CSA's and Container Gardening

Hopefully my readers can take the summer months of lax posting as it just being the summer, the strange time of the year where time slips away like the freshly squeezed juice of a lemon through a strainer. That's my hope, anyway. There is definitely much to come as we've been overwhelmed with produce from our CSA, Wimer's Organics as well as our own container garden.

If you are a member of or considering becoming a member of  a CSA for this or next season, Wimer's is definitely the one to go with. They seem rather dirt cheap for the amazing, delicious, and organic offerings we get bi-weekly (there's no way we could eat as much as we get in one week!). They even offer payment plans, which I was happily surprised to find out, since joining a CSA is a lot of money to put out up front for the season or seasons you want. I know this had been a reason in teh past we had not joined one sooner, as I have also heard from friends and acquaintances, always with a wistful look in their eye. I was happy not to have that wistful look in my eye this year.

Along with comparing their previous grow seasons yields, which offered tremendous variety, more so we thought than other farms, the close pick up location, and the opportunity to purchase eggs, yogurt, chickens, and other items from their store (like COFFEE!) sealed the deal. We also get a thoughtful weekly email from Bud Wimer about the farm, maybe some recipes, and what to expect "in the box," an advance peep so as to plan ahead for meals and trips the grocer. And what was "in the box" this week you might inquire? In addition to the pounds and pounds of the three varieties of tomatoes you see below, we also got six ears of corn, two eggplants, two red peppers, a hunk of fresh mint, some beets, and a giant onion. Mind you, we still are working off of some leftovers of our last share.

Wimer's is a Certified Organic Farm, and while a lot of families and individuals choose to eat as much organic possible, this could also be a clincher, but as I've stated before, we wouldn't purchase organic fruit or vegetables over non-organic; we're more interested in that the crops and animals are raised and bred with resourceful and ecologically safe manners, (for example, Integrated Pest Management), as local as possible, and cage free (for the animals, not the crops for that one :)

We've had some struggle with some of our crops, particularly the zucchini, squash, and cucumbers. They come up but somehow either don't grow to a picking size before shriveling (zukes and squash) or they turn into some sort of oddly shaped rotund fruit which we can't use, either for pickling or just well, as a cucumber. Our tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and strawberries are for the most part doing well. The marjoram died in one of the earlier of our many heat waves, but the rest powered through..

Right now we are flush with tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes, as you can see. The first two images are beautiful roma, cherry, and beefsteak (?) from our CSA, and the last two are champion, patio, and lemony tomatoes and orange, green, and red peppers recently picked from our garden.

We're thinking some sauce is in order to make use before it spoils.Maybe a  lot of sauce. Stay tuned for that post.

Mini Chocolate Nanner Muffins

My grandad grew up during the Great Depression. This comes out in weird ways sometimes, like in the form of beer can whirligigs or the old TV he always has lying around just in case. My grandad also grows a lot of his own produce. In his later years, he's started growing produce for sport rather than sustenance. My poor grandma is left trying to figure out how to use everything he grows in the kitchen. And she, also a child of the Great Depression, feels the need to bake, cook, freeze, or jar all of it. Corn, berries, zucchini (so much zucchini), and lately champagne grapes (in Southern Idaho! my grandad is both talented AND crazy). My grandma finds a way to use it all, and I have a cache of creative hand-me-down recipes to prove it. But before I get to those, I'll give you a fruit saving recipe for something you probably already have lying around: rotten bananas.

Mini Chocolate Nanner Muffins

Preheat oven to 400 and beat the following together in a large bowl:
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 cup overly ripe bananas, mushed

Add:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Don't over mix! Let your batter stay lumpy as long as all the dry ingredients are wet.

Evenly split batter into a lined mini muffin pan (you'll have enough batter to fill it at least twice). Once the batter is in, put a Hershey's kiss in each, pressing it into the batter until the edges are covered. I usually leave one muffin in the center of the pan kiss-less, at least the first pan per batch, so that I can do a toothpick test or two.

Bake roughly 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Check the mini muffins often after the 10 minute mark if they're still too wet; they're real small and the line between done and burnt is really thin. Pull the muffins from the pan as soon as you can manage to get them out without burning off your fingerprints and let them cool on a wire rack.

If you don't have a mini muffin pan or you just like your muffins normal-sized, you can mix in 1-1 1/2 cups chocolate chips to the batter instead of the kisses to achieve the right chocolate to banana ratio.