Another yummy tomato "recipe"

So, has anyone noticed that my recipes lately have just been vague directions of throwing vague amounts of numerous veggies together? :-) Well, this one is kind of the same. But you should try it--the beauty is in the simplicity of ingredients and taste!

Slice a large tomato or two in thin (but not too thin) slices... probably about 1/2 inch. (Handy tip of the day: use a serrated knife to slice tomatoes... it will cut right through the skin without tearing up your beautiful tomato). I prefer using Brandywine tomatoes for this dish, but any yummy slicer will work well. Layer the slices in a flat dish or on a plate.

Cut up some fresh basil into thin strips. Sprinkle over the tomatoes. Salt and pepper liberally (or to taste), and drizzle with olive oil. Then sprinkle with some shredded mozzarella. Put in the fridge until it's time to eat to let the flavors blend.

That's all there is to it! Another version is to layer the tomato slices with thin slices of mozzarella (and then skip the shredded on top).

Enjoy!!!

I just LOVE August!

It's hot, it's humid, and we're in the best season of eating in Minnesota! I seriously LOVE August in Minnesota. It's summer's last hurrah. It's fairtime. It's corn season. The tomatoes are ripe. Ahhhhh!

I think besides eating myself silly with sweet corn, my next favorite summer food is gazpacho. It's a cold tomatoey vegetable soup chock full of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, onions, and cilantro. Here is how I make it (I know using V-8 is cheating, but oh so yummy!):

April's Gazpacho

I cut up a bunch of cucumbers:

 Then I cup up a bunch of tomatoes. The varieties I show here are (from top big one, then clockwise) Brandywine, a couple Rutgers, Oregon Spring, Amish Paste, and Green Zebra (center). I like to use a mix of paste and juicy slicing tomatoes in the gazpacho. This batch I only used the Brandywine, Rutgers, and Amish Paste. We had the Green Zebra cut up for supper.

Next on the chopping board: onions!

And then a nice big green pepper!

After mixing together all these wonderful fresh vegetables that came straight from the garden, I add a few cloves of garlic-chopped, ground black pepper, and salt. (Oh, the more garlic, the better!!!) Pour a bit of regular V-8 over all of it and refrigerate for a couple hours to allow the flavors to blend. I've skipped the V-8, especially when I have lots of juicier tomatoes, and then you just have to make sure not to skimp on the salt. Other good additions are lime juice and cilantro. 

 Certain members of my family enjoy this for breakfast... be warned that if you do this, you will have definite garlic breath! Oh, but so worth it!




So, as I was saying... I just love August. And here is why: this week my CSA customers can expect a couple dozen ears of Bodacious sweet corn, tomatoes--both cherry and slicers, cucumbers, onions, purple scallions, peppers--sweet and jalapeno, green beans, and possibly zucchini (I got my zucchini in late so it's just starting). Next week should include more sweet corn (possibly 2 varieties), more tomatoes, more cucumbers, more onions, zucchini, and hopefully broccoli. And it just keeps getting better... squash will be on the list soon, along with turnips, salad greens, watermelon (!), kale, cantaloupe... Oh yeah... I LOVE AUGUST!

Really good recipe! Black Bean Salad

Since we are in the midst of the cherry tomatoes and green peppers, I thought I'd share this wonderful recipe. It's very fresh and has just the right amount of light dressing. I hope you like it! I found it in  the July 2002 edition of Quick Cooking Magazine. Enjoy!

Black Bean Salad

2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained

1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 medium sweet yellow or green pepper, julienned

4 green onions, chopped

3 Tbsp fresh cilantro or parsley, minced

Mix all together in bowl.

Dressing:

3 Tbsp lemon juice

2 Tbsp olive or canola oil

1 garlic clove, minced

3/4 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

Stir or shake dressing ingredients together and toss with vegetables. Refrigerate. Serve chilled.

Edit: Added a picture! But this was taken before the cilantro was added, so imagine it with little green bits of leaves spread throughout!

The tomatoes are coming! The tomatoes are coming!

