Week 16 - Tomatillos from the Hoophouse

This week we are cleaning up the last fruits in the hoophouse. That means everyone will get a last hurrah of tomatoes. Eat them quick because they are starting to split on the vines out there. Members will also receive a bag of tomatillos this week. It's time for a big batch of salsa verde or, for those interested in another canning project, pickled tomatillos (recipe below).

Pickled tomatillos, pictured snug in their jar, make an awesome addition to quesadillas,
burritos, roast meats, and fish all winter long.

For week 16 members will receive Spaghetti Squash, Carrots, Apples, Fenugreek Sprouts, and Kale or Chard along with their Tomatoes, and Tomatillos.

We've let the last of the tomatoes ripen up in the hoophouse.
As you can see, the plants are done now. Eat your tomatoes
up fast because they are ready to burst!

Tomatillos will keep for a week or so on the counter. Use them in salsas, stews,
or sauces. They also make fantastic chili. Or try them out in the pickle recipe below.

Pickled Tomatillos

Last year we were overrun with tomatillos from the hoophouse very late in the season. I had to figure out what to do with them before they rotted. The favorite solution turned out to be these pickles, based on a recipe from Linda Ziedrich's Joy of Pickling. If you are itching to can something, give these a go. They're simple to put together and oh so welcome when the summer garden is covered in snow.

This recipe makes about a quart of pickles. It works best canned in 1/2 pint (1 cup) or 1 pint (2 cup) jars

• 1 Pound Tomatillos (amount in share), husked, washed, and halved or quartered.
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 2 teaspoons pickling salt (or sea salt - just make sure it doesn't have an anti-caking agent)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar

The following ingredients are per jar of pickles:

• 1 clove garlic, slivered
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seed
• 10 whole black peppercorns

Pack the tomatillos into two prepared pint or four prepared half pint jars (prepare jars by washing them and drying them in a 200 degree oven, or sterilizing in some other manner) leaving a half inch head space. Add one clove of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon oregano, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, and 10 peppercorns to each jar.

Bring the vinegar, water, salt and sugar to a simmer. Stir until the salt and sugar are completely dissolved. Pour the liquid over the tomatillos, separating it evenly between the jars. If the tomatillos are not quite covered add an equal amount of vinegar and water to cover them.

Cap the jars with two piece canning lids, be sure not to close the rings to tightly. Boil for ten minutes in a boiling water bath. Let sit for one month before eating so that the flavors (especially the oregano) have a chance to mellow and combine. The pickles will keep for at least a year, or a month in the refrigerator once opened.

Week 11 - Mouse Melons!

For week 11 members can expect to receive tomatoes (mainly cherries, the slicers in the hoophouse are petering out), zucchini and/or summer squash, eggplants/peppers/tomatillos, potatoes, onions, garlic, parsley, cucumbers, and chard or kale.

So, if you've been paying attention you've probably figured this out already, but I really like to grow vegetables that are new to me. I love finding something I've never heard of in a seed catalog, getting a pack of seed in the mail, and experimenting. I love it even more when the experiment goes well. 

Mexican Sour Gherkins AKA Mouse Melons. I'm kinda thinking that everything
should be called Mouse Melon.

One of this season's successful experiments is the Mexican Sour Gherkin. They look like tiny watermelons and taste like lemony cucumbers, though they are neither watermelons nor cucumbers (or lemons for that matter). They are in the same family as melons and cukes, but they're their own thing. And, even though they have Mexican in their name, they seem to like it in the U.P.

They are producing quite well for us, the quantity we've harvested from our little test patch is pretty impressive. We weren't expecting to have enough to include in shares this year.

Also, they're delightful. Seda loves them. I told her they were baby cucumbers and she sang a lullaby to every one she picked until she realized she could eat them. At that point they started leaving the bucket faster than I could put them in it and her energies had to be...redirected. Potato harvest with Dad went much better. 

We are considering the Mexican sour gherkins to be cucumbers for the purpose of the shares and some members will probably receive regular old cucumbers this week rather than the little guys. They should keep going until frost though, so hopefully we will be able to give everyone a taste of them.

Mid-season is ruled by garden standards like zucchini, tomatoes, and potatoes (and thankfully so), so it's nice to be able to add something unusual to the shares this time of year. However, members might be wondering what to do with them. There isn't a ton per share, so they may get munched before finding their way to a recipe, but if you want to get creative try the following quick pickle.

Summer Refrigerator Pickle

This recipe can be changed to fit the vegetables you have. If you don't have Mexican Sour Gherkins substitute half of a salad cucumber or one pickling cucumber, diced like the zucchini. Or leave out cucumbers altogether and just use more zucchini.

• 1 mounded cup cherry tomatoes
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 1 large handful Mexican Sour Gherkins (about 25)
• 1 small zucchini or summer squashed, diced into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 clove garlic (or more to taste), minced
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon whole mustard seed
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Approximately 3/4 cup white wine vinegar

1. Slice the cherry tomatoes and Mexican sour gherkins in half.
2. Combine all of the vegetables, sugar, salt, mustard seed, and pepper in a one quart non reactive bowl. Stir very well.
3. Let sit for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables have released a lot of liquid.
4. Add the vinegar and stir well. 3/4 cup was the perfect amount for me, but use however much vinegar you need to just barely cover your vegetables. Adjust the seasonings as needed.
5. Refrigerate the pickles for at least a half hour before eating them. 

