Vert-à-Go

I made this quick stirfry the other night–with the exception of the root ginger, basmati rice, peanuts, and sauces, it was entirely locally-produced. You could just as easily make a protein-rich vegetarian version with some locally-made tofu from the Chung Wah Chinese Grocery (at 201 20th Street West).

• one sliced shoulder pork chop (Pine View Farms)
• broccoli, green onion, garlic, green pepper (Saskatoon Farmers’ Market)
• chopped swiss chard stems (the community garden plot)

sauce: 1Tb light soy sauce, 1Tb sherry, 1tsp sesame oil

photo: the first tomato of the year from my garden. Anyone for gazpacho?

My son enthusiastically (but somewhat prematurely) picked the first tomato off one of the Prairie Pride tomato plants I have growing in 5 gallon pails in the back garden last week (I quickly ran out of space in the ground for all of the varieties that I wanted to try this spring–Sweet Millions, Sun Gold, Green Zebra, Mr Stripey, roma, Thai Pink Egg, Toma Verde, and another tomatillo). We finished ripening it in a bowl in the kitchen and it was delicious.

This has been a very grey and rainy summer, and the tomatoes have not had nearly the amount of sun that they would have liked. In particular, the tomato plants on the side of the garden that gets fewer hours of sun are looking rather spindly. I’m hoping they will still be able to catch up a bit, but we will really need some substantial light and heat. The tomatillos, on the other hand, are about 5 feet tall and taking over the world! I have been dreaming of my sisters’ tomatillo soup ever since I spotted the plants at the nursery this spring, so they can grow 10 feet tall and sprout a million of them if they like.

This year has been an experiment in using an organic rather than chemical fertiliser–I just hope we get some more sun soon so that I can properly judge how the performance compares. I need to get out there this weekend and reinforce the staking–I’m using the tomato spirals from Lee Valley (no longer available??) this year and they’re working really well. So far I haven’t had any breakage casualties from the torrential rains we’ve been having this summer (we’ve missed the hail so far, thank goodness).

Whether or not you should prune your tomatoes seems to be a hotly debated topic–should you sacrifice quantity of fruit to achieve greater size and flavour? I do tend to pinch off the small suckers after a certain point (but the most important variable I seem to deal with every year in terms of tomato production is really whether we get enough sun or not).

Here is a video that shows you exactly how to prune your tomatoes

And another very comprehensive article on the same subject

This article by Jackie Bantle from the U of S Gardenline on summertime care of tomatoes also has some good advice on how to harvest your tomatoes:

“Harvesting tomatoes requires a gentle hand to remove the fruit without damaging the plant or unripe fruits that may be closely associated with the one you are picking. You must pick tomatoes at the right stage of maturity. Tomatoes will ripen naturally off the vine once they have reached the stage of maturity known as “hard green,” but a tomato is considered to be mature only when it has reached the “breaker stage” of development.

The breaker stage is indicated by the appearance of any pink or red colour on the fruit. At this point, all the chemical actions associated with ripening will proceed identically either on or off the plant, so the tomato that is picked at this point will be indistinguishable from one that has ripened fully on the vine. If a tomato has been picked prior to full ripeness it should be stored at normal room temperatures of about 15-20°C until ripe.”

As soon as I’ve got enough of the cherry tomatoes ripened, I’ll be making Madhur Jaffrey’s Moroccan tomato salad–I can’t wait. I’m also really hoping to get enough so that I can get my mom to teach me how to make canned salsa.

How are everyone else’s tomatoes doing?

Streetscaping of Avenue B has started this week, so the entire stretch of Ave B on the west side of the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market is now fenced off. You can still park in the parking lot and there is access at the Ave B & 19th Street intersection to cross over to the market.

Debby Claude, manager of operations, suggests that you avoid the west side entirely for the next month if possible and enter by the east side (by the outdoor selling area). She says there is usually parking down Avenue A (a few street spaces and a small paid lot), or you can park about a block away behind the old Adilman’s building at the corner of Ave B & 20th Street. And if you’re arriving by foot or on bike, then you don’t have to worry about the parking palaver at all. Clever you!

photo: spinach soup–it’s all the rage with the preschool set (today, at any rate)

As I mentioned last week, we’ve been doing some thinning out at the community garden plot. Some of the spinach had gotten quite large and was starting to bolt, so we stripped it, stuffed it into a couple of bags, and stuck it in the fridge. Then I got busy and it sat there for a week. Or was that nearly two? Oops!

I tentatively stuck my nose in the bags yesterday and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared. Greens picked from the garden will last way longer than those you buy from the store because they haven’t taken a week or longer to get to you (incidentally, your risk of getting sick from home-grown greens is also way smaller than commercially-grown greens, although you still need to take sensible precautions while growing and preparing them). You wouldn’t want to make a salad out of the leaves in my fridge at this point–the leaves were rather mature to be eaten raw, some of it was wilting a bit (ok, a few of them were wilting a lot), and there were some yellow/damaged leaves which needed to be culled. It didn’t look real pretty, but overall it was still perfectly edible–a perfect candidate for soup.

