TOO HOT TO COOK

At 7 am it's already 80 degrees; a few hours later it's 87!  Ugh.  It's definitely too hot to cook and almost too hot to eat.  ALMOST.  Luckily, preparing delicious food without cooking is easy when you belong to a CSA (community supported agriculture); in fact, it's required.  We purchased a "full share" from Common Thread Community Farm, located in Madison, N.Y (http://commonthreadcsa.com/) and twice a week we stop by the farm to fill our bags with fresh produce and herbs.  In this age of constant food recalls and E.coli outbreaks, it's reassuring to pick up our produce from a known and trusted local source. [Check out http://www.marlerblog.com/ for up to the minute information on  food poisoning outbreaks and recalls.]

This week we stopped by the farm and filled our bags with radishes (so sweet you can eat them like an apple), carrots, beets, hakurei (Japanese turnip with a sweet and mild flavor, a delicious, if unusual salad ingredient), scarlet salad turnips, fennel, scallions, bunching onions, kohlrabi, garlic scapes, green summer cabbage, swiss chard, kale and collards, head lettuce, arugula, radicchio, summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. Then we headed outdoors to the fields to the “pick your own” crops: snow peas, shelling peas, cilantro, dill and sunflowers.  Here's our stash from July 16 ~

And from July 19 ~ 

We supplement the bounty from Common Thread with summer favorites from the Farmers' Market in Hamilton.

 We've been eating amazing salads twice a day (yes, Mom, twice a day!) composed of leafy greens like bronze leaf lettuce, radicchio and arugula, thinly sliced veggies (fennel, zucchini, radishes etc) and dressed with an interesting vinaigrette.  Last week I whipped up a spicy mustard vinaigrette using mustard from  Fox Hollow Farm.  It's flavored with balsamic vinegar and fresh garlic and is delicious.  A great pairing with a sturdy summer vegetable salad.  

 Check out the recipe page for recent favorites and feel free to contribute!