Week 14: Green Tomatoes and Sprouts

It's that time of year again.

Harvest Fest happened at Algomah Acres.

And the tomato leaves have succumbed to frostbite. At least the leaves on the field tomatoes have.

(Sorry, no frost photo. Moonlit tomato leaves covered in ice crystals are both breathtakingly beautiful and difficult to capture with a camera.)

Which means this week's share includes Green Tomatoes, along with: Cabbage, Carrots, Apples, Spaghetti Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and Potatoes.

It also means that we have spent our last few days digging carrots and potatoes.

Ignore all those lamb's quaters seed heads in the background
and just focus on the sea of carrots.

And our nights rescuing green tomatoes from the cold. 

So, instead of an original recipe this week (Even the CSA farmer gets too tired to cook sometimes. We've pretty much just been eating scrambled eggs and baked squash this week.) I'm offering you a greatest hits list of fall recipes from the past and pinterest recipes I think you should try. The focus is green tomatoes and Brussels sprouts, the two trickiest items in this week's share:

This post from 2011 (I've been doing this for longer than I think I have) features two of our favorite fall recipes. Spaghetti Squash with Two Sauces (which has become Scott's birthday dinner of choice) and roasted Brussels sprouts. Both have been mentioned every year for the last few years, and both are worth trying if you haven't yet.

For more Brussels sprouts ideas, check out the Brussels sprouts pinterest board.

I have two favorite green tomato posts. This one features fried green tomatoes, and this one features green tomato relish. I am still waiting for someone to point me towards a good green tomato pie recipe. 

There isn't one on my green tomato pinterest board. But maybe you'll find one.

Week 15: Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday.

Seriously, right now. Earlier we celebrated by swimming at the AmericInn and hiking the Summit Peak Loop. The color in the Porkies is perfect today, by the way.

Actually, this photo shows the cakes I made for Seda's birthday
party a few weeks ago. But you get the idea.

As I type Scott and Seda are preparing a birthday "cake" for me. It's an apple-carrot-green tomato crisp. You'll find the recipe at the bottom of this post.

And now you know three items to expect in the share this week. If you recall, the last two shares of the season are extra big. This is the first of those shares. You can expect: Apples, Green Tomatoes, Carrots, Daikon Radishes, Tomatoes (ripe ones), Beets, Onions, Rutabaga or Kohlrabi, Winter Squash, Celeriac, a choice of Herbs, Gold Ball Turnips or Winter Radishes, and Kale or Chard or Dandelion Greens.

The only new thing this week is daikon, which I will get back to in a second. The celeriac may be a challenge for some of you - perhaps you still have some lurking from last week. If you need some ideas for using it, you are in luck. I just went crazy pinning celeriac recipes on pinterest, you can find those if you click here. You could also add some celeriac to the fall soup recipe below.

The daikon is another storable radish (like the winter radishes - incidentally, if you want to store any of your root veggies be sure to remove the greens first and store the roots in the crisper or some other cold, humid place) and can be used similarly. The daikons are nice, because they are full of flavor - like the other winter radishes - but have a crisp juicy texture, more like that of the french breakfast radishes. If you need some more specific ideas, I pinned a few recipes here. 

Now, I have two recipes for you, just to make sure you can use everything in your shares.

The first is a thick soup. Scott invented it the other day. It is a lovely combination of savory and sweet, and filling with with a hunk of whole grain bread.

The second is my birthday crisp. I invented this recipe, mostly because I still really want to come up with a tasty dessert that features green tomatoes, and Scott made it. I would say that it's pretty tasty, but maybe a bit too sweet for my taste. I understand that he had a four year old helper, and they may not have followed the recipe exactly...Still, next time I would probably only use a quarter of a cup of sugar in the filling. Proceed according to your tastes.

Fall Soup

• 2 small or 1 large orange fleshed winter squash, halved and baked (Scott left the seeds in and it turned out great - he has a thing for squash seeds. You can take them out if you don't share his thing.)
• 6 large carrots, chopped
• One bunch (6-10) gold ball turnips, chopped
• 1 medium beet, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cups apple cider (or enough to cover the above ingredients)
• Salt, Cinnamon, and Nutmeg to taste
• 2 Tablespoons Butter

Combine all of the ingredients, through the cider, in a large pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn the temperature to simmer and simmer until the vegetables are tender.

Once tender, puree the soup. We use an immersion blender (you should get one if you don't have one) but you could also use a regular blender or a food processor.