Summer Refrigerator Pickles, ready to go into the fridge.

Homemade Condiments: Preparation for the Dark Days Ahead

If you are a CSA member, there are a few things that I would like you to know about your farmers.

1. They are busy.
2. They love ugly vegetables, leftovers, and the leavings that get pulled out of the field at season's end.
3. They appreciate you a lot.



A bit of what we shared with our members this season. Thank you
CSA members of the world.


At least those things are true of me and my husband.

I think that most people understand that growing vegetables is a lot of hard labor. It is, of course, labor that we love or we wouldn't be doing it, but it cuts into our time for doing other stuff. Like eating and sleeping. And canning.

Canning is what I am actually getting at here. I make some preserves to sell at the market, but I don't have time to can much to put on my shelves during the growing season. Most of our produce goes to the shares, the market, or our dinner, and most of my energy goes to growing said produce, working my day job (yes, I still have one), and loving our one year old daughter.

So, when fall comes along and other people are sitting back admiring their well stocked pantries, I start to fill mine. The CSA season is over, the fields are getting cleaned out, and I have time to can stuff (and love my daughter) almost to my heart's content.



Cold weather goodies we just cleaned out of the garden: parsley, green tomatoes,
and scallions. I'll assume you knew that we didn't grow the ginger.










This year I am particularly excited to get canning because I am going to be participating in Urban Hennery's Dark Days Challenge, which is a challenge to eat local through the winter months (December 1st through April 15th) when finding food produced in your community can be especially tricky. I want to be able to rely on items that I have prepared ahead of time for some of this challenge.

To that end, I have been making condiments.  Condiments have been my favorite thing to can since I started canning. They allow for creativity in flavor combinations, unlike tomato and apple sauces - which we eat but aren't exciting to make, and we eat them - unlike jams and jelly which sometimes sit on the shelf indefinitely. I make a mean crabapple ketchup that my husband and I love on meatloaf (and hotdogs - it's cool if they're local hotdogs from Vollwerth's, right?) and I have been trying to perfect a chokecherry barbecue sauce that I use on chicken for a few years now, but this year I have been branching out.



From smallest to largest: ginger scallion sauce, green tomato relish, chimichurri.

My green tomato relish recipe is still under construction, so I'm not going to post it right now. I mentioned it simply because I made a whole lot of it (along with salsa verde and pickled tomatillos) so you can expect it to turn up frequently during the coming dark days.

My green tomato relish recipe has been posted and can be found here.

I am going to share my ginger scallion sauce and chimichurri recipes though. They're both pretty easy, especially if you employ a food processor, and they are extremely useful condiments worthy of having on hand. Happily, the main ingredient of each also happened to be lingering in the fields when we cleaned things up for the season and survived my neglect while I dealt with the more perishable items.  I'll start with the simplest one first.

Ginger Scallion Sauce

My brother in law introduced me to ginger scallion sauce earlier this summer. He discovered it via Francis Lam's writings on Salon.com. It only has four ingredients so I haven't changed it much from the way Mr. Lam presented it, but I'm still going share how I do it because that is what the internet is for. I do make it with a lot less oil than Francis Lam's version. I just like it better that way.

When I made the batch pictured above my coat was hanging on a hook in the kitchen near where I combined the oil with the ginger and scallions. It has smelled like a Chinese restaurant ever since. To me this is a seriously good thing.

The coat, not yet ginger scallion scented, out and about on Halloween.

This quantity of ingredients makes about two cups of sauce. It is best with rice, vegetables, eggs and fish.

• 12 ounces scallions, white and green sections
• 4 ounces fresh ginger
• 1/2 cup peanut oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

1. Chop the scallions and ginger very finely, until they have formed a paste. The only practical way to do this is with a food processor.
2. In the meantime, heat the peanut oil until it is smoking hot.
3. Transfer the ginger and scallions into a high sided, heat proof pot. The pot must be large enough that the hot oil can safely be added to the vegetables in the pot. Allow for boiling oil and splattering.
4. Stir the salt into the ginger and scallions.
5. When the oil is smoking hot, pour it in a steady stream over the vegetables, stirring as you do so. Continue stirring for a moment to incorporate all of the oil.
6. Cover and store in the refrigerator. 

Chimichurri

I just sort of stumbled upon chimichurri. It's origins are in Argentina, someplace I have never been and have no particular connection to. I'm not sure where I first read about it. I do know that when I ran across it I thought the flavor combination sounded heavenly. It is the kind of recipe that everyone makes their own way, so I read as many versions as I could, tried a few out, then combined the best of everything I had found to my liking. Feel free to tweak it as you see fit.

These quantities make a generous quart. It is fine to halve or quarter the recipe. This is great with red meats and sausages or with vegetables. Keep in mind that all of the listed measurements of minced or chopped things are after mincing. I do all of the chopping for this recipe with the food processor.

• 2 cups finely minced parsley
• 1/2 cup dried oregano
• 2 jalapeno peppers, or to taste, minced
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 20 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 4 teaspoons whole cumin, lightly crushed with a rolling pin, mortar and pestle, or something similar
• 2 cups olive oil
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1. Combine all of the ingredients.
2. Stir well to make sure that everything is well mixed.
3. Cover and refrigerate. This is really best once it has sat for at least 24 hours.

Refrigerated, both of these keep for at least a few months, certainly they keep as long as we can keep from eating them all up.