What does one family do with several heads of lettuce a week? There’s no way to save lettuce for the winter months (while I suppose I could try to dehydrate it I don’t think the results would be edible). Luckily I eat a lot of salad. I’m trying to get my kids to enjoy it more; currently only 1 out of 4 eats it willingly.
I could go the low-carb diet route and start using large lettuce leaves instead of bread to hold my sandwiches and wraps together. I could also eat more BLTs, going heavy on the L. Instead I try to find “fancy” ways to eat salad. To me, any salad that doesn’t just consist of the average lettuce, tomato and cucumber combination can count as fancy. One of my favorites is a Greek salad: sliced black olives, cherry tomatoes, crumbled feta cheese and of course lots of farm-grown romaine lettuce.
A new favorite fancy salad involves beets. I need to credit my friend Eileen with helping me get over my fear of fresh beets and I’m glad she did. The fresh ones are, not surprisingly, much tastier than the canned ones. According to Eileen, all one needs to do is “cut the tops off and then boil the heck out of them until the skins just slide off.” She also suggested serving the beets chopped in a salad along with some crumbled blue or feta cheese, saying the sweet juiciness of the beets and the creaminess of the cheese were reminiscent of the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches of her youth.
Another fancy favorite involves chopped apples, chopped toasted walnuts, and small cubes of cheddar cheese atop a bed of lettuce. By keeping variety in my salads, it’s easy to finish off the lettuce in a week.
Spinach is also in abundance this time of year. Spinach is a little easier to save than lettuce; I could blanch and freeze some for later use. As with the lettuce, only 1 out of 4 of my kids eats it willingly (though this time it’s a different one than the lettuce muncher). There’s only really one way I make spinach, but then I use it several ways. I sauté a few pressed garlic cloves in olive oil, throw in the spinach and close the lid until the spinach wilts. Mix it up with the garlicky olive oil and there you have it. We eat it like this as a side dish or added to recipes like Vegetarian Greek-style Pot Pie*. My husband’s new favorite is to put some right on top of a slice of plain pizza.
I know that later in the summer we’ll have an overabundance of different kinds of vegetables—tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini. The tomatoes will be eaten and made into sauce. The cucumbers will be devoured by my kids—sometimes whole, skin and all. The zucchini will be grilled, sautéed and baked as well as shredded and frozen. As a matter of fact, I only just finished off the last of the frozen shredded zucchini from last summer in a batch of muffins and sweet bread. As a last resort, I celebrate the holiday established by Pennsylvanian Tom Roy…”Sneak some zucchini onto your neighbor’s porch night.” (August 8th) As long as nobody returns the favor, we’ll do all right.
*Vegetarian Greek Style Potpie
Ingredients:
Your favorite home made or store bought pie crust (top and bottom)
3-4 medium potatoes, scrubbed and diced
2 bunches spinach
2 cups crumbled low-fat feta cheese
2 T Olive oil
3-4 garlic cloves, pressed
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare pie plate with bottom crust.
2. Bring one pot of water to boil. Add potatoes and cook for 10 minutes, drain.
3. Prepare garlicky spinach (Heat 2 T olive oil in large pot. Add garlic, stir, and sauté 1-2 minutes until garlic is soft and fragrant. Add spinach. Put lid on pot, checking every minute or so until spinach is wilted. Mix with olive oil/garlic)
4. Place ½ potatoes in piecrust. Add ½ spinach and cheese. Repeat and then place top crust on. Flute edges and vent.
5. Bake for 40 minutes. Let sit for 10 minutes before cutting.
—Written by Guest Blogger and CSA Member Gina Sampaio
If you notice a hole in the upper left-hand corner of your Farmers' Almanac, don't return it to the store! That hole isn't a defect; it's a part of history. Starting with the first edition of the Farmers' Almanac in 1818, readers used to nail holes into the corners to hang it up in their homes, barns, and outhouses (to provide both reading material and toilet paper). In 1910, the Almanac's publishers began pre-drilling holes in the corners to make it even easier for readers to keep all of that invaluable information (and paper) handy.