After pureeing, reheat the soup if necessary, and season to taste. Add butter to finish the soup.

Birthday Crisp

Scott made my birthday crisp in his cast iron pan.
Because he loves his pan as much as he loves me.

For the filling:

• 2 large or 4 medium carrots, sliced in 1/4 inch slices
• 1/4 cup water or apple cider
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg (or much less than that if you are using freshly ground)
• 2-3 apples, sliced thickly
• 2-3 green tomatoes, sliced thickly

For the topping:

• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place the carrots, water or cider, sugar, and spices in a large saucepan (or cast iron skillet if you are awesome like me husband). Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for about five minutes. Then add the apples and green tomatoes. Continue to simmer until the apples are just tender.

Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the topping.

When the filling is ready, transfer it to a pie plate (or leave it in your kick ass skillet) and sprinkle the topping evenly over it.

Bake until the topping is golden, approximately 15 minutes.

Sing happy birthday to me :)

Week 15: The First Double Share

It's a big week this week, and not just because of the vegetables. Seda turned three over the weekend and Scott turns thirty today!

Party Time!

Also, we do have a LOT of vegetables for you. This week's share (which is technically the week 15 and the week 17 share combined - but that is a little confusing) will include: Brussels Sprouts, Kale, Sorrel or Parsley, a Selection of Fresh Herbs, 2 pounds of topped Beets, At least 3 pounds of topped Carrots, Rutabaga, Head Lettuce, 3 pounds Green Tomatoes, Spaghetti Squash, Onions, a Pumpkin or Gourds, and optional Jalapeno peppers.

Bring a strong back to pick-up this week! And maybe an extra bag.

If you're wondering how you can possibly use all these vegetables before they go bad, remember several of them are easy to store.

Brussels Sprouts: We're leaving them on the stalk because they store best this way. They are best fresh but will keep for up to a week wrapped in plastic in the fridge. We have kept them, on the stalk, for a few weeks in our unheated porch with little damage, though they taste best right after harvest. The simplest way to cook them (which also happens to be delicious) is to roast them. You can find my recipe for roasted sprouts in this post, just below the photo of Brussels sprouts.

Fresh Herbs: These can be hung to dry. Thyme, oregano, and rosemary all dry particularly well. Just make sure they are out of the sun. You can also dry them in a frost free refrigerator. Simply leave them in there, whole and uncovered, until they become crisp. I find refrigerator dried herbs have the best flavor.

Beets and Carrots: We have removed the leaves on these items so they will store longer (leaves take moisture from the roots, even in storage). Keep them in their plastic bags and store them in your crisper drawer, they will keep for at least two weeks this way. You can also pickle them. Pickyourown.org (a great online resource for canning information) has recipes for pickled beets and pickled carrots here. Scroll down to the pickling section to find them.

Rutabaga: These will also keep in your crisper drawer for at least two weeks. If space is tight they can  go on the counter for a week or so. If you aren't sure what to do with your 'bagas, try steaming or boiling them and then mashing them just like potatoes. Add butter, herbs like sage or thyme, or even a dollop of maple syrup. A few carrots will go nicely in the mash too.

Green Tomatoes: Three pounds of green tomatoes may sound like a lot, but it is just the right amount for a small batch of green tomato relish (recipe here at the bottom of the post) and some fried green tomatoes. The fried green tomato recipe can be found at the end of this post. Green tomatoes will keep on your counter for at least two weeks, ripening slightly as they sit. These tomatoes will never get fully ripe. If you want to make the relish, be sure to take a few of the optional jalapenos in the share. Green tomatoes also pickle beautifully.

Spaghetti squash just after harvest.

Spaghetti Squash: This will keep for at least a month on your counter, or much longer in a cool dark space like the closet of an unheated spare room or in a reasonably dry basement. When you are ready to cook it, the options are many. I like spaghetti squash baked, forked out, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and dried tarragon. If you want to get fancy, try the recipe at the bottom of this post. The recipe I linked to is what I'll be making Scott for his birthday dinner.

Onions: These are cured storage onions. Store them and use as you would any storage onion from the store, but expect them to taste better :)

Pumpkins just before harvest.

Pumpkins: We don't have enough pumpkins for every member to get one, so you'll have the option of either one pumpkin or three gourds. You should be able to keep your pumpkin out for decoration through Halloween with no problem, but if you want to carve it you should probably wait a few weeks because, of course, once you cut it it will not last as long. You can also paint it is Seda is demonstrating below. I haven't tried it yet, but the variety we grew is supposed to be a pretty good pie pumpkin too.