 

Yesterday was the weekly CSA pickup day. The baskets contained beans, peppers, jalapenos, a purple kohlrabi, cherry tomatoes, and even a REAL standard tomato--the first ones to ripen! The picture above is the FIRST tomato I found in the garden. There was just the one, mostly ripe, and our family sliced it up to eat for supper. Yesterday I found about 6 more smaller ones. The heat will really get these guys coming! There are tons of green tomatoes up there, so I'm looking forward to a good harvest.

The rain has me a little concerned, though. It has been very wet and humid here in SE MN. Various fungi are sprouting up in the middle of lawns, in the mulch, and elsewhere. There has been a bit of blight showing up on the tomatoes and the peppers are even showing some leaf drop. The melons and cucumbers are loving it, though. I might have to do a bit of judicious pruning to keep the tomato plants in check and allow them more airflow to try to remove and head off some of the blight. Thankfully, it is not the late blight that is hitting parts of the country. This is the early blight which shows up as spots on the leaves, very common but usually preventable with mulching. The blight spores are in the soil and splash up on the plants during rain. My entire tomato patch is well-mulched, but with the immense rains, it seems that there must have still been some soil splash.

The peppers are not doing as well as they usually do, either. Many of the fruits are getting sun-scald from the lack of leaf cover. This is very frustrating since it means harvesting the peppers before they have a chance to ripen to that beautiful red, orange, or yellow that I love. A couple of the new varieties I planted this year are faring better than the others--Revolution and Flavorburst. Revolution is putting out some huge blocky peppers! Flavorburst are a paler green, almost yellow. As you can see from the photo, some of the peppers are just odd-shaped. These tend to be the New Ace. New Ace are not my favorites, but they usually can be depended upon for plentiful and early yields. They seem to be the worst hit by the sun-scald this year, plus the odd shapes. The kids get a kick out of them, though. 

The planting continues... yesterday I planted a bunch of fall crops--chinese cabbage, pac choi, rutabaga, turnips, and kale. There will be more planting occurring through the next few weeks, too! We had a lot of rain this morning, so that puts a hold on re-working some areas, but second crops of  beans, peas, and lettuce will be going in right away, along with more kohlrabi (hopefully the rabbits don't find them again!), beets, chard, radishes and carrots. The first plantings of most of those are just being getting ready for harvest now, except for the lettuce, which all bolted a few weeks ago. The lettuce can be a finicky germinator in the warm summer, but we'll see what happens. That might have to wait until later in August.

You might have noticed a new addition to the blog--you can now subscribe to receive updates via email! How handy, eh?! Just type in your email addy in the block to the upper right. The FeedBurner service will send you a confirmation email which you need to respond to in order to be signed up. I'm not collecting email addresses, so no worries there! 

Enjoy the heat! Summer is quickly slipping by!

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I set up a FeedBurner account with hopes that friends/followers who want to get updates via email can do so! Well, let me know if you get this... comment please! To get email updates (daily digest style), just enter your email address in the box at the upper right, under the title pic. It will send you a confirmation email to which you will need to respond. Good luck! Hope this works!

Back from vacation... time for garden bounty!

Our family was able to sneak away for a few days in the Northwoods of MN. We got back to find out that our area had some mega-rain, and then we had a doozy of a storm last night with about another inch! I went to the garden this evening, in the cool of the day and did some weeding. The ground is definitely wet, and the weeds are loving it! I couldn't believe what just 5 days can mean to some very vigorous weeds. But the plants that I WANT to grow are also doing great! I think you could probably see growth on the squash if you stood there for 5-10 minutes! Same with the cukes. AND I even found the first full-size tomato tonight. I think it was a Rutger (though not sure, since it was in the cherry tomato row... hmmm, a mystery!) and it was yummy. We sliced it up to have with our chicken dinner. 

The chickens were the last of our 2009 broilers. I just cooked them in the crockpot since I knew our day would be busy with cleanup from our camping trip. And it was... I think we washed 7 loads of laundry today, and still have another 5 or so to go! That's what happens when you take 8 people on a camping trip and it rains... every day... Ah well, it's to be expected "up north."

 

This week's CSA baskets will contain some cherry tomatoes (if they hurry and ripen), some beans, green onions, peppers, and maybe even an eggplant or two. The heat is good for the tomatoes--they love heat and ripen better when the nights stay above 70. So, they will soon be coming along. The corn is also looking pretty good, although the recent storms have cause a lot of blowdown in the corn patch. Nothing was snapped off, though, so it should be fine even if it doesn't look pretty. Ripe corn is still a ways off, but it will taste OH so good!

