It all begins in a land far, far away…

In 2005, I planted exactly three pots on my terrace in New York City.  I grew four kinds of lettuce, two kinds of thyme, oregano, lemon verbena, and one variety of cherry tomato.  In 2008, I married a farmer, and we bought 25 acres in Central Virginia, managed a flock of 800 pastured laying hens, and planted approximately 7000 tomato plants.

In a similar tale of living at full tilt, I made my very first batch of jam ever last month: apricots from our neighbors’ tree, simmered slowly with a vanilla bean, and tucked right into the fridge, in part because there were only two pints and in part because I’m still a little scared of canning.*  And then last week we** went to the Prince Edward County Cannery and put up 58 quarts of tomatoes.

We had a fantastic time, and the Huddlestons were such generous, patient, congenial teachers.  Mrs. Lena Huddleston has been working at the cannery since it opened in 1975, and she knows a thing or two (hundred) about canning.  She showed us how to use all the big equipment to steam the tomatoes before peeling and chopping them and to cook the tomatoes gently before putting them in cans.  After that Mr. Huddleston took over and sealed everything up.

Meanwhile we cleaned up our mess (and now I want a hose in my kitchen).

When all the cans were sealed, we placed them in an enormous metal barrel, and Mr. Huddleston used an elaborate system of pulleys and chains to lift them all at once into a giant kettle of a pressure canner, where they were processed for the better part of an hour.  (During that time we walked next door to Granny B’s Market, where we had some fine fine reubens for lunch.)  And at last they were plunged into a cool water bath, to stop the cooking and to cool them enough to load everything up into the truck and head home.

Guess what everyone’s getting for Christmas?

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* I know!  A farmer’s wife, scared of canning!  I just have to begin.  My excuse is that the times when we have the most abundant vegetables here on the farm are also our busiest times.  Freezing has always been more manageable — and, I maintain, an excellent choice for many kinds of vegetables. But I do dream of being a food preservationist extraordinaire, and I really want to make jams and pickles.  So I really will learn to can.  Maybe soon.  I’ll keep y’all posted.

** Let me say right now that by “we” I mean, “Miles, Katie, Shannon, Ali, and the Huddlestons.”  I arrived late with Arlo after his morning nap, and we cheered everyone on in the final stretch.

Down below the photos, we’ve listed a few recipes we’ve been loving lately.  Some CSA members have also been sharing recipes via email, the comments sections here on the blog, and over at our Facebook page.  We’ll try to highlight some of those soon as well.  And plans are still afoot for adding forums to this website, so you can share your recipes and cooking adventures directly; we’ll keep you posted!

Here are some tasty ideas for working through these early summer CSA shares and farmers market finds.  Most of them would be fantastic fare for your Fourth of July BBQ!  Lots of these posts link to other great recipes too.

Ginger Scallion Sauce at Chocolate & Zucchini

Red, White & Blue Roast Potatoes and Firecracker Potato Salad (two recipes) at Babble

Fondant Fennel from Edward Schneider at Mark Bittman

Raw Beet Salad at Just Braise

Quick Sauté of Zucchini with Toasted Almonds at Smitten Kitchen

Chard, Onion, and Gruyère Panade at Orangette

101 Fast Recipes for Grilling at The Minimalist

Soon, it should be easier to search recipes we’ve posted or linked to here on the farm blog.  In the meantime, you might enjoy just browsing the posts with recipes.

Enjoy your holiday weekend!  What will you be eating?

Was it yesterday’s record high of 102° and the accompanying sweat in our eyes, grime behind our knees, and grumpy baby in our arms?

Is it the wild blackberries turning deep purple and plump along the edges of our fields?

Is it the hum of the fans, the buzz of the flies, the pleasant cracking and clinking of the ice in our sweet tea?

It is all these things — but mainly, we know it is summer because of this:

and especially

especially

especially

especially because of this:

Our farm pooch is inspecting a bin of Cherokee Purple tomatoes — we’re in the last weeks of their season.  It’s always tough to say farewell to these jewels of summer.

But it means all the delicious autumn crops will soon be upon us!  Red Russian kale, sweet Hakurei salad turnips, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, broccoli … mmmm!  These are some of our favorite vegetables of the whole farm year.  They’re beginning to show up on market tables and in your CSA shares now, and you’ll see more of them in the coming weeks.  Keep checking in here for some of our favorite ways to prepare them.  Or leave a comment letting us know your favorite fall recipes!

