A Chance for a Little Late Season Produce

Hello CSA'rs,

On Saturday, a couple of nursery team along with volunteers from Xavier HS, put the greenhouse nursery to bed. Now the compost team is mulching the bare beds outside the greenhouse. Another dedicated group is putting the garage back together so our equipment can be safely stored there.

Food is still available:
The nursery workers harvested seven flats of green and ripening tomatoes. If you want any of these (you can take and ripen them at home), you may come in any time this week and take what you want. There are Three foam boxes of ripening ones to the right and four of green to the left. Please bring your own bags. And do leave them covered as you find them.

Also still available:
--Small amount of onions in basket.
--Oregano prunings for drying.
--Lemongrass to dry for tea.
--Some rather large bok choy in the cooler.
--And about forty pounds of radishes in the cooler.

This food will remain available this week, and whatever is left that is still usable will be taken to the Manna food pantry on Saturday morning.

While you are there, you may harvest some kale from the beds in the greenhouse. It is beautiful and needs to be harvested to encourage it to continue growing. If you've never done this before, please note how the outer leaves are broken from the plant to allow the inner ones to continue growing. Follow the example of the first few plants in the rows near the center aisle that have been harvested. Follow the example of the first few plants in the rows near the center aisle that have been harvested. Do not take one or two leaves from many plants, but fully harvest a few plants until you have what you need. Happy eating.

Happy eating,
Suellyn

Get Involved with Organizing and Planning for Next Season

The Enright CSA Core Group is looking for increased participation from membership as we move through these transitional times.

Members of the CSA who participated in the 2012 season are invited to join the Core Group at their next meeting, Thursday, November 29, from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Listed below are some of the teams that will be part of the CSA reorganization over the winter. If you are interested in getting involved, they would love to hear from you! Please contact Suellyn Shupe, suellyn7@yahoo.com, and let her know if you are interested, and if you will be able to attend the meeting. Please be sure to mention any specific interest and/or experience you can offer to any of the work groups listed here, or to the CSA in general.

1. Media Management
2. Online Services Team
3. Land Team
4. Transition Team
5. Farm Manager Hiring
6. Fundraising Team
7. Finances/Budget

How Did You Use CSA Vegetables for Thanksgiving?

I waited until we found out what was in last Saturday’s share before definitely deciding what I was going to make as side dishes for Thanksgiving. I made a roasted spiced squash dish that was quite tasty and a turnip, apple, and cheddar cheese gratin that everyone seemed to enjoy, and I had some green beans I blanched and froze earlier that I used for a green bean salad with some of the onions that were on the share table last Saturday.

My sister Amy, also a CSA member, made Bok Choy Stuffing that was absolutely delicious. I never would have thought of it—she used it as a substitute for celery—but now I won’t forget that idea next I have a recipe that calls for celery and I have some bok choy around.

I also tried a roasted vegetable salad that turned out pretty great last week. It didn’t make it to the Thanksgiving menu, but the recipe is below, simple and delicious.

Now, we’d also like to hear from other Enright CSA members (or anyone else who reads this blog)—what did you do with your locally grown produce this Thanksgiving?

Roasted Vegetable Salad
3 radishes, cut into chunks
4 small green tomatoes, cut into chunks
1 sweet pepper, seeded and cut into chunks
¼ cup seeds or nuts (pine nuts, almond or walnut pieces, or sunflower seeds)
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Grated Parmesan cheese
Lettuce and other greens
Dill, basil, oregano, thyme, or other herbs

Toss the cut up radishes, tomatoes, pepper, and seeds or nuts with a little olive oil and any of the herbs (dried or fresh chopped) that you have on hand. Spread the vegetables and seeds/nuts on a cookie tray and roast for about 15 to 20 minutes in a 400-degree oven (keep an eye on them and when the nuts start to brown everything should be ready). Take the roasted vegetables and seeds/nuts out of the oven and let them cool. Meanwhile, wash, dry, and tear up some lettuce and other interesting greens and add to salad bowl. Add the roasted vegetables and nuts or seeds, sprinkle liberally with Parmesan, and add a few dashes of red wine vinegar and about an additional capful of olive oil. Toss and serve.

Winter Vegetables Lend Themselves to an Ethnic Approach

Potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbage—these are all colder weather crops that we have in abundance this month. As it happened, I had dinner at a great Ethiopian restaurant that opened up on the outskirts of Price Hill a few months ago (Habesha on Crookshank, give it a try!) and eating there reminded me of just how much I really love Ethiopian food.

One of the dishes I had there was a concoction of cabbage and potatoes, and I went looking for a recipe when I found we had more cabbage and potatoes in the share this week. The recipe I found included carrots as well, and since I had quite a lot of turnips (and both my daughter and my mother-in-law declined to take any off my hands), I decided to adapt the recipe, as I am wont to do, to include a little more of what I had on hand.

This is a simple dish to prepare; it involves some peeling and chopping, but other than that it is fairly hands-off. It does take nearly an hour to cook, but the results are well worth it!

Ethiopian Cabbage Dish
¼ cup olive oil
4 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 onion, sliced
½ head cabbage, shredded (you can use Chinese or regular cabbage)
3 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾” chunks
3 medium turnips, peeled and cut into ¾” chunks
1 tsp. sea salt
¼ tsp. ground turmeric
½ tsp. ground cumin
½ tsp. ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, then add the sliced carrots and onions and cook for about 5 minutes. Stir in the salt and spices and add the cabbage; cook for another 15 to 20 minutes until the cabbage is beginning to soften. Stir occasionally, turning the cabbage with a spatula. Add the potato and turnip chunks, reduce the heat to medium low, cover, and cook for about 20 to 25 more minutes, until the potatoes and turnips are fork-tender. Occasionally take off the lid and stir the vegetables around with the spatula as they cook. Makes about 4 to 5 servings. It smells great and tastes even better!

Put That Lemongrass in Some Spicy-Sweet-Sour Thai Soup

There was still lemongrass at the pickup this morning, and we’d already gotten some last week as well. I know there is a Thai restaurant on the east side called Lemongrass, so I figured Thai food was the thing to make to use some of this interesting stuff. I found a recipe for Tom Ka Gai (Thai Chicken Soup) and adapted it a bit to use some other produce I had on hand from the farm. It was quite tasty, and so I thought I’d share my “souped-up” soup recipe. Note that you can use turkey in place of chicken, so this might also come in handy after the Thanksgiving feast next week if you have any leftovers.

Tom Ka Gai
4-6 cups good quality chicken stock (or make your own turkey stock from bones)
1-2 cups cooked chicken or turkey
2 stalks lemongrass
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated, or 1 tsp. powdered ginger
1-2 fresh chile peppers (depending on size and how hot you want it), seeded and chopped
1 bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 celeraic root, peeled and chopped
1 can coconut milk
1 tsp. brown sugar
1-2 Tbsps. lime juice
1-2 Tbsps. Thai fish sauce (bottled and available at most grocery stores)
Handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped (or substitute dried basil)
Ground black pepper
Thai noodles

Slice and mince the lemongrass roots; discard the brown stalks but keep the green stalks and cut into about 6” pieces. Put the chicken stock in a large pot and add the minced lemongrass and the lemongrass stalks. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the cooked chicken, the basil, and the celeriac and continue to simmer another 5 minutes or so until chicken is thoroughly heated.

At this point, fish out the lemongrass stalks and discard them. Add the ginger, bell pepper, chopped chiles, brown sugar, and ½ can coconut milk and simmer for about 4 minutes. At this point, prepare the Thai noodles by placing them in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them to allow them to soften (takes about 5-7 minutes).

