Tomatoes!

First harvest-in-bulk

The slicers, sauce, and grape tomatoes are in!  If you don't know what that means, here's a rundown of my use of the terms:

Slicers or beefsteak are excellent for sandwiches or other fresh slices of tomatoes.  They are the traditional round tomato shape and juicier than sauce tomatoes.  Some of ours are heirloom Brandywines, Mortgage Lifter, Rose de Berne (pink), Cherokee Purple (red/purple), and Pruden's Purple (red/purple).

Sauce tomatoes are usually more elongated.  They are more meaty/less juicy than slicers.  Common ones are called Roma or Marzano.  We are growing Amish Paste, Opalka, Grandma Mary's, Orange Banana (orange).

Grape tomatoes are "two-bite" cherry tomatoes... a little too large to eat in one bite, but small enough to snack on.  They are very prolific plants, so we will have buckets available.  This variety is Principe Borghese, and is the traditional variety used for sun-dried tomatoes. We will also have cherry tomatoes.

Not all of these will be available at any one time, but we should have a good daily variety.  If you are interested, please message us through our facebook page!

 And the beautiful beginnings of tomato sauce...

Produce Spotlight: All-Blue Potatoes

 Have you heard about All Blue Potatoes?  Have you wondered what all the hype was about?

These lovely gems are not the most exciting item fresh from the earth.  In fact, they tend to be so dirt colored that we sift through several times to make sure we didn't miss any of their hidden beauty.

Once scrubbed, you might begin to see their attraction.  The beautiful purple color is different from anything I've ever seen in my other potatoes!

After slicing, I'm always fascinated.  Look at the gorgeous marbling!

Some color will be lost after cooking.  Boiling tends to make them white all through, but when we grill them, they tend to retain a portion of their exotic coloring.

The Old Farmer's Almanac covered the origin of all blue potatoes in this interesting blog post.

Grilled Veggies

Grilling zucchini is probably our favorite way to consume this prolific vegetable.  If you've never grilled veggies before, it's easy to prepare and can be placed on the grill with your meat.

Start by washing your veggies.  Slice off the ends and any bad spots.  Peel and remove the seeds if desired.

Slice into 1/4"-1/2" slices for softer vegetables (summer squash, for example).  

Lay out a sheet of foil.  Coat the foil with oil (I use olive oil and a brush; you can also use cooking spray).  Place the zucchini in a single layer half the size of the foil and leave room around the edges to fold them up at the end.  Add salt and pepper or your favorite herbs and spices.  Add a second layer if desired.  I usually stop at two layers so the center is done when the edges are.  Coat with olive oil again.

Fold up the center edges twice, then fold both ends twice.  Folding twice helps keep in the oil and juices.  If you're worried about over-packing the packet, wrap in another sheet of foil.  Leaking oil can cause unexpected flare-ups on the grill!

Harder vegetables, such as potatoes, should be sliced more thinly to allow them to cook in the same amount of time.  I use a mandolin or a sharp knife.  Some people mix veggies in their packets, but I tend to find the zucchini limp and the potatoes raw, so I keep each one to its own foil packet.

Grill for 7 minutes on either side over direct heat.  Be careful when opening the foil packets: there will be steam and hot juices.

Enjoy!

Egyptian Tree Onions

Remember the wild abandon of these plants?

Welcome to the plant known as Egyptian tree onion, walking onion, and tree onion, as well as other names.

We planted ours several years ago, and, for the most part, have alternately weeded and ignored them.  Finally, this year, as we make plans to clean up the original potato bed, we needed to harvest the entire crop.  The entire area will be thoroughly tilled and hopefully compost added before next year's planting.

First, the lovely bulbils...

Then the onions themselves, which remind me more of shallots in size and their property of dividing every year.

Either part can be eaten.  They are a bit spicier than a regular onion.

To read more about the tree onion, check out this link.  If you are interested in purchasing some (either for eating as a spicy onion or to plant your own perennial onion crop), please leave a comment or email us!

Latest Harvest

All-Blue potatoes

Candy onions

Kennebec

Tree onion bulbils