Week 16

As I am sitting here, a little damp from morning harvest, with the front door open, I am wondering if I shouldn't close it and pop on the heat for just a minute.  For someone who works outside all day I am such a baby when it comes to being warm (as in very warm) when I am inside.  Perhaps I will build our first fire of the season. 

We are having farmers over tonight with a theme of food that you didn't eat enough of this summer and I am really not feeling all that summerish at the moment.  I am sure I can change my tune if I just think about the fact that I am not going to eat a tomato for many months starting very soon!

Hope you all are enjoying the rain.

Green Beans - We were really on the fence about planting green beans.  They can be hard to sell at a price that justifies growing them and they just never do as well for us as we think they should.  After 10 years of them not really working that well in our system and our downsizing it seemed like a good time to let go of them.  Then I got sad about it one May day and planted a bed in a part of the field that has always had hideous weed pressure. I knew it was less than ideal but it was one of the few places on the farm that wasn't already mapped out.  Well, that went about as well as one would have expected.  After the spring carrot field turned into our last planting of zukes and cukes there was about a hundred feet of empty space.  Hmm, I thought, is it too late?  Almost too late, but they made it and are in your box this week.  We ate some grilled on a salad with grilled steak, grilled onions and blue cheese and they were so good that we ate some again the next night.
Rainbow Chard
Carrots
Garlic
Potatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Radish - Large Only
Herb - Large Only

This green beans goma-ae calls for mirin and is the recipe I use, but many recipes don't call for it if you don't have it and don't want to buy it.  They typically use a little more sugar.  With just a few ingredients it is an easy dish and incredibly delicious.  The Asian grocer, Arirang out by the Goodwill in Hawk's Prairie sells already toasted sesame seeds if you want to eliminate a step.  Some stores also sell them pre-ground but I don't think Arirang has them packaged that way.