Add a tablespoon of lime juice, a tablespoon of fish sauce, and a sprinkling of ground pepper. Taste to see if the balance among salty, sweet, spicy, and sour suits you. If it doesn’t, add more fish sauce for salty, brown sugar for sweet, black pepper for spicy, or lime juice for sour. Add more coconut milk if you want it creamier. When the balance suits you, drain the noodles and place in the bottom of soup bowls, then ladle the soup over the noodles. Makes about 4 to 5 servings.

Thanks for all the great local food

It’s a little more than a week until Thanksgiving, but last night I gave some thanks in advance as I looked at dinner, which was entirely composed of food raised in Price Hill, except for the roast chicken. We had mixed lettuce salad with tomatoes and peppers, garlic mashed potatoes, and kale with carrot ribbons, all wonderful, all good for us (more or less), and all grown within a short bike ride of our house.

That’s surely something to be thankful for. But there will be a little more to be thankful for on Saturday, as we pick up our traditional (as far as a tradition can be set in four years) just-before-Thanksgiving share. I remember working packout for the day-before-Thanksgiving pickup a couple of years ago. It was a dark and stormy night, cold and wet and could have been miserable, but Amy Stross and I had a great time as CSA members came in on the way home from work and got fresh vegetables for their Thanksgiving feast the next day. It took hours to thaw out after that shift, but I still remember it very fondly—it provided a much more visceral connection to our food than if we had gone to a supermarket.

This year, the pre-Thanksgiving pickup will be on Saturday morning, and the weather report looks great, sunny and in the mid-50s. So I’ll be riding my bike to the greenhouse, and as I told my family earlier today, some of what I prepare for Thanksgiving dinner will depend on what we get in the share on Saturday. Squash? Sweet potatoes? Greens? I love them all, and whatever we get, it will be part of the feast, along with some green beans I blanched and froze earlier in the season, dried peppers, and anything else from the farm that I can work in.

Thanksgiving is just a little more “real” when you eat food from the Enright Ridge CSA. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Using What We Have, Dealing with Compost, and Spicy Piccallili

Over the weekend, I realized I still had quite a bit of produce from the Enright CSA in my crisper drawers. I made a list—turnips, burdock, potatoes, sweet potatoes, a little garlic, pumpkins, winter squash, hot peppers, pears, leeks, sweet peppers, green tomatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, maybe a few other things that I should have used by now but still looked like they were in decent shape.

But I decided that something needed to be done. I improvised a goat cheese and leek tart with Jerusalem artichokes and mushrooms for dinner—it was delicious, I might add—and though I didn’t have enough pears to make pear butter this year, I remembered that they cooked nicely in the crockpot and made the whole house smell wonderful, so I threw them in the slow cooker, and a few hours later, served the stewed pears over custard for a delicious dessert. And I ate the leftover cooked pears for breakfast the next morning.

Then I took a mess of peppers, the green tomatoes, and a few tomatillas that had been forgotten but still looked perfectly serviceable, and I chopped them all up with an onion. I believe it would be called green tomato salsa these days, but in the olden days that my recipe came from (which I adapted a bit), it was called piccallili. I let it ripen overnight, salted and in the fridge, and will add the vinegar and process it in canning jars today to enjoy this winter when there are no shares of fresh produce coming in every week.

I had a lot of stuff for the compost pile when I was finished, and I knew it needed turning and there was some nice topsoil at the bottom ready to be harvested. That was a warm and messy job on a nice Sunday afternoon, and the dog helped. Not. But it’s done now, and the list of what I still have left to use is a little shorter. Word is there will be a limited pickup this Saturday, November 10—look for more details in an email to come. So I’d better get started thinking about ways to prepare some of the produce I still have in those crisper drawers.

I’m thinking pumpkin ravioli, maybe stuffed peppers, mashed turnips, baked sweet potatoes—not all at once, but over the next few days. If anyone has some brilliant ideas about how to use the burdock and celeriac, I’m interested in hearing about them. Leave a comment or send an email note (farm@pricehill.org).

Spicy Piccallili*
3 lbs. green tomatoes
3 or 4 (depending on size) green/yellow/white sweet peppers
4 jalapeno peppers
1 large onion
3 Tbsps. salt
1 pint cider vinegar
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. peppercorns
1 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. mustard seed
4 whole cloves

Chop the vegetables (chop the jalapenos very fine) and spread in a pan in layers, salting each layer. Cover and refrigerate overnight (at least 12 hours). Then drain well; press to get out additional liquid.

Heat the vinegar in a large pot and add the sugar and spices, then add the chopped vegetables. Bring to boiling point and simmer for about 5 minutes or so. Pack hot mixture in sterilized canning jars and seal. Process in hot water bath for 10 minutes. Makes about 3 pints.

*Adapted from a recipe that calls for a peck, or 12 pounds, of green tomatoes.

A Hallowe’en Treat: Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

When I scooped out the innards from the Enright CSA pumpkin I was making into a jack o’lantern, I separated the seeds (which was easier than I expected) and put them in a colander. I got about a half-cup of seeds out of a medium-sized pumpkin (pictured), so that’s what I used as the basis for my cobbled-together recipe for toasted pumpkin seeds. They taste great, I could hardly stop eating them and wished there had been more seeds in that little pumpkin. Happy Hallowe’en!

Sweet and Spicy Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
½ cup pumpkin seeds, washed and dried
Scant tablespoon melted butter
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt or regular table salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
Dash ground white pepper

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Rinse the pumpkin seeds well, then lay on a paper towel to dry. (Don’t leave them on the towel until they are completely dry or they will stick to it.) Line a cookie sheet with foil, grease the foil, and distribute the pumpkin seeds over the tray in a single layer. Roast the pumpkin seeds until they are completely dry, about 40-45 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the sugar and spices in a small bowl, and melt the butter. Take the pumpkin seeds out of the oven and transfer them to a good-sized bowl. Raise the oven temperature to 350 degrees, then drizzle the butter over the seeds, sprinkle with the spice mixture, and toss until all the seeds are well covered.

Distribute the seeds on the foil-covered cookie sheet again and toast until golden-brown, about 18-22 minutes. Cool and eat (in between the chocolate meant for trick-or-treaters, of course).

The Future Forest Garden Orchard

From Suellyn:

An update the progress of our forest garden orchard is in order. We are coming to the end of the grant period that allowed us to add fruit and nut trees to our CSA gardens. In December, I will send the final report to Alliance for Community Trees and hopefully collect the second half of the grant money.

Left to do: Plant the apple and peach trees that are on order and are scheduled to be delivered in early November. They are bare root trees and will be dug at the nursery when they have gone dormant. If summer lasts much longer in Tennessee, they may not come till later.

In September Michael and Kate Waddell and I, with super help from Elder High School students, cleared the refuse from the area at the Outback where the Red Haven peach trees will go. I may schedule the digging party before they come in so we’re ready to go when the fruit trees arrive. We will be putting protective cones around them for the first year.

Last weekend we harvested perennial root plants (Jerusalem artichoke and burdock root) from the beds by the fence behind the greenhouse to make space for the apple trees. Five or six dwarf and semi-dwarf apple trees of disease-resistant varieties will be planted there. Again, Michael Waddell and I had the assistance of five enthusiastic Elder students doing service work.

Already growing:> The elderberry trees and currant shrubs the team planted at the Outback last spring are thriving, though the hazelnut shrubs are struggling a bit in their plot near the greenhouse. Two of the three plum trees near the greenhouse entrance are doing well. One was a little scruffy looking upon arrival, but it is hanging in there.

