This week your basket contains: cucumbers, summer squash, red onions, Swiss chard and kale, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes (full shares), basil, carrots (full shares), peppers (half shares), and potatoes FLOWERS are going great guns!  Brighten up you home with one of Polly’s gorgeous bouquets (25+ stems) for only $7.  Simply email to order one time, or standing weekly order.

HOT PEPPERS are also looking good.  We only include them in your basket if you ask for them.  Email us to let us know you want on the hot pepper list (if you got them last year, we still have you on the list.).  We’ve harvested just a few this week, but will have many more in the coming weeks.  We always put hot peppers in your greens bag to differentiate them from sweet peppers.  BLACKBERRIES are ripening!  If you want to come out to pick berries that are not exposed to roadside emissions, send us an email.  We can have you out any day of the week, but we will need to coordinate times and numbers to ensure we can maintain proper social distancing.  We’ll be setting up 2 hour time slots for folks to pick.

As you can see in your basket this week, summer is coming on fast and strong.  There are a few things we wait for all winter long that are finally coming in.  One of them is tomatoes which we always celebrate with BLT’s made with the first tomato.  Another is basil which gets made into pesto as soon as we can.  This is the recipe we use.

PESTO

4 c. fresh basil leaves

2 cloves garlic

½ c. pine nuts

½ c. olive oil

¼ c. melted butter

3/4 c. freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Salt & pepper to taste

Put basil leaves, garlic and nuts in bowl of food processor.  Process until finely chopped.  With machine running, slowly pour in the olive oil and melted butter.  With a spoon stir in the cheese, salt and pepper.  This can be stored in the fridge for up to three weeks.  We have also had good luck freezing pesto in ice cube trays, which gives you quick easy pre-portioned pesto cubes.

Cucumbers are amazing this year.  We’ve been making tzatziki a lot lately.  It is great on its own as a salad, as a topping for salmon or other fish, in pitas with tomatoes, humus and grilled chicken, or as a dip with crackers and cheese.  This is the recipe we use. 

TZADZIKI

Simply grate whole cucumbers, lightly salt and set aside for 20  minutes.  Drain off the liquid that accumulates, squeeze in a few cloves of garlic and stir in some yogurt and/or sour cream (we find it best to use a 50/50 mix).   Generally, you want to use equal volumes of cucumber and dairy product. Serve with toasted pita bread or crackers.

It seems like we grow enough different veggies that even when most things are doing very well, there is something that performs poorly.  This summer it is carrots.  They are notoriously difficult to germinate, a pain to weed, and frustratingly boring to thin.  We seed carrots every month from March or April until August, and with a bit of luck our later seedings will be better.

GRILLED ZUCCHINI AND RED ONION SALAD

6 small zucchini, quartered lengthwise

1 large red onion, cut into ½” slices

¼ c. plus 2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs. chopped fresh thyme

1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

1 ¼ c. feta, crumbled

1/3 c. pitted kalamata or nicoise olives, chopped

salt and pepper

Sprinkle zucchini with 1 tsp. salt and set on baking sheet lined with paper towels. Let sit for 15 minutes, then pat dry and cut into 2” pieces. Brush zucchini and onion slices with 2 Tbs. of olive oil, sprinkle with 1 ½ tsp. thyme and some black pepper. Sprinkle onions lightly with salt.  Prepare a medium-hot grill. set the vegetables on grill, cover if using a gas grill, and cook without touching so that the vegetables brown and get good grill marks, about 4 minutes. Flip and continue cooking so that other sides brown and the zucchini is just tender, about 5 minutes.  Transfer zucchini to a serving platter and continue to cook onions over a cooler part of fire until they start to soften (10 more minutes).  Add onions to platter with zucchini.  In a small bowl, whisk lemon juice, ½ tsp. salt and remaining ¼ cup of olive oil together with 1 ½ tsp thyme and black pepper. Drizzle over vegetables. Sprinkle with feta and olives and serve immediately or let sit for up to 1 hour at room temperature before serving. Serves 8. From Fooday 8/7/07