I'm all Tomatoed Out

The remaining tomatoes have been cooked, with the exception of one box of mini pear tomatoes for salads and one Celebrity that I didn't see so it got to live on as a whole tomato for one more day.

The rest became 2 quarts of Fresh Corn & Tomato Soup and 3+ quarts of Pasta Sauce. This time I made it with meat, mushrooms, garlic & onion, and roasted red peppers. It is quite tasty. I had some Opal Basil to add in and it gave it a certain yummy something. Hooray. It's all chilling in the fridge now and will be frozen once it is cooled.

I mentioned to someone at the farmer's market today that I was all tomatoed out. Seriously? If I don't see another tomato for another month it'll be too soon. It's not that I don't want to eat them. No, actually it is that I don't want to eat them. There is such a thing as too many tomatoes, and I think if I had known how many great tomatoes we would get from our share I would never have even considered getting the extra 25 lbs for sauce. There was plenty for sauce with what we had. At least I'll know for next year.

By the way, the woman to whom I was speaking said she could never have enough tomatoes. I believe that she did not get 10-12 tomatoes per week for the last 5 weeks. I am also peached out but that is my own fault, or rather the fault of the fabulous farm where we get our peaches from. See, they have awesome peaches. And let's say we only want 6. Well, it costs the same to buy 6 as it costs to buy a large basket of them, and well you may as well take the 9 or 10 in the large basket for the same price, right? Fortunately we have had great peach cobbler, peach crisp, peach muffins, and peach pie in the last few weeks. But that's enough. ENOUGH PEACHES. Thank you.

Today at the market, I bought plums, apples, asian pears, zucchini (to augment what I have so that I can make zucchini bread), onions, peppers (for the sauce), grapes, fig jam, lamb stew, and goat cheese. We have no market next week and our farm share is done, but we can go to the farm stand if we need to, and there is another market in Oakton on Saturdays, and another in Herndon on Thursdays. I'm fairly certain we won't be wanting for fruit or veggies before then though.

Salsa Madness

I can't take credit for the recipe. My CSA had a bunch of Salsa Kits in our shares. All you do is put everything in a food processor, blend it all together, and add vinegar or lime juice and salt. I made up the first kit and it lasted WEEKS. I had 2 more kits in the fridge and just made them up. I'm just posting this so I remember what was in each of the kits:

Roma tomatoes

tomatillos

peppers (early ones had jalapenos, and others had other kinds of peppers)

garlic

onion

Really that was it. And it is fabulous. :-D

More Pasta Sauce

Truly, if I had known how many tomatoes we would get from our farm share over the course of the summer, I would have skipped the box of tomato seconds and just used the "firsts" to make sauce for the winter.

That said, we still have a ton of tomatoes in the house, so I am plotting a second round of sauce. Not as much this time--7 quarts is a lot of sauce and a LOT of tomatoes.

This batch is going to contain onions, garlic, mushrooms, meat (the last batch was vegetarian) and maybe roasted red peppers, because I also have a bunch of peppers from the farm. Since I'm kind of doing "stolen moments cooking"--cooking when I have a stolen moment here or there--I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to end up doing. Right now I am one handed again, holding a baby in one arm and typing one-handed with the other. But before this particular waking, I cooked up the meat, onions, garlic, and mushrooms, with a bunch of fresh herbs (I have opal basil again this week so that has gone into it). I'm not entirely looking forward to peeling tomatoes on my own, as it is much more fun with company. Adam will be home tomorrow so I might leave it until then.

After cooking up the meat, etc, it all fit into a quart container, so I anticipate this will be at least three quarts when all is done. Since I used up 2 of the 7 quarts of sauce from the last batch, that will give us 8 quarts frozen for the non-tomato season. Excellent.

Swiss Chard and Chicken Quesadillas

Last week our CSA newsletter came with a recipe for Chard Quesadillas. I made them this weekend and Omnomnom. We thought that if we added chicken it might be very good too.

So I did. And Double Omnomnom mostly because they have a different texture with the chicken. So here's your recipe. I prepped 8, cooked one to share with my kiddo, and froze the rest.

Swiss Chard and Chicken Quesadillas

1 lb bag of shredded mexican cheese

8 large flour tortillas

2 chicken breasts

sazon goya and adobo or whatever you like to season your chicken breasts

1 large bunch of chard

salsa

Chop up chard into small pieces, stems and leaves together. Place in a microwave safe bowl with a lid (or a plate for a lid) and cook for 4 minutes. You shouldn't need to add water if you have washed the chard--whatever water sticks to the leaves is enough to steam it.

