Green Options

One leaf on the maple tree turned bright orange. The apples on our trees now droop with bounty. The local drive-in went to weekend-only hours and starts movies around 8:00 pm because that’s when it gets dark now here in Wisconsin. Deep sigh. Yes, those bittersweet signs of fall are in the air.

My advice on how to deal with this transition? Throw a potluck party celebrating the abundance of summer while you still can. Call it post-gardening season therapy. There’s nothing more cathartic than feasting with friends, savoring and reminiscing about the bounty of this year’s harvest –- while undoubtedly starting to plot for next year’s growing season.

Here’s a mini-cornucopia of ideas to get you started. For more detail, check out my piece in Hobby Farm Home magazine: The Community Table: Celebrate your local bounty with a potluck meal of regional fare.

1. Focus on Fresh Bounty

Tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, salad and spinach greens.

Indian food is my favorite, so I may be a little biased on this one. Nonetheless, the following is a delicious meal that I think most people can enjoy.

I am calling this “Homemade Indian Yum Yum” because it is full of spices often used in India, but it isn’t actually based on any specific Indian dish.

We all know we’re supposed to get a few good servings of fruits and vegetables in our daily diets. Here are a few fun ones in the vegetable category. Hope you enjoy these eclectic stuffed vegetable dishes.

Pear pie. Pear ginger muffins. Pear cordials made from fruit, sugar and vodka. Pears canned in sugar syrup. Pear jam.

When my senior neighbor Mary calls me every year at the end of August with her annual message of “The tree is ripe – come pick,” I turn into the Bubba Gump of pears, gratefully using the four bushels of pears I harvest off her abundant backyard tree.

As the country whines about escalating food prices, there’s often rotten apples falling from some tree near you. Or pears, plums – name your fruit. You know the tree I’m talking about – the one you pass by every day in someone’s yard that is practically falling over with ripe fruit and you think to yourself, “Someone needs to do something with that.” How true – and that “someone” is you.

Talk about an organic homerun: By connecting with and harvesting a local fruit tree, you not only garner more organic, fresh, local fruit booty than you know what to do with – and put something to use that would otherwise have gone to waste. You build community by connecting with others. We’re talking community at its core, most sustainable essence, sharing abundance with others, relishing the gifts of the land.

Step up to the plate – or bushel – and tap into these unwanted fruit on trees in backyards across the nation that could be making the world a better place through more pie – or jam or cobblers or muffins – you get the picture. Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you:

Two things peak like clockwork every August on our Wisconsin farm: Both the tomato harvest and the flow of guests at our B&B, Inn Serendipity, hit their peak. A time of rich abundance sprinkled with managed chaos, everything dances wildly amidst summer seasonal flow.

Which means I’ll gladly embrace any way I can simplify life right now, particularly when it comes to serving that morning meal daily to our B&B guests. Here’s a serving of our favorite tips and ideas for hosting a summer breakfast of your own, showcasing the abundant local, fresh flavors of the season and featuring our house recipe favorite: Fresh Tomato Breakfast Pie.

1. Prep the Night Before

This Fresh Tomato Breakfast Pie recipe serves up a great example of my ideal B&B recipe: Looks and tastes much more complex than it is. My morning B&B routine is a whole lot simpler if I can prep and organize my dishes the night before and just cook them fresh before serving. This recipe works well for that: Make and bake the crusts the night before. Chop and prep the tomatoes and other ingredients, then just assemble the pie in the morning and bake.

Give me a piece of paper and pencil and I might choke out a few stick figure drawings for you. I’m not much of an artist in the traditional sense. But give me a chunk of cheddar, some beer, fresh veggies and other local ingredients from my home state of Wisconsin, and I transform into the artistic ninja of my kitchen here at Inn Serendipity Farm and B&B. Give me a palette of local, homegrown flavors and I can channel my inner culinary muse.

