Week 7 and Happy August!

Hello-
It's already August! Where has the time gone? Full days fly by, I guess.
Your bags are nice and heavy this week and filled with summer goodies.

Here's the list:
Summer Squash
Cucumbers (some of them may be white or yellowy-brown... they're supposed to be that way, I promise :>)
Salad Mix
Arugula (small bag of spicy greens)
Green & Yellow Beans
A bunch of young red onions
Sweet Peppers (long wrinkly Italian fry peppers or regular blocky sweet peppers)
Tomatoes!
Cherry tomatoes
Herbs- Cilantro and Summer Savory. The cilantro has a strong pungent flavor, and it's excellent in many dishes, and the savory looks vaguely like rosemary, and is reported to be especially nice with beans.

Cilantro (above) & Savory (below)

If you're curious what varieties of tomatoes you're receiving, check out my post from last year to see pictures and descriptions of many of the kinds of tomatoes we grow. There are so many beautiful colors and such diverse flavors! Make sure you have a few of them on toast with a little mayonnaise and salt and pepper- nothing else quite sets off a tomato's natural flavor as well, in my humble opinion.

Also, I was thinking of trying to make Gazpacho sometime, and I was wondering if any of you had a recipe for it that you would recommend.... Sounds like a tasty dinner on some hot August night.

I was making some salad the other night and I realized how much I use my handy dandy salad spinner. Many people never invest in a salad spinner, but it's a great kitchen tool, especially when you're getting lots of greens through a CSA. On the CSA days (Tuesday & Thursday) Sue, Kelli and I cut all the lettuce, spinach, beet greens, baby swiss chard or asian greens that will be going into the Salad mix, and quickly rush the fragile greens to the shaded porch to get it out of the sun and heat. There are a couple sinks on the porch, and we soak all the greens in those sinks to cool them off, help them stay crisp and wash off any dirt that might have splashed up on them out in the field. Then we spin the greens to dry them in large industrial salad spinners that look like this:

Once they are relatively dry, we mix all the different greens together in large bins, then weigh and bag them, and rush them down to the cooler to keep them in pristine condition until it's time to pack them into peoples' bags. Anyways, what I'm leading up to is that although we wash them once at the farm, a second rinse might be necessary before putting them in the salad bowl to make sure nothing gritty is left on the leaves. And after washing them, to avoid having soggy salad, a home-sized spinner comes in handy. They are available at the hardware store, in many grocery stores, and places like Target. They often look like this:

Kelli Johnson gave me this recipe and raves about how tasty it is! It also uses many of this week's veggies if you want to give it a try:

Wegman's Arugula Peach Salad
Serves: 4
Active Time: 20 mins
Total Time: 20 mins
Ingredients

1 pkg (8 oz) sliced green beans
1 pkg (5 oz) Arugula
Cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 or 2 small red onions, peeled, thinly sliced
1 peach, wedged
Juice of one fresh lemon (2-3 Tbsp)
3 Tbsp Wegmans Basting Oil
3 Tbsp Wegmans Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 tsp salt
Directions

1. Steam or boil sliced green beans until tender-crisp. Transfer to bowl of ice water 2 min. Drain well.

2. Combine beans, arugula, tomatoes, onion, and peaches in large bowl.

3. Whisk together lemon juice, basting oil, olive oil, and salt in small bowl. Toss with salad.


And here's a dessert cake that uses some of the leftover zucchini (or any kind of summer squash)
Chocolate-Zucchini Snack Cake
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate

1) Pre-heat the oven to 350. Grease a 11 x 8 baking pan.
2) Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
3) Whisk the eggs, sugar, yogurt, oil and vanilla in a medium bowl. Add the zucchini and 1 1/2 cups of the chocolate chips. Stir into the flour mixture until just blended. Spread in the pan and bake for 30 minutes or until lightly browned and a toothpick into the center comes out clean.
4) Remove from the oven and sprinkle the remaining 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips over the cake. Spread with a spatula as they melt to form an icing, placing it back in the warm oven for about a minute to melt them completely.
Eat!