Week 8

 Usually when food magazines arrive this time of year they sit on the coffee table untouched but this month they ended up on the front seat of my car and I had a chance to glance at them on Saturday.  A couple recipes caught my eye.  One I am making tonight, the grilled vegetable and barley salad, along with the roast chicken with sumac, lemon and garlic from the same issue.  Both will be modified a bit but I am looking forward to making them.  The other is a pappardelle with arugula pesto and zucchini ribbons.  I liked the way the zucchini ribbons mimicked the look of the pappardelle.  I might try to make that a bit later in the week.  I love cooking this time of year.

We unexpectedly welcomed seven new chicks to our animal family this week.  Kelly came home late one night from turning off water and heard one of the chicks sending out a distress call from the one piece of landscaping we have in the front of our house - a big bush by the front door.  It was stuck under a branch.  We let our chickens roam (hence the no landscaping) and we recently saw some feathers and a coyote in the back field.  We had assumed that the missing chickens (we don't count them when we close up the coop each night) had fallen prey to the coyote but apparently one was sitting on a clutch of eggs right by our front door for the last few weeks.  It is sweet to see a hen and her chicks.  They sometimes sit on top of her back or just peak their heads out of her wing feathers.  We moved them from under the bush to a safer place and they are pretty fun to watch.  If any of you need some new chicks for your flock I would love to find a nice home for them.

Alright back to the vegetables - happy cooking.

Carrots
Sweet Onion - It is hard to believe that some of our onions are starting to fall over (a sign of maturity).  If you feel the necks of these onions I bet you will find some that are starting to soften.   The sweet onions are always the first to mature for us but usually until August.
Tomatoes 
Lettuce 
Zucchini 
Beets
Cucumber
Green Cabbage - Large Only
Dill - Large Only

Pappardelle with Summer Squash and an Arugula Walnut Pesto