I made a very quick and easy cream of spinach soup for lunch from Joy of Cooking: All About Vegetarian Cooking (2 minutes of chopping, 8 minutes of stirring, 5 minutes of casual supervision/pureeing resulted in 2 meals’ worth of soup). The recipe isn’t available online so I won’t infringe copyright, but I would highly recommend any spinach soup recipe that features nutmeg. My nearly-3-year-old got up from her nap and immediately requested a second cup of it for her snack (I suspect the fact that her daddy grew it made it a big draw!).

I’m expecting another couple bags of soup-grade spinach to be lugged home today or tomorrow, so there will be plenty of opportunity for further experimentation. Chilled pea and spinach soup? Spinach and chickpea soup? It’s so satisfying making a delicious meal out of something that you might unthinkingly throw out just because it doesn’t look ‘perfect’, and the possibilities are really endless.

(photo: no excuse for running out of onions now!)

I like going to the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market because it’s only a 10-minute walk from my house (or, at least, it WILL be again when they finally finish that underpass). But it certainly isn’t the only game in town for fresh farm produce!

The Community Farmers’ Market Cooperative runs three separate mid-week sales in Saskatoon, which feature an excellent selection of vegetables, fruit, baking, and so on. These markets are a great chance for me to top-up during the week if I’m out and about, and are much more convenient for everyone who doesn’t live near the downtown market.

• Tuesday (9am-3pm) at Peavy Mart on 51st Street
• Wednesday (9am-3pm) at Market Mall
• Thursday (11am-5:30pm) at London Drugs on 8th Street

The Cooperative is also looking for new vendors to ‘make it, bake it, or grow it’. To take part, get in touch via their kijiji ad.

I stopped by the market today on my way back from doing some early-morning picking at The Strawberry Ranch. It is a lot smaller than the full Saturday market, but you can still pick up a good selection of items.

There are a few vendors inside (the coffee stand was not open), and the BC fruit stand is set up outside, as well as the Simpkins and Spring Creek stands. I saw new carrots (they’re getting to be a good size), new potatoes, peas, broccoli, and cauliflower, among other things. It’s a good day to go if you’re not keen on crowds! Sunday opening hours are 11am-3pm.

Much the same as last week’s list, except that:

• sugar snap peas are now finished
• cauliflower is new this week (Simpkins)…mmmm…aloo gobi!

The fruit stand is now open for both the Saturday and Sunday markets, with apricots, cherries, and peaches continuing.

(photo: Egg yolks, the day after–and only one casualty)

We thinned out the voluminous swiss chard at the community garden yesterday, so for supper I made a Swiss chard and tomato frittata from the Moosewood gang. The only difference was that I cooked it till nearly done on the stovetop, then sprinkled it with parmesan cheese and put it under the broiler for a few minutes to finish rather than flipping it over. We had hot buttered whole wheat toast along with it.

I thought it was delicious, and my two preschoolers even ate it all up. I didn’t personally learn to love chard until I was an adult. In fact, when my sisters and I were kids, we used to try and herd the chickens towards the Swiss chard part of the garden, hoping they would peck it to pieces (sadly for us, this did not work). So I was impressed that the kids were so enthusiastic–but I suspect that serving rhubarb crisp with ice cream for dessert is a powerful incentive for cleaning one’s plate!

The only problem with frittatas is that they call for a lot of egg whites, which means you end up with leftover egg yolks. You certainly don’t want to have to throw them out. Despite the dire things you may have heard about cholesterol and eggs, egg yolks (and, in particular, yolks from free range hens) are a nutritional powerhouse. But what can you do with the leftovers?

What to do with leftover egg yolks

If you’re going to use them within the next day, you can place them very carefully (whole) in an airtight container (they will start to get hard on the outside within a day or so and won’t be good for much after that)

If you’ll use them within 2-3 days, place them very carefully (whole) in an airtight container and very carefully cover them with water. Gently pour off the water when you’re ready to use them. This will work best with good quality eggs with a resilient yolk (standard grocery store egg yolks tend to break if you even look at them funny).

You can also freeze them, but they should be used for baking or cooking rather than an omelette. You can freeze them individually in an ice cube tray (break up the yolk a bit, but don’t beat it) or else gently mix a larger number of yolks together. You must also stabilise them before freezing or they will become lumpy and unusable when they’re thawed out. To stabilise them, decide whether you will want to use them for a sweet or savoury dish in the future, and add a sprinkling of either sugar or salt to each yolk (or 1 tablespoon sugar/salt per 1 cup of yolks). Place in an airtight container and don’t forget to label it ’sweet’/’savoury’ and list the number of yolks. They should last for about a year–thaw them out in the fridge the day before you plan to use them.

(photo: So pretty! vanilla pudding with raspberries and mint)

I plan to use my six leftover frittata yolks for this delicious vanilla or chocolate pudding for dessert tonight. I’ll probably make 1.5 batches to use up all the yolks at once–it keeps for 3 days in the fridge, so I seriously doubt that leftovers will be a problem! The free-range eggs I buy will lend it a lovely buttery tint–it would also be a good time to try the rum raisin pudding variant.