When we heard news of the late blight that swept much of New England and the mid-Atlantic this summer, our hearts just about fell out of our chests for the farmers up there.  Late blight is a fungus that destroys tomato plants and can also spread to potatoes; it spread like wildfire in the Northeast this summer.  It’s awful to imagine a summer without tomatoes.  And tomatoes are quite often a vegetable farmer’s bread and butter — a summer without tomato income is a very, very scary thing.

Luckily, Virginia seems to have been mainly spared, and we’ve got some gorgeous ones for you in the CSA and at market right now.  I always say you should eat tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow.  Nothing tastes like a vine-ripened tomato in the thick of summer, and their season comes but once a year.  This year, I’m eating them with an extra grateful heart.

We’re growing eight kinds of tomatoes at Frog Bottom this year, a mix of heirloom and home garden hybrid varieties.  All are thin-skinned and delicious.  I really am hard-pressed to pick a favorite — but if I must, I’ll always reach for a Cherokee Purple first.  That’s the purple one I’m touching in the photo above.  Let it ripen as long as you can stand it (at room temperature — never in the fridge), till it’s a deep dusky purpley-pink.  It’s amazingly sweet but with a nice balanced acidity.  It’s a natural for slicing and eating as is or in a sandwich.

Stop by the farm any day at lunchtime and you’ll likely find Ali and me both with sticky tomato juice running down our forearms and a bit of a homemade mayonnaise mustache.  Can you think of a better way to celebrate the season?

Here are our favorite ways to eat tomatoes right now; all require pretty minimal preparation and let the natural intensity of the tomato shine through.

Sliced and doused with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper. When we want to gild the lily we add basil leaves and fresh mozzarella.

Sliced and stuffed into a simple sandwich of toast slathered with homemade mayo. We haven’t bought mayo in ages.  It’s fast and easy to make your own, and once you start, you’ll wonder who kept this secret from you your whole life.  To make your own mayo: Blend one room temperature egg, some dried or jarred mustard, the juice of one lemon or a roughly equivalent amount of vinegar, and a bit of salt in the blender or food processor for a minute or two.  Then add oil (we usually mix equal parts olive and canola, but experiment to see what you like) — usually about 3/4 cup — in a very slow stream while still blending, until everything is emulsified.  Our mayo tends to be thinner than storebought, but you can add more oil if you’d like it thicker — or a bit of water or milk or cream if you want it thinner.  You can also stir in more lemon juice, mustard, salt, or pepper at the end to taste if you want.  Put whatever you don’t use right away into a tightly sealed jar in the fridge and use within a week.

Coarsely chopped and roasted in the oven with olive oil and salt for an hour or two or three. It can be hard to turn on the oven these days, but we’re always glad we did.  Slow roasted tomatoes are like candy.  Toss them with pasta, add them to a salad, smear them on toast with goat cheese, or just stand there at the stove and eat them all right out of the roasting dish.  Roasted tomatoes freeze very well.

Tomato bread salad. Tear or slice some chewy, slightly stale bread into rough 1-inch chunks, toss with olive oil, and bake until crispy.  Toss with halved garlic cloves, chunks of tomato, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and some basil or other fresh herbs.  Let the whole thing sit for about ten minutes and then dig in.  Avoid the garlic cloves.  Or not.  We first started making it when we read about it several years ago on Molly Wizenberg’s food blog Orangette.  We can’t recommend this website heartily enough for its wonderful storytelling and its no-nonsense, always-delicious recipes.

Panzanella. Tomato bread salad’s slightly fancier cousin — a bread salad that originated in central Italy.  Here are two delicious versions, one at Kitchen Parade and one at Chocolate & Zucchini.

And if you can’t eat  your way through all the tomatoes: freeze ‘em!  They’re slightly more accommodating when you use them later, if you blanch, peel, and coarsely chop them first.  But when we don’t have time for that we throw them into Ziploc bags whole.  Then we use them in sauces and casseroles in the winter.

And what about y’all??  Please leave a comment and tell us how you eat your tomatoes!

And now, here’s Teri!

I have always looked at my Californian family and friends with a touch of envy.  Don’t get me wrong; I love Virginia and plan to live here until I’m pushing up daisies.  It’s just they seemed to have the advantage of having large groups of like minded people working together for the common good.  I remember reading about a CSA there and thought — that would be so amazing, to pick up a box of produce and try to figure out what everything was and what to do with it. I really liked how it changed the dynamic of what’s for dinner.  Instead of trying to figure out what to make (you know most people recycle the same 10 meals over and over and over = boring) you have all this stuff and just have to figure out what to do with it.  That’s where the fun begins!  Zucchini tart = amazing.  Summer squash and cornmeal pizza crust = not so much — but at the very minimum, not the same old thing again!

