Week Nine: Fancy Dinner Party

This weekend Dan and I are hosting our parents for a “favorite British foods” dinner party: baked cheese, steak and ale pie, and a yummy dessert. And Pimm’s, of course! We had a decent selection of root vegetables this week, so I was able to get most of the veggies locally. I’ll post the recipes (and pictures!) later this week.

I finally wised up and took a picture before I ventured into the picking fields!

The amount of produce I’ve been bringing home every week has started to get overwhelming. It doesn’t sound so intimidating when you check in and are told “nine items today!”… but then you realize that one “item” can be eight cucumbers, or three pounds of tomatoes, or six ears of corn. I picked up for Matt this week since Aly is on vacation, and wow, it was a lot of stuff. I have no idea what Dan and I would do if we weren’t splitting this with Matt and Aly! (Probably turn into leafy greens.) I also got some tomatillos (never mind that I have no idea what to do with them) from the picking fields, along with more dill, cilantro, and a couple jalapeños.

Most of a salad... just add dressing!

The haul this week was huge: eight cucumbers, four zucchini/squash, 3 lbs tomatoes, 1.5 lbs potatoes, 1.5 lbs carrots, chard, lettuce, onions, and some orangey-gold beets. I made (wait for it) fridge pickles with half the cukes and the dill (I know, big surprise), and plan to use the potatoes and carrots in our dinner this Friday. Matt took home the lettuce, some tomatoes, the onions, and squash. I'm not sure what I want to do with the chard yet – I’ve decided I’m not a huge fan – probably sauté it and toss with pasta or something.

Herbs, jalapenos, and tomatillos. Also, Google wants to autocorrect "tomatillos" to "automatism".

Ginormous zucchini and some normal size ones.

 I've never used golden beets before (I’m pretty sure that’s what these are), but since I had such success with the chocolate-beet cake I made a few weeks ago, I searched for a yellow cake recipe that used them. I found a cupcake recipe that looks promising, but I’m not sure how well it will translate to a regular cake pan since the author didn't give a “yield”. I’ll make sure to post about that adventure.

More new potatoes!

I had some squash left this weekend (and now I have more…), so I roasted some to have with a pre-marinated pork loin for dinner on Sunday night. I sliced 2 yellow squash into ¾” discs and laid them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, then drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled them with some Lawry’s. I had to cook the pork at 425º, so I put the squash in at the same time and roasted everything for about 30 minutes. I think next time I’ll flip the squash about halfway through to make sure they get nice and crispy all over.

More carrots - it's fun to see the natural shapes I get at the farm instead of the Bugs Bunny style from the grocery store.

Stay tuned for adventures in dinner parties and baking with beets!

Chard and beets