Case in point: Wisconsin Melting Pot Cheese Soup, my recent entry into the Wisconsin State Fair’s “Cornucopia Challenge” culinary contest, featuring ten different Wisconsin-produced ingredients. This recipe below garnered a third place white ribbon in this culinary contest category sponsored by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation’s “Ag in the Classroom” efforts to promote Wisconsin products.

Ready to take on your own private “Cornucopia Challenge,” creating your own signature dish featuring your local fare? Here are four tips to get you thinking creatively about combining your area’s flavors into a state fair ribbon worthy dish:

I recently saw stuffed Greek-style grape leaves selling at a trendy deli for $1.25. Each. As those who have tasted these “dolmades” already know, they can quickly be addicting and you could eat yourself broke at that price. Originating from the Arabic word “dolma,” meaning “stuffed,” the word evolved into “dolmades” in Greece and is a traditional dish of grape leaves stuffed with rice, meat, lentils and seasonings served as an appetizer or entrée.

With that pre-made price tag as my incentive to find a cheaper alternative, as well as find a vegetarian option to the meat filling, this recipe evolved. A very forgiving ingredient list, feel free to experiment to season and flavor to taste. While this makes a big batch, you’ll be surprised how quickly they disappear. The dolmades will typically stay fresh in the refrigerator for about a week; add a drizzle of olive oil or water if they start to dry out.

July ushers in the epitome of summer garden abundance here in Wisconsin. So I was disappointed to see my local supermarket in town selling a teeny “fresh” box of basil from California, a quarter of an ounce for $2.49. With these high ingredient prices, it’s no wonder making your own pesto hasn’t evolved to higher home culinary status.

But ignore that price tag. With a little planning, you can make the amazing homemade, local pesto that will keep you savoring summer all winter long. Here are a few frugal tips to get you started:

1. Grow Your Own Basil

There’s a reason why fresh basil comes with such a high price tag: the herb is incredibly hard to keep fresh. From the moment it is cut, the leaves start to wilt, making transport very difficult. One of the most economical ways to get your feet wet in gardening is to grow basil (or any fresh herb you use frequently), which can readily be grown in a container or pot.

Every mid-July, I hit a culinary rut. An odd confession, I realize, given that right now fresh garden fare is edging on peak abundance and gifts me with a daily cornucopia of seasonal produce for ingredients. But as the zucchini harvest piles up on the kitchen counter this time of year, I feel a bit overwhelmed and uninspired. I crave a fresh cooking groove.

However, I’ve learned that just like any artist needs to at times rekindle a creative muse, we foodies too need a dose of cooking inspiration, especially during this time when we have a bounty of fresh fare to savor.

Here are three tips I’ve discovered for shaking up a peak summer cooking rut, followed by a summer breakfast classic we serve at our Wisconsin B&B, Inn Serendipity: Zucchini Feta Pancakes, that will cure any summer cooking rut that ails you:

1. Flip Savory and Sweet

Twist the expected menu and serve a familiar item category a new way. For example, most folks expect pancake to be bread-like and sweet, swimming in a pool of syrup.

Summer is my favorite season.  It’s the time of year for sunset barbecues and dinners on the patio, and for strings of tiny Italian lights and flickering Moroccan lanterns. Summer plays the beautiful hostess of longer days and breezy nights, polka-dotted sundresses, and peals of joyful laughter coming from children playing in the backyard.

There’s no better time than summer to indulge in a sliver of chocolate cake, so rich in contrast to the simplicity of the gingham tablecloth and the mason jars overflowing with wildflowers.   This cake is made without using wheat, corn, or dairy ingredients, yet it is unmistakably, deliciously, chocolate.

My kids love to make muffins, and one of their favorite vegan recipes is for chocolate chip muffins. We like to put a special dash of bran on the bottom and a dash of coconut on top for an extra treat.  If you’ve never tried chocolate chips in a muffin, you will be pleasantly surprised!  These muffins are quick and easy to make, but be warned:  they will be eaten up quickly!