Since Charles is moving on, we will need to get ourselves up to speed on care and pruning of these trees, and we may have lost a couple of our orchard team. If any other CSA members would like to join us in this endeavor, learning about and caring for these new trees please reply to suellyn7@yahoo.com. I will include you in further activities this fall and again in the spring.

End of Season Vegetable Quiche

These warm Indian summer days we've had this week may have lulled us all into thinking winter isn't right around the corner, but . . . um . . . winter is right around the corner. It's the end of the growing season, and our last regular Saturday pickup is this Saturday, October 27. (Though we should have one special distribution around Thanksgiving; something to be thankful for!)

I hope you've frozen and canned lots of produce to enjoy over the long and possibly cold winter, but since we still have a few fresh vegetables, I took a look at what I had today and decided to make a vegetable quiche. (Actually, I was thinking stir fry, but Mike said, "How about a quiche?") Turned out to be a great idea, quick to put together (though it takes awhile to bake), and we decided we got Vegetable Credits that cancelled out the Cheese and Eggs Demerits.

End of Season Vegetable Quiche

Assorted vegetables, such as
--bunch of kale, washed, dried well, and chopped
--bunch of leeks, washed and sliced
--a tomato or two, diced
--a purple pepper, diced
1 Tablespoon butter
2 cups shredded cheese (mozarella, Swiss, or something more exotic)
1/4 cup Bisquick or Jiffy Baking Mix
3 eggs
about 1 1/4 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wash the leeks well and slice the white parts and some of the green; saute in about a tablespoon of butter until they soften, 4 or 5 minutes on medium heat.

Distribute the leeks around the quiche pan, then add the chopped kale. Sprinkle the diced tomatoes and peppers over the kale, then arrange the shredded cheese over all.

Put the Bisquick in the bottom of a 2-cup container, add the eggs, and add milk to fill to 2 cups. Stir well; the Bisquick likes to stay in a dry lump at the bottom. Add salt and pepper to taste and pour carefully over the vegetables.

Bake for about 45-50 minutes, or until it begins to brown on top. Take out of oven and let it sit for about 5 minutes, then slice into wedges and serve.

End of the Season, End of the Tomatoes

When the tomatoes first started to ripen back in July, along with the huzzahs and cheers of CSA members, we had several odes to those delicious fruits, and it seems only fitting that, as we see the last of them, there should be some sort of Tomato Elegy.

The gold leaves tell the tale of parting heat,
Those scarlet orbs now vanished from the vines.
Our farmers homeward turn their weary feet,
And leave the world to e’er less sunshine.

Okay, that’s probably enough (apologies to Thomas Gray). But it is nearly the end of the Enright CSA season, so muse we must on the coming winter as well as on the bounty of great food we had all summer long.

I was thinking about it the other day, and I decided my favorite part of growing season at the CSA is not having to decide what to eat. That is, I still decide what to prepare from day to day, but from week to week, our eating habits now follow the sun, with root vegetables and greens in the spring, on to those lovely tomatoes as well as peppers, corn, eggplant, and okra in the heat of July, and then winding down again to turnips and greens and squash in the fall. Plus of course those weekly cucumbers. Who knew they were a three-season vegetable.

But on the whole it’s an elegant progression, and I like dining as the seasons intend. Tonight we had the end of the potatoes, roasted with a little olive oil and salt, and they tasted like fall. We also ate three of those tomatoes pictured above, so now there are only two left. It’s kind of amazing, and a tribute to our farmers, that we still have ripe, delicious tomatoes midway through October, so these last few are particularly tasty.

To take liberties with yet another poet, où sont les tomates d'antan? The tomates, alas, are pretty much gone for this season, so I will just enjoy what the cool weather brings. And I’ll miss all this great food when the season ends.

Going Green, Not Just in the Garden

A while back—I think just over a year ago—Cincinnati residents all got great huge green rolling bins for recycling, and the city’s recycling program changed from weekly pickup to every other week. I was not a happy camper about the changes to the program, mostly because the marketing seemed to suggest that it was good to fill that giant bin with recycling; you could even get prizes, it seemed, for how much you stuffed in that bin.

I’m all for recycling, but the whole point is to make less waste, either to be recycled or shipped off to a landfill. Those big 96-L containers and a kind of “contest” mentality about how much you recycled just didn’t make sense to me. Well, eventually I was able to trade in my gigantic bin for a much smaller and more manageable 35-L green container. It fits just about two old recycling bins full of stuff, and since the recycling truck comes around every other week now, the size works fine for me.

Then, in talking to some folks from Price Hill Will, I discovered that they don’t actually weigh what you’ve recycled each week to figure out the “reward points” you win. If your bin is out and it has stuff in it, it records that you’ve recycled, and that’s all. So, I calmed down a bit about them encouraging you to buy more stuff just to recycle the containers.

But then I went to the Recyclebank website to check into how the points and rewards system works. Another bummer; it seemed like all they offered was discount coupons on . . . yes, you guessed it . . . buying MORE stuff. This just seemed so counterproductive to me, I kind of forgot about the whole thing, though I definitely kept recycling, putting out my small bin every two weeks with newspapers and some bottles and cans, and flattened cardboard food boxes.

Then, the other day, someone was telling me about how great the Recyclebank rewards program was, and though I disagreed, I decided to take another look at it. Well, what do you know, they finally had a recycling reward that didn’t involve buying more stuff—and in fact, encouraged another green action, taking public transportation.

I seem to have quite a lot of points, and I traded in a thousand of my points for six free Metro bus rides, which I will definitely use. They are supposed to be mailing me some kind of vouchers—I’m waiting to see exactly how easy they are to use. It will be another bummer if they aren’t something I can use directly on the bus for a free ride, but I’m hoping they’ll be simple to use.

Six rides on Metro would cost $10.50; I probably have accumulated enough recycling points to get at least three more batches of six rides. That’s $42 in free transportation downtown to see a show, visit the library or Contemporary Art Museum, or eat at Arnold’s and listen to some good music. Now, that’s a reward program I like!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow—Chili with Peppers Galore

Last night, we were driving up the highway to the Queen City Balladeers’ Leo Coffeehouse when the heavens opened and we were hit with a deluge. Water up to our wheel wells, slamming the windshield, making visibility almost nil. It was quite an experience. Then, just before the Norwood Lateral, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and there was a lovely rainbow.

Which seemed particularly fitting, since we’d just had Rainbow Chili for dinner before heading out into the storm. So I took a photo of the rainbow—through the rain-spattered windshield—to go with the chili recipe.

I have to give my sister Amy credit; she told me she’d made some chili using lots of the peppers from the CSA. That seemed like a good use of peppers, so I got out a lot of them—red, orange, yellow, green, white, and purple—and diced them up. I think I probably used about ten of them, including a couple of jalapenos. I decided to make white chili—using chicken and Great Northern beans—so you could really see the rainbow colors of the peppers, but you could use a meat of your choice or even make it strictly vegetarian.

This tasted great with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of grated cheddar cheese on top; it’s definitely a Texas kind of chili, not Cincinnati chili (though I did put some cinnamon in, because I did grow up on Cincinnati chili, so I couldn’t help myself). I let this cook all day in the crockpot so I could take advantage of the warm weather before the rains came, and the kitchen smelled wonderful when I got back. But if you are home, you could make it all in a pot on the stove, too, in less time.

