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random weekend in the middle of the week – Pick Your Own

I had Jury Duty. Only I called the night before and was told they didn’t need me. So did I go to work like a responsible citizen? No! Of course not! I took today off work. Whee!

Plan a: wake up at 6:30am, get on the road by 7:15; get to a pick your own farm in New Jersey by 8am; pick stuff; drive to a pick your own farm in Pennsylvania; pick more stuff (they have late season strawberries!); have lunch with my parents; drive home; pick up two yoga classes that I usually am working during and have never tried these teachers.

How did that work?

Well, I got out of the house more like 8am. Still pretty darn perky.

Got to the PYO farm in New Jersey. I really like this place; it has a huge variety of things to pick. I started off with slips to pick blackberries and blueberries.

blackberries I love blackberries more than any other fruit-type thing. When I was little, we had blackberries growing in our backyard: tight, little fruits full of flavor. And I’m always a bit disappointed by these lush, overflowing things that have been selected as the ideal blackberry. Well, it looks like the breeding of grafting or whatever you need to do to make the big berries, isn’t 100% because I could find more compact berries on the same brambles as the juicier ones. \o/! So I went down a row and back up and had filled my two containers-worth of blackberries. (and then there was a moment of ick, when my feet, wet with the lingering dew of the humid summer morning, hit the sandy driveway… and there was unexpected sandiness of unpleasantness.)

blueberries I caught the trailing end of the blueberry crop, but I’ve always had a fondness for smaller berries, here, too. So it just took a bit more patience to pull a berry here and there until … well, the container wasn’t full, but I was done.

(side note: that’s twice now this week that I have seemed to be overheated without feeling hot at all. I’m a little worried by this development, but I figure summer won’t last too much longer and my body can figure out its issues if I give it time)

So I decided not to pick peaches or white grapes or anything else on offer, but I did buy some peach and nectarine seconds. (and, yes, a doughnut – they were making them on site)

And then I drove straight to my parents’. We went out for lunch. I suggested the little Mexican shack that had opening up fairly close to their place, but my mother said there was a place in town that was better… turned out to be Qdoba (WTF parents?). Apparently, they’ve started doing their regularly because it is right next to the social security office. (awww… old parents) But they were paying, so I only hassled them a little about it.

Gave them some blackberries and drove home and took a nap.

food list – it’s summer again!

I may have gone a bit overboard at my produce truck and the farmers’ market and berry picking.

Oh, yes, I went berry picking. Food in Jars had a post about local Pick Your Own berry farms, and I was totally sold on the idea. So a friend and I went out to Rowand Farms (no website?) in Glassboro, NJ to acquire cherries and strawberries. I’ve only picked apples before, and cherries are definitely harder – but then moving on to strawberries was like leveling up once more because you really had to look hard to find the pretty ones… plus stooping, but we knew that going in.

Now I have to make plans for all of this food:

Produce
1 nectarine
4 tomatoes
2 bunches of small asparagus
handful of shelling peas
radishes
slightly less than 1lb lettuce
2lbs cherries
3lbs strawberries
3 lemons
5 limes
2 grapefruits
4 rhubarb stalks
turnips galore
1 yellow squash
1 red pepper
1 carrot
1 parsnip
3 rutabagas
1 celeriac root
7 oz kale
1lb spicy mustard greens

ready to be harvested from my garden
radicchio
swiss chard
nasturtium flowers

processed produce
tail end of a jar of salsa
vodka pasta sauce
1/4 cup rice with turmeric, clove, and sundried tomatoes
Thai sweet spicy garlic sauce
chipotle in adobo sauce
jarred crab apples
pineapple juice
orange juice
fermenting peaches

dairy
sour cream
cheddar cheese
1% milk

protein
beef fajita leftovers (about enough for 3-4 quesadillas)
3lb beef roast
4 eggs

So now I need a plan
Monday, June 8
breakfast: 2 quesadillas with leftover fajitas

~*~

roast: foil packets of root vegetables with various spice mixes and garlic; asparagus

dinner: salad w/ half the lettuce, shelling peas (try one to see if they are good popped out, or if they need to be blanched), roasted asparagus, radishes, and nasturtium flowers – dressing: something mild and sweet – white balsamic and apricot jelly?

prep beef: 1/3 slice into thin strips and marinate with pineapple juice, jalapeno, black bean sauce (for stir fry); 1/3 slice into thin strip and marinate with salsa, chipotle, and lime juice (for something involving tortillas); prep the thickest third for roasting (studded with garlic cloves and tuck in some rosemary) and wrap for freezing

Rhubarb – make candied rhubarb and rhubarb syrup for camping

dessert – strawberries and milk

Tuesday, June 9
breakfast – try Kenyan collard green recipe with kale (uses a tomato); eat some strawberries

9am – meet real estate agent to go see a house I can’t afford

~*~

dinner: stir fry marinated beef with asparagus, red pepper, jalapeno, ginger, radishes; also saute some of the spicy mustard greens with garlic to have one the side. Make rice.

strawberries – try making small batch strawberry jam w/ shredded fresh ginger and 1 ground black cardamom jam

salsa – try making salsas from strawberries and cherries

Wednesday, June 10
meet friend for coffee; take radishes and sexy butter.

do I still want breakfast? – rest of the spicy mustard greens made like roman kale

take any remaining berries in to work

~*~

dinner: (psst: you still haven’t eaten your theoretical packets of roasted root vegetables, the yellow squash, maybe a tomato or two, nor the Mexican-ish beef) That could be an interesting start to a cottage pie…

cream cheese – cut some of my fresh herbs to make a cream cheese spread

pack to go camping – take

  • candied rhubard
  • rhubarb syrup
  • limoncello
  • rum
  • scotch?
  • camping cups and dishware
  • herbed cream cheese
  • hot sauce (but not my salsas)
  • if I feel really ambitious I’ll make a batch of raita, but looking at this schedule – I doubt it
  • again if I’m feeling ambitious, perhaps some of this ginger syrup
  • fig newtons