Sage in bloom. See more photos from this week.
Sneaking this post in with a mere twelve hours to go before we are back at the farm! This week we got:
Above: Jeff loves chives so much he wants to marry them.
See more photos from this week.
This post has been delayed almost a week due to both busyness and laziness. But late or not, here it is. Are you ready? Because it's about to come down hard. Any moment now. It will swarm down on you like a big swarming blog thing. Ready? Are you sure? The last thing I would want is to startle you. Okay then.
Last Sunday, a little more than a week ago now, myself, Jen, my sister Stacy, and Darby drove out to the farm with the hopes of picking the most delicious strawberries ever. And I knew that we were going to get quarts and quarts of them. So needless to say I was excited. But when we got there we discovered that they weren't quite ripe yet. A large majority were edible but not really ready to be picked. Most were either white at the base of the berry or still green at the tip. So instead of picking a bunch of so-so strawberries we only took three pretty nice ones, which we promptly ate.
We did, however, get some wonderful sugar snap peas. While the plants were really young, they were already delivering plump, crisp peas just begging to be bitten into. After picking the peas, Jen and I joined my sister and Darby and walked from the field back to the farm stand to pick up our membership card and our eight—yes, eight—heads of green leaf lettuce.
Then Stacy was kind enough to hang out with Darby while we went to pick some herbs. And that's were I learned something new: chives have gorgeous purple flowers. I guess I never noticed them before, because I don't think they're new to the farm this year. But damn. They look amazing. So I must admit that I am in awe of the humble chive.
When we got home later on I actually tried a chive. I didn't think I liked them, but since I am trying to expand the panoply of vegetables and vegetable type things (I am aware that herbs are not vegetables) I eat, I figured I would try it. And again the lowly chive taught me another lesson: that it's delicious. So beware, chive, 'cause I'm going to eat the shit out of you.
So to sum it all up: too early for strawberries, great for sugar snap peas, an overwhelming amount of lettuce, nice selection of herbs and a learning experience about the wonders of chives.
PS, here's the official tally:
PPS, if you're wondering, we managed to give away seven heads of lettuce to our lucky co-workers and pseudo-co-workers (aka the people in the office below our apartment).
Welcome to the first installment in an occasional series about our adventures in cheesemaking. Yes, cheesemaking. Because apparently learning to freeze, dry, and can food that we drag home from a farm hasn't been enough to quench our thirst for homesteading.
Jeff got the idea to start making cheese after reading about homemade mozzarella in a Barbara Kingsolver book. After more investigation (as well as the mail-order purchase of citric acid and special cultures and rennet), we decided that mozzarella required more skill and a better kitchen setup than we have at the moment. Then I found a recipe for paneer* in a photocopy of an Indian cookbook a former housemate had left in a former apartment some years ago. Paneer had always seemed too complicated and risky to try on my own, but in the context of looking for a first cheese to make, paneer suddenly seemed within reach. Not to mention, once we had paneer we'd be able to use the pound of spinach we'd just gotten from the farm to make a batch of palak paneer.
And that is how I found myself making homemade, raw-milk paneer one evening. That's right, I walked four blocks to the park, bought a container of unpasteurized milk from a guy with a cooler (I love how skeevy the Clark Park farmer's market sounds when you say it like that), and came home and curdled it on purpose. The process was pretty simple, and took about an hour and a half. Most of that time was hands-off, too, just waiting for the milk to boil or pressing the cheese.
I began by slowly bringing one and three-quarters pints of milk to a boil.
While the milk was heating, I lined a strainer with cheesecloth and set it over a big bowl. Then I juiced a lemon.
Once the milk began to boil, I slowly stirred in the lemon juice and let the milk curdle.
After the milk curdled, I set the pot aside to cool.
Once the curdled milk was cool enough to handle (the actual temperature will vary based on your heat tolerance/experience handwashing dishes), I strained the curds through the cheesecloth.
Then I squeezed to remove excess whey.
I pressed the curds for about an hour. (The pumpkin is optional.)
I removed the weight and unwrapped the cheesecloth. Paneer!
This method is pretty flexible. You can basically start with an arbitrary quantity of milk, and just add lemon juice until it curdles. Use the paneer right away or store in the whey and refrigerate until use.
Now all that remains is to perfect our palak paneer recipe. I think a date at an Indian restaurant is in order. You know, for research purposes.
* Paneer is a mild Indian cheese that, when pressed, looks a lot like tofu. (Or you can use unpressed paneer to make a dairy version of scrambled eggs/scrambled tofu.) It doesn't melt, but instead keeps its shape when cooked.
Above: pumpkins! See more photos from September 29 (week nineteen).
The past couple of weeks have been full of variety and interesting new crops, but I haven't been in much of a writing mood. Blah. Actually, for a while I wasn't even in much of a farm mood despite the fact that we are getting all this great food. It has really taken up a lot of our time lately and, with about six or seven weeks left in the season, I was ready for a break. Luckily I had Monday off this past weekend, which allowed for a change of scenery. And Lorraine visited, too. Romping around the farm with someone new really helped. (No offense, Jeff!)
The past couple of weeks have seen a mix of summer crops ending and fall crops coming in. It's rare that we get raspberries and pumpkins in the same week, but that very thing has happened for two weeks in a row now. And the brassicas in the fields look amazing: full heads of cabbage, the outer leaves gaping, and rows of stately broccoli plants.
From September 29, 2007: Week nineteen list
And from the pick-your-own fields:
From October 6, 2007: Week twenty list
And from the pick-your-own fields:
Quote of the month:
Jeff seems to have befriended a little girl who saw him tying up a bunch of lemongrass with one of the lemongrass leaves. She beamed, "I like to tie things with grass, too!"
Notes on catnip:
In the absence of feline pets, catnip can also be prepared as a tea. Though I have to admit that my secret fantasy is to cut large quantities of catnip, strew it around the sidewalks and porches of West Philadelphia, and watch all the neighborhood cats stumble and writhe around, high off their asses. (Sorry, I know this is implicitly a family-friendly blog because it's just about our CSA share. But there are just so many cats here, and who doesn't love a little bioterrorism now and then?)
Tonight Jen and I made a platoon, however many that is, of breaded & fried eggplant slices. In this case I believe we made about 100 slices. We let them cool on a wire rack before stuffing them into freezer bags to store for the long term. Well, probably not as long as we might think because I tend to eat them often. Lately I have been making a wrap of the fried slices with tomatoes and a pesto spread (pesto base with no oil).
Jen previously wrote post about how to make them here.
