A woman & her sandwich - a love story

Lunch - Round 1.

I’ve eaten a tomato sandwich(es) for lunch almost every day since plucking the first ripe heirloom a few weeks ago. My tomatoes of choice are brandywine and Cherokee purple, but my absolute favorite is the pineapple tomato.

When I sit down with my sandwich, I’m probably visibly excited. While this is true with most meals, it’s especially so with a tomato sandwich. Something about the crunch of the lightly-toasted bread, the mayo, the fresh tomato. I fall in love all over again every lunch.

Everyone in the CSA will have heirlooms in their share this week, and we have plenty more if you’re interested in your own transcendent tomato sandwich experience.

Here’s what you need for a tomato sandwich.

INGREDIENTS

• Tomato slices

• Bread slices

• Butter

• Mayo

• Optional: Fresh basil leaves

DIRECTIONS

1.) Heat a few pats of butter in a skillet or pan, and lightly toast the bread slices. You could also just toast your bread in a toaster.

2.) After the bread’s toasted, spread mayonnaise on both pieces, and add tomato slices. Enjoy!

This is just one pineapple tomato. They are giants! This was even a “second,” as in produce that’s damaged in some way.

~ Stella

Easy & refreshing tabbouleh salad

Long-time CSA member Sondralee sent in this lovely tabbouleh. Thanks, Sondralee!

Tabbouleh, or tabouli, is a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern salad. Traditionally, this dish has more veggies than bulgur wheat, but it depends on your tastes and what you have on hand. So I’ll leave the vegetable quantities open below. It’s also encouraged to make parsley the star of the salad, turning it mostly green.

Note: If you’re looking for bulgur wheat locally, we find it at Core Goods in Oil City.

INGREDIENTS

~ ½ cup bulgur wheat

~ Cucumber, diced

~ Tomato, diced

~ A big bunch of parsley, chopped

~ Just a few mint leaves, minced

~ Onion (green onions or yellow or red), diced, to taste. Onions can have a strong taste, so you may want to just add a small amount.

~ Garlic cloves, minced, to taste

~ Olive oil, to taste

~ Salt, to taste

~ Fresh lemon juice, to taste (I use the juice of 1 whole lemon.)

DIRECTIONS

1.) Cook bulgur until tender (see directions below). Drain any excess water, if necessary. Set aside to cool.

2.) At the same time, combine all veggies and herbs. Salt to taste.

3.) Combine veggies and herbs with bulgur.

4.) Stir in olive oil, to taste. Add lemon juice, also to taste. Sprinkle more salt, if necessary.

5.) Tabbouleh is best chilled. It will keep in the fridge, covered, for up to four days.

HOW TO COOK BULGUR WHEAT

For every 1 cup of bulgur, you need 1 1/2 cups of water. Combine bulgur and water with just a pinch of salt and bring to a simmer. Then, cover and cook over low heat until tender (about 5 minutes). It’ll have a slightly chewy texture. Remove from heat and let stand for about 5 minutes. This makes about 2 1/2 cups cooked bulgur.

Note: Fine-grain bulgur is soaked rather than cooked.

~ Stella

Here’s mine. I’ll admit, I was hesitant to “over parsley,” but after adding in a large bunch it’s clear that an even bigger bunch would have been delicious. I won’t be afraid to turn it green next time. I’ll also switch up my ratio of bulgur wheat to veggies next time, and use more veggies. You’re also *coughs* supposed to finely chop the veggies… so, uh, do as I say, not as I do???? Someday, I’ll be the kind of person who finely chops things, I swear.

The aftermath

Here’s the scene on Thursdays after CSA share packing. Every ripe veggie on the farm finds a home each week, whether it’s in the CSA shares, sold to a shop or at market, donated, given to a friend or family member, or in our tummies. There’s no food waste on the farm.

As always, many thanks to Gene for his assistance. And thanks to Fawn, too.

~ Stella

Tomato season is here!

It’s. Tomato. Season. Woooohoooo!

After deer debacles of days of yore, we’re pretty darn excited around here. And the lean and lower system in the Big Tunnel is working so well that the vines are climbing for the ceiling! It made this short farmer snort in puzzled amusement as to how she was going to get them down.

Click here to see what we have now. We’ll continuously add varieties as summer marches on. (Our Romas are not ready yet.)

We LOVE fresh tomatoes with balsamic and ranch, and a crumble of feta. How do you like them?

Here’s where to find all of the produce we have to offer each week. Orders are ready any time after noon on Mondays. Click here to order.

The season is short - let’s enjoy it!

~ Stella

A taste of summer: 5-ingredient pasta pomodoro

For the fresh ingredients, you’ll need: tomatoes, basil, and garlic.

Pasta pomodoro is wonderfully simple, and uses just a few key ingredients. I’ve written before about my preference for easy, delicious foods on repeat. In the summer, this is one of them.

This is how I make pasta pomodoro. You only need pasta and salt, plus five key ingredients. I’ve left most of the quantities “to taste,” because it’s really about your preferences, and what you have on hand. The beauty of the dish is found in its freshness, and that all answers are correct by virtue of your tastes.

INGREDIENTS

• Pasta of your choice (We use whole wheat penne or spaghetti.)

• Salt, to taste

• Olive oil, to taste (I make this dish with a thin sauce, and lots of olive oil, but it’s up to you the ratio of tomatoes to oil.)

• Garlic, to taste, minced

• Fresh tomatoes, chopped

• Fresh basil, a generous handful, cut in ribbons

• Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded

DIRECTIONS

1.) While making your sauce, cook pasta according to package instructions. Drain and set aside.

