Farmshare Chronicles: End of Summer Bucket List

Here we are in the middle of August already! My facebook timeline is full of pictures of new shoes and backpacks and shiny-faced 1st day of school pictures.

I looked out the window the other day and realized that, all too soon, fall will arrive, the trees will flame in to their fall plumage and then go bare.

Then (sigh) it will be winter. 

But, before I get too far ahead of myself, it’s time to put together the End of Summer Bucket List. These are things that need (neeeeed!) to be done before summer ends so we know we’ve wrung every last bit of life out of the season.

End of Summer Bucket List

aka “All The Links”

• Drive with the windows down and sunroof open while listening to some new (aff link) and some old (aff link) tunes.
• Sit outside on patios and at the corners of open-windowed  spots to watch the world go by.
• Eat. All. Of. The. Tomatoes.
• Wring out the last little bits of grilling time (ok, this is more likely a September thing cause August humidity… ick.)
• Stock up on ice cream for late night snacking.
• Mix up the last of the summer produce into cocktails or syrups so I can sneak a bit of the summer season into fall.

Farmshare Chronicles – Week 8

Week eight brought the heaviest bag of the season (12.5 pounds) and the first (ever!) farmshare cantaloupe. Juicy and fresh. I could have just cut it in half and eaten it with a spoon, but decided to be a little more civilized and cut it into chunks. [Sadly, I can’t find a link for the addictive Rancho Gordo Star Dust seasoning I sprinkled on it. A combo of chile powder, dried lime zest and other seasonings that is so, so good on cantaloupe.]

Here’s the total run down:

• Cantaloupe – Cut up and eaten on its own.
• Corn – Sautéed with some zucchini and eaten on tostadas.
• Cucumber – Sitting in the fridge, thinking about what it’s done…
• Green Beans – Boiled with potatoes and coated in pesto.
• Kale – Massaged kale salad. It’s… interesting.
• Yellow Onions – In my pantry.
• Tomatoes – Made my first ever batch of fried green tomatoes.
• Zucchini – See corn

While I’ve had my share of “standard” BLTs this season, the green tomatoes (with a nudge from our farmer) were begging to be fried and made into a BLT.

I’d actually never made fried green tomatoes before (I rarely fry foods), but it’s a pretty simple concept:

1. – Slice the tomatoes and lightly salt them.
2. – Let them sit for a bit.
3. – Coat them in flour.
4. – Dip them in egg.
5. – Dredge them in a mix of cornmeal and flour.
6. – Fry in shallow oil until golden brown.

I’m a fan.

Though not necessarily a convert to always making them myself.

Yet.

So far my compost casualties are still small and I’m a smidgen proud of myself for that. It’s probably a combo of the public-shaming potential of the blog and that I’m trying to be pretty disciplined about using everything while it’s fresh, but I think this has been my best year for limiting the waste.

The zucchini that has shown up has been in pretty small quantities (read: not the garden-hogging levels of most home gardeners) so it’s been pretty simple to keep up with, but, after a while, sautéed zucchini gets a little humdrum. This week I busted out the food processor (aff link) and made a batch of Slightly Sweet Zucchini Fridge Pickles from Marisa McClellan’s blog, Food in Jars.

Besides her blog, Marisa has written two outstanding cookbooks (aff links) that focus on canning and pickles of all sorts.

The remaining two small zucchini were baked up in to a crispy snack/side of Oven-Roasted Zucchini wedges.

You can find a lot of variations of baked zucchini wedges on the inter webs, but I tried to keep these as simple as possible.

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Previously on the Farmshare Chronicles:

• Farmshare Chronicles: Cloudy With a Chance of Greens
• Farmshare Chronicles: The Humbling (Tzatziki)
• Farmshare Chronicles: Cuke-Aid 2015