Rainbow Chili
About 10 assorted bell and hot peppers in a variety of colors, seeded and diced
1 large onion, diced
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, diced
3 stalks celery, sliced thin
4 to 6 tomatoes, diced
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon cumin
¼ teaspoon coriander
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1 can Great Northern beans
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sauted in a little olive oil
Chopped fresh parsley, sour cream, and grated cheddar cheese for garnishes

First saute the chicken thighs in a little olive oil (let them cook while you are dicing everything). Set them aside to cool, then put the diced garlic in a little olive oil in a pan. If you want to cook this on the stovetop, use a soup pot to sauté the garlic; otherwise, you can use a skillet and then transfer the vegetables to a crockpot.

Let the garlic cook for a couple of minutes, until it is fragrant. Then add the diced onions and cook until they become soft, 3 or 4 minutes. Add all the peppers and the celery and tomatoes, then add the spices and salt. Cook everything for about 5 minutes, then transfer to crockpot or turn the heat way down and let everything cook for awhile (about 3 hours on high in the crockpot; 45 minutes to an hour would probably be enough if you cook it on the stovetop).

When things have simmered nicely, add the chicken and beans, heat through, and serve with the garnishes. Makes about 4 good-sized servings. It tastes great the next day, too.

We’ve Got Lots of Hot Peppers, So Make Your Own Tabasco

It’s not at all hard to make hot pepper sauce. There are an infinite number of recipes around, but this one is simple and effective. One thing, you need to make it now to have it ready for hot wings or other spicy foods in the new year—aging the pepper sauce is necessary to “mellow” the fire.

It keeps well, too. I made a batch of this last year and I’m still using it (a little goes a long way). So, if there are still a couple of baskets of chile and jalapeno peppers for the taking at pickup this Saturday, consider taking a bagful to make your own Tabasco sauce. We can call it, hmm, “Price Hell Sauce” . . .

Basic Hot Pepper Sauce
1 ½ cups distilled white vinegar
1 lb cayenne or jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
2 tsps. salt

Put the vinegar, salt, and chopped peppers in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for at least 5 minutes or up to 15 minutes. Let cool, process in a food processor, and store in a glass bottle with an airtight lid. Put the bottle in a dark cabinet and let age at least 3 months. Strain when ready to use.

Slow-Cook Butternut Squash Soup

There has been some discussion at the greenhouse and elsewhere about how hard it is to peel and cut the butternut squash. Here’s a recipe that doesn’t require peeling until after you’ve roasted the squash and it comes off a lot easier. You do still have to cut it in half; use a sharp knife, that’s my only suggestion. Oh, and someone at the greenhouse suggested it is a little easier to cut in half longways if you cut off the stem end first.

With the squash and apples and the spices this recipe uses, it’s a great soup for these chilly fall days we’ve been having lately. And the best part is you can start it and then forget about it until dinner time, making it a nice choice some weekend day when it is nicer to be outside, visiting a pumpkin farm or raking leaves, during the afternoon. I made it yesterday, and it was as delicious as I remembered from last season. Since it was cooking in the crockpot, it also allowed me to pay more attention to the baseball than anyone who knows me would expect . . .

Butternut Squash Soup
1 butternut squash
2 Tbsps. olive oil
2 small medium onions
4 cups broth, vegetable or chicken
2 small apples, peeled, cored, and cubed
1 ½ tsp salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
¼ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. cloves
¼ tsp. coriander
¼ tsp. cinnamon

Cut the squash in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and pulp. Brush olive oil on the inside and roast it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until you can easily peel the skin away from the flesh.
Plug in your crockpot and turn it to high. Add the broth, the onion, and the apple. Stir in the spices. Cover to let heat. When the squash is finished roasting, let it cool until you can handle it, then peel it, cut it into chunks, and add it to the crockpot.

Turn heat down to low, cover, and cook for 6 to 8 hours. When it is ready, blend in small batches with a blender or food processor. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed before serving.

Getting Inventive with Kale--Add Carrots and Raisins!

I saw a recipe for something similar to this, but I didn’t have all the ingredients, and I didn’t even like some of the ingredients, so I adapted it to make it my way. It was delicious and is very autumnal looking, with the green leaves, orange carrots, and golden raisins. A fine fall dish.


Kale with Carrot Ribbons
2 large carrots
1 bunch kale, with tough stems removed
4 Tbsps. vegetable oil
1 small onion, sliced
1/3 cup golden raisins
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 tsps. finely grated fresh ginger, OR 1 tsp. ground ginger
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel the carrots and then use the peeler to cut the carrots into long thin strips. Wash the kale and cut away the stems, then slice leaves crosswise to make strips.
In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat, add the onions, and cook until softened, 3 or 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the raisins, garlic, ginger, and about ½ tsp salt. Cook, continuing to stir, for 1 minute.

Add the carrots, kale, and about a 1/3 cup of water. Stir or turn with a spatula as the vegetables cook, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.

Rings of Squash, Pretty & Tasty

We’ve got those nice delicata winter squash in the share this week, so I went looking for something interesting to do with them (though baking them works well, I wanted to try something different). This is a quick and easy recipe that’s also delicious and quite picturesque. It’s adapted from a recipe in an issue of Rachael Ray’s Every Day magazine, and yes, I believe she says you can make it in 30 minutes. I can’t, but perhaps you can.

Fried Delicata Squash Rings
1 delicata squash
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
¼ cup plus 2 Tbsps. olive oil
Fresh thyme (or any herb that you have around)
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese

Toss the breadcrumbs in a bowl with the herbs, the olive oil, and a little salt and pepper. Put the breadcrumb mixture in a large skillet over medium heat and cook until breadcrumbs brown, about 4 or 5 minutes. Take the breadcrumbs out of the skillet and set them aside.

Cut the stem top off the squash and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. Use a sharp knife to cut the squash into slices (about 3/8” thick is good). Heat the ¼ cup of olive oil in that same big skillet, and add the squash rings in batches. Cook till brown on one side (5 or 6 minutes), then turn and cook until fork-tender (about 3 more minutes). Drain on paper towels, arrange on a platter, and garnish with the browned breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper. Very easy, very pretty, and quite tasty, too.

End of Season Field Trip!

Want to go see where our functional art bicycle cart came from? On Monday, October 8,
meet at Greenhouse to carpool at 6:30 pm. We will join a small group from Home Meadow Song Farm at 7:00 pm at the Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Cincinnati to tour the Green Acres exhibit. Entry to CAC is free on Monday evenings.

There’s lots to see in addition to our art bike cart. There is information about the offsite artist gardens created in association with this exhibit, including the Pawpaw circle over at the Red Bank/Erie Ave. triangle and a potato patch in the Sculpture garden in Hamilton. Soil from one of our Enright CSA gardens is part of another “piece” in the exhibit.

For many of us, gardening is a creative pursuit. Come let’s see what some garden artists have made of it. Please respond to suellyn7@yahoo.com if you plan to come so we'll know when everyone is gathered to leave for the CAC.

Sweet Corn and Bean Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

Here’s a tasty salad recipe from Enright CSA member Tina Michel—a little too late for our sweet corn harvest, but we’ve got salad greens coming this week, so if you have some frozen corn, you’ll be all set. I decided to use the scanned recipe she sent as the illustration, because you can always tell a well-loved recipe by how beat-up and stained it is (or at least you could when people actually had paper recipes). But I’m not sure you can read it from the photo, so here’s the recipe in readable (and copyable) form.

