Week #9 (7/24 & 27)

This week your basket contains: onions, snap peas or snow peas, lettuce, summer squash, potatoes, garlic, and cabbage.

As the squash have continued to produce prodigiously, we are all in need of new ways to use them.  Who can argue with a recipe that not only uses up some of your zukes, but uses chocolate to boot?  We’ve served this many times and have always gotten rave reviews.

LONNIE’S CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI CAKE

½ cup soft butter

½ cup cooking oil

2 eggs

1 ½ cup sugar (can be reduced)

1 tsp. vanilla

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ cup chocolate chips

½ cup buttermilk

4 Tbs. cocoa

2 cups grated zucchini

¼ cup chopped nuts

1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix oil, butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and milk together.  Add cocoa, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.  Mix well. Add flour and mix well.  Add zucchini, chocolate chips and nuts and mix. Divide the batter into 2 well-greased loaf pans or one well-greased 13 x 9 in baking dish. Bake at 350⁰ for 45 minutes or until a tooth pick poked into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

This is a favorite warm weather dish for cabbage.

ORIENTAL CHICKEN SALAD

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves

½ cup thinly sliced onion

3 Tbs cider vinegar

2 Tbs sesame seeds

1 head cabbage

1/3 cup cilantro

2/3 cup fresh mint

2 Tbs roasted unsalted peanuts

3 Tbs sweet and sour fish sauce

In a 5-qt saucepan, bring 3 cups of water to a boil.  Add chicken and when water returns to a boil, cover the pan and remove from heat.  Let stand until chicken is white in the thickest part (cut to check).  This should take 12-15 minutes.  Combine onion and vinegar and let stand 15 minutes.  In a heavy frying pan, stir sesame seeds until golden brown.  Remove from pan.  Shred chicken by hand. Shred enough cabbage to make 6 cups.  Drain the onions and combine in a large bowl with chicken, cabbage, onion, cilantro and mint.  Add peanuts, sesame seeds and fish sauce and mix well.  Makes 4-6servings.

We are very disappointed in our garlic this year.  As we had mentioned earlier, we were somewhat surprised that it was ready for harvest earlier in the summer than usual despite the very wet weather we had through June.  Usually, you watch the leaves and pull the heads when four of them have started to brown down.  This year this happened in June instead of July.  It now appears that the browning was the result of the wet weather giving penicillum molds (ubiquitous soil-borne relatives of the bread molds that give us penicillin) perfect conditions to infest the garlic.  We are finding a distressing percentage of the heads have already gone bad while hanging in our barn.  You may find that some of the cloves have darker, waterlogged portions that need to be cut off.  We’ve tried to discard all the bad garlic, but some may slip through.  We apologize if your garlic is less than perfect.

CURRIED CABBAGE

1 Tbsp. canola oil

1 ½ tsp. curry powder

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

4 cups shredded cabbage

1 ½ tsp. lemon juice or 1 Tbsp. lime juice

2 Tbsp. plain yogurt

Salt to taste