Farm Notes is online! We talk about summer fruits, meet a few more farmers, and realize it is almost tomato time!
While we wait for the tomatoes to ripen (they are starting to come in, a few at a time, and that is a very good sign), we have a vast amount of basil in the field. You don't have to wait for the tomatoes to be able to eat the basil. It is time to make glorious batches of pesto. It's the perfect dish for this steamy time of year when you want to use your stove as little as possible—plus the garlic is juicy and potent.
And of course there are other things you can use to make pesto, if you are ready for some different flavors. You can make it out of carrot greens. Or parsley. Or you can put parsley in your basil pesto. It is also high sorrel season. I am betting that most of you haven't really tried sorrel and that you might have a bag sitting in the bottom of your fridge, melting. Sorrel used to be in the kitchen garden of every English homesteader because it provided a citrus-y, lemony flavor back when citrus was a complete luxury. You can use it in a simple cream sauce for your fish or chicken, you can make a chilled soup (it does turn kind of a gruesome grey). In any case, this is the time to try it!
There are some powerful flavors swirling around these days—fresh onions, fennel, amazing garlic. All of these make the potatoes and squash taste so much more alive. If you add butter and salt to any of those early July treats, you really can almost forget about the tomatoes that are still not here yet.
At the farms, this is the time of year when our potluck lunches are getting really good. We have all kinds of eaters—vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, omnivores, gluten-free, dairy free—and we are all learning to cook for each other. The vegan cakes have been amazing. We ate kohlrabi in so many different ways last month, and now we are getting into the squash.
For more recipe ideas you can find us on Pinterest!