Corn & Bean Salad
4 ears sweet corn, fresh or frozen (thawed if frozen)
2 medium red bell peppers
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
¼ cup cider vinegar
2 Tbsps. fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsps. Dijon mustard
½ cup olive oil
1 16-oz. bag dried white beans, prepared according to package, or 2 16-oz. cans white beans, drained and rinsed
1 bunch scallions (green onions), trimmed and cut into thin slices
2 cups fresh mixed bitter greens such as arugula or curly endive (optional)

Place corn and bell peppers on foil–lined cookie sheet and sprinkle corn with vegetable oil. Roast corn and peppers in oven for 30-35 minutes, turning occasionally, until corn is light brown on all sides and pepper skins are blistered and charred. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

Place peppers in a plastic bag and twist tie top; set aside to cool for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, use a sharp knife to cut the kernels from the corn cobs. Discard cobs. Remove the peppers from the plastic bag and use a blunt knife to scrape away as much of the burnt skin as possible; rinse under cold water and cut peppers into thin slices.

In small bowl, use a wire whisk or fork to combine the lemon juice, vinegar, and mustard. Set aside. In a 12-inch skillet over medium heat, heat the olive oil and add the corn kernels and drained beans. Cook 2 to 3 minutes, until heated through. Add vinegar mixture, roasted red peppers, sliced green onions, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat. Toss gently but thoroughly to mix.

Serve bean salad warm, on bed of mixed greens, if desired. Makes 8 servings.

Happy Autumnal Equinox

Today is the astronomical first day of fall in the northern hemisphere, where we reside and farm. It’s also called the autumnal equinox, because on this date, night and day are nearly exactly the same length (12 hours each) all over the world. The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning “equal night.”

More specifically, the September equinox occurs at the moment the Sun crosses from the north heading south across the celestial equator, which is an imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator. South of the equator, spring is arriving as the Sun heads their way.

This year that moment is 8:49 am EDT (that is, in our time zone). On any other day of the year, the Earth's axis also tilts a little away from or towards the Sun. But on the autumnal equinox (and on the vernal equinox in spring as well), the Earth's axis is straight up and down, neither leaning toward nor away from the Sun.

The Sun also rises due east on the equinox, and sets due west. If you’ve ever seen one of the ancient astronomical sites like Stonehenge, the woodhenge at Cahokia (shown in the photo), or the Serpent Mound east of Cincinnati, and you happened to watch the Sun rise or set for a few weeks leading up to an equinox, you’d see it gradually approaching one of the major markers.

So, if you think of it, check out where the Sun sets in relation to your house this evening (sunset is at 7:32 pm this evening) and you can reckon where due west is and use that reckoning to figure out the other cardinal points of the compass from your yard. You might even want to build your own woodhenge to keep track . . .

Of course, the autumnal equinox also signifies that colder weather is coming and the growing season will soon end. Not too soon, however; at the Enright CSA, autumn temperatures bring us tasty cool weather crops including greens and root vegetables. And we’ve already got some delicious winter squash coming in. Because of the CSA’s excellent farmers and their knowledge of seasonal growing, we’ll still be getting lots of great produce for seven or eight more weeks, if all goes well.

Zingy Pepper Soup

I’ve still got a lot of peppers left from last week’s share. Maybe you do, too. I thought I’d make some savory pepper soup; this cool weather is just right for a hot and spicy soup.

The recipe is from a cookbook titled The Vegetarian Epicure. A friend of ours gave it to us 29 years ago, solely because he was dating a girl who was a vegetarian at the time. He was gamely eating soy burgers, but I think he knew the food could be better, and he knew we grew a lot of vegetables in the backyard. He was probably angling for a dinner invitation with an appetizing eggplant entree. Maybe.

Anyway, the cookbook has served me well over the years, and this pepper soup recipe is one of my favorites. Use a mixture of sweet and hot peppers and it will still have that zing, without making you cry for mercy as your eyes water.

Pepper Soup
1 cup peppers, finely chopped
2 lbs. ripe tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
1/12 cups water
3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
1 ½ tsp fresh grated lemon peel
Salt and black pepper
1 cup cooked brown rice
Sour cream
Fresh dill, parsley, or basil

Pick out an assortment of small and medium sized peppers—yellow, orange, red, and green, sweet and hot. The more hot peppers in the assortment, the more fiery the soup. You’ll need about 10 to 12 peppers. Wash them, cut them open, discard all the seeds and pulp, and chop the rest very fine (you can use a food processor). You should have 1 cup of finely chopped peppers.

Scaled the tomatoes and peel them. Chop the onion. Now, put all the vegetables, including the minced peppers, into the food processor and puree them. Transfer them to a pot, add the water, and simmer the mixture for about 20 minutes.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook it awhile, stirring all the time, and then pour in a little of the hot vegetable mixture. Whisk it to make a smooth sauce, then pour it back into the soup. Continue to stir and simmer the soup mixture for about 10 minutes.

Add the lemon peel, grind in the fresh black pepper, and add salt to taste. Stir in the cooked brown rice, heat through, and serve the soup garnished with a dollop of sour cream and some chopped herbs. Serves 4.

Time to Taste Some “Flavors of the Garden”

The Civic Garden Center is again sponsoring a special neighborhood gardens harvest sampler on Saturday, September 22 at the CGC. Called “Flavors of the Garden,” it follows their fall plant sale, and various community gardens will be represented, sharing some food made from what they’ve grown this season. “Flavors of the Garden” is from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the Civic Garden Center, 2715 Reading Road, near Reading and Oak (just across from the old Bethesda Hospital, if you are looking for a landmark).

Enright CSA will again host a table showing off our harvest. Nancy Sullivan has volunteered to make an herbal wine cooler to serve that was a hit last year. She’s looking for donations of bottles of white wine to make the popular Basil Sangria. Bring bottles along with you to pickup Saturday morning if you’d like to help. And if you could prepare a dish using produce from our garden to share at this event, please contact Suellyn at suellyn7@yahoo.com.

This is not a potluck or a fundraiser! It’s just a free fun event to allow different community gardeners to get together and talk about how the growing season shaped up, as well as share a little of what they grew.

Sample sized portions of dishes from 15-20 different gardens are available to those who attend. There's also an opportunity to walk the paths in the CGC, peruse their library, and shop their small garden-oriented gift shop as well as network with foodies and garden people from all over the city. You can come even if you don't cook something, but we hope to have 2-3 dishes that will serve 20-30 small portions on offer.

Forecast Calls for More Corn, So Make Some Chowder

We’ll likely be getting some more corn in this week’s share, though probably not the dozens of ears we got last week. Hope you’re not bored with corn yet; it’s a delicious vegetable and ever so versatile. How many other vegetables can you make soup, bread, and pudding out of?

We’ve already had a corn pudding recipe, and you can make corn bread from your favorite recipe and just throw in some corn kernels. So, today let’s look at soup.
Chowder, actually, and this one even uses the cobs. It’s adapted from a recipe I found on SimplyRecipes.com.

Corn Chowder
1 Tablespoon butter
2 slices of bacon
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
4 ears of sweet corn, kernels removed from cobs (but keep the cobs, too)
3½ cups milk
1 medium-sized Yukon gold potato, peeled and diced
1 bell pepper (red or orange is good, but green is okay too)
1 teaspoon chopped basil
½ teaspoon sea salt
Ground pepper
Small bag of frozen cooked shrimp (optional)

Fry the bacon in your soup pot; take out the bacon strips and drain. Add the butter to the soup pot and then add the onion and sauté for about 4 or 5 minutes, until it is soft but not brown. Add the chopped celery and cook for another 4 or 5 minutes. Then break the corn cobs in half and add them to the saucepan. Add the milk and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a very low simmer, cover the pot, and cook for 30 minutes. Make sure the heat is as low as possible to prevent scalding the milk on the bottom of the pan.