Cook chicken breasts, seasoned however you like. I used 1 packet of sazon goya and a sprinkle of adobo. You can cook them however you like to--I used my Pampered Chef covered baker and cooked them from frozen in the microwave in 10 minutes, but if you don't have one, you can boil, broil, pan fry or whatever it takes to get it cooked and seasoned. Then chop the chicken really well.

If you are going to freeze these, prep 8 pieces of aluminum foil large enough to hold an open tortilla. Build your quesadillas by layering ingredients on one side of the tortilla (so you can fold it over). Layer Cheese, Chard, Chicken, Salsa, and more Cheese. Fold over.

If you are freezing them, fold over the foil and wrap it up. If not, spray a pan with cooking spray, place quesadilla on the pan, and spray the top. Bake at 300 degrees for 10 minutes on the first side and another 5 on the other side.

If you are cooking from frozen, spray both sides of the quesadilla with cooking spray and bake at 300 degrees for 15 minutes on the first side and 10 minutes on the second side. (potentially will come back to fix this after baking one from frozen, but quesadillas from Dinner Zen cooked well this way).

This was a HUGE hit with my toddler. I haven't seen him devour anything so quickly in a long time.

CSA Last Week!

It's with a tear in my eye that I post that this is our last CSA Week! I'm so sad. Next year I think we'll do the Fall share, to keep it going for another 4 weeks.

This week:

Watermelon (from the "everyone take a watermelon" box)
Opal Basil
Some other herb (need to look it up)
peppers
tomatoes
cherry tomatoes
potatoes
onions
zucchini
LOTS of cucumbers
corn
chard (from the "take what you want" pile)

Tonight I'm making chard and chicken quesadillas. We made quesadillas with just chard the other day and OMG they were so good. But I thought they might be nice with some chicken added, too. I made a TON of chard though so I might just make the chicken ones for tonight and prep the chard ones for the freezer.

Will post the recipe if they come out well.

CSA Next to Last Week, With Raspberries!

Today's pickup was beautiful and bountiful as usual!

Raspberries!

Spaghetti Squash

Swiss Chard

Corn

Tomatoes

Radishes

Chinese Long Beans

Pole Beans

Parsley

Eggs

Surprisingly, there were no potatoes as we have had in the last several weeks! That's OK though--I have plenty PLENTY of potatoes still. Our newsletter came with a recipe for swiss chard quesadillas, and actually it sounds not just pretty good, but potentially freezable as well. We had some pretty tasty chicken quesadillas from Dinner Zen, and they froze beautifully and reheated great. So I'm thinking of doing maybe a swiss chard, corn, and chicken quesadilla and making it more of a dinner than a snack. I'll post if they come out yummy.

Meanwhile, only one week to go! I'm so sad. I was sorely tempted to add the fall share (they had some openings at the East Farm, which is where I go), but I think that instead we will just go to the farm stand and farmer's market for our fall veggies. It's supposed to be very leafy and rooty again, so it will nice to see what they have at the stands. If we like it, then next year we'll add the fall share when we do our initial share purchase. Meanwhile, one more week to go! Hooray!

Adventures with Chinese Long Beans

They're purple!

No really, Chinese Long Beans are purple! This made me all kinds of happy. But what to do with them? Well, some internet searching and conversing with Smita (who is now my go-to woman for all spice-related questions) led me to doing an experiment last night. And the experiment was universally accepted, even by the toddler. Simplicity was the word of the day, and we had Side Dish Win!

Simple but Savory Chinese Long Beans

1 bunch Chinese Long beans, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 small onion, sliced thinly

1 clove garlic, coarsely chopped

large pinch of salt

Penzey's Singapore Seasoning

1/4 c water

1 T olive oil

In a pan that comes with a lid, heat the olive oil. Add the long beans and onions. Saute for about 4 minutes and add the garlic and a pinch of salt, and then season liberally with the singapore seasoning. Continue sauteing another 5 minutes. Add water and quickly add the lid to the pan, then turn heat down to low. This will steam the beans so that they are done all the way through. Allow to steam for about 10 minutes.

From my internet research, I've learned that Chinese Long Beans are in the same family as green beans, only they are purple, longer, and much more fibrous, which is why they have to steam after they are sauteed. We served this next to one of our gifted freezer meals of chicken and broccoli in a casserole, so it served to bring a little extra spice, kick, and interest to the plates. My toddler ate only this and left the chicken and broccoli on his plate. Next year I will not be so hesitant to make these! It seems we have found some more beans that my husband is not allergic to! (anything in the green bean family is fine for him, and these as well as pole beans are fine! Yay!)