CSA Share---August 19th

Peak season! Another 2-sack day.

1.5# green beans (beautiful!)
6 ears sweet corn (starchy! starchy!)
1 bell pepper
1 cubanelle pepper
1 huge jalepeno pepper
4 small eggplant
1 bunch fennel fern
2 cucumbers
9 teeny summer squash
1 large head green lettuce (bitter!)
1 dozen eggs

They sent eggs this week because their outdoor tomatoes weren't quite ready. They were giving us greenhouse tomatoes up until now. We left the fennel there this time. I'm not feeling adventurous this week. The green beans are blanched for 3 minutes and then frozen in quart-size freezer bags. I love, love, love garden green beans, even when slightly slimy and limp from freezing. The flavor can't be beat.

I learned something interesting about green bean flavor this week. The seeds inside make a real difference. I picked my own garden's green beans long before the seeds developed. The CSA beans were WAY overripe with plump green seeds inside the pods...or so I thought. Then I blanched the two batches and tasted each. What a difference! The plump CSA beans had a richer, green-beanier flavor that I actually preferred over the delicate, bland, skinny ones. Well, I actually like them both very much. I will enjoy both of them all winter, but now I have a choice between delicate and robust flavors :)

Confession: I haven't eaten any squash over the last 3 weeks. Terrible, huh? Just don't feel like cooking it or eating it by myself. It's been rotting in my fridge :( Same with the eggplant, mostly. I did saute and puree some squash and eggplant to put into a spaghetti sauce. That worked REALLY well because Bobby ended up eating some of it, too (along with the 4 missionaries we were feeding for dinner).

It's been a blessing that my tomatoes haven't produced one ripe tomato yet. I need the canning break.