If you’re looking for colors other than red in the coming weeks, head to any of the area farmers markets. You’ll find veggies in every hue, shape and size. The late summer harvest (tomatoes, corn, peppers, zucchini, eggplant) is now overlapping booth space with the early fall bounty (acorn squash, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cabbage).
Ask a farmer what he or she does with all of that delicious, colorful goodness, and you’ll get at least as many answers as there are crops.
Does it matter how many acres of fresh produce you have at your disposal if you have three picky little eaters? With 3-year-old twins and a 6-year old, Chloe Diegel and her husband, Alex McKiernan, of Robinette Farms are like many parents who have children who refuse to eat any foods that touch each other on the plate, that are mixed together or that are cooked.
People are also reading…
“It’s a perfect time of year for tomato basil soup, gazpacho,†Diegel said, before trailing off. “But our girls won’t eat either of them. Most of the time, we let them eat their veggies raw. Alex and I will eat anything, but the girls like sliced cucumbers, carrots and cherry tomatoes. They also eat tons of melons, but we can’t mix anything up or cook it.â€
At this time of year, when there’s so little time and so much to harvest, Diegel and McKiernan eat a lot of bruschetta or French bread sliced, grilled, and topped with garlic, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil.
Diegel sautes zucchini and yellow squash with garlic and onions, and every time she makes it, she has the girls try it. Although her daughters continue to claim they don’t like it, Diegel laughs and says she continues to hope that one of these times, they’ll start liking food that’s mixed together and cooked.
With an abundance of fresh garlic, she and Alex roast it and spread it on crackers and bread, use the roasted cloves to flavor butternut squash soup or spread it on freshly sliced and grilled eggplant.
Ruth Johnson (Johnson Farms) is also a fan of butternut squash soup, and this is one of her favorite times of year because they’ll be harvesting butternut squash from now until late October, or the first frost, whichever comes first. (Johnson’s recipe is below.)
Megan Jackson, manager of the Old Cheney Road Farmers Market, said her veggie of choice right now is peppers -- any kind of peppers. She especially loves the Italian Carmen pepper.
“It’s bursting with sweetness, and it’s just peaking now,†Jackson said. “I eat them raw, right here at the market. Robinette Farms has the Carmen peppers, and I also love Vernon Dean’s (D&V’s Produce) poblano peppers. I roast them, and some I freeze for soups later, and some I stuff with various meats and cheeses.â€
Mark Roh of Abie Vegetable describes himself as more of a meat-and-potatoes guy, but he loves this time of year because beans and bacon is one of his favorite dishes. And it couldn’t be easier to make: You just toss a handful of green beans into a frying pan with the bacon. When the bacon is ready, the beans are, too.
BLTs are another of Roh’s late-summer favorites, and with the tomato harvest going wild, Roh and his wife Erin are trying to find time to can tomato paste. This time of year fires up the inevitable debate in their house: salt or sugar?
Roh grew up eating sliced tomatoes sprinkled with sugar, and his wife eats hers sprinkled with salt.
“You might ask around,†Roh said. “You’ll be surprised how many people like sugar on their tomatoes.â€
Dave Sanders of Sanders Specialty Meats likes his tomatoes slow cooked with zucchini and onions.
“I stew the mixture until it’s all soft and the flavors are completely blended together,†Sanders said. “And then I put it in a cup, sit down in front of the TV and savor it. It’s delicious.â€
Don Medinger doesn’t like anything on his tomatoes. He walks through his fields at this time of year and just picks tomatoes and eats them.
“This is my favorite time of year, but it’s already hard on me,†Medinger said. “I know winter is coming, and I won’t be able to get fresh tomatoes with any kind of flavor.â€
Still, he loves this time of year because his apple and peach trees and raspberry patch are all laden with fruit, too, and as he works, he just picks and eats whatever sounds good.
Although he prefers to eat fresh tomatoes raw, Medinger makes and cans salsa to eat with chips throughout the winter. And he blanches whole tomatoes to remove the peel, and then puts them in freezer bags. He uses the frozen tomatoes in stews and chili to warm up on those cold winter evenings.
Renee Cornett of Lakehouse Farm (and Prairie Plate Restaurant) also believes this is the perfect time of year to prepare for winter. For instance, if Cornett has harvested 5-gallon buckets of basil, some of it ends up as pesto on the menu at the restaurant, some ends up as pesto in her family’s freezer, and the rest of the basil goes to the Old Cheney Road Farmers Market.
