Week 11 Veggie List & Ideas

Remembering Dad

The summer solstice is just ahead and here on the central California coast the weather is finally warming up and drying out. Spring crops, like fava beans and green garlic, will soon give way to summer squash, green beans, and cucumbers. In Connecticut, where I grew up, the growing season is just beginning. My Dad used to plant his vegetable garden every Memorial Day weekend. Now that he is gone, the garden had another idea this spring and popped up a volunteer lettuce plant in mid-May. My sister, our husbands, and I made a meal of this, along with some fresh spring shad, before saying goodbye to Dad’s garden.

The hotter weather has me thinking about salads and slaws, and anything eaten cold. Pursuing this “cold” idea, I discovered that my favorite radicchio recipe, Sicilian Sauteed Radicchio, is quite good cold, as refreshing and sweet-bitter as a chilled sugared grapefruit!

This week it looks like salads, chilled roasted meats, and maybe some pickled radishes from a vintage Hawaiian cookbook I picked up. And I do wonder about scaling down a recipe for chocolate-dipped strawberries. In the past I’ve made quantities of 24 – 48, a major commitment of time and effort. How much simpler would it be to dip only 8?

This week’s veggies:

Arugula

Red and golden beets (mixed bunch)

Broccoli

Green cabbage

Carrots

Fennel

Green garlic (bulbs getting more mature now; cloves forming)

Red Russian kale

Lettuce

Bunching onions (scallions)

Spinach

Watermelon radishes

Strawberries

Leftovers: purple cabbage, green cabbage, green garlic, radishes & greens, beets & greens, lettuce, Sicilian Sauteed Radicchio

Ideas: 

Simply steam: broccoli, spinach, cabbage?

Green salad, coleslaw and other cabbage salads

Polish beets or sweet & sour beets with greens

Pickled radishes

Kale hot salad variation

Tuscan-style Garlic Spinach with green garlic

Chocolate-dipped strawberries for two

Braised Fennel with Tomatoes,

Braised kale with garlic & scallion

Cornish hens with spring vegetables