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.

Celebrating Lammas

Happy Lammastide to all today. It’s August 1, the least-remembered pagan holiday. It celebrates the beginning of the end of summer; the name comes from “Loaf Mass,” which is kind of funny, because it’s a lot older than the Catholic mass. But they tried to christianize it a bit by celebrating the baking of the first loaves of bread with the new crop of wheat.

Its old name is Lughnasa, for the Celtic sun god Lugh. It’s one of the four holidays that comes between equinoxes and solstices. The others are Imbolc (which we call Groundhog’s Day or Candlemas, a holiday for prognosticating an early spring), Beltane (also known as May Day, celebrating the first of the warm weather), and Samhain (we call it Hallowe’en these days). If you notice, all these old holidays are associated with warm weather—expecting it, celebrating its arrival, cautiously noting it is slipping away, and then marking the end of the warmth.

Just being warm meant a lot to folks in the old days, that’s pretty clear. But of course warm weather also meant it was the growing season, which meant there was plenty of food, another big deal for folks in years past. It’s a big deal for us again, since we are growing our own food at the Enright Ridge CSA, so I think it’s nice to celebrate these holidays. (Though I would celebrate them anyway.)

There’s more about Lammas in a post last year that you can read here, but for today, if it doesn’t get too hot, bake some bread (though we’re not growing wheat quite yet) to celebrate.

It’s also the full moon tonight, and I think it’s always auspicious when a full moon falls on one of these four holidays (last year there was a full moon on Halloween). If you’ve had enough of the sun for awhile, get out and enjoy basking in the light of the full moon tonight, eat that bread, and celebrate Lammas.

Tomatoes Deserve an Ode

Eleven pounds of tomatoes in a large share on Saturday—that must be some kind of record. I've made gazpacho, BLTs, and ketchup! (more on that soon). There will be more recipes as we work our way through the immense red and yellow bounty, but today’s blog posting is simply a poem by Pablo Neruda, an ode to tomatoes, and just one thing to mention about it—remember, in South America, December is the equivalent of July here, when the tomatoes start rolling in by the bushel.

Ode To Tomatoes
Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it’s time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

The End Is Near

No, we’re not going all apocalyptic on you, it’s just the end of the 2011 growing season at the Enright Ridge Community Supported Agriculture Urban Farm Project. (Good thing we don’t use the whole name all the time.) The Enright CSA greenhouse got a little winterization attention last Saturday, with a good-sized crew patching the plastic on the roof and replacing the glass in the side of the greenhouse along the walkway. It was work that needed to be done before it got much colder and wetter, and as it happened, we had a nice sunny and almost warm day to get the work done. Who knew you needed gymnastic skills to be a farmer, but Charles could have represented the U.S. team well at the Olympics, based on his balance beam skills high inside the greenhouse. Thanks to everybody who came out and helped with the work.

I understand people are keeping busy at home, too, figuring out ways to preserve some of the bountiful harvest we've received the last couple of weeks. I have some chili simmering in the crockpot as we speak that used up the last few red tomatoes (though those green ones are pinking up), a slew of peppers, and—to my chagrin—what were the last two eggplants. I'll miss eggplants a lot. Really!

There’s one more pickup, this Saturday, November 5. We’ll be seeing more cool weather crops, greens and root vegetables, with a few more tomatoes and peppers to make us remember summer, too. We’d also like to remind you one more time to bring back your completed surveys—they really help us plan for next year.

Late Harvest Meals Get Creative

We had root vegetable chowder for dinner the other evening, and it was delicious. I didn’t make it—Mike did—and he made some interesting combinations that I might not have considered, but it definitely worked. It was a chunky, gruelly (and I mean that in the best possible way) concoction of potatoes and onions, with a sweet potato and one stray beet that got overlooked, and not only did it taste great, it was a beautiful golden color, too. Unfortunately, he didn’t write down what he put in it, exactly, but it proves that sometimes you can get great results when you make it up as you go along.

I unearthed something similar I did at the end of the season last year. I liked it so much that I did write down what I’d put in it so I could make it again. I call it a “Late Harvest Frittata,” so if you have an interesting assortment of vegetables in the next week or so, you might give it a try. Or you can try Mike’s method, and give cooking without a net a shot. All of our vegetables taste so good, how can you go wrong, no matter what you do with them.

