My farm delivery arrived this morning, and the phone ringing rattled me ut of bed. I wish I could be a regular person, and sleep at night like regular people,bed at ten or eleven at night and getting up at five or six in the mornings, but I’m just a night owl. I hate to go to bed at night, and invent all kinds of reasons not to do it. Plus, if I do get in bed early, unless I’m really, really sick almost to death, I can’t sleep until after two a.m. Getting in bed just makes those eyes pop open and stay that way for endless hours of tossing and turning. Thats why I started playing Solitaire at bedtime. It helps me relax. Winning a few times would relax me more, but I don’t ask for everything.
Anyhoo…
this is what I pulled out of my basket. Collard greens, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, green beans, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, Asian pears, chanterelle mushrooms, kale, and sweet potatoes. Might be other things I'[ve forgotten about, but those are what sticks out. While collards are a Southern tradition dish, I personally have never cook/tasted them, so I went online to get some recipes. I watch Food Network a lot, and I’ve seen a lot of the people there who ooh and ahh over collards, and they talk about how long it takes to cook them, so tonight they will go in the crock pot with a ham hock and lots of other ingredients to cook until morning, when I’ll have my first ever collards for brunch.
I’ve had spaghetti squash a few times before, and to be honest, have not been impressed by it, but will give it another try with a salsa this time instead of a spaghetti sauce. Most of the spaghetti sauces I make include all of the veggies I have in the fridge, so the salsa will also include a lot of them with some jalapenos added. If nothing else, it will give it a kick. And there is definitely a stir fry in my immediate future with the sugar snaps–if I can hold off snacking on them first. I love, love, love ’em raw and crunchy.
Oh yeah, 
These are the veggies after a water bath in the sink, drying on a towel in the kitchen. Don’t these tomatoes look scrumptious? I might just stick some slices of them on a cheesie flatbread and grill them a couple of minutes. Or slice and eat with a bit of salt. And I still have a couple of avocados in the fridge I could mash up and add one of them to. So many possibilities. Not very many more deliveries this year. So…I’m already looking forward to next spring when the farm starts up again.
I tried adding some string cheese to my pasta casserole today. I don’t know if it is the cheese, or the fact that it’s been in my fridge about six years, but it didn’t melt, so that wasn’t the answer. Tomorrow I’ll grate more pepper jack and put that on the pasta. That might work. Might even put some on the collards if I don’t like the taste. Guess I’ll have to make some cornbread to go with them, because I definitely know I don’t like grits. Tried ’em, hated ’em, no need to try ’em again. Might make some mush, known to parts of the world as polenta. I do like that. And I know, all of them are made from corn, so they should all have the same taste, but sorry, grits just taste sorta gritty to me. Like chickpeas. A lot of people love ’em, but they have this sandy stuff left behind on your teeth that give me the shivers.
Oh yeah, I had one of my Asian pears tonight. I love Asian pears. Like all pears, but the Asians are special. A cross between an apple and a pear. So crunchy and good. It could have ripened a bit more, but things like that don’t matter much to me. About the only green things I can’t eat are persimmons. I can eat a lemon without a pucker, but a ‘simmon? That is off the chart in pucker power when it’s green.
Oh, my, gotta go make some watermelon ice cubes now, then tackle those collards. Get the beans ready to cook later when the crock pot is empty, and look forward to a trip to the grocery that stops my sinuses up just thinking about, to pick up some tiny red potatoes to cook with the green beans. Trips to the grocery and K-Mart are fun though. I usually end up getting my power chair hooked on something that gets pulled down an aisle, and that is so much fun. NOT!!! At least not until I get home and start thinking about it. Then I have to laugh.
A.
Angie's Place 