This Weeks Veggies
Tomatoes – Red Slicers, Cherries, Brandywine Heirloom and some green tomatoes. See the links below for great green tomato recipes.
Cucumbers
Holier Than Thou Lettuce
Braising Greens
Scallions
Melons
Beets
Farm Life
The frost warning last Friday sent us scrambling to bring in crops and cover the most tender vegetables. Your lettuce is now all under cover. The good news is that you will continue to have lettuce until our first hard frost/freeze. The not so good news is that the cover creates an inviting environment for Flea Beetles and slugs. The result is hole-y lettuce…. hence the moniker “Holier Than Thou” Lettuce.
The harvest scramble meant that we stripped the vines of all of the cucumbers, tomatoes and melons still in the fields. In the process I found lots of nice surprises. There were ripe melons hiding under those big leaves… lots of them.
Your melons are quit ripe. If you don’t think you will get them eaten quickly, try freezing them. Just cube or ball them, lay them on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Transfer them to a container when they are firm. The frozen melon balls will be great in the bottom of your champagne glass on New Years Eve.
Featured Veggie of the Week
Bringing all the tomatoes in from the field means we now have lots of nice green tomatoes. There are lots of things you can do with them in addition to the classic Fried Green Tomatoes. In fact, The Oregonion recently ran a special feature on them in the Fooday section. To see the recipes go to www.oregonlive.com and search for “Green Tomato”. Unfortunately, the recipes have already been moved to the archives. In order to access them you will have to register as a user. I have also included some links to Cook.com recipes if you would prefer not to register with The Oregonian.
This link is for Green Tomato Pie.
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1637,156190-252199,00.html
Cooks.com also has a recipe for classic Fried Green Tomatoes
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1650,132183-252192,00.html
There’s even a recipe for pickling small green tomatoes. Since this recipe does not call for a boiling water bath or pressure canning, it would be safest to store them in the fridge.
http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1736,153184-243194,00.html
