Is it possible that we are through the early-summer mostly-leafy-vegetables grow season!? Perhaps not entirely. It’s our first week of not getting lettuce – big bunch of kale, yes, but no lettuce! Loads of summer squash and a bit of broccoli will have staring roles in this week’s dishes, along with 2 pints of blueberries and 7 fresh peaches.
Tasty Contents
- 2 Pints Blueberries
- 1 Bunch Kale
- 1 Bunch Chives
- 1 Quart Pickling Cucumbers
- 2 cups Broccoli
- 1 Quart Zucchini
- 1 Quart Yellow Squash
- 7 Peaches
The Prepping
First things first, we needed to wash, dry and properly store the veggies, to get it to last all week.
We rinsed off the pickling cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, broccoli, and peaches, so that they’re all meal ready. We’ll rinse the blueberries when they’re about to be used, and we stuck the bunch of kale in a plastic bag, put in the crisper section to keep it fresh. Likewise the chives were placed in a cup of water and stored in the fridge.
The Planning
We seriously eat a lot of pickles, so we will be creating another batch of refrigerator pickles, reusing the brine we made last week. This is a super frugal thing to do! Our CSA recommended a recipe for a kale based pesto, and suggested adding to it the chives. We are usually up for trying anything, so we’ll plan on making it this week.
The peaches arrived very fresh. And there are seven of them, along with 2 pints of blueberries. The no-to-low sugar pectin we have contains recipes for simple jams, including blueberry and peach jam. Since the recipes for either are the same, we figure we can do a blueberry-peach jam medley. We’re thinking about a 50/50 mixture or something more peach forward. It’ll depend on how many cups of chopped peaches we get from the bunch.
Squash Enchiladas
With so much squash this week, we will need to up the amount of squash some of our recipes call for – it’ll probably all work out. One recipe that immediately comes to mind is the Black Bean Enchiladas in Thug Kitchen. The enchilada filling consists of a mixture of sweet potato, black beans, and shredded yellow squash. This is an amazing recipe we’ve made plenty of times before and hope that doubling, or even tripling the squash content will still create delicious enchiladas.
Summary
We are starting to get into the full swing of things, incorporating added vegetables into our main and side dishes. Recommitting to canning and pickling has also brought us back the joys of homemade treats. This week we are looking forward to inventing our own jam flavor profile and sharing it with friends and family!
CSAeats 