Late Harvest Frittata

1 or 2 small eggplants, peeled and diced
2 or 3 sweet peppers, seeded and sliced
4 to 6 small tomatoes, green or red or a combination, diced
Any other vegetables or greens that look good (if you use potatoes, you might want to dice and boil them first)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
¼ cup grated asiago cheese
6 large eggs
3-4 Tbsps. olive oil
pinch of crushed red pepper
salt and black pepper to taste
4 strips of bacon, fried and crumbled (optional)

Heat the oil in a large iron (or otherwise ovenproof) skillet over high heat. Sauté the garlic until starts to brown, then add the eggplant and sauté for about 5 minutes, until it is soft and brown. Add the tomatoes, peppers, and any other vegetables and cook for another 3 or 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, beat the eggs and add the asiago cheese, red pepper, and salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to broil, then reduce the heat on the burner under the skillet to medium low and add the egg mixture. Mix the vegetables and the eggs together in the skillet, cover, and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, until the egg just starts to set but the center is still fairly soft. Take off the lid, sprinkle the bacon on top and broil in the oven until it finishes cooking—about 2 minutes. Cool the frittata in the pan for a few minutes, then cut in slices and serve.

Happy Halloween and Samhain

Happy Halloween--or Samhain, as the original Celtic festival celebrated from October 31 to November 1 was called. Some say Samhain means "summer's end," and that is surely what it is for us, as we'll have our last pickup at the Enright Ridge CSA this coming Saturday. Samhain celebrated the end of the harvest season--just what we are reckoning with at the CSA, too. It also marked the end of the "light" half of the year, as we head into darkness, and hey--I believe that Daylight Savings Time ends next Saturday, too. Who knew that Congress followed the old pagan calendar . . .

In any event, we'll be seeing the last of the tomatoes and peppers of summer, which continued well into fall, as well as some fall greens and root vegetables. You might think about carving one of those big turnips we got into your jack o' lantern this year--it was turnips and rutabagas that were used to carve scary faces to ward off evil spirits before new world pumpkins were introduced to Europe. Or you can just hide behind a false face, as masks were another way people found to hide from the demons.

Most likely the only demons showing up tonight will be trick-or-treaters. My uncle used to discourage them by passing out heads of cabbage, turnips, and occasionally brightly colored hard-boiled eggs, just to confuse them. I think I'll keep my turnips and cabbage for dinner, however, and pass out the more usual chocolate and licorice treats.

Happy Halloween, Happy Samhain, and as my grandfather would say, don't forget to set your clocks ahead. Remember, it's spring back, fall forward.

Eat Locally, and Help Harvest, Too

I made the BLT pictured here the other day, and realized it was a completely "locally sourced" sandwich: The lettuce and tomato came from the Enright CSA; the bread was from St. Lawrence Bakery, and the bacon was from Eckerlin Meats down at Findlay Market. It was also very tasty.

It's great to have local produce, and I appreciate it even more when I've been in the garden or the fields down at Ritter Farm helping with the harvest. (It also makes me appreciate just what "field worker" really means.) I've done it in the blazing heat and the chill, but right now the weather is perfect and I'd like to recommend a harvest shift if you haven't done that yet.

There's a lot to be picked every week, and if you still need hours for your share, this is somewhere that your work is really needed right now. CSA staff and members are harvesting all day long Friday, so if you have any time free--or if you can get a little time free to spend outdoors in this glorious fall weather we're currently experiencing--think about joining the harvest.

If you go to the greenhouse, the white board will tell you where the harvest is happening, and when. The harvest at Ritter Farm is often in the late afternoon and early evening, and it's easy to get to. Just go down Cleves Warsaw Pike till you get to Hillside, turn left, and look for some cars parked behind the white house on the right (the second house on Hillside on the right). The fields are right along the small parking area.

Join the harvest before it's all over. You'll be glad you did, you'll appreciate those eggplant and peppers and beans that much more, and we'll all thank you for bringing them in from the fields!