Topping, my Granny always had stashed in her jacket pocket along with a bar of Terry's dark chocolate. Alternating bites of apple and dark chocolate, particularly on a windy, nippy day, helps me accept, even enjoy, my present environment.

If you're having trouble accepting the season, give it a try. Jonathans are at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market and even at Meijer's. Trader Joe's is my source for the dark chocolate hazelnut bar.

Faceted

I recently finished a book that does something quite remarkable: it presents all the sides of a conflict so evenly that as soon as you have sympathized and supported one side of the conflict, the author makes you see and understand it from the polar opposite perspective.

Paulette Jiles' The Color of Lightning begins with a scene of remarkable violence: a Comanche and Kiowa raid on a northern Texas frontier settlement, the murder of some, the torture of others, the brutal rape of two of the women and their capture along with four of their surviving children. If you told me that 100 pages later I would feel heartbroken when one of the captive children who has been adopted by the tribe has to leave the Kiowa to return to his family I'd have thought you were off your rocker. But that's what happened.

Jiles has written an historical novel that does not flinch at the complexities of history: she shows the flaws and the virtues of three disparate cultures that collided with tragic results. There is the story of Britt Johnson,* a freed slave, and his wife and children who are negotiating the freedom of the Texas frontier while tiptoeing around some very angry white people who are pissed about losing the Civil War. There is the story of Samuel Hammond, a Quaker from Philadelphia, who is sent as an Indian Agent to some of the most war-like and violent tribes, to preach peace and convert them to Christianity and an agrarian lifestyle (unsuccessfully in both cases). And there is the story of the Comanche and Kiowa whose traditions and way of life are disappearing and who react with both extreme violence toward the settlers, and extreme tenderness toward the captive children they adopt. Most vivid is the portrait of a particular warrior, Tissoyo, whose love of gossip and befriending of Britt make him a complicated bridge between two of the worlds.

Using Samuel and his friend the illustrator James Deaver as her mouthpiece, whose biblical morals (in the case of the former), and liberal cultural appreciation (in the case of the latter), make them echo the contemporary questions that were popping into my head as I read, the author probes the clash of the cultures: at one point Deaver remarks to Samuel that "Americans are uncomfortable with tragedy." Near the end Samuel, who finally sees the futility of his position, violates his principals of non-violence, and says to Deaver, "And here [tragedy] is. We are regarding it. Like an audience." Shortly after this statement, he leaves the territory and the role he has played forever. In a way, he is less like a member of an audience, and more like a character who walked off the stage when it is clear that things will turn out very badly (something that I've always secretly hoped Edgar might do in King Lear...)

I thought that one of the most memorable and heartbreaking moments in the book (and there are many) was watching Jube, Britt's son who was captured and adopted by the Kiowa, decide to return to his family. His loyalty to his parents, particularly seeing the sacrifices his mother made to keep him and his sister Cherry alive, motivate his actions. But he is ripped up inside because on an individual level, staying with the Kiowa would have been much better for him as a black man. For his own sake I wished he could live in a place where he could grow into an equal member of the community. His longing for the freedom and the self-esteem that he left behind is a difficult compromise to watch.

And on the other side, I loved Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a white captive woman who dubs one of the wives of the man who captured her "the Dismal Bitch." She is so terrifically foul tempered (with good reason since she is a slave and treated brutally, not adopted like the young captives) that she eventually causes the Dismal Bitch to commit suicide. After this, the Comanche are convinced that she is a witch and eventually when Brit arrives to ransom the captives, they pay him to take her back. Moments of levity like this help keep the book from sinking into a morass of historical misery.

The book kept me emotionally charged by my feelings for all the different characters and their cultures. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention all the physical beauty in the book: the way the mountains rise out of the plains, the horses that gallop in giant wild herds, the quick on-set storms rushing towards a settlement, the view of a buffalo calf tottering near its mother. The author's gorgeous prose makes this a tragedy that is drenched in beauty. Jiles facility with language makes the landscape sounds so exquisite that I understood why people loved it so fiercely and fought so hard to claim it for their people.

________
*I only discovered in the author's end-note that Britt Johnson was a real person and many of the events that she depicted were based on historical records.

