What's Cooking?

On Wednesday, as I mentioned, I went to Madison to do some gardening and stopped by the farmers' market. You've seen some of that haul. What I didn't mention earlier is that Wednesday is also our CSA pickup day. Michael was headed south for Scrabble Club, and offered to pick up our share (in DeForest) this week so I could get to book club on time. I didn't see the produce until late last night, but was excited to find:
4 more kohlrabi, including one that is purple (not pictured)
green onions
radishes
sage
four types of lettuce
peas!! (two bags!)

I love this picture. Yay Produce!
Earlier in the day I called Michael to see if he would please take a package of sausages out of the freezer for dinner. Not only did he take out the sausage, he also organized the freezer for me! Am I a lucky woman or what?

I invented a really cool dish late last summer that I blogged about here:
and I made it again tonight. The vegetable selection was different, of course, but the results were still good.

I used:
1 monster kohlrabi and one regular kohlrabi from my garden
All 4 zucchinis that I picked yesterday
2 onions from the garden (one yellow, one white)
2 cloves of early garlic from the farmers' market
2 tomatoes (1 lb) from the farmers' market
4 Jordanal sausages

Originally, I had planned to include the turnips, as a stand-in for potatoes, but decided to save them for the soup I plan to make tomorrow with my carrots and the rest of my onions. Instead of the turnips, I put all four zucchini in this pot. It made enough for at least four servings . . . and it is apparently good enough that Michael helped himself to a late-night snack of seasonal veggie stew a few minutes ago. (I just came up with that unoriginal but appropriate name - seasonal veggie stew - and I think it is a keeper.)
I'm pretty scared of under-cooked meat (even if it isn't from a CAFO) so I started cooking the sausages before I chopped any of the veggies.
kohlrabi (peeled) and zucchini
Just in case you're like one of those kids in Huntington, WV, as shown in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, who can't identify vegetables, this is onion and garlic (on the left) and tomato (on the right).
I drizzled a little bit of olive oil in this pan, let it heat up, then tossed in the kohlrabi and zucchini. Note to self: the zucchini doesn't need nearly as much cooking time as the kohlrabi. I already knew this, but I was being a lazy chef and had put them all in one bowl during the chopping process.
I let the kohlrabi and zucchini cook down a little, then added the onions and garlic . . . after they had a nice chance to mellow, I added the tomatoes. I could have added them sooner, but didn't want them to lose their color, which I thought they might.
Finally, when I felt certain the sausages were cooked, I sliced them up tossed them in, and let the whole thing simmer for a few minutes while Michael took Oliver for a walk and I finished making the salad.

I would have added basil, but my little basil plant in a pot out back is not doing very well. I think I damaged it when I pulled leaves off last week for a capreese salad. More on basil in a minute.

I made a salad with 3 of our 4 types of lettuce, green onions, raw kohlrabi, and radishes. We are out of the really yummy raspberry pecan salad dressing that we had been using on our strawberry salads earlier this summer, so Michael used honey mustard dressing. I decided to go for a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic instead, and loved it, and felt good about my non-local but less-processed dressing. Unfortunately I then adulterated my local salad by adding a little bit of feta cheese (which I could get locally but did not on this occasion) and kalamata olives (which will never be local, and have certainly seen their share of processing). Oh well, the salad was still excellent!
Finally, I made a loaf of yogurt rye bread today. I had considered making croutons with it, but decided against it for a few reasons. First, the last time I made croutons I actually made too many and ended up throwing a cup and a half away - which made me very sad. I was disappointed with myself for the waste. Second, I was already using the good crouton pot for my veggie stew. Third, I've only made croutons with home made french bread before. Normally I would not care what kind of bread my croutons were made from, but I'm still trying to get the hang of making bread in Wisconsin - with our variable humidity - and while my last 3 loaves (or more?) of French bread exploded in the bread machine (I needed to use tools to get the last 2 loaves out), this loaf of rye bread was a very squat, dense thing, and I wasn't sure it would make very good croutons. (It tastes excellent, even if it is squatty - I had a slice with strawberry jam for dessert.) Rather than croutons, we just had a slice of buttered bread with dinner.

Now, back to that basil. I can't believe I forgot to take pictures yesterday or mention it earlier! The main reason I went to garden in Madison yesterday was to "minimally process" my basil. I bought two little basil plants (and one parsley plant which has since been overtaken by the vine patch) at the farmers' market, and planted it among the tomatoes, according to some "Companion Planting" literature I found. It is really doing well! I have a book called "Grocery Gardening" by Jean Ann Van Krevelen that has some ideas about how to preserve produce. I'm not a huge fan of drying herbs (although the sage from our CSA is hanging upside down in the kitchen as I type) so I was delighted to read that it is actually more tasty to preserve basil by freezing it. Van Krevelen says, "Just toss your clean and dry harvested leaves into a blender with just enough olive oil to loosen the mixture. Then throw it into a freezer bag and pop it in the freezer. When you need basil for a recipe, just break off a piece and add; it will taste like you just harvested it" (Grocery Gardening, 42). I picked a (child's) bucket full of basil and I'd say it turned out to be maybe 3/4 of a cup of finished product. I could have broken off a piece and added it to my dish, but that seemed silly - the reason I put that basil in the freezer is to have basil in the winter when I don't have a plant growing outside.

When my mom and I planned to harvest some basil yesterday, I had *no* idea that all of that other produce would be ready too. The zucchini and green beans were a total surprise. We knew the turnips were ready but I wasn't sure if I should pick them yet - I thought they were supposed to be ready in the fall. I also checked on my potatoes, and was pleased to see that they are, in fact, growing - I didn't think they were last week. I covered them with more straw to make sure that they are not exposed to the light. I picked four cherry tomatoes, and was pleased to see quite a few large green tomatoes on the tomato plants. There are flowers on the pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, and winter squash vines, as well as on the green pepper plant. Things are going to be getting busy in the garden in a hurry!

I actually took a few pictures of our wild, overgrown haven of a garden (in the downpour) but I could not get them to attach to a message in gmail, and they are now saved on my dad's computer an hour away. Stay tuned, maybe I will post them later.