The summer is just slipping away...away from lazy days too hot to do much but eat salad and delight in juicy ripe peaches; away from free time and that endless feeling that mid-summer has. Now I feel like summer is just racing to a close. The weather is starting to cool off; school starts next week (yikes!), and perhaps best of all, the harvest is really starting to hit its stride. I spoke with our farmer, Matt, today and he mentioned that the boxes are really going to grow and that we will have a consistently large share for a while now. Its so exciting! I had to thank him profusely for a number of reasons. Mainly, of course, because he grows the wonderful food that my husband and I eat, and also because some complaints have surfaced around "light" boxes and leaner share weeks. There are a lot of issues I feel like addressing here, and I won't go on and on (or at least I will try not to), but I would like to at least address some of them a bit. First of all, summer is not the height of harvest, fall is. Yes, it is exciting to see all of the green around you like the earth has woken from a long winter slumber, but food takes time to grow and ripen. We are now about to partake in this part of the process, but I hope that folks start becoming more mindful of what is in season, rather than what they think should be. The other main issue I would like to point out is that we are part of a Community Supported Agriculture. This means, at the very least, that we take part in the risks associated with farming and should also be, at least a little, involved with understanding the basic processes involved in the food that is grown for our consumption. This week's share is large and beautiful, and I am grateful. But I am also grateful just to be part of this more intimate way of being involved in the food system that makes my environment, my community and my kitchen a better place.
OK; now this is me getting off of my soap box :)
I have some assorted beets still hanging about and I have been thinking about other options to try along with the yummy simple salads we have been making. The other day, we had a barbecue and someone suggested wrapping the beets in foil and nestling them amongst the coals to roast. This was so simple and delicious! They cooked in no time and the skins easily slipped off to reveal yummy and slightly smoking tasting beets that we just drizzled with a bit of evoo and salted to taste. Sadly, I do not have a picture of that creation, but it was lovely and as easy to make as it sounds. Give it a try if you bbq anytime soon!
I also recently decided to play with my mandoline and make some beet chips which are shown here in their raw form. This was just an experiment so I only used one large and one small beet, but it came out great and I am definitely going to do it again! I sliced the beets very thin and placed them on parchment paper on a baking sheet. I set them to dry in a low oven, at 250 degrees for about an hour to an hour and half. When they were done they curled up a bit and were crisp and got crunchier as they cooled. I hit them with a little bit of fleur de sel to taste and delighted in this simple salty and barely sweet snack - yum!