Tantre farm share, week 19

Bottom row: carrots, qt of Brussels sprouts, onions, French radishes, tatsoi, two hot peppers and basil
Middle-ish row: red fingerlings, lots of red peppers, cilantro, tomatillos, turnip greens
Top row: green beans, broccoli, baby lettuces, butternut squash

I can't say that this week's menu plan is terribly inspired or inventive, but hopefully it will be tasty:

• The tomatillos, some onion and the hot peppers and cilantro will get turned into tomatillo salsa.
• I'll make cheese grits with spicy turnip and radish greens for breakfast.
• Tonight we'll have roasted red pepper pasta sauce on whole wheat penne which will use up some peppers, onion and basil (I don't have any heavy cream, so I'll use some milk and a little sour cream--it won't be quite as luxurious, but hell, it's a Thursday and we don't need luxury on a Thursday); steamed broccoli will be served with it. (Boring, I know, but the girl critter actually eats it).
• The tatsoi will go into a lunch stir fry with tofu and any of the broccoli that is left over.
• My book group is meeting this week and I'll bring a salad with the baby lettuces, radishes, red peppers and carrots. I might mix up a blue cheese vinaigrette to make a change from our normal dressing.
• Some of the butternut squash will be used to fill homemade ravioli and I'll strip the sage bush outside to add fried sage leaves to the brown butter sauce.
• We need to have a roasted night with roasted Brussels sprouts, fingerling potatoes and what's left of the butternut squash. We might need some protein source to go with it...personally I could just pig myself on roasted vegetables but the other members of my household will probably feel like their needs have not been completely met.

Putting on the pink

The days have been gray and there is a chill in the air. Autumn is definitely here and I need a jolt of color to keep me perky. In the last few days I've been drawn to hot pink. This isn't a color I usually embrace--I'm more of a red and orange type--but it has felt good and energizing in a transitional sort of way.

I've begun knitting a pair of wool socks from some stash wool that I acquired about 4 years ago.
I'm doing them toe-up, using the short row toe instructions that I found in Socks from the Toe-Up. This isn't the first time I tried toe-up socks; in fact this very wool was used in my first attempt and ripped out when it looked funky. But the short-row toe worked great. I'm not really using a pattern--just ribbing the top and keeping the sole smooth and I haven't decided what kind of heel I'll do yet. But it is very nice to have something so cheerful to knit and so portable; way better than wrestling with a big sweater when I go out (sweaters are better for in-front-of-the-dvd player knitting).

Yesterday I spread the pink into the kitchen by making 3 pints of pickled red onions.
I was going to do Orangette's recipe, but then I happened upon David Lebovitz's much simpler lazy-person's version and went with that. Mine aren't quite as brilliantly pink as his--some of my Tantre torpedo red onions were almost white on the inside so there wasn't as much pigment to seep out into the brine. But they should still be a cheerful accompaniment to the burgers I'm planning on making soon.

Tantre farm share, week 18

Bottom row (left to right): two red onions, wee head of garlic, arugula, tomatillos, hot peppers, poblano peppers, cilantro, parsnips, basil
Middle: two quarts russet potatoes, carrots, lots of red peppers, French radishes, pt grape tomatoes
Top: almost 3 lbs of green beans, Red Russian kale, bag of baby lettuces, bunch of Asian greens, Sunshine Kabocha squash

• I'm feeling a little maxed out on the simple steamed green beans and blanched green bean salads so this week we're going for the much less photogenic, but meltingly tasty slow cooked Greek green beans with tomatoes and potatoes, grilled lamb chops and Greek salad (with the red onions, cherry tomatoes, radishes, baby lettuces, feta, cucumber, olives)
• So long as the hot humid weather we are having goes away and I can stand to turn on the oven, the parsnips, carrots and potatoes will get roasted and then tossed with feta and a squeeze of lemon when they come out, which should go well with an arugula, radish and cherry tomato salad (If the stinky heat continues the root vegetables will get chucked in the crisper bin while I wait for cooler weather.)
• I'm going to have to do something Mexican with the red peppers, hot peppers, poblano peppers, cilantro, tomatillos and garlic. I'm thinking of some sort of vegetarian enchiladas with roasted peppers and roasted tomatillos combined with corn cut off the cob, cilantro and cheese and rolled up in corn tortillas and baked. Might crack out a jar of the homemade salsa and some sour cream to top it off.
• Soy braised kabocha squash will be served with stir fried Asian greens and tofu with garlic, and rice
• This week's bounty of peppers and beans means I'll also be roasting and freezing some of the peppers and blanching and freezing some of the green beans.
• No great plans for the kale or basil yet...ideas anyone?
  

some pretties (and one not-so-pretty)

Brian's smoked brisket, my version of Noelle's potato salad, heirloom tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, green beans with olive oil and lemon, and a very hoppy beer

Grilled pork tenderloin medallions with grilled peaches and nectarines, blue cheese, pine nuts and basil-balsamic vinaigrette, with homemade ciabatta and steamed green beans

Open wide! Fish taco wants to come inside!

Bi Bim Bop-ish

There is simply no way to make sauerkraut (at least sauerkraut made with white cabbage) look pretty...

salsa time!

