But what to do with all those vegetables?!
featuring roasted vegetable perfection and my favorite garden slaw recipe
This is just a note for all of you local to the Eastern Shore of Virginia folks, to let you know that I'm opening up our summer CSA subscriptions on our website for purchase. The summer CSA share starts June 21st and is twelve weeks long. Each week you will receive a box of seasonal vegetables, herbs, and fruit. Some of the vegetables you can expect to find in our summer CSA include heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, chile peppers, sweet peppers, summer squash, zucchini, fennel, leeks, onions, garlic, figs and lots more! I grow each of the vegetables from seed all the way to harvest on your table, and each box is a labor of love designed to generously feed a family of 3-4 or a couple who eats a lot of vegetables. You don't want to miss out. Shares are going fast, so sign up today!
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The following post is free until the very end where I share my recipe for garden slaw dressing. The actual recipe is for paid subscribers only.
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I am treading water, trying to keep my head above now that we are firmly planted in a season of overwhelming abundance: that particular moment in time right before the solstice hits around June twentieth when high spring collides with early summer. I want to be grateful and revel in it all, but mostly I'm just tired. Mid-May through mid-July is a time of plenitude here on my farm. The variety of vegetables is dizzying from greens to brassicas to carrots and beets and strawberries. My problem each week is to figure out what to put in our CSA without repeating and/or overwhelming my customers. The walk-in cooler is perpetually stacked from top to bottom, and harvests occur daily. When we try to take a day off from harvesting to plant or weed or, you know, simply rest and maybe take a nap and let our poor bodies recover, we end up regretting it the next day. Each week, I send out a list of what's available to chefs, restaurants, etc., and to give you an idea of just how overloaded we are right now, I thought I'd share this week's list with you here:
Strawberries
Green garlic
Rainbow beets
Italian red Tropea onions
Spring onions
Napa cabbage
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Springtime salad mix
Crispino iceberg lettuce
Little gem lettuce
Bacchus radishes
Hakurei salad turnips
Bok Choi
Choi sum
Dill, Cilantro & parsley
Snow peas
Sugar snap peas
Fava beans
Magda zucchini
Zephyr Squash
Carrots
Arugula
Leeks
Kohlrabi
Swiss Chard
Frisee
Escarole
I have no doubt that I'm forgetting a few things, but I think you get the idea. What is your favorite vegetable you have been eating on repeat lately?
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Spring and fall are times of absolute overwhelm, overdrive, and veritable abundance for farmers. Our popular imagination likes to envision summertime as the time of plenty when everyone's favorite “vegetables” like tomatoes, corn, and melons come in, but in truth, that's not actually the case. If you ask a farmer, they're likely to tell you that July and August are really hard months for us. These are the hottest months of the year, made even more intemperate over the past decade due to climate change, with the heat and humidity wreaking havoc in the form of pests and disease, not to mention that there are so many crops that simply won't grow once you hit sustained temperatures over eighty-five degrees. Try as we might with shade cloth and trees, it is very difficult to grow sweet, crisp lettuce that meets my high standards, so I simply don't for the months of July and August. It just isn't worth the time, effort, stress and uncertainty.
Because of our ever-changing climate, winters are also becoming more mild for many of us, which means pests are getting worse. We need a good snowpack and sustained hard frosts to properly disrupt pest cycles, but here on the Delmarva peninsula in Virginia, we're not getting that and haven't gotten any snow for the past three years, which is very unusual. I can try to look on the bright side and say that this extends our growing season, allowing us to grow tomatoes until December, but to be honest, this false Pollyanna cheer annoys me: I need and want a break. The dark side of extended warmer weather and mild winters is that pest cycles double and even triple, so now I'm experiencing squash bugs and cabbage worms much earlier and later than I'm used to. It might not seem like a lot unless you're an organic farmer, trying not to spray your vegetables with poison and regenerate the earth at the same time. These are all thoughts that consume and worry me daily. Have I chosen a foolish profession that pays very little and has no safety nets? Have I been even more foolhardy in insisting on not only growing organically but with a mindful purpose toward regenerating this spot of land I care for? It is so easy to become discouraged in the face of so much uncertainty, but my spirit is also daily bolstered by the incredible farmers I'm surrounded by and the good work we are all trying to live out daily.