2.) Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a small to medium-sized pot. Add minced garlic. Cook and stir, just until garlic begins to turn golden. Add chopped tomatoes to the pot. Cook and stir for just a few minutes. The tomatoes will start to cook down into sauce.

3.) Add basil. Cook and stir for a few more minutes. Add more olive oil and salt, to taste.

4.) Add sauce to a bed of pasta. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy your summer night!

~ Stella

Oh hiiiiiiii! Want to try pasta pomodoro with fresh ingredients? We can help! Click here to order. Place your order online and pick up Monday, any time after noon.

Pick & sort

It’s August, and that means harvest, harvest, harvest, and sort, sort, sort. What a difference from last year, thanks to the deer fence. And we’re LOVING the lean and lower system for the tomatoes in the high tunnels.

Mangia bene!

Ashley put her CSA produce and recipe to delicious use this week with her pasta pomodoro. I’ll post the pasta pomodoro recipe later this week. Thanks for sending in, Ashley!

Make friends with your veggies

If you open your CSA share and think, “What in the heck am I supposed to do with all this?” follow Becky’s lead: saute everything in olive oil and soy sauce. Voila! Stir fry! Don’t let your veggies intimidate you. Or even better, make friends with your veggies. They’re here to help you.

Thanks for sending in, Becky!

The easiest veggies to freeze

We freeze the farm’s “seconds,” meaning produce that’s damaged in some way. These peppers all had holes. Usually, the pepper is completely fine inside after nixing one little part and washing. Other times, it’s an insect palace, and you have to sprint to the back porch to chuck it in the woods as fast as you can.

A fridge we ordered almost half a year ago arrived last week. We keep two fridges, which is a lot of fridges for little old minimalist me, but Fridge No. 2 lives in the basement and stores seeds. It’s also what we use for winter produce when we shut the walk-in cooler off in late fall. When No. 2 conked out last winter, it was sorely missed.

When its replacement arrived, I’d forgotten we’d ordered a bigger size, which meant more freezer space. So I bought a new box of quart freezer bags and just by George went to town last weekend on peppers, green beans, and blueberries. And we now have more than enough cherry tomatoes and slicers for the CSA, so I can start marching those into the freezer.

Around here, Jason’s the good directions follower. I’m “bad” at directions, which is to say lazy. So Jason’s the canner. He mostly likes to can jam, and makes a nectarine and lime jam that’s summer on a spoon. It’s one of Marisa McClellan’s unique recipes from her Food in Jars book. She specializes in small batch recipes, which makes canning less of an all-day chore. Not that I’d know. I only freeze things. Here’s a couple of my favorites.

Note: I use quart freezer bags. After the first use, I wash and dry them for other purposes. I often do reuse them in the freezer, and haven’t had any problems. Sometimes I’ll double up reused bags.

• Cherry tomatoes: Rinse, let dry, and pop in freezer bags. After freezing, they aren’t fit for a salad or anything like that, but they have many uses, like cooked on pizza or in chili or pasta.

• Heirloom tomatoes & all slicer tomatoes: The easiest way is to cut in chunks and cook down to a sauce. I’m not talking about simmering on the stove for hours, this takes mere minutes. I don’t add anything - no sugar, no salt, nothing. That way, when you reheat the sauce six months from now, you don’t have to taste it to remember what’s in it. This yields a thin sauce, with lots of tomato pieces. It makes pasta in January that tastes fresh. It’s also great in chili and soups.

• Peppers: Rinse, dry, chop, and baggie. These freeze really well.

• Corn: Some people cook corn first, but I don’t find that necessary. I slice it from the cob and put it raw in the baggie.

• Green beans: Blanch green beans first, which means you cook them briefly in boiling water, then cool them in ice water. After letting the beans dry somewhat, freeze them in bags. (I once tried freezing green beans without blanching, and they tasted awful.)

• Blueberries: Funnel right into baggies.

• Strawberries: Chop in half and add to baggies.

Do you freeze fruits and veggies? Which ones, and what’s your method? Email plottwistfarm@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.

~ Stella

Where we rank

When I was collecting the paperwork for Silas to complete kindergarten at home, I acquired high school transcripts for me and Jason. When I realized my transcripts included my class rank, I immediately snatched up Jason’s. What was his rank? More specifically, where was his rank compared to mine? Would I be able to lord it over him, noting, henceforward, in any decision, that he was technically outranked? Or would I need to keep the discovery a dark, permanent secret, entombed inside of me and the halls of our old high school. If need be, could I get a hold of the original transcripts and burn them both?!?

When I found Jason’s rank, I laughed out loud. We started “going out,” which didn’t entail actually going anywhere since neither of us had a driver’s license, in the ninth grade. As I remember it, we weren’t in many of the same classes in school, and I feel like we diverged as far as what academic tracks we were on in a few ways. Nevertheless, in a class of 126, I think it was, we were exactly one person apart in class rank.

While amusing, it made sense. When we started dating, we got along really well. Really well. And we kept getting along all through school… all through college… and now, almost 21 years later, we mark 14 years of marriage today. We still get along really well. He’s nice to me, and I’m nice to him, and the rest has kind of fallen into place so far.

That we’re numerically ranked in school is so strange. What if we had number ratings in life? Life rank? I guess social media kind of does that for some nowadays. Well, if such a life transcript existed, and I looked up Jason, I’ll proudly admit, he’d probably still outrank me.

~ Stella

This day ranked pretty high on the happiness scale.