meansoybean

A rainy start to the organic growing season and, as in previous years with the farm, the first basket has a lot of leafy vegetables. If you didn’t know, leafies like cool weather, which explains their abundance.

I got yummy garlic scapes, as well as radishes, young green onions, pak choy, frizzy lettuce, mesclun, mizuna and spinach. Once home, I busily worked on cleaning all the goodies in a DIY vegetable soak — good thing because there was an earwig hiding in the lettuce! (Makes me shiver even now).

The bulk item of the day was oregano and I took a HUGE bunch because I cleaned out my spices before moving. You can bet it’ll be dried and stored for future. I couldn’t understand why more people didn’t take some.

Did I mention I was a busy bee tonight? I took the organic rhubarb from 2 weeks ago (procrastinate much?) and made this syrup. I also added a bit of ginger and the end result promises tasty, light summer drinks. Yum! And sooooo much easier than making a pie.

Well, not quite yet. Every year all farm partners get an early (and free) basket that consists of just a few items and a 4-inch basil plant. Today I got a very nice bunch of asparagus, two frilly lettuce heads, a bag of sunchokes and some rhubarb. I lightly fried the green spears in olive oil with some garlic, spritzed on lemon juice and finished em off with salt and pepper. Yum!

Not sure what to do with the rhubarb, so I might just chop up the stalks and freeze them for now. I’m pretty bad at making crusts so I think I’ll steer clear of pies. Any ideas?

Hmmm, you’re thinking to yourself, what the hell is all this about? Check it out here, over at swiss-miss.com

When I was walking around DUMBO last summer, I wondered where her studio was. I’m not actually sure how her blog ended up in my list, but it’s been there for a really long time. I check it everyday. It’s often a source of very cool discoveries and smiles. Be sure to say YAY for swissmiss’ 5th in the Flickr pool!

I’ve made this only a handful of times, and it never ceases to amaze me how yummy this is. Following Chow Vegan’s instructions, sorta kinda, I made this over the weekend and just polished off the remainders. I can’t find canned Jackfruit in brine so I buy the frozen green fruit from Hawai. I neglected to sauté first, and I actually marinated the squeezed-out fruit for a whole day in the fridge. I dumped the whole lot into a well-heated cast iron pan and added a few tablespoons of olive oil for good measure. I cooked it on minimum heat for about 2 hours, checking on it every 20 minutes or so to avoid super-burning. Eat it right away if you must, but waiting at least a day is really worth the wait.