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Everyone wants cilantro once tomatoes and peppers start rolling in in July, but what most people don’t realize is that cilantro hates temperatures above eighty degrees and will consistently become unusable, bolting and going to seed, by July or August. So what on earth is a farmer to do? Try and try again. Plant in the shade. Plant rows of figs, persimmons and elderberries throughout the garden. Try new (to me) varieties of vegetables and herbs that will hopefully not wilt under the heat and humidity. Plant herbs like papalo, a Mexican herb common in Pueblan cuisine which, though somewhat bolder and more layered in flavor, tastes quite similar to cilantro, and stands up much better to eighty-five plus degree days.
What is your favorite vegetable you have been eating on repeat lately?
With a walk-in stacked from top to bottom and all of these vegetables at hand, I thought I'd share a few quick, tried and true methods that I use when prepping and cooking vegetables for a fast and delicious meal.
The fresher your ingredients are the better they will taste. I know you've heard me time and again talk about how so much of the fruit and veg we get from the grocery store is jetlagged, at least a week old, more often two or three weeks old, traveling hundreds if not thousands of miles before it reaches your table:
My farmers market customers and CSA subscribers often ask me, how to cook a certain vegetable. What is the best and tastiest way to prepare it? We are all busy people with work and deadlines, trying to limp along and make a living, so I try to give them the quickest and easiest ways possible that apply to a wide variety of vegetables. One of my favorite methods is to simply thinly slice your vegetables, drizzle them with lots of olive oil, maybe a crushed clove or two of garlic, then roast at 400 degrees in your oven until browning, caramelized, and slightly charred. This simple method works for a wide array of vegetables, from carrots to beans to cabbage to broccoli and cauliflower.
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About twenty minutes into roasting, toss the vegetables so that they can get evenly roasted on all sides. At forty minutes, the magic begins to happen, and you can take the vegetables out or leave them in a bit longer, depending on how caramelized and charred (or not) you like your vegetables. Occasionally I'll drizzle some maple syrup on halfway through roasting if I'm craving something a bit sweeter. After they're out of the oven, I will often drizzle more olive oil on top, currently I'm enjoying an olive oil steeped in chili peppers, to give it just a kick of heat. I will almost always squeeze a half lemon on top of the finished vegetables once they're out of the oven for that perfect balance of acidity. Then maybe a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, and I'm ready to eat!
The recipe I'll share with you below is one that you can incorporate a whole lot of crunchy vegetable odds and ends into. I call it garden slaw because it is basically a cold slaw, but cabbage doesn't necessarily have to feature heavily in the ingredients, although it can if you're trying to use up a lot of cabbage. I have used this recipe for years and love it for its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink quality.
My garden slaw features a delicious hodgepodge of vegetable odds and ends. I pulled the last of the broccolini that had begun to flower and then threw in all sorts of garden leftovers including kohlrabi, napa cabbage, radishes, onions, garlic scapes, and carrots to make what turned out to be an astonishingly delicious veggie slaw. This slaw is a great way to use up stems from broccoli and cauliflower, just make sure to peel the tough outer layer first. I added some dried cranberries and almonds for good measure and then dressed it with lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, yogurt, and lots of black pepper. Walnuts and dried sour cherries are also a delicious addition. Always toast your nuts! Occasionally, if I'm feeling fancy, I'll add blue cheese or a goat or sheep cheese for a bit of funk.
This is the perfect cooling salad for these hot summer days that are arriving earlier and earlier in the age of climate chaos. The key is to mince up the onions, leeks, garlic scapes or your allium of choice as fine as possible and try to slice everything quite thinly. As I'm chopping I ask myself what does a reasonable forkful/mouthful of this slaw look like and then chop my vegetables accordingly. Below I share my dressing recipe, whose ratios I am always tweaking but this is my current favorite iteration.
Recipe: Garden Slaw Dressing
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