Late Spring Holding Pattern

The days are getting long.  I can run very early before work or very late after work.  It has to be time for my vegetables, soon.

Next week my final CSA payment is due.  I am gettin weary of the average store-bought varieties.  Please, June, hurry up and get here!

Waiting for June

The payment is sent; I'm officially on the CSA list for 2010.  Another payment will be due to Fort Hill Farm in May (I think) for 400-something dollars. 

My husband gets a little frustrated with the cost.  I've tried to explain to him that while we may be spending more on vegetables than usual, we are also eating more vegetables than usual.  Once I've paid for something, I use it.  That's why I pre-pay my Pilates and yoga classes.  I'm way too cheap...I should say 'frugal'...to simply spend money and not use it.

There are good reasons for eating more vegetables, too.  I'm now 40.  My family has a terrible heart disease history.  If I don't exercise and watch my diet, I'm destined to wear the "zipper" of open heart surgery like so many of my relatives.  No way.  I'm terrified of anesthesia.  I've been frightened into a healthy lifestyle. 

The grocery store continues to disappoint.  I have a true aversion to buying things packaged in foam and plastic.  Everything, now, it seems, is packaged in airtight little tombs to preserve freshness over thousands of miles.

I can't wait for June when I can eat my real vegetables.

Midwinter Veggie Withdrawal

I received an e-mail from Fort Hill Farm today.  My next share payment is due.  I need to send roughly $250 to a farmer for vegetables that I won't get to eat until mid-June.  It sounds dubious, I suppose, to those who haven't bought into the idea of a CSA, but after the constant supply of beautiful, organic veggies of last summer contrasted with the supermarket lackluster selection that we've been surviving on lately, I'm ready to gamble again. 

Sweet Corn

One of the most labor-intensive crops to grow organically is corn.  Corn ear worms (those little worms that you occasionally find on the top of an ear) are preventable if you treat every single ear individually.  I recall going to our local organic farmers' market and finding a sign on the pile of corn that stated "Not Organic".  When I questioned the farmer, he explained that customers were so turned off by the worms (which are actually moth larvae) that he stopped growing it because no one would buy it.  He purchased his corn from a conventional farmer and sold it at his stand.

We have gotten lots of corn from Fort Hill Farm this year; a real treat for us.  The boys especially love sweet corn.  The first few ears were perfect...not a worm on them.  As the season continued, we found more critters crawling on our corn.  There was a little bit of revulsion from the troops, but my way of thinking is this:  Evidence of worms is proof that Monsanto and other bullying chemical giants did not have their tentacles on my dinner.

As for cooking corn, my favorite method is from the Joy of Cooking:  Bring a pot of salted water to a rapid boil.  Add the corn, put a tight fitting lid on top, and remove it from the heat.  Time for 5 minutes and serve.  If the corn is young and fresh, you can't beat it!

I Finally Have a New Grill

After much debate, we finally bought ourselves a grill.  You may recall our tragic grill story.  Many family members and friends insisted that Weber was the way to go, and I don't doubt their judgement, but our finances just don't justify the cost of a Weber.  Even though Rich only grills when there is an audience, I allowed him to make the choice.  He was the one who labored year after year keeping our old grill in operating condition, so he chose a Brinkmann, which has a great website that allows you to buy replacement parts cheaply and easily.    Plus, the grill was only $200 including tax.  Rich assembled it for me and even bought a cover. 

It is a bit overbuilt, I think, but it's really hard to find something simple these days. 

Here is a picture that shows part of the grill doing its magic on some Asian eggplants (notice that there is plenty of room for a glass of wine:

The eggplants were really very pretty, slender purple things, but Rich was thoroughly uninterested in eating them, so I did what I do with many of his vegetables:  I hid them.  (It occurs to me that if we stopped using the word "eggplant", and started calling them "aubergines" like the French do, eggplant might have a broader appeal.)

Rich's favorite dish in the world is Chicken Tikka Masala, the Indian restaurant mainstay.  I marinated chicken breasts overnight in yogurt and Penzey's Tandoori spice mix.  When I have more time and energy, I mix up my own spices.  It was, like, 80% humidity and 92 degrees out, so I was taking shortcuts, though.  In cooler weather I also make my masala sauce from scratch, but I used a jar of Patak's to prevent me from slitting my wrists in misery.  So anyway, I grilled the eggplant and the marinated chicken, diced both up, and tossed them in a pot of masala sauce.  I left some chicken out of the sauce for the kids, which they thought was delicious.  I also sliced some raw carrots for them.  Add some boiled white rice and homemad nan, and we had a great little meal. 

Rich ate a few chunks of the eggplant, but he was not fooled in the least.  Oh well.  I ate the aubergines, and loved them!

On Blogging

My family has been supportive and kind regarding my endeavor to write about our eating habits. They don't have to be. They could all just be resentful of the time I waste on the whole project, spilling their secrets, laughing at their food aversions, typing out crappy sentences with very little revision...

My brother, my mother and my husband are among my most faithful readers, although none of them will post any comments about my posts. I quit for awhile, in fact, believing that no one was actually reading. It's lonely to write without feedback.

I will admit that it is a bit quirky to allow my family to stand around hungrily while I photograph our food, but I think they all feel like they are a part of this project. Anyway, my darling husband was thoughtful enough to snap a shot of me snapping a shot of our dinner. My boys will be able to remember this episode clearly enough to bemoan the experience to their therapists many years from now.

Hiding the Zucchini

I know the title sounds like a 14-year-old boy's euphemism, but it isn't meant to be. I really had a lot of zucchini to eat, and had to hide it in other foods to convince my doubtful family to ingest it. If you read The Value of a Mother-In-Law, you'll understand my husband's aversion to the squash. The boys have no such excuse aside from being little boys.

Fort Hill Farm came to the rescue with a great way to hide zucchini from the zucchini-defiant: Chocolate Cake. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Who would ruin a perfectly good chocolate cake by hiding zucchini inside?

But it worked. It was delicious. And we ate it all up.

Here is the recipe as presented by Fort Hill Farm:

Moist Chocolate Zucchini Cake
From The Cook’s Garden by Ellen Ecker Ogden

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour 2 cups sugar
1 cup whole-wheat flour 8 TBSP (1 stick) unsalted butter (room temp)
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder ½ cup olive oil
2 tsp baking soda 3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp fine sea salt 1/3 cup sour cream or yogurt
3 cups grated zucchini
*Add some Chocolate Chips for a real treat!

Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and lightly flour a 9×13 inch rectangular pan.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Using an electric mixer on high speed, beat the sugar, butter and oil together in another bowl until well combined. One at a time, add in the eggs, beating well after each addition. Gradually stir in the flour mixture, blending until just smooth. Stir in the sour cream or yogurt, then the zucchini. Spread evenly in the pan.

Bake until the cake springs back in the center, about 45 minutes. Cool completely over a wire rack.

Some things to note: I was staying at a rented beach house when I made this recipe. I only had white flour, I had no chocolate chips, I had no grater with which to grate the zucchini, so I chopped it very small, and the oven in the house had no discernible temperature settings- the numbers had been scrubbed off the dial, and the light did not turn on until the dial was turned to its highest setting (whatever that might have been). This recipe is very forgiving, because it was still very good, despite all the setbacks.

I did not take photos, but it looked just like a chocolate sheet cake with some very tiny flecks of green. Try frosting it to hide the green flecks. Or tell the kids they are "sprinkles".