So Much Produce/So Little Time to Cook
The "granny CSA" or what I brought home from my mother's this weekend.
It’s not that I have SO little time to cook it’s that I am preserving or u-picking or really want to be outside while the sunshine lasts. It’s the time of year where I get almost overwhelmed with the beauty and bounty of the produce and get a little panicky that I won’t be able to take full advantage of all of it. And tomatoes, corn, peppers and eggplants haven’t even really hit here so what am I going to do next week, the week after?!
It’s a luxury problem and I am grateful for the bounty. And I am grateful for my mother who grows so much of it. We spent less than 24 hours at my mother’s this weekend principally so my husband could make pickles with my mother. My husband is not a pickle fan but loves her bread & butter pickles from the Joy of Cooking she’s been making for 30 years (here’s a similar recipe).
Brian's second batch of bread and butter pickles.
The top photo shows only some of the loot I brought home. Not shown are three quarts of Marion Berries that I turned into Marion Berry, peach, vanilla jam (instead of planning my fall classes which I am determined to do this week!).
And the first of the Transparent apples are ripening here in the Willamette Valley and my son ate all three of those little things plus a lemon cucumber, which “one can eat like an apple but it doesn’t even have a core!” he gleefully discovered.
First, rather tart Transparent apples of the season.
And here’s all the garlic she grew this year.
Garlic harvest
And take note of the basket it’s in. The handle is completely duct-taped and the rim is reinforced with some ribbon. These are the kind of things that drove me crazy as a teenager. My parents hung onto everything. . . product-life-extension, as my older brother calls it. Now it doesn’t drive me crazy. Now I realize just how spot-on her priorities are. Grow the garlic, forget about a new basket. Who has time for that?
Happy Cooking and Eating!
P.S. With the beets (from the Granny CSA) I made this. I’ll be making this with the parsley, and I made a wine-braised cabbage dish with the green cabbage that was quite good: 1 cup of leftover cheap rose (would be better with a dry white wine I think); some finely chopped rosemary, 1/2 an onion, 1 tomato, diced, and salt and pepper.
