Farm share, week 3

[magid]

It started raining just as I got to the distribution point; I hadn't realized that there's a slab of corrugated metal (if corrugated metal can be called a slab) above that exit from Harvest, so the veggies stayed dry.

This week's bounty:

• a bunch of cute beets with greens
  
• two (hothouse) tomatoes
  
• a bunch of scallions (very thin ones, with all the greens)
  
• two heads of lettuce; I got green leaf (absolutely enormous) and red leaf (merely big), and there was romaine as an option, too
  
• up to three pounds of greens, choosing from chard, spinach (I got half of the last of it), and purple flat-leaf kale; I got about a pound and a half of spinach and chard, which may end up feeding my freezer for now
  
• up to six pounds of: one stalk of broccoli, one (corn-shaped) head of cabbage, a bunch of radishes, garlic scapes, something else that was already gone, and however many zucchinis and summer squashes you could face; I ended up with a broccoli (it's almost purple), a couple of garlic scapes, and about five and a half pounds of zukes and squish, so any and all recipes or ideas for them are extremely welcome (I'm wishing I had meunster cheese, so I could make my mom's summer dinner of sauteed zukes, squish, and onions topped with cheese.)

Oh, and I might drive out to the farm Sunday, to pick strawberries and sugar snap peas, too.

Note to self: consider leaving the car closer to Central on Wednesdays as the share gets heavier.

Comments

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

It's zucchini time ALREADY!?!?
G...d save us all.

[magid.livejournal.com]

They're still reasonably small at this point, at least.

Any favorite recipes?

[(Anonymous)]

Not favorite, but what I do is saute 'em with onions. Can be with eggplant, red pepper.

Zucchini bread is yummy. So is zucchini soup.

Saute it and put it in a savory noodle or rice kugel.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Good ideas all, thanks.

[queue.livejournal.com]

Ever had zucchini bread? Yum.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Especially with nuts :-)

[queue.livejournal.com]

=P

[magid.livejournal.com]

I haven't in years; I think as a kid I found it too weird that a vegetable ended up in what's essentially a low-intensity cake.

Something like this recipe? (I was looking for my quickbreads cookbook, and it's gone on walkabout. So this looked like it might do.)

* 3 eggs
* 1 cup oil
* 2 cups shredded raw zucchini
* 1 3/4 cups sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons vanilla
* 1 cup chopped nuts
* 2 cups flour
Put zucchini in strainer and press or squeeze with hands to get excess liquid out. Beat eggs, sugar, and oil together. Add flour, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, and nuts. Mix together by hand. Add zucchini (minus liquid). Beat mixture. Pour into 2 greased, floured, loaf pans. Bake 1 hr. at 350 deg. F.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

I've got one I adore, but it requires one whole chicken to dispose of two zucchini. You separate the chicken from its skin and stuff the gap with a mix of herbs, cheese, and shredded zucchini. It gives you a wonderfully moist chicken, but isn't a particularly efficient way to dispose of zucchini.

Let me know if you want details...

[magid.livejournal.com]

Hm... chicken and cheese... I think I'll pass!
:-)

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

But chickens don't lactate!
It depends on your interpretation of kosher laws, I suppose.

[magid.livejournal.com]

The ban on poultry and cheese has been 'on the books' in Jewish law for over 1000 years, I believe. And for my mental mouth, it's definitely 'meat and cheese,' not something I eat. (Soy cheese or soy meat doesn't seem to work for these sorts of recipes, either.)

[bitty.livejournal.com]

There is no really *efficient* way to dispose of zucchini. The zucchini will always be ahead of you, will always win. Go with some small battles.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm certainly not disposing of 5.5 lb of mixed summer squash in one go (even putting in the freezer after being cooked would take up far more freezer real estate than I'm willing to give it.

Hm. I wonder if there are zuke pickles...?

AHA!

[magid.livejournal.com]

There are zuke pickle recipes galore out there, ranging from some sweet ones, sour ones, dilled ones, and even curried ones (that look rather like a chutney).

[cutieperson]

i loooove slicing summer squash into rounds and browning in olive oil & garlic, then tossing over rice. sometimes i add canned clams (the saltiness goes well with the squash).

[magid.livejournal.com]

I never think of clams (surprise!), but I do think of olives, or cheese, with zukes.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Not useful for small zucchini, but should you at some point end having to deal with large ones, I might be able to roust up my Mom's baked stuffed zucchini recipe.

I'm not very inventive with zucchini, so what I typically do is slice them or julienne them and sautee them in olive oil with onions and garlic (and other vegetables when I've got other vegetables) and whatever seasoning I feel like, and sometimes meat of some kind (e.g. sliced chicken sausage might work nicely). Then I toss the mixture into some pasta.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ideas are fine; I can go round up recipes if I need something more specific.

I think I've tended to have dairy with zukes, so thinking of putting them with meat is interesting. And I even have some meat I could defrost, too.

[cellio]

I've eaten zucchini pancakes -- think latkes or salmon cakes in consistency, not like flapjacks. I don't have a recipe, though.

Zucchini works well breaded and fried and then topped with yogurt.

There's bread, of course, and muffins.

Later in the season, when they are more numerous, you look for cars that have been left unlocked. :-)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ooh, zuke latkes, what a neat idea! And I have lots of onions (and even leeks) to pair with them, too. Between these and the possibility of zucchini bread, I'm glad I now have a food processor!

I don't manage breaded and fried things well, for some reason. Though these would be easier than fish, at least, so it might be good practice.

And in my neighborhood, people do tend to leave their cars locked :-)
(Otoh, I don't have to take many if I don't want to; anything left at the end of the distribution goes to Food for Free, so it's not going to be wasted.)

[bitty.livejournal.com]

LATKES. FEED BITTY LATKES.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Potato ones? Carb and grease-laden ones? Or the newer, slim-line, zucchini latkes? :-)

[bitty.livejournal.com]

YES PLEASE

[magid.livejournal.com]

Noted. Though I will point out that you're going out of town...

[bitty.livejournal.com]

There'll be a sudden paucity of zucchinis next week?

[magid.livejournal.com]

It could happen! The weather, for instance, could be cloudy with a chance of fat men from outer space obsessed with zucchini.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

which would, of course, solve the problem of too much zucchini in the first place.