Last Sunday I transformed these:
Into this:
Which got packaged like this:
Whoo hoo! My first batch of canned salsa!

I've made plenty of fresh salsa, but never took the effort to preserve the stuff. Last spring, after tasting the salsa that one of Brian's co-workers made, I was inspired to make an attempt this year. John (the co-worker who might be a teeny bit obsessive since he has canned 46 jars of salsa so far this year...) was kind enough to share his recipe with me and the Farmer's Market cooperated by providing me with a peck of Roma seconds for $4 (I got there at about 8:30 am and think I may have got the last peck of Roma seconds. There were plenty more regular tomato seconds though.)

So long as you have a food processor, making this stuff is a breeze. Without it, the daunting quantity of chopping might push it into the 'labor of love' category, but the taste was really terrific--full rounded flavor, little edge and kick, and very difficult to stop eating.

Salsa
makes about 6.5 pints (6 jars and a container to eat RIGHT NOW)

Approximately 31 Roma tomatoes (10-11 cups): plunge in boiling water until skin splits. Cool tomatoes in cold water—peel, core and squeeze out juice and excess seeds. (The first photo contains about 11 cups of peeled seeded tomatoes.)
3-4 big cloves of garlic, peeled
4-6 jalapeno peppers with seeds—tops cut off and cut in half width wise
3 large white or yellow onions, peeled and cut in 1/4s
4 mild red, green or yellow peppers—seeded, stem cut off and cut in 1/4s
1 small bunch of cilantro, washed and lower part of stems cut off
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup white vinegar
3 tablespoons kosher salt

Get your food processor ready for some action: with the S-blade roughly chop the tomatoes (in a couple of batches). Dump into a big pot.

Then fine chop the garlic and jalapenos, add the onions and peppers and chop until smallish but not reduced to a pulp. Then add the cilantro and pulse a few times to chop it. Dump into the big pot.

Mix in the brown sugar, vinegar, and salt and bring to a boil. Then simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring frequently so bottom does not scorch.

Prior to filling jars, heat the jars and lids in boiling water for ten minutes.

Fill jars with hot salsa, wipe the rim with a clean towel and cover with lids. Then screw on the ring. Be careful to keep everything clean when boiling and filling jars.

If you are a "proper canner" and have the deep pot/rack/jar lifter, go ahead and process the jars in a hot water bath. If you are a) lazy b) equipment challenged c) willing to risk a little (salsa is high in acid and salt so the likelihood of it poisoning you is much lower than some non-acidic, non-salty food) you can do the sloth version. Set the jars on the counter and as they cool down they should seal (my mom always flipped the jars over so they were resting on their lids with the hot contents in contact with the metal--I'm not sure if it is supposed to help the seal or if it is just a compulsive quirk, but I do it too). If jar does not seal it must be refrigerated (press the lid and if it gives and makes a little popping sound, then it didn't seal).

Tantre farm share, week 17

From left to right and vaguely bottom to top: Basil, hot peppers, squash, kale, big bunch of parsley, cherry and grape tomatoes, cabbage, two wee eggplant, 2 qts green beans, spicy salad mix, lots of red peppers, red onions, 3 small heads of lettuce, 5 ears of corn, carrots

Menu plan:

• Last week I didn't get around to making the long bean salad (I ended up just steaming beans and tossing with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper) so this week's green beans will get that treatment. I'll serve it with stir fried tofu, red peppers and eggplant and some rice.
• Fish tacos will use some of the cabbage, some of the corn cut off the cob and some of my homemade salsa*.
• Ina Garten's perfect roast chicken will get roasted on a bed of carrots and last week's huge cipollini onion (I plan to substitute the squash for the fennel in the recipe and don't think the chicken needs butter rubbed into the skin), served with some salad.
• The rest of corn will be prepared Mexican style--grilled on the cob with mayo, chili pepper, pecorino, cilantro and lime juice--and served with turkey burgers and salad.
• Some of the red peppers will get roasted and packed in a jar with olive oil (or some other preservation method? Must look into the best method.)
• I like the looks of this recipe for basil rubbed pork chops with blue cheese and nectarines and will try to adapt it to a pork tenderloin I have in the freezer, a lot more basil than the recipe calls for and the last few Michigan peaches that I still have. Probably served with some form of kale.
• I'll have a big bowl of salad always ready for lunch to use up all the nice lettuce.
• The bounteous quantity of parsley will get split between a batch of Sarah's hummus and a batch of parsley heavy tabbouleh.
• The red onions will get pickled using Orangette's recipe.

* Recipe for and pictures of the salsa coming in the next post. This would also be a good week to make it, what with the ample quantity of red and hot peppers, so long as you can lay your hands on a peck of tomato seconds.