Discard the cobs, turn up the heat again, and add the potatoes, chopped bell pepper, chopped basil, sea salt, and ground pepper to taste, bring to a simmer and reduce the heat to maintain a simmer for 15 minutes. Then raise the heat again, add the corn kernels and the optional shrimp (defrosted a bit by running water over them). Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes, until corn is cooked and shrimp are heated through. Crumble the reserved bacon over the top of the soup, stir in, and serve.

I decided to add the shrimp after I made the chowder because the smell of the soup while it was cooking reminded me of a shrimp and corn chowder I had made in the past; I’m sure this would be perfectly delicious without the shrimp, too.

Very Varied Vegetable Gratin

I’m sure everyone has been enjoying their corn, but we got lots of other vegetables in the share last week, and with the eggplant, zucchini, peppers, and squash, I was thinking ratatouille. But when looking up recipes, I found a few for a vegetable gratin, and that sounded so good I made that instead. I used a little of one recipe, a little of another, and came up with this.

I made this for a potluck attended by a bunch of finicky musicians (okay, they aren’t finicky—they’ll eat anything, but they are quite honest about their reviews of what they eat), and they all went back for seconds. It was very well received, and I’ll definitely make it again and hope to get more than a few bites myself next time.

Vegetable Gratin
2 smallish eggplants, partially peeled (peel off strips, leaving skin every other strip)
1 small to medium zucchini
1 medium pattypan squash
1 red or purple pepper, seeded and sliced
1 onion, sliced thin
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 cloves garlic, chopped
12 roma tomatoes, sliced
½ cup mozzarella, shredded
¼ cup bread crumbs
¼ cup parmesan cheese
Olive oil
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh basil
Salt and pepper

Partially peel the eggplants and then slice into rounds about a half-inch thick. Cut the rounds into halves or quarters, so they are about bite size. Sprinkle the pieces with salt and arrange on rack for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the garlic and slice the onion. Peel the zucchini, cut in rounds, and cut the rounds into halves or quarters. Cut the pattypan squash into bite-size pieces, too. Slice the tomatoes. Then put a little olive oil in a skillet and add the onion and sugar. Sauté the onion until soft, stirring so it doesn’t burn, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook it for another 2 minutes or so. Add about four sliced tomatoes and cook for 2 or 3 more minutes.

Spread the onion/garlic/tomato mixture over the bottom of a baking dish (8” square or 7” x 11” casserole). Then add a little olive oil to the skillet and cook the eggplant pieces, about 4 minutes on each side. Remove the eggplant from heat and let cool a little.

In a large bowl, toss the zucchini, pattypan squash, pepper, and tomato slices with about a tablespoon or two of olive oil, the chopped basil, and salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Then layer the eggplant and the other vegetables in the casserole on top of the onion mixture in the casserole.

Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 30 minutes, then take the casserole out and sprinkle with grated mozzarella, then bread crumbs, then parmesan cheese. Bake for another 15-20 minutes, until cheese is brown and bubbly.

Make Pudding Out of Some of That Corn

We got a lot of corn in the share this week. I mean a LOT of corn. Most people love corn on the cob, and this is some tasty stuff that lends itself to just boiling and eating. But variety is also the spice of life, so here’s something a little different, a great way to use up some of the corn from this week’s share from Nancy Sullivan. If you want a more savory version, add some pepper (sweet and piquante), and onion.

Fresh Corn Pudding
Ingredients
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• ground black pepper to taste
• 2 cups milk
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups fresh corn

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place butter in a 9x13 inch baking pan and set in oven to melt.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, salt, sugar, pepper, milk and flour. When mixture is smooth, stir in corn. Remove pan from oven when butter is melted. Pour butter into corn mixture and stir well. Pour corn mixture into baking pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour or until set in center and golden brown on top.

Another alternative: I saw a recipe for a Thai corn pudding dessert (how did corn get to Thailand from the worlds of the Maya and Aztecs)? Keep the corn pudding sweet, without onion, etc. As soon as it comes out of the oven, top with coconut cream that you have heated with a little salt in a small saucepan.
—Nancy Sullivan

Electronica in the Kitchen

I got an iPod Touch a few months ago, and I like it a lot—I can take pictures with it, and if there’s an Internet connection around, and there usually is, I can check my email if I get bored while sitting in a bar listening to my husband and friends play music, Google song lyrics to make sure they are singing things right, read the New Yorker magazine in really little type, and even watch a very small screen episode of Star Trek. I can even get books from the library to read and get a map if I’m lost (which sometimes gets me more lost, but never mind that).

One thing I haven’t done with it yet is put any music on it, which seems strange to a lot of people. I just hate iTunes; it always gives me trouble. But that’s neither here nor there; one of my favorite uses of the iPod is what I wanted to talk about today—it’s an easy, portable cookbook.

I use it to access the Enright CSA blog to follow recipes posted there, and I also find lots of recipes online. Perhaps the oddest way I use it as a cookbook is to open the folder of recipes I have collected on my doddering old desktop computer, choose the recipe I want to make, attach it to an email, and send it to myself so I can open it up on my iPod, which takes up just a tiny amount of room on the counter or table where I’m working.

I could get out my binder of printouts of the recipes, sure, but I’ve never gotten round to alphabetizing or otherwise organizing them, so it’s always a search to find them. And with the iPod, I can immediately divide or multiply ingredient amounts to make more or less using Google, which even kindly translates cups to tablespoons and so forth. It’s a one-stop kitchen aid and cookbook.

So, yes, it’s an expensive electronic cookbook, if that’s all I choose to do with it. But someday I will put some music on it, and then I can listen to Harry Chapin or The Band while I cook. Meanwhile, I can watch Captain Kirk battle the forces of evil in the universe while waiting for my sauce to come to a boil. Now, that’s win-win.

Eggplant Extravaganza

As we conclude Eggplant Week, we've got a whole slew of recipes for eggplant, plus a link to a blog from a couple of years back about eggplant varieties. Take a look at this list to find out what kinds of eggplant we've been getting in our shares.

Last year we got a lot of eggplant, and we posted recipes for Eggplant Involtini (originally posted by Angie Utley), a recipe for Turkish-style Braised Eggplant from the New York Times, and a recipe for everybody's favorite Middle Eastern party dip, Baba Ganoush.

And here's one more eggplant recipe, for a nice Eggplant Creole Farcie (which means stuffed eggplant, essentially). So now you can try a different way of serving eggplant every day of the week!


Eggplant Creole Farcie

2 small eggplants
2 strips bacon
¼ cup minced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup minced green pepper
1 stalk celery, minced
2 tomatoes, skinned
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup Asiago cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the eggplants in halves and scoop out the pulp, leaving a shell to fill (about 3/8” thick). Chop the pulp to small pieces.

Cut the bacon into small pieces and put it in a skillet; when starts to fry, add the onion, garlic, celery and pepper and cook until the bacon is crisp. Add the eggplant and the tomatoes. (To quickly skin a tomato, drop it in boiling water for 10 minutes. When it cools, the skin will slip off; cut out the stem core with a knife and it’s ready.)

Simmer until eggplant is tender and then beat the mixture with a fork until well blended. Season with salt and pepper and fill the eggplant shells with the mixture. Cover the tops of each with shredded Asiago cheese. Put a little water in the bottom of a pan with a rack and place the eggplant on the rack. Cook about 30 minutes, until shells are thoroughly heated.

Depending on the size of the eggplants, makes 2-4 servings.

