Category: Information/Logistics

Tomatoes are my FAVORITE.  This is a little poem/celebration I wrote on the blackboard at a farm I worked on a few years ago:

Give thanks to the Mother Earth from whom all blessings flow. Give thanks to the Sun, Moon and Stars. Give thanks to the rain and the creek. Give thanks to the soil and the hands that work it. For today is the day that the seed fulfilled its promise and renewed the faith. Today is the day of the first tomato.

I was feeling a little dramatic that day obviously, but that is still how I feel pretty much every time I bite into the first fresh tomato of the year.  By the time we’re 4 weeks into tomato season it starts to seem a little less exciting.  Here are a few of our favorite tomato recipes to help you power through all the juicy plenty coming at you this time of year:

Ratatouille

Panzanella

Spaghetti Sauce

A Big Tomato Sandwich

Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes Baked with Herbs and Capers

Pepper and Tomato Soup

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

Gazpacho

Shell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stewed in their own Juices

Robust End of Summer Spaghetti

Carrots are the best!  Or at least that’s how I feel.  They’re crunchy, or you can cook them and they get soft, but not mushy.  You can use them in soups and salads and more.  They’re good straight out of the garden all by themselves or dressed up in something complicated.  Plus they’re super good for you, packed with beta carotene.  Here are some of our favorite recipes that use carrots (including the greens!):

Kale and Swiss chard soup with navy beans

Sesame kale salad

Pasta salad with salmon, cabbage, and carrots

Shell beans and summer vegetables stewed in their own juices

Gazpacho

Carrot Top Salad

Carrot Top Soup

Pumpkins, butternut, delicata, acorn, spaghetti, kabocha… They’re all hard squashes that store well and are SUPER HARD to cut open but totally worth the time and energy.  They can be sweet in pies, or savory with curries.  They store very well at a temperature slightly below room temperature, save the ones that don’t have any breaks or scrapes in the skin.

Here are some recipes to get you started cooking with winter squash.  Every squash has a slightly different flavor, but you can mix and match for most of these recipes depending on what you have on hand.

Pasta with pumpkin sage sauce

Fresh pumpkin pie

These are what most people in the US think of when they think of radishes (there are also the large Daikon types).  They’re small and crisp and peppery.  We usually see them in salads, but here are some other fun things to use them for

Radish butter

Carrot top salad

Gazpacho

Technically an immature onion plant, but usually a variety specifically grown for this purpose.  They’re wonderful and cold hardy and give a mild onion-y flavor to all sorts of recipes.  Here are some of our favorite recipes that use them:

Green Onion Pancakes

Napa Cabbage with Peanuts and Cilantro

Jerusalem Artichokes, also known as sunchokes,  are a relative of the sunflower. They are funny looking, but great for your health. Diced up raw, they are crisp and flavorful and can replace water chestnuts in recipes,  or they can be eaten cooked like potatoes! Learn more about them here: http://www.eattheseasons.com/Archive/sunchoke.htm

Here are a few old blog posts with more recipe ideas:

Sunchoke and potato mash

Sunchoke soup