Gourds: I imagine you all know that gourds are not edible. They are pretty much the only thing that we grow that isn't. Usually I have little patience for cultivating plants that I won't be eating, but for some reason I LOVE gourds passionately. If you do too, hang on to them until they are dry and they will last more or less forever, as long as you keep them dry. Their color will fade, but their character won't.

Gourds adding flare to the acorn squash box. (Acorn squash
will go out next week.)

Fried Green Tomatoes

The ingredients to this recipe are the same as those in the green tomato post linked to above, with the fried green cherry tomato recipe, but the technique is a little better. If you've never had fried green tomatoes I STRONGLY suggest you try them. They're surprisingly easy to make, once you figure out how to get the breading to stick to the tomatoes (it took me some trial and error...), and kind of addictive.

• Canola or Peanut oil, as needed
• 2 pounds green tomatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch or thinner slices
• Flour, as needed
• 1 large egg
• 1 Tablespoon milk
• 1/4 cup corn meal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika

In a large skillet, heat about an eighth of an inch of your chosen oil over medium heat.

Spread some flour onto a small plate.

Lightly combine the egg and milk in a small bowl.

In another small bowl combine the corn meal and seasonings.

Dip the green tomato slices in the flour, then the egg/milk mixture, then the corn meal mixture, coating thoroughly but thinly at each station.

When the oil is sizzling hot, fry the slices in batches until the breading is golden and the tomatoes are slightly soft.

Or until they look about like this. Complete with oil
splatter on the stove top.

If necessary, drain on paper towel before serving to remove excess oil. These are best when they are still nearly hot enough to burn your mouth.

Week 14 - Green Tomato Relish Pictorial

Now that we have had a freeze (see freeze prep photo post here), it is officially fall. Scott says that we shouldn't dare give out any more summer squash or zucchini (does everyone have a loaf of zucchini bread in the freezer yet?) but you're getting them at least one more time.

This week's share includes carrots, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers/summer squash, 2 lbs green cherry tomatoes, onions, parsley, two apples, and one jalapeno.

In honor of fall, everyone is receiving the ingredients to make a small batch of green tomato relish, which explains the last five items in the share list. 

The ingredients in the shares makes slightly more than four half-pints
of relish.

I don't get a lot of time to can in the height of harvest, and most of our cucumbers and ripe tomatoes go to the members anyway, so I preserve the items that we have in abundance once the season slows. Thankfully, that allows me to make all the green tomato relish I want. It's sweet, sour, and pleasantly spicy. Perfect with cheese, lunch meat, or hot dogs. I want a lot of it.

I understand that not everyone is up for canning, so before I get to the relish how to I'm going to offer another option.

Fried Green (Cherry) Tomatoes

Fried stuff is good. Especially when it's garden fresh stuff coated with egg wash and a layer of corn meal crunch. Generally I fry sliced green tomatoes by first dredging in flour, then egg wash, then seasoned corn meal, then pan frying in canola or peanut oil. I wanted to include my recipe because fried green tomatoes need to be enjoyed in the Yoop, but the shares have green cherry tomatoes. This is my solution. 

• 2 cups green cherry tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1/4 cup corn meal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• canola or peanut oil for frying

1. Halve the cherry tomatoes and place them in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Toss tomatoes with the flour, coating as evenly as possible.
3. Lightly beat the egg and milk together, then toss the tomatoes with the egg mixture.
4. Combine corn meal, salt, black pepper, and paprika.
5. Add the corn meal mixture to the tomatoes and toss, again coating as evenly as possible. It will be a bit slippery and lumpy. That is okay.
6. Cover the bottom of a 12 inch frying pan with about an 1/8 of an inch of oil and heat it over medium high heat.
7. When the oil is hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle (test with just a drop - otherwise you risk a burn) pour the tomato mixture in the pan like a giant pancake.
8. When the bottom is set and turning golden, flip the "pancake". It will break apart, just try to flip all the pieces.
9. Cook until the second side is set and golden. Remove from heat.

I snapped this photo just after the flip so you would know what you were going for.
Sorry my stove is a bit of a mess, note the recipe notebook in the background.

And onto the relish.

Green Tomato Relish

If you taste the relish right after cooking you may think it doesn't live up to my praise, don't worry. It needs a month on the shelf before it is perfect. If you want to eat it before then you will just have to settle for really good.