Eggplant for Breakfast!

Last season, I noted that there were times when a meal without greens was breakfast—maybe. And several people commented about ways they were enjoying greens in their breakfasts, in fact. Well, when the produce is rampant, you definitely have to get creative in the kitchen, and though I know those eggplant haters out there won’t be thrilled with this idea, I encourage all open-minded folks to give this one a try.

The idea came about by accident; I had some New Canaan Farm bottled peach sauce that was meant for basting a pork roast or roasted chicken. But I didn’t have any pork or chicken—I had a nice plump eggplant. So I basted the eggplant with the peach sauce, baked and broiled it, and it came out smelling wonderful and looking a bit like cinnamon rolls. Then we tasted it—delicious, and a nice complement to green bean salad for dinner—but it really seemed like it would make a great breakfast entrée.

If you don’t have any bottled peach sauce (I found it in a discount bin at the grocery), you can try apple butter or homemade-from-Schenk-pears pear butter as a topping. Even butter and brown sugar might be tasty. Experiment with all this great produce, and you never know what kinds of delicious treats you might discover.

Eggplant for Breakfast

1 eggplant, peeled and sliced into ½ inch rounds
Salt
Peach sauce, pear butter, apple butter, or brown sugar and butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange the eggplant slices on a rack and sprinkle with a little salt to draw out the liquid. Let stand for 15-20 minutes, then arrange in a baking dish. Spoon sauce or butter of your choice over the eggplant slices and bake for 20-25 minutes. Then turn on the broiler and broil for 5 to 7 minutes, until the sauce starts to bubble. It sounds weird, but it’s really tasty. (Makes 2 servings with a medium-sized eggplant.)

Eggplant, Part II: 'Plant Burgers

You may have tried veggie burgers, but have you tasted a 'plant burger yet? This is a simple and delicious way to use up—er, I mean enjoy, really I do!—the eggplant as they start rolling in at the CSA

Take your eggplant, and without peeling, cut it into 1/2 thick slices, lengthwise or crosswise. If you want to eat these as burgers, round slices make sense, but you can also serve it without bread or buns, in which case lengthwise pieces, as pictured at left, are also good. Your choice.

Salt the eggplant lightly and let stand for about 15-20 minutes while you fire up the grill. Then, brush both sides of the eggplant slices with something that has olive oil in it--or just with olive oil. You can mix a little balsamic vinegar and some herbs in with the oil, or use your favorite marinade that has oil; the brushing ingredients are entirely up to you—feel free to experiment here.

Put those slices on the grill and grill for about 5 minutes, until grill marks start to show up. Flip and grill on the other side for 5 minutes. At the end, toast some buns, and serve the eggplant slices on toasted buns garnished with lettuce, onion, tomato, and homemade ketchup for sublime 'plant burgers.

Eggplant, Part I: Make a Cheese Pie with Eggplant

Today we have a guest blogger, Suellyn Shupe, who has the first of several eggplant recipes we'll feature this week, since those lovely purple and white globes have been in the share the last couple of weeks. Here's Suellyn's recipe . . .

I invited Nancy Sullivan to try this dish with me because I was determined to cook that gorgeous eggplant we got Saturday before it started to shrivel up. The recipe is from an excellent cookbook called Simply in Season which "was commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee to promote the understanding of how the food choices we make affect our lives and the lives of those who produce the food." The cookbook is available from Ten Thousand Villages in O'Bryonville, among other places.

Eggplant Cheese Pie

4 1/2 c. Eggplant cut into half inch cubes
1 med. onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
In large fry pan, saute veggies in 1 1/2 Tbsp oil for 2 minutes. Cover and cook approximately 5 minutes, till eggplant is soft.

1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried
1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp dried
Add herbs to pan and salt to taste.

1 small zucchini, sliced
Line bottom and sides of greased 10" pie pan with zucchini and spoon eggplant mixture on top.

2 cups fresh mozzarella cheese, shredded
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 egg
Combine and pour over vegetables. Bake in preheated oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

This took less than an hour to make. It says serves six, but it's quite light, and Nancy and I polished off more than half of it with a salad on the side. I would count on serving three or four if using as a main dish.

Note: I sort of hated to use evaporated milk, but I didn't know if I could substitute regular milk 1 to 1. It got a bit watery after baking, but it didn't really matter because there is no crust to get soggy. Quite an appealing looking and tasty dish.

Put a Little Vegetable in Your Dessert

Those melons we had in August were sweet and delicious, and we’ve gotten plenty of sweet corn in our shares this season, too, but sometimes it’s challenging to use everything we get at pickup, and how great would it be if some of the bounty could be made into dessert?

We’ve included some sweet treats in past blogs—for example, Zapple Cobbler, Zucchini Blondies, and Zucchini Pancakes. Hmm, there is a theme to these; zucchini turns up in sweet treats more than, say, cucumbers or turnips.

So . . . here’s another simple way to use up a little zucchini, though this recipe is the cookie equivalent of Stone Soup—it’s pretty much a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe with zucchini added. However, the zucchini keeps the cookies moist for days, and the extra flour added along with the zucchini means it makes a few dozen more cookies than a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe. Can’t beat that.

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies

1 cup butter flavored Crisco*
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated zucchini (about 1 large or 2 small zucchinis)
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 oz.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and spray cookie sheets with cooking spray (or line with parchment paper.) Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and zucchini alternately in thirds, stirring well after each addition.

Stir in the chocolate chips and then drop teaspoonsful of the dough on the greased cookie sheets, spacing well (about 2 inches between each mound of dough). Bake 14 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown (be careful not to overbake). Makes a lot—about 7 to 9 dozen cookies, depending on the size.

*You can use softened butter or margarine, but Crisco makes tastier cookies and recent research says that a little lard is good for you. Now, that’s my kind of research.

Cucumbers New Orleans Style

New Orleans, though spared a direct hit from Hurricane Isaac, was pummeled by wind and rain this week. Now it looks like the remnants of that hurricane will hit the Ohio Valley just in time for the fireworks on Labor Day Eve. Bummer, but a little rain beats our own encounter with a hurricane a few years back. And we can use the rain.
For another connection between the Queen City and the Big Easy, try this New Orleans-style Cucumber Casserole, a recipe adapted from an old edition of The Joy of Cooking by Enright CSA member Mary Jo Bazeley. We definitely need to expand our horizons when it comes to preparing some of our produce (think eggplant for breakfast—I’m not kidding, that recipe coming soon!) and this one does a good job of making cucumbers into something that is neither pickled nor fit for tea with the queen.
Jazzy cucumbers, in fact—I’m looking forward to trying this one myself.

Creole Cucumber Casserole
3 large cucumbers
5 slices of bread crumbled and dried

Place bread crumbs on bottom of 9x12 pan. Pare and seed cucumbers, then wrap in paper towels to drain. Meanwhile prepare Creole Sauce:

Creole Sauce
Melt 2 tbsp. butter over low heat.
Add and cook, covered, for about 2 minutes
1/2cup chopped onion
1 minced clove garlic
6 shredded green olives
Add and cook until the sauce is thick, about 50 minutes
1 ½ cups canned or fresh tomatoes
½ cup chopped green pepper
1 bay leaf
A pinch of thyme
1 tsp chopped parsley
1 tsp. dark brown sugar
½ tsp. of salt
A few grains cayenne
1 tbsp dry sherry
¼ cup chili sauce
½ cup diced ham
½ cup sliced mushrooms (optional)

Slice cucumbers, then mix with Creole sauce. Pour over breadcrumbs. Dot with pieces of cheese (Mary used a queso cheese, although any cheese should work.) Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes. The cucumbers were a tad crunchy but the cheese was starting to burn, so it might be a good idea to add the cheese later in the baking cycle so it just melts and does not burn.