Hang in there, CSA members! Things are trying to get ready for you to eat!!! :-)

Mud and rain and such

Well, since the weather seems to think we need even more rain, I went out between showers today and planted. Yep, in the mud. By the time I was finished up, the soles of my shoes were about an inch thicker from the mud (and that's even after scraping them off a few times). So, recently planted are some squash plants and more squash (seed-form) in hills: Burgess Buttercup, Eastern Rise, and a mystery squash ("Gold" or "Sweet Dumpling" or both--a donation from a high school ag department).

The potatoes also went in today. I know... I know... everyone says they should be planted on Good Friday. And this year it was even warm enough on Good Friday to do that! Well, this is one of those unconventional things that I'm doing since it worked before. Two years ago I was a good girl who put in a mountain of potatoes as close to Good Friday as possible. Nothing. I think I got out 20 pounds of spuds from the 20 pounds of seed potatoes I planted. Not a great return. Last year, I bought the seed potatoes, cut them and promptly forgot about them until almost everything else was planted! I threw the 5 pounds or so in the ground (didn't want to spend more on seed potatoes than I spent on store potatoes if they weren't going to do anything!) and HOLY COW--I had tons of taters! Ok, maybe not tons... but harvested at least 20 pounds or more. So, this year I wasn't sure if I was going to plant any or not. (I tend to like planting reliable crops.) Last week decided to go for it. Farmers Seed and Nursery in Faribault still had seed potatoes so had the kids pick up 20 pounds--mix of Red Norland and Red Pontiac.  So, let's hope for the best.

Let's also hope we get some drier and warmer weather. It's too wet to try to weed, so the weeds are really starting to get crazy. Two good days with the scuffle hoe would do some amazing things! 

Strawberries!

This is the first year we've been able to reap the benefits of the hundreds of strawberries plants we've attempted to get started through the last 6 years or so! The reason is because we finally are able to deter the marauding deer that have (up until last summer) eaten every last plant down to nothing. A gardener can fall into the depths of despair when faced with a bed full of stems with no leaves. But, since we put the fence around the garden, and then covered the plants with Agribon spun fabric and straw over winter (further protection since the deer DID jump the fence--in multitudes--over the winter) we are finally getting the first tastes of what seems like 6 years of hard work! :-) This is supposed to be the time before one can expect apples off of new trees, not strawberries off of plants! haha! But seriously, the plants we put in last year are doing quite well and we even planted about 200 more this year so that next year I'm hoping we're swimming in berries!

Our CSA members will be enjoying a taste of these little gems this week, and hopefully next week. We only have 4 good rows producing right now (some are earlier than the others), so we'll see what we can do.

Wow! I LOVE summer!

CSA nights start next week! WHEEEEEEE!!!

This is some of the amazing lettuce that is coming out of the garden right now!

My family and I spent a lot of fun and satisfying time in the garden this weekend. We are continuing to plant more and more crops as the weather keeps warming up, and getting to harvest some things, too!!! The first crop (as usual) is lettuce--the photo above is actually of THINNINGS we took out of the lettuce beds! That's right--this is just the beginning. The heads of romaine and buttercrunch won't be ready for a few weeks yet. By then we'll be planting more lettuce for lettuce blends. YUM YUM YUM.

We also discovered that some of the strawberries are starting to ripen! The kids and I picked the dozen or so that were completely ripe and promptly ate them (gardeners' prerogative, you know!) We will be sharing with our CSA members, though... don't you worry! This year we planted enough new berry plants to DOUBLE the strawberry patch. I'm so excited to finally have a strawberry patch--this is the first time we've been able to thwart the deer and keep the plants going to harvest. 

I am so excited with how well the garden is coming along this year. It promises to be a bountiful summer!

Dream gardening!

