Tag: recipes

Mid-August Eggplants

I cannot believe we are already at the middle of August. Obviously, I have not Blogged recently. Quite honestly, it has been simply too depressing to write about not having any veggies for our CSA Members. The rains and the heat together caused most all of the plants to wither and die except for the cucumbers and cantaloupe and eggplant which were in a drier section of the garden. However, the deer got in and ate all of the cucumbers and cantaloupe and then the plants turned yellow. The eggplant remain and we do have beautiful globe eggplants this year! The one bright spot!! We also have potatoes. The okra plants are less than two feet high; thus, there is no need to use a ladder to harvest them this season. LOL You just gotta laugh at the craziness of it all . . . it is as if we live in Florida!

I have posted two new easy eggplant recipes to the website. Both are delicious and freeze well. This is the only vegetable I have to process, so we shall be eating lots of eggplant this winter in our household. Eggplant is naturally bitter; but as long as they are growing quickly, we never remove the skin when we prepare them. Also, we much prefer to roast our eggplant as this method brings out the sweetness. I simply brush the slices with EVOO rather than frying in it.

Eggplants are nutrient-rich, antioxidant-packed fruits that may benefit your heart, blood sugar, weight, and cancer risk. Their hearty texture is a good stand-in for meat. You can roast, bake, steam, or sauté eggplant. When it’s cut up, it makes a good addition to curries and soups or even as a basil substitute for pesto which can be used for dips, pizza, or sandwich spread.

We will offer a limited number of CSA Boxes. If you really love eggplant and potatoes, please send me an email at canecreekcsa@gmail.com and I will prepare a box for you. There may be some offerings over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, we will not be able to resume the entire CSA schedule again as we had planned at the end of June.

Praising The Bear

It is pouring rain at the farm right now. The farmer is going back to the field to harvest some beets in the mud for Tuesday’s CSA. There will also be some green beans or some yellow, broad beans in your box–but not both There would have been both, but it is raining too hard to be picking more beans! We really do not need this rain. Daily rainfall, even if small amounts let alone this deluge, is not good for our garden. The squash, zucchini, and patty pans in particular will begin to drop off from excessive dampness.

We had a serious problem solved last week! There was a huge hive of something (bees? wasps? hornets?) attached to the underside of the bucket of one of our tractors. This tractor had not been used recently as it is used for maintaining our gravel road–although with this rainfall, we might need to use it tomorrow! We have another tractor for mowing which is in “seasonal” use right now. Back to the problem . . . Robert has been watching this hive and considering how to safely remove it. The fantastic news is that one day last week, one of our bears tore off the hive and carried it off into the woods–much as he did our trash can one time! Problem solved without needing to use an epie pen! Praise for the bear THIS WEEK . . .

This is the small bear and one of the two which frequent our property and perhaps live on it somewhere!

One of our CSA Members was telling me how she is making muffins for her freezer from the patty pans and summer squash. What a great idea; particularly if your family needs to have the zucchini hidden! I am surprised I have not thought of this; although, Robert and I tend to be purist when it comes to our vegetables. As little sugar and as close to raw as possible is our preferred method of consuming,

In the box you can expect green cabbage, red beets, a variety of patty pan squash, long summer squash, yellow or green zucchini , orange carrots, yellow broad-beans and/or string-less, green beans (depending on the day), a couple of sweet, green bell peppers, and a bit of okra.

Beeturia and Broad-Beans

In the box this week you can expect green cabbage, red beets, a variety of patty pan squash, long summer squash, yellow or green zucchini , orange carrots, some cukes (still regrowing from the deer feast), the last of the broccoli (on Wednesday only), some yellow broad-beans, and perhaps a bit of okra. I will know for sure once I began packing the harvest into boxes!  The okra plants are stunted this season, so the amount will be limited. Then again, that seems to suit most families as many do not like okra.

I love the sweetness of roasted beets! Please remember that beet juice will stain anything it touches!  To remove the pinkish stain from your fingers, try rubbing with salt or lemon juice. Also, ingesting beets will stain bodily fluids of people sometimes. This is called beeturia. The discoloration is due to betalain, a natural pigment found in beets. Not all people experience this; but if you are one of select who does, please do not be alarmed. It might be the time to bring out your “red” dish towel if you have one.

Leaving a bit of stem on the beet prevents excessive “bleeding” while boiling.

Speaking of roasted . . . a friend was telling me how she sliced patty pans and roasted them in EVOO with onions. I think I will give this a try tonight as we have been steaming patty pans recently. A change will be nice. A word on the yellow broad-beans. Robert and I think they are tougher than the green beans; therefore, I steamed a batch last evening for two (2) minutes instead of the one (1) minute setting which I typically use for veggies. We thought they were prefect–with butter, of course!

We do now have a twirling eight-foot fence around the gardens. It rather makes me dizzy to look at it on a windy day. Here’s trusting the Mama deer feels the same way. Robert saw the spotted fawn again last evening. He is about the size of large dog now! He very agilely ran from one tree line to the other when Robert was harvesting squash. I think they surprised one another!!