Okra Even Inspires Poetry

Okra is such a delectable vegetable, it has even inspired poetry and song. Chris Smithers' "I Got No Love" is sung by a peddler of vegetables who has "Okra, enough to choke ya, and beans of every kind." (Sound familiar?) And the Florida Okra Fest (slogan, "Celebrate the Pod) features "The Okra Song," which begins:


Okra it gets slimy
When you cut it with a knife
Love is just as slippery
You gotta hang on for dear life

I even came across a poem that mentions okra by a well-known Cincinnati poet, Nikki Giovanni. (She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, but grew up in Lincoln Heights.)

Knoxville Tennessee

I always like summer
Best
you can eat fresh corn
From daddy's garden
And okra
And greens
And cabbage
And lots of
Barbeque
And buttermilk
And homemade ice-cream
At the church picnic
And listen to
Gospel music
Outside
At the church
Homecoming
And go to the mountains with
Your grandmother
And go barefooted
And be warm
All the time
Not only when you go to bed
And sleep

--Nikki Giovanni

Who Loves Okra?

Okra is like eggplant—either you love it, or you don't. I love okra. (I love eggplant, too, but for all you okra avoiders, I hated kale before I joined the CSA. Now I eat it all the time and I like it very much too. So, you could change your tune!)

Anyway, I've been eating okra all my life, and yes it's hairy, and slimy after you eat it, and apparently in other parts of the world it is called "lady fingers." All things that make it sound more like a prop in a horror movie than a tasty ingredient in stews, gumbos, and jambalaya. I like it that way, or just steamed with tomatoes as Smothered Okra.

It's also tasty fried, though I don't think it's particularly good for you that way, and I'm not a dab hand at deep frying, so I usually eat this when I'm at a BBQ joint. So, how do you like your okra? Do you like your okra at all? If you don't, just put it on the share table—the okra lovers among us will be happy to take it off your hands!

A New Mailbox and a New Mailing Address for the Enright Ridge CSA

When you come to pick up your share on Saturday, you’ll notice a new locking mailbox mounted on the front door of the greenhouse. This gives us an actual street address to use as a mailing address for the Enright Ridge CSA:

Enright Ridge CSA
824 Enright Avenue
Cincinnati, OH 45205

If you have any postal mail correspondence to send to the Enright Ridge CSA, please send it to this new address from now on.

You can also use the locked mailbox to drop off any outstanding payments you have for your share—just be sure you include the main name on the share, and you can drop your check right into the mailbox (though we’d recommend putting it in an envelope, just for good measure).

Everything else—including the website address and the email address—stays the same, we’re happy to report. But now we can get mail directly at our physical address. Thanks to the folks who installed the mailbox (plus some additional electronic payment possibilities that we will report on soon), we will definitely have a more efficient method of collecting share applications and payments in the future.

Sun-Dried Tomatoes (in the Oven)

Have you ever bought sundried tomatoes to use in a pasta dish or salad? They are just bursting with tomato taste, but they can also be a bit dear at the grocery or specialty store. With all the tomatoes we've gotten this year, it's easy to make your own at home—you don't even need the sun.

For years I made sundried tomatoes from the roma tomatoes I grew in my backyard. They are the best choice, but this year I found those small round tomatoes (about 2" in diameter) we get from the Enright Ridge CSA are great candidates for drying. I took my share of tomatoes in those small ones last week, and dried a batch of them over the weekend.

Just a few simple steps will get you a delicious bag (or jar) of sundried tomatoes, too. And, when you open a jar of tomatoes preserved in oil in the middle of February—well, let's just say Proust's cookie has nothing on these little jewels for conjuring up summers past in the dead of winter.

Sundried Tomatoes

Small tomatoes--roma or other varieties
Foil
Baking sheets
Salt

Optional Ingredients for Canning Dried Tomatoes
Garlic cloves
Basil leaves
Peppercorns
Olive oil

Cut the tomatoes almost in half, so they open up like a book. Line cookie trays or baking sheets with foil, arrange tomatoes cut side up in rows, and sprinkle salt over the tomatoes.

Put the trays in an oven on low heat (180 to 200 degrees works well) and leave in heated oven for about 12 hours (doing this overnight is a good idea). When the tomatoes are dried (but not burnt), you will probably find some that are not entirely dry but still have some mush in them. That's okay if you are willing to pack them in oil and process them.

So, take any completely dry tomatoes and store them in an airtight container. You can keep these in the pantry and use them for cooking right away. Then, take the ones that have a little softness still and pack them in one or more pint canning jars. Add a peeled garlic clove, a couple of basil leaves, and a few peppercorns. Add olive oil to fill to about a half-inch from the top of the jar. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to push the tomatoes aside and let the olive oil get down between the fruits. Add a little more olive oil as needed, wipe the tops of the jar, put on the caps and bands, and process in a hot water bath for about 15 minutes.

When you open those jars in February, you have great tasty summer tomatoes for pasta, and you can use the flavored oil for salads and marinades.

Remind Me Why People Eat Cows?

I had an amazingly delicious dinner last night—I took stock of what was in the refrigerator and needed to be used, as well as what we’d just gotten in the share this week. I grilled slabs of marinated eggplant as well as a lot of assorted vegetables, including the last of the turnips from a couple of weeks ago, and one forgotten kohlrabi, plus beans, tomatoes, and peppers.

I guess that was the main course; to accompany it, we had fresh sweet corn and southern-style greens, chard steamed and then laced with a little cider vinegar and sprinkled with crispy, crumbled bacon. So, it wasn’t entirely a vegetarian meal, but it didn’t have a hunk of meat as its centerpiece, either.

There was a lot of food on the table, and it was filling, though I didn’t feel stuffed after eating. And I know it’s good for me—a 1 cup serving of chard has 7 calories. That’s kind of amazing. Of course, the bacon adds a few more . . . but the chard also is a good source of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, riboflavin, vitamin B6, calcium, iron, and potassium. The only negative is that it is kind of high in sodium.

There are 34 calories in a cup of cooked turnips, 48 calories in a cup of cooked kohlrabi (though it is also high in sodium), 22 calories in a half-cup of green beans, 33 calories in a cup of cooked eggplant, and about 43 calories in a good-sized tomato. I did add a bit of olive oil before grilling everything (there are 119 calories in a tablespoon of olive oil, but it doesn’t have any “bad” features according to any nutritional charts).

Vegetables are great sources of vitamins and minerals, but they don’t generally have much protein (though once our hazelnut trees are producing, we can get protein from them). For now, I got 5 grams of protein from the bacon in last night’s meal (and only 50 calories, so that’s not a bad tradeoff).

Tonight I am thinking about a vegetable quiche, which provides a lot more protein in the eggs and cheese, though also a lot more calories as well (surprisingly, many more in the eggs than the cheese). One thing I know, it will be delicious, and another day will go by without eating any cows. Though I’m happy to have them around for the milk and cheese in that quiche, I don’t need a steak or burger when I have all these great vegetables.

You read reports all the time about the daily recommended requirements of different food groups—currently it’s 2 to 4 servings of fruit and 3 to 5 servings of vegetables a day. I’m sure I’m not the only who wonders if anyone actually manages to meet this standard, except of course during high season at the Enright CSA. Then, there are times—like last night—when I eat more than my 5 servings of vegetables all in one meal!