I have seen my dream garden--and it is BEAUTIFUL! This week I had the opportunity to travel to Heritage Farm, home of Seed Savers Exchange, in Decorah, IA, with my best friend. Our morning trip was undertaken for the purpose of purchasing pepper and tomato plants to round out our gardens. What we discovered was our "perfect farm." Heritage Farm is nestled in the idyllic setting among the rolling hills of northern Iowa. In mid-May the hills are bright green with freshness and life. We saw some of the Farm's herd of White Park cattle, including some of the most precious calves I have ever seen. The photo above was taken from the barn, looking over this beautiful garden and the Visitors Center/Store.

 Hannah and Emily at Heritage Farm

If we had had the time, we could've spent the entire day wandering around. As it was, we were on a time crunch--both of us being busy moms with duties to tend to at home. We brought our younger daughters and Kris' baby with us. The girls had fun exploring the chicken coop. Both of them are familiar with chickens and recognized some of the breeds, since we both have flocks that they help tend. After choosing our plants and a few packets of seeds that we couldn't pass up, we had a quick picnic lunch near the stream before heading back north. It was a wonderful day--enjoying time to chat on the drive, passing a few horses and buggies as we traveled through Amish country, and getting a glimpse of the "perfect farm" that we wish our small holdings could someday emulate.

So, what did I purchase??? Well, I was looking for more Carmen sweet peppers since I didn't end up with as many plants as I'd like from my planting. They didn't have any Carmen, but I decided to try Tolli's Sweet Italian--"This sweet red Italian heirloom is one of our all-around favorites for fresh eating and canning recipes. Great added to tomato sauces. Large, dependable yields of 4–5" long tapered fruits." I also picked up some King of the North bell peppers, a dependable large bell pepper that I wasn't able to order seed for this year. Then for fun, I picked out Sweet Chocolate and Purple Beauty peppers, and Purple Tomatillos (just imagine the colorful salsa or pico de gallo!). Emily picked out some sunflower and nasturtium seeds plus a pack of petunias to plant in her garden.


What a fun day!

Spring cleanup!

Some people would call this free help (or slave labor! haha!) We prefer to say "character building." :-) Here Mikey and Greg, my garden cleanup crew, are getting ready to burn off the vines from the tomato cages. I don't want them burning up all the mulch left over from last year, so they are removing any big chunky debris to burn, and making a firebreak so the fire from the tomato cages doesn't cage on the mulch. That old decaying mulch is a big part of our fertilization plan--after it has done it's job as a weed barrier, we till it in the following spring to add organic matter to the soil. We've been doing this for about 6 years now, and the fertility shows in our gargantuan tomato plants and pepper "bushes."

I've already been able to plant a few rows of lettuce and peas in the garden. This is definitely the earliest that I've ever done any direct-seeding! I'm so excited to have our own greens and peas! YUM!

Time to plant OUTSIDE?!

It is so hard to believe that it is already the beginning of April. It's even harder to believe this amazingly warm weather we've been having! We had no snowfall in March, the snow drifts and piles are GONE, and the temps have been hovering in the 60's and 70's--we even hit 80 two days this week! So far I've uncovered the strawberries and checked out the buds on the raspberries. Both look like they survived the winter well. The rhubarb is also making a good showing. So far, I haven't seen any asparagus tips, but hopefully they will be popping up soon, too. (Although I noticed some gopher or mole damage in the new asparagus bed--I just hope they didn't bother the plants!)

The photo above is some of last fall's rainbow carrots. I'll be planting these again this year. They are fun to grow--so colorful and tasty! This weekend or early next week, I'm planning on seeding the first plantings of carrots, lettuces, spinach, and broccoli. With this early spring, is it possible we will be enjoying the bounty of the garden earlier than usual?! We can hope!!!

It's planting time!

This week I started getting some of the seeds planted. I was a little late getting those onions in the dirt, but the peppers and tomatoes are right on schedule. Planted so far are:

• Red Zeppelin Onions (gotta love the name! haha!)
• Candy Onions (in place of my favorite Expression which were "out of stock")
• Red Marble Onions
• Hardy Scallions (the first planting... these will continue every few weeks)
• Peppers: Peacework, Revolution, New Ace, Carmen, Jalapeno, Valencia, and Flavorburst
• Tomatoes: Brandywine, Green Zebra, Oregon Spring, Pruden's Purple, Amish Paste, Juliet, and Sun Gold Cherry

I'm very excited about the new peppers and tomatoes I'm trying this year. Those would be Peacework, Revolution, and Flavorburst peppers; Green Zebra, Oregon Spring, and Pruden's Purple tomatoes. I've discovered that tomatoes and peppers are my favorite vegetables to grow. I enjoy starting them in the house and watching them come up, transplanting them, turning the house into a jungle, moving the plants out to the cold frames and greenhouse, and then planting them in the garden. Then comes the REALLY great part--watching the plants really take off in the garden soil and produce their fruit. I really enjoy the challenge of coaxing early tomatoes and peppers in short Minnesota growing season.

