Showing posts with label milkweed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label milkweed. Show all posts

Friday, August 3, 2012

Blight

Yesterday at the farm share I was sad to discover that they have again been hit by tomato blight.  There was a huge pile of green tomatoes and a little blackboard with info about the blight.  Basically, there won't be any more tomatoes from the farm and if we have tomatoes at home we should not go near them until we'd changed clothes and showered.  I haven't seen any sign of it on my tomatoes at home, but I haven't really been around much to fuss over them.  That's probably for the best anyway.

The other night, to use up some of last week's share, I made a puttanesca sauce a la Lemony Snicket.  I sort of threw everything I could think of into it:  eggplant, bell pepper, arugula, garlic scapes, peas, every single milkweed caper I made, and a jar of sauce.  It came out quite tasty although I think, were I to do it again, I'd skip the peas.

Since this was the first week we were splitting the share, I have a more manageable amount of veggies.  I came home with lettuce, arugula, mustard greens, tat soi, summer squash, bell pepper, potatoes, garlic, onions, carrots, cucumbers, parsley, and a little more winter savory (to dry).  We had a big salad of the greens (minus the tat soi, that's for today) with bell pepper, cucumber, raw corn, and the cold leftover roasted onions from a dish I made earlier in the week.  The onions drizzled with balsamic vinegar were just wonderful!

I have an overnight shift tonight so I'm not too excited about doing any major projects today, but hopefully before the weekend is out I'll make either green tomato ketchup or chutney or both, depending on how many tomatoes I have.  I think tonight for dinner I'll make an arugula risotto and fry up the squash and tat soi.  That will at least finish up the rapidly perishable items.  I still have kohlrabi and beets from before we left, 1 eggplant and 2 bell peppers from last week's share, and the rest of yesterday's to work through.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

A Capers Caper

It so happens that I am solo this weekend, so I took the car in to get the tires rotated and brought the bike along.  There is a narrow gauge rail trail near the tire dealership which has a lot of geocaches on it (Yes, I'm one of those people) so I thought I'd do something productive while I waited.  I have never seen so much poison ivy in my life.  But I did also see milkweed plants with buds and I remembered seeing this recipe for milkweed bud capers.  Why not?

I grabbed 3 clusters of buds, tucked them in the pannier, and biked away.

Now that I'm home, I can start the process.  The first step is to brine the buds for 3 days:
Incidentally, I did find 7 geocaches before the car was ready.  One of them took me a very long time and involved a LOT of poison ivy.  I think I might have some on my ankle....