what I cooked from the farm this week

Hi friends!

I thought I’d try something a little different this Tuesday. Instead of one formal recipe, I’m going to run you through what I took home from the farm this past weekend and how I prepared it all. There are tons of ideas and mini recipes below!!

For a little context, every week at Long Season Farm, those of us who work there get a “staff share” which means we can request anything from that week’s market list and it becomes part of our general harvest list. Just like all the produce we sell, everything we take home goes through our wash and pack where Allison makes it all look extra beautiful! Taking home whatever I want every week is one of my favorite parts of my part-time job at the farm.

I get a lot of questions from folks who are overwhelmed by their CSA shares or who buy a lot at the farmers market and then get home and don’t know what to do with it all. I also hear from a lot of frustrated folks who end up throwing out produce because they didn’t get to it before it wilted or rotted. I, like you, really hate wasting food and wasting money!

So I thought it would be fun and hopefully useful to run you through what I do. No paywall today because there’s not a formal recipe and I don’t want to gatekeep vegetable knowledge! But, as always, if you enjoy this and want to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today — it’s the easiest way to support me + my work!!

P.S. If you enjoy this, let me know and I’ll do it again because I take home tons of vegetables every week and the items change frequently because (a) we grow a lot of fun stuff and (b) the seasons change!

This is what I took home this past Saturday:

If I have the time and energy, I really like to do a “power hour” of cooking when I unpack my vegetables so I have an easier time adding them to meals throughout the week. It also allows everything to take up less space in my fridge. I did this with everything except the kale and romano beans, both of which I just threw in the fridge to deal with enjoy later.

The first thing I did when I got home with my vegetables was tear the greens off of the beets and throw them in the compost, by which I mean my Mill (not sponsored! I just love that thing and think it was worth every penny even though it was so many pennies…here’s a referral code to get $150 off, which is just something anyone who owns a Mill can offer…not special!). Yes, beet greens are totally edible. But I don’t love them and I think it’s best to eat things that bring us joy. Moving on.

I threw the beetroots themselves, peel and all, into a saucepan and covered them with water. I brought the water to a boil and then covered the pot, turned the heat to low, and let the beets simmer until I could easily pierce them with a paring knife. I didn’t look at a clock. I just tried not to forget about them. I bet they were in there for about 45 minutes. Once they were tender, I rinsed them with cool water and then ripped a paper towel in half and put a half in each of my hands and rubbed the skin off the beets with the paper towels. Easy! I cut them into wedges, put them in a container, drizzled them with olive oil and sherry vinegar and seasoned them with salt and pepper. Once they were totally cool, I popped a lid on the container and parked them in the fridge to enjoy throughout the week. Marinated beets are great as part of a plate of lots of salads and things, as a topper for a rice bowl, as the base for a salad with other things like goat cheese…whatever!

Then I decided to make a sorta salsa/pesto type of mixture with the scallions and cilantro. So I trimmed off the root ends of the scallions, then cut them into inch-long pieces and put them on a parchment liner that fits in my air fryer. I tossed the chopped scallions with a little bit of olive oil and salt (using the parchment as a “bowl” so I didn’t have to wash an actual bowl) and then air fried them for about 6 minutes at 400ºF. Just long enough to get them a tiny bit charred and wilted. Then I put them in my blender with the entire bunch of cilantro, the juice of 2 limes and a big squeeze of olive oil (approximately 3 tablespoons). I seasoned this mixture with salt and put it in a jar. I’ve been eating it on everything. Tortilla chips. Scrambled eggs. Cold roast chicken. Anything!

Then I decided to turn on my actual oven, which I generally avoid in the summer, but it was early in the morning and pretty cool. So I cranked it to 425ºF. I cubed all four of my eggplants and put them on a sheet pan and drizzled them with olive oil and seasoned them with salt.

I did the same thing with all of my tomatoes. I debated keeping them fresh instead of cooked, but I was craving the concentrated flavor of roasted tomatoes so I went ahead and cooked them. I have access to these amazing tomatoes regularly so cooking a bunch of them at their peak is definitely a flex of my tomato privilege!

I roasted the eggplant and tomatoes, rotating the trays after about 20 minutes, until the eggplant was browned and soft and the tomatoes were totally collapsed, maybe 40 minutes total.

The roasted eggplant cubes have and will continue to find their way into many meals. I really love them cold topped with the scallion/cilantro sauce. I also look forward to tossing them with pasta and tomato sauce.

SPEAKING OF TOMATO SAUCE, since I had my blender out anyway, I turned the roasted tomatoes into a smooth tomato sauce.

Pro tip: the best way I’ve found to store fresh basil (and what I would have done if I hadn’t blended the basil into the sauce) is to stand the stems in a tall glass of water and then put a plastic grocery bag over the leaves and store the whole thing in the fridge. It takes up a lot of space but it works! The leaves stay fresh and green and don’t get wilted or browned.

I was hungry after all of that cooking, so I had some of the eggplant and beets with some rotisserie chicken I had picked up at the grocery store. I ended up adding more of the cilantro/scallion sauce because I can’t get enough.

The next day, I cooked the kale with some old carrots I have in my fridge that we harvested almost a year ago…root vegetables last!!! There was also an onion and ground turkey in the mix and I threw it all on baked potatoes for dinner and had enough to bring to lunch at the farm the next day. A full circle moment if there ever was one. I will write up notes for this recipe soon because this is the second time in a week I have made it and IT IS SO GOOD. Stay tuned….

I have not yet cooked the romano beans, but they are safely tucked away in my fridge and I will likely be making them tonight. Grilled and tossed with the cilantro + scallion sauce? Maybe I’ll blanch them and add them to a salad with the beets. Or slow cook them with some of the roasted tomato sauce and eat them on rice…who knows?!?! Not even me!

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