She shocks green beans and freezes bags of them for use in the off-season. Shocking is a quick method of preparing fresh produce for the freezer. Drop the green beans into a large pot of boiling water for about five minutes. Remove the beans and drop them into a large pan of ice water to cool them quickly and completely. The beans will still be a vibrant green. Pat the beans dry, bag them and freeze them.
Because this is such a busy time of year for farmers, Cornett does what she can to save time. She freezes fresh berries now, too, and then after the growing season has ended, she thaws the berries and makes jam.
“Unfortunately, watermelon doesn’t save well, so you’ll just have to eat your weight in watermelon now,†Cornett said.
Like Medinger, she finds herself missing summer’s bounty in the middle of the winter.
“The best thing to do right now is save fresh produce -- can it, freeze or keep it in a root cellar -- so you can eat it in February when you’re sad,†Cornett said.
Ash Gordon (Nebraska Mushroom) is currently harvesting his abalone oyster mushrooms. He says their flavor is so delicate, you’ll want to either sauté them in butter or brush them with olive oil and grill them, but don’t bury them in soups or stews. They make perfect sides to a main dish of pasta or even steak.
Okra is one of the reasons Dawoud Isied (Grain Bin Bakery) likes this time of year. He makes a spicy chicken and okra soup that goes perfectly with a loaf of his garlic or green olive bread. (His recipe is below.)
Evrett Lunquist (Common Good Farm) has an abundance of apples right now. With the apples, he and his wife Ruth Chantry make vats of applesauce and freeze it.
Chop the apples and put them in a pot with a little water. Cook the apples slowly until they’re thoroughly cooked, and then run them through a food mill. Cool the sauce, put it in freezer bags and freeze.
“We leave the peels on,†Lunquist said, “because we enjoy seeing the lovely pink shade of apple sauce. The flavor of the McIntoshes is a perfect balance of sweet and tart, so we don’t add any sugar or spices.â€
Whether you’re content to live in the moment and savor the fruits and vegetables of the season or you’re busy putting up the abundance for the dark, cold days ahead, you’ll find a variety of herbs and produce at these four farmers markets:Â
University Place, 48th & Leighton, Wednesdays, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Fallbrook, 570 Fallbrook Boulevard, Thursdays, 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Haymarket, Saturdays, 8 a.m. to noon
Old Cheney Road, 56th and Old Cheney Road, Sundsays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Dawoud Isied’s Chicken & Okra Soup
1 whole chicken, cut up
1 pound okra (short, cut off stem and chop into bite-sized pieces)
3 or 4 cloves garlic, smashed
Juice from two lemons or limes
4 tomatoes, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 jalapeno (if you like spicy, chop it up; leave it whole if you don’t)
1 tablespoon fresh ginger
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil
Boil the chicken with water, salt, black pepper, lime juice, onion, ginger and jalapeno until the chicken is tender. In the meantime, fry the okra in the olive oil and garlic until it is lightly brown. Add the tomatoes to the okra and cook for several minutes. Remove the chicken from the water, fry it in olive oil to brown it. Return the chicken to the water mixture and add the tomatoes and okra.
Simmer the soup to your desired thickness and serve with a side of rice and a loaf of garlic bread or green olive bread. (Isied's Grain Bin Bakery sells both varieties.)
Ruth Johnson’s Butternut Squash Soup
2 pounds butternut squash (cut in half and remove seeds)
1 teaspoon marjoram
2 to 3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 medium-sized sweet onion (cut in half)
4 large cloves garlic (cut in half)
½ cup cream or milk
Vegetable oil for brushing
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons butter
1 bunch of fresh basil (chopped)
1 teaspoon dried basil
Brush vegetables with oil and place cut side down on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Roast in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Remove garlic from pan. Roast remaining vegetables for another five to 10 minutes until onions are done. Remove vegetables from pan. Turn over squash and return to oven and roast another 5 to 10 minutes or until squash is soft.
In a dutch oven over medium heat, melt butter. Add the peeled garlic, onions, dry herbs, salt and pepper. Saute for five minutes. Add squash (without peel) and enough stock to cover the ingredients. Cover and cook over low heat for another 30 minutes before blending with a blender to smooth the mixture (if needed, add more stock to adjust thickness of the soup). Add the cream or milk and most of the chopped fresh basil, saving some to garnish the soup. Yields four servings.