• 2 pounds green tomatoes (cherry or otherwise)
• 2 small or one medium onion
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper (or none if you despise heat)
• 10 stems parsley, tough lower stem removed
• 2 tart, firm fleshed apples
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cinnamon stick 
• 10 whole allspice berries
• 20 whole black peppercorns

Place the tomatoes, onion, parsley, and jalapeno into the bowl of a food processor. It chops much better if you put the parsley and jalapeno on the bottom, but I wanted you to see how the parsley is trimmed. Use all tender portions of the stem along with the leaves.

Chop until it looks like this. It only takes a few seconds. You want some texture left in it. Once chopped, transfer the mixture to a sauce pot that will hold all of the ingredients with room for simmering.

Chop the apples into small pieces.

Add them to the pan along with the sugar, vinegar, and spices. There's no need for a spice bag because the allspice and pepper are left in for canning and the cinnamon is easy to fish out.

Bring to a boil and simmer until the apples are soft, 30 - 45 minutes. Ladle the hot relish into clean half pint jars (you should need four with about a half a cup left over) leaving a half inch head space. Top with two piece canning lids and tighten the rings "fingertip tight".

Boil for ten minutes in a boiling water bath (AKA an old stockpot with enough water to cover the jars by at least one inch). There is less risk of breaking a jar if you use new jars, do not close your lids too tightly, and bring the water to a boil with the jars in it, rather than adding jars to already boiling water.

The relish will keep for at least a year on the shelf. Remember it is best after it has sat for at least one month.

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.

The most frustrating thing about farming

I've been really into taking pictures of things in pots lately. It must be all of the canning I am doing. It is the season for preserving the harvest.


The last pan of 2010 tomatoes - about to be sauced

Living seasonally is one of the most romantic things about farming. The time of year dictates our activities as farmers in a way that just doesn't happen much in modern life. It is one of the many things that I truly love about farming.

And also the thing that I most hate.

Living seasonally doesn't just mean that my life is tied to my environment, that I can live my respect for nature, and that I get to eat really well. Though, happily, those things are true. It means that I only get one go at things each year. One shot. So, as an optimistic 30 year old, living seasonally means I will only have - at most - 50 to 60 more tries at this.

My husband and I are constantly thinking about ways to make our farm better. He creates files about cultivation methods. I obsess over the best variety of shell bean to grow in our area. We both ponder sources for soil inputs, marketing methods, and the best way to grow a lot of tasty tomatoes. Each year we make a plan. We try to get it right. Of course there are always failures, big and small. We always end up with a big list of things to do differently next year.

50 tries probably sounds like a lot, but it isn't. Imagine that you only get 50 tries to get your life's passion right. A chef might cook the same dish, a pitcher practice the same pitch, a singer sing the same song countless times, until those actions are as natural as breathing.  A farmer only gets to live each season once, and there are only so many seasons in a lifetime.

Which is why it is such a pain in the butt when, as a farmer, you screw something up. Like I did last night. Actually, I suppose this screw up was more in my role as farmer's wife rather than as farmer because it was a failure in the kitchen and not the field, but I have plenty of both.

I had been saving the last of the blueberries we picked this year in our freezer to make a batch of blueberry basil jam, something I sell at the local farmers' market, just for us. Then I had a brilliant idea for something new to try with the blueberries, blueberry green tomato relish. It started out nicely...(more pictures of things in pots here)



Looks pretty...





Tastes good too.



And then it experienced a melt down. Literally. I went in the living room to hang out with my daughter while the pot simmered on the stove to allow the tomatoes to soften. A few minutes later, my husband called from the kitchen "This stuff is really boiling in here." We had a little chat about it. He stirred, turned down the heat, we called it good. When I returned, the blueberries and chunks of onion were disintegrated and, though the flavor of the relish was pretty good, it wasn't a relish. It had turned into a sort of thin blueberry ketchup with strangely large hunks of, nicely softened, green tomato throughout.

It wasn't a catastrophic failure, but I'm not sure how I'll use
up six pints of it.

I can think of a number of ways that this recipe went wrong. I used a bit too much vinegar, the wrong blueberry/tomato ratio, chopped the onions too fine and the tomatoes too large, and I obviously over cooked it. Plus I just realized that I should have added some fresh ginger. I'm sure that I could make another, better, batch of it right now. But I can't. I have to wait through the seasons before I can get my hands on more blueberries and green tomatoes.

My daughter, helping me photograph green tomatoes for the anticipated version of this post in which the relish turned out perfectly and we all lived happily ever after.