Green Options

During this bountiful season of the tomato harvest, there’s a certain classification of recipes I turn to. No sauces, no stews, nothing that uses cooked tomatoes or anything I can make in January with my frozen tomato booty. Celebrate the final summer hurrah by savoring the fresh and relish those special recipes that can only made this time of year.

This Tomato Crouton Casserole fits that bill nicely — and can readily be a side dish or we even serve it with breakfast at our B&B. Recipe after the jump:

Summer is my favorite time of year. The days are long and perfect for hiking, traveling, going to the beach, or just sitting on the porch. And summer is the season of my favorite fruits: berries, plums, and melons! I grew up picking huckleberries every summer in Idaho and am always on the lookout for wild berries. Free, fresh-picked fruit is always the tastiest, and wild blackberries and plums happen to be just ripening for the picking where I live on the Mendocino coast of California.

We took a walk to the beach the other day through an orchard overflowing with ripe plums. Further on, the path was lined with tall blackberry bushes. Needless to say, we had an excess of blackberries and plums for a while. Add to that the fact that a local organic wine was on sale this week, and I naturally just had to make sangria!

My sister lived in Spain for a semester last year, and I had some amazing sangria when I went there to visit her. Of course she knew a recipe for sangria, which the one below is based on. (Thanks sis!) So, with a little local foraging, some fresh-picked seasonal berries, and some local wine, I made a yummy summer drink that can be adapted for any kind of fruit that’s in season.

What’s a local foodie to do if you don’t have the right spot for a garden? Maybe you just don’t exude the green thumb karma and enthusiasm for growing your own seasonal fare? Or what if there isn’t a farmers’ market nearby for one-stop local food shopping?

Join Charlene Torchia and be a local food forager, developing connections, routines and routes for regularly traversing your area and buying direct from area family farms and food artisans. “I call it my ‘food run’,” explains Torchia, who runs the eco-friendly bed and breakfast, Journey Inn, in Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, about an hour from St. Paul/Minneapolis. “Once a week I make my rounds and stock up on key supplies such as meat from Anderson Farm, goat cheese, organic parmesan from Eau Galle Cheese, apples and cider. Vegetables come from a local CSA – Community Supported Agriculture – and I can even buy bread through them as they grow and grind their own wheat.”

With no dirt under the fingernails required, Torchia exemplifies the spirit that if you’re passionate about the local foods movement and supporting sustainable agriculture, you can find direct sources for bootie in your area. Try plugging your zip code into the Local Harvest database for a starter list of area options. “It’s all about relationships that go beyond shopping transactions,” Torchia adds. “Friendships developed from my food run. I feel part of the community and my B&B guests love hearing the personal story of where each breakfast ingredient came from.”

Here are some starter tips for becoming a local foods forager in your area:

A few years ago, I was walking through our farm gardens, when all of a sudden I turned around, and there stood a hungry tiger, licking his chomps. “Hmmm, that’s a peculiar non-native species to roam the Wisconsin countryside,” I said to myself, and then ran like hell across the field.

All of a sudden, I came to the edge of a cliff, staring down into the deep canyon below. ‘Hmmm, this canyon wasn’t here yesterday,” I noted, as the tiger quickly caught up to me. As I looked down, at the bottom of the canyon stood a second tiger, ready for dinner. I saw a small branch growing out of the edge of the cliff, and I quickly jumped and grabbed the branch, dangling precipitously over the cliff drop off, but hey, I figured I’m still alive.

I look up to see not only tiger number one snarling down at me, but two voracious mice, chewing away on my branch. But as the branch started to crack and my life flashed before me, my eye catches a strawberry, dangling from its vine. Not just any strawberry, but a perfectly ruby red ripe beauty, moist with morning dew. And I reach out, picked it and ate that strawberry.

We’re into early summer, now, and I know this, not by the rise in temperature, but because we’ve gotten the last bit of asparagus for the year and the first of the summer squash. Summer squash is one of the most prolific of vegetables, always seems like there are more squash each week than I have recipes for them. Here’s a creative way to use that abundant basil, the first tomatoes and your burgeoning crop of summer squash:

Squaghetti
1 large, long-shaped zucchini, leave peel on, prepare as above
1/2 pound spaghetti noodles
1/3 cup basil pesto (recipe)
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1 cup roasted tomatoes (recipe)

Prepare zucchini strands and place in a colander. Boil water for pasta. Before you place the spaghetti in the water, put the colander in and blanch the squash for 1-2 minutes. Remove from the water, set aside to cool. Cook pasta.

When the pasta is cooked, Drain and add the hot pasta and pesto in a large bowl. Gently fold in the squash strands as they will be more delicate. Top with the tomatoes and the parmesan. Now, let’s see ‘em pick the green vegetable out of that dish! Actually, they won’t bother. The strands mix well with the other flavors

More seasonal recipes in this week’s carnival after the jump.

Culinate has a handy overview of eating organic in the winter: how and what produce is seasonal and least likely to have pesticides, what to avoid, and other little tidbits.  Well worth a read, even for dark-greens who might think they already know how to eat organically.