Don’t fancy pudding? You could turn those yolks into a bernaise/hollandaise sauce, pasta carbonara, or some classic desserts (creme brûlée, zabaglione). This enthusiastic thread at the Chowhound forum has some more great ideas.

(photo: Bright lights, big city–Danny’s magnificent chard!)

I went by the Nutana Community Garden the other day for the first time in several weeks. My husband took charge of the plot this spring and did some nifty space-saving planting (thanks to Square Foot Gardening)–it’s all looking really good. In particular, the Swiss chard is going completely rampant!

Swiss chard is one of those things that tastes best fresh out of the ground and is done no favours by hanging out in a supermarket cooler (buy it in season at a farmers’ market or other local vendor–try Steep Hill Co-op). It will also continue to grow back throughout the season–in fact, the more you cut it, the better it grows. So if you have a few square feet of sunny ground to spare, you can keep yourself in these highly nutritious greens from mid-July to freeze-up (and beyond, if you freeze what you can’t eat fresh at the time!). There are a number of varieties, but I personally like Bright Lights for its gorgeously-tinted stems. Planted in containers, these were a huge hit at London’s famed Chelsea Flower Show a few years back.

So, what should you do with it while it’s at its best and more profuse? Well, right now you can add it to your morning omelette, chop it up and add to a tossed green salad, make soup (it goes great with beans or lentils), make pesto, sauté it as a side dish, make Swiss chard ‘cabbage’ rolls, add it to pasta, chickpeas, casseroles, fish…the possibilities are pretty much endless. You could even try a tourte aux blettes– a sweet Swiss chard tart (often including apple, raisins, and pine nuts) popular in the south of France, which is often served for dessert.

If you’re picking Swiss chard from the garden, you will probably still have more popping out of the ground than you can possibly use right now. If you get it into the freezer, you can save yourself money and food miles this winter!

How to freeze Swiss chard

If you’re going to use frozen Swiss chard within a couple of weeks, you can just stick it into a bag and freeze it as-is. But if you want it to keep for longer, you need to give it a good wash in a cold water bath, blanch it (plunge it into hard-boiling water for two minutes to kill any nasty bacteria), then dunk it in ice water and squish out all the excess water, then pack it into freezer bags. It should last for a year in an air-tight bag or container.

You may want to remove the stems and use them fresh for something else rather than freezing them–they can go rather mushy and/or stringy after freezing.

Get more great Swiss chard recipes:

Leslie Beck, RD: Canada’s leading nutritionist

Veggie Meal Plans

Simply Recipes

Martha Stewart

Now that the farmers’ market is in full swing, and the garden is growing nicely, the majority of our meals are locally grown. Here’s a sampling from the weekend:

Fusilli pasta salad with sugar-snap peas, yellow peppers, green onion, cilantro, mint, and Canadian goat cheese feta (source: Vegetables: farmers’ market, herbs: my garden, feta: Bulk Cheese Warehouse)

Barbecued Mennonite farmer sausage & steak, new potatoes with chopped herbs & butter, sautéed beet stems & greens (source: Smokehaus sausage: Bulk Cheese Warehouse, Benlock Farms steak, vegetables: farmers’ market, herbs: my garden)

Sliced Mennonite farmer sausage, new potatoes with chopped herbs, mixed salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, green onion, mixed seeds), Saskatoon berries and chokecherry syrup on vanilla ice cream (source: Smokehaus sausage: Bulk Cheese Warehouse, lettuce & herbs: my garden, vegetables: farmers’ market, Sunview Farms eggs: Herbs & Health, Saskatoon berries: my neighbour, chokecherry syrup: my grandma, ice cream: Homestead Ice Cream)

Early last week I cut up a whole Pine View Farms chicken (6.5lbs), which lasted our family of four for meat the whole week. One night we had half the breast with a pepper/sugar snap pea/mushroom stirfry (I cut up the other half and fried it, then put it in the freezer to add to a curry next week).

At lunch time one day I popped the chicken back into some water with (organically grown) celery leaves/tops and let it simmer away for about half an hour, then added the resulting broth and chicken stock that I already had in the freezer to sautéed celery, onion, garlic, and mushroom. Once the vegetables were tender, I whizzed the soup with a hand blender and stirred in the chopped cooked chicken with salt, pepper, and juice from a (organic) lemon. This made enough soup for us for 2 meals.

Another evening I put the de-skinned legs, wings, and thighs into the slow cooker and made a coconut chicken curry with onion, carrot, chickpeas, and swiss chard (I would have added peas to this too but we’d already scarfed the fresh ones earlier in the week with the other half of the swiss chard, and I was out of frozen ones). This fed us very well, gave me lunch the next day, and I froze 3 additional large single portions of leftovers.

Any remaining bits of that chicken went into the freezer for future chicken stock!

This week I plan to make (among other things) a beet/goat cheese/arugula/walnut salad, a balti curry with baby tomatoes and chicken, a green pepper/sugar snap pea/mushroom/cashew stirfry with quinoa, whole wheat/buttermilk pancakes with garden strawberries & Saskatoons, pasta with fresh peas/basil/pumpkin seeds, rhubarb crisp, monastery lentils or lentil salad (depending on the weather).