I am hoping to put up a hoophouse for my tomatoes and peppers this year. I would love to extend our harvest season another month or two. I've been doing some research on these things, and currently am trying to decide if we have the know-how to build one from scratch or if we'd be better off with a kit. Cost will most likely be the deciding factor. So, most likely we will be building one without the assistance of a kit. Thankfully I have been able to find a few different websites and books with very good instructions. Of course, that won't happen for a few more months--we have to wait for the snow to melt first!!!

In the meantime I can create my little jungle inside the house. I'll be posting photos as everything starts getting green. Spring is just around the corner!

So what IS a CSA?

Young Eggplants--MINUS Colorado Potato Beetles

This question was posed to me this week. The simple answer could be a "subscription" garden... you pay your subscription for the season and get your regular installment of produce. But really, it is, and can be, so much more. Think about sustainable farming, think about knowing where your food comes from, think about getting to know your neighbors, think about supporting the local economy... Consumer Supported Agriculture is all of these things.

For us, our CSA garden provides us with a way to afford being able to produce high quality non-chemical food for our family and friends. We have the land, but there is so much more expense involved--including seeds, water and irrigation, mulch, natural soil supplements, time, and of course, a method of deterring the deer from the HUMAN food. (Yes, maybe the kids are right about this obsession with the deer...) Pushing the limits on our short growing season can also increase the monetary costs of the garden--a greenhouse, hoophouses, and row covers to protect those tender plants from frosts and also to encourage early production. It takes a bit of planning and work to get tomatoes by July 1 in Minnesota! All of these things have monetary costs, but the benefits SO outweigh the costs. And those costs are minor compared to the costs of produce shipped from various parts of the world so that we have the luxury of out-of-season produce.

In these days of Big Ag, it's difficult to support a family by farming alone. This is where Community Supported Agriculture--in the form of subscription gardening, farmer-direct meat purchasing, local farmers markets--make a huge difference. We are far from supporting our family with our CSA garden, but it does support our quest for a healthier style of eating and living.

And not only are you sustaining a farmer's way of living, but consider how that farmer is sustaining the earth. While we are not organic-certified, we grow our fruits and vegetables by organic methods. Last year that resulted in our 2 older sons going out in regular intervals with a jar of sudsy water and a knife to look under each leaf of the eggplants in search of Colorado Potato Beetle bugs, eggs, and larvae. The adult beetles and larvae were sent to drown in the jars while the orange eggs were smashed with a knife and scraped into the jar also. We had only a minor infestation so were able to curtail it with about 2 weeks of the intense "beetle search." The boys learned more than they wanted to about the life cycle of the nasty beetles, but they can identify them in a flash! In a conventional garden, we may have tried a plethora of nasty chemicals, only to find the beetles already had an immunity or developed an immunity to them, while questioning if we really should eat anything that was within 10 feet of the chemical. And then what could the after-effects of whatever was used be on beneficial insects? This is just one small example of how we take seriously our role as stewards of the earth.

So, what is a CSA??? It's building a network, it's protecting the earth, it's getting to know where your food comes from, it's supporting a farmer... and it's GOOD EATING!

PingTung Long Eggplant

Random thoughts on Monday...

