Note: I wrote this post on the 23rd & then had some issues getting it uploaded before I left for Baltimore. So please read it accordingly.
My home smells a bit like lovage today. Very faintly. I, as planned, stripped all the leaves off and chopped them very finely. They’re frozen in ice cube trays now. I put the stems out with hummus to see if they’d be an adequate celery snack substitute. Only Bill was willing to try them (I don’t like celery much), and he said the stems were entirely too woody for that kind of consumption. So, into the stock bag they went.
I also chopped the rhubarb into chunks and froze that on a freezing sheet1. I’ll dump that into a baggie today.
We got sweet peppers and radishes from our CSA and carrots from Ellen. Along with the lovage stems, I chopped the peppers and the radishes and some of the carrots for munching during Bill’s birthday yesterday. I set them out with hummus, and they went over well. But we still had too many for everyone to eat. I believe I’ll make dinner with some of the pepper strips, the radishes and some of Ellen’s chard tonight. The rest of the the peppers, as well as some other things, I hope Bill will stir fry, or otherwise cook, while I’m gone.
Except, of course, he’s coming down with a cold. Poor guy. So he may not be cooking at all. We’ll see.
The carrots I didn’t cut up should last a good long time. As should the beets. I’ll need to look up today in How to Pick a Peach the best way to store both. I almost immediately put the ripe big tomatoes went into the freezer for later saucing. The ripe cherry tomatoes are on the counter for snacking. The green tomatoes? Well, my friend Heather has had a lot of success in just keeping them around to ripen into February. While I don’t plan to do that, it gives me confidence that they can sit out on the counter and wait for me to return and figure them out. There were a few tomatoes on the verge of ripening. Those went into a paper bag with one another, in the hopes of hastening the process. For snacking.
Overall, I think we’ve done a good job at getting this bounty eaten or preserved. I’m pretty pleased with us. We had a CSA delivery last night as well, and that was relatively easy to get put away after having done all of this. It’s almost like it all suddenly came together on how to deal with a bunch of veggies at a time. Hopefully, that’s true, and it’ll still be easy as winter comes in.
That said, I do NOT know what to do with fennel (nor does Natalie), as I hate it. Gonna have to find someone to give it to.
fn1. A “freezing sheet” is a cookie sheet I no longer use for baking. They’re very old sheets,I think from my undergraduate days, and they warp with heat now. Normally, I would recycle such things, but it turns out they’re the only sheets that fit in my second freezer. So, freezing sheets.
So maybe this is awful, but I was invited to a pot luck dinner party this weekend (and was graciously gifted the recipe book, Asparagus to Zucchini, by my aunt and uncle). In it is a recipe for a citrus fennel salad, so we made that and brought it to share. Thankfully, it went over well (I even ate some myself!) and the host enjoyed it so much they were happy to keep the left overs. Perhaps I’ll just need to host my own dinner party next time I get fennel 🙂
That’s the opposite of terrible! It’s fabulous. It’s also brilliant. Making use of food you have and hate, rather than just slowly letting it rot and tossing it, or tossing it from the get-go? BRILLIANT.
Now, just send me that recipe so I can make that salad and send it to my friend who needs veggies but doesn’t have a lot of time to cook. 😉