Me hosting a pick-up happened completely by accident.  I went to a hooping workshop (as in hula hoop) at the Carver Healing Arts Center and saw a brochure for Frog Bottom Farm.  It was beautiful.  I left it there because it was the only one and thought, I hope I can remember that name.  A couple of days later I looked it up online, and amazingly, they were looking for a Midlothian pick-up.  I flipped out.  I was so excited at the prospect of hosting.  Not only would this really cool thing be happening in Midlothian, but I would be a part of it!  My California friends and family (who by the way are Midlothian transplants) thought it was really awesome too!

What I have found is there are like-minded people here and probably everywhere who want to eat locally grown, freshly harvested foods, and have a connection to the people who grow it.  They get excited about seeing what each week brings.  Some anxiously await tomatoes while others dream of ratatouille recipes.  I have noticed personally I didn’t eat enough vegetables.  And, when you do, you feel great!  I am so looking forward to the rest of the growing season.  The interesting people I have met.  The adventurous recipes I have yet to try.  They all make me look forward to each and every Wednesday with a smile and excitement so big I feel like I have to pinch myself.  What an awesome ride.

Below are two recipes from Teri that highlight ingredients you’ll find in your CSA share right now: zucchini and tomatoes.  The Zucchini Tart — which would be equally wonderful with any of our summer squash — tastes somehow fresh and rich at the same time.  Teri warns that “you’ve really got to be in the mood to look at and fool around with zucchini for quite a while –  it’s a labor of zucchini love!” and so she also offers a quick crowd-pleaser recipe for Tomato Pie.

Zucchini Tart with Feta

Adapted from a recipe in Saveur magazine, May 2006
Serves 6

Lynne Curry serves this tart by the slice from her stand at the Matakana farmers market in New Zealand.

1 10”x13” sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed and chilled
12 small zucchini (or other summer squash) (about 2 ½  lbs.), trimmed
Salt
3 Tbsp butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
10 cherry tomatoes (or better yet, Frog Bottom Farm tomatoes of equivalent amount), finely chopped, strained in a sieve, excess moisture pressed out
1 cup (4 oz) crumbled feta cheese
½ cup ricotta
2 Tbsp chopped basil
Freshly ground pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350°.

Fit pastry into a 9”x12” baking sheet, pressing it against the sides.  Score around bottom inner edge of pastry (beside crease where bottom meets sides), being careful not to cut all the way through, with a paring knife.  Prick bottom of pastry all over with a fork, line with a sheet of parchment paper that fits the bottom only, and fill with pie weights or dry beans.  Bake until edge of crust begins to puff and color, about 25 minutes.  Remove weights and paper.  Bake until bottom is golden, 6-8 minutes more.  Let crust cool.

Grate 4 of the zucchini on the large holes of a box grater into a large bowl.  Add 1 Tbsp of salt, toss well, and set aside to let weep for 30 minutes.  Transfer to a clean kitchen towel and wring thoroughly to remove moisture.

Meanwhile, slice remaining zucchini into ¼”–thick rounds.  Working in batches, blanch rounds in a large pot of boiling salted water for 1 minute.  Drain and spread out on a paper towel- lined sheet pan; set aside.

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Spoon out and reserve 1 Tbsp.  Add onions and cook until soft, 5-6 minutes.  Add grated zucchini and cook, stirring often, until just beginning to brown 5-7 minutes.  Transfer to a large bowl; let cool.

Stir tomatoes, half the feta, ricotta, basil, and salt and pepper to taste into zucchini mixture.  Stir in egg and spread mixture evenly in crust.  Arrange zucchini rounds, slightly overlapping in rows, like tiles on top.  Bake for 15 minutes, then brush the top with reserved butter.  Continue to bake until crust is deep golden, 10 minutes more.  Let cool to room temperature, then sprinkle remaining feta over top.  Cut into squares.

Tomato Pie

Frozen pastry crust
Tomatoes
Red onion
Basil
Hellman’s Mayonnaise – about a cup per pie
Shredded Mexican cheese blend – about 2 cups per pie

Preheat oven to 350°.

Slice tomatoes and onions in rounds and layer into the crust, sprinkling with fresh chopped basil — stopping to close your eyes, smell the basil and smile.

Mix the mayo and cheese into a paste –- sort of.

Press the mayo/cheese mixture on top of the pie. Decoratively add basil leaves.

Bake until gorgeous.

Try to wait ‘til it cools to eat it or it will be a mess –- but who cares? Make 4 of them and then you’ll be sure to have one to cool that will slice pretty.