Snowflakes in the backyard

It's back to winter here in MN. Over the weekend we had above freezing temps during the day with rain. Now it's about 20 degrees and blowing snow. Below zero is forecast in the next few days. It's a good time to think about greenhouses and planting! :-)

Who has checked out what was left in their freezer from last summer. Mike and I went through our 2 chest freezers and condensed down to 1. We found a lot of frozen rhubarb, broccoli, snowpeas, and cauliflower from the garden. Other treasures we discovered were frozen strawberries and corn (from another local farm). We decided it's time to start using this stuff up! So yesterday I thawed some rhubarb and made rhubarb cake--what a treat! It was like a little taste of spring in the midst of this bleak landscape of winter foods. (Now don't get me wrong--I love winter foods: comfort dishes like hotdishes, good keepers like squash and potatoes, canned fruits, etc. But that cake brought the odors of spring. It reminded us of fresh peas, greens, and, of course, rhubarb!) Tomorrow we'll be having a side dish of cauliflower with our supper. So I encourage you to dig in the freezer and see what you find!

During the school year, I teach piano lessons on Mondays. I have decided to incorporate a little "me time" into the schedule, because when I'm home the rest of the week there is NO TIME for mom time. We are busy with school, housework, and keeping our family fed! This means MOM is busy doing all those things! :-) So today, I had some extra time which I'm using right now to blog. As I was driving up our driveway this afternoon, I came across a small group of turkeys, which after looking it up in Google, I now know that it is correctly called a "rafter" of turkeys. There were about seven meandering across the driveway, no doubt eating some gravel which they need for digestion. Quite close to the turkeys was a small doe, poking through the woods. This has been a rather common spectacle on our farm. Since we are somewhat isolated and surrounded by a lot of woods, there are large populations of deer and turkeys.

You may wonder if these cause some problems in the garden. Short answer=YES. The turkeys haven't been much trouble (although they enjoy visiting our domestic turkeys when we raise them), but the deer have caused much anguish during my gardening career. Last year we completed a deer fence around the entire fence. Even though it's only 5 feet high, it accomplished it's task quite well. I think it was just enough of a deterrent that the deer figured they could just as easily get lunch elsewhere. Now that the snow is drifted about 3 feet deep around the deer fence, though, the deer have decided to come visiting once more. You see, I made the mistake of leaving an uncovered round bale of straw in the garden. I used part of it for mulching the strawberries, and was planning to use the rest this spring for the same purpose and in the raspberry patch. Even though there are about 7 strawbales outside of the fence, the deer felt a need to destroy that one partial bale INSIDE the fence. One day I sent Greg up to chase the deer away--there were at least 20 inside the fence! Most of them easily cleared the fence, though a few had their hind legs tripped up on it. So, plan B will probably be put into place this spring--topping the fence with electric strands and colored tape-flags. My kids think I'm obsessed with my no-deer-in-the-garden plans. I even have a Plan C and D! Well, someday when they wander up there for a snack of sugarsnap peas to find that every last one has been nosed out by the evil deer, they will understand.

One thing that I did today as I was enjoying some quiet was finish going through the FEDCO/Organic Growers Supply catalog. I was reading through the descriptions of all the organic soil amendments and resolved to test the garden soil again this spring and see if needs some additional rock powders, greensand, etc. We use no synthetic fertilizers in the garden, depending on rotation, compost, composted manure, and cover crops to boost the fertility. It seems to be working, if you look at this jungle of tomato plants. This picture was taken a couple years ago. Last year's tomato plants were even more massive and loaded with fruit. I will be given them a bit more space this year, since I anticipate an even better season!

Well, my free time is up! Time to go back to the cold and snow, and leave my garden daydreams for another time.

2010 is here!

2010! Yes, it's here! I have sent in my seed order, and expect all those little gems to arrive any day. The onions will need to be started soon, quickly followed by the tomatoes and peppers. What fun! Little growing plants in the house will help to send away the winter doldrums!

We are continuing our CSA garden this year. Last year we supplied food for 8 families, including our own. What an accomplishment! I look forward to another wonderful season this year! I have added a few different varieties of peppers and tomatoes to the mix this year, and I promise the jalapenos will have some heat! Last year, they were so mild our 4-year-old could munch on them fresh from the garden! Over the next few days I plan on posting more of the photos that I took last season. The collage above features (clockwise from top left) Brandywine tomato blossoms, onions and leeks ready for baskets, a variety of cherry and grape tomatoes, and baby melon plants ready to be set out.

I just finished the brochure for our farm items for the 2010 season. Watch for it in the mail or at Ferndale Market in Cannon Falls.