Well, I had to eat.
My farm share has been wonderfully abundant. Lovely vegetables and I’ve been very good
about staying on top of eating them all. There’ve been a few that slipped to
the back of the drawer before I realized it, but so far nothing tragic.
Since my strawberry picking excursion I’ve wanted to do more
pick-your-own. When Katie said she’d
love to pick blue berries I was all for it.
We went to one of the closest farms, Linvilla Orchards. Now, I don’t
know if they are organic and Pedro calls them a zoo, and I can see his point.
But I can also see a lot of good that they do. The place is huge, they have
many different crops, and they cater not just to people who want to pick their
own and plan to can, but also to children. (It's 15 stems of zinnias for $5.)
Families with kids and school field
trips were there in full force. It didn’t diminish any fun we had – in fact it
made us happy that here were little kids walking along holding bags of peaches
they had picked right off the tree. Since the weather has been so nice, picking
was a pleasant experience as well. On that particular Friday Katie and
I picked 8lbs of blueberries. That’s enough for six pies, a giant yogurt
container full and a bit more for breakfast yogurt. One pie has been baked, the
other five allotments are frozen and can be baked at a moment’s notice!
Katie and Jessica partook of the first blueberry pie and it
was decided we needed to go back for peaches. So we did.
On a cool Saturday
morning we drove to the farm passing a heavy rainstorm on the way. The storm must have hit the farm as well
because everything was wet as can be. Perfectly beautiful ripe peaches lay all
over the place on the ground ready to be picked up. Now Jessica, at 8 months pregnant, wasn’t
really into crawling around under the trees. So Katie and I took that job while Jessica picked from the trees. We ended
up with something like 30lbs of peaches. That’s a lot of peaches. I’ve been wanting to make pickles as well,
and so Katie and Jessica kindly obliged me while I picked about 10lbs of
cucumbers.
Melanie sent me her dill pickle recipe which is delicious. I was
supposed to wait a week after making them , but I really couldn’t.
There is something incredibly satisfying about making your own, whatever
it is.
So the count stands thusly:
2 jars of whole brandied peaches
2 jars of peaches preserved in light syrup
10 jars of peach sauce (just cooked with some spices and a
little sugar)
11 jars of pickles.
Not bad.
I was also finally able to crack open an experiment from
last summer, pickled nasturtiums. I
really had my misgivings about these.
They were so simple even though I only ended up with three little jars of them.
I actually only ended up with one after giving the other two away. Needles to say, people are going to have to
request these this year! They are so yummy!
I decided to put them on a tilapia fillet. Trader Joe's has lovely frozen fish. I made a little bit of a sauce with butter, salt pepper, and a dash of the brine, sautéed the fish in that and added the nasturtiums. Oh boy. They are so yummy. I went right out and planted as many seeds as I had kept from last year along with a packet I rustled up from somewhere. They are coming up and I am so excited to make more of these! They are delicious. Poor Man’s Capers indeed!
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