The Taste of Summer

It was worth the wait. The first ripe tomato from my garden was eaten with much ceremony and gratitude. Nothing tastes of summer like a sun-ripened tomato. Every day, more tomatoes appear, promising a bountiful, if late, harvest. I ate the first plump treasure in a Caprese salad. It made a perfect summer lunch.

                                      

Caprese Salad

serves 1

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper, to taste

1 large tomato, sliced thinly

3 slices of fresh mozzarella cheese

1 fresh basil leaf, thinly sliced

Whisk lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Arrange slices of tomato and cheese on a serving plate. Drizzle with lemon juice and olive oil dressing. Sprinkle with basil.

The Egg Recall

The current salmonella outbreak, linked to eggs, highlights the dangers of factory farming. Two egg farms are the source of salmonella infecting several states (13 states at last count.)  When you read how many brand names these eggs have been sold under, you understand how food packaging can give the illusion that there are more companies producing our food than actually are. The FDA is warning that the salmonella scare isn't over, and more brands may be recalled. To keep up-to-date on the recall, there are several websites that you can consult, including the two below:

Egg Safety Center

Federal Food Safety Information

In my opinion, this egg recall underlines the importance of finding quality, local sources for our food.

Tomatoes!!! (Finally)

Better late than never! My five tomato plants are starting to bear fruit!! I've counted 20 of the little jewels growing and more blooms are coming on. All of this is happening in spite of my overzealous pruning. My parents stopped by one day and tried to hold back their laughter while they explained my mistake. My plants resembled tomato trees instead of the bushy plants they should be. My dad pointed out that a "sucker" is a small branch growing in the V formed by two larger branches. These are the only branches that should be pruned.

Next year I will know better! But all is not lost and soon I will be tasting a homegrown tomato from my own garden!

Putting Up Food

Preserving food at home, or "putting up food," was once a necessity. Now it is considered to be an almost-lost art. My mother has always canned garden veggies, and I remember well the hiss of the canner on the stovetop. (Her canned green beans are fantastic!) There has been a renewed interest in canning and freezing foods in recent years. And with the current concern about the safety of commercially canned products in our grocery stores, I expect more and more people will be interested in how to preserve summer's bounty for the rest of the year.

I recently read an interesting article about community canneries. In some small towns around the country, there are places set aside for community members to preserve their own food. Canning classes are offered, and the equipment is shared and maintained by town citizens. What a neat idea! Here is a link to the story:
Community Canneries

The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a wonderful website, full of information about how to preserve foods. There are instructions on how to can, freeze, dry, cure, smoke and ferment foods. There are also instructions on making jams and jellies. If you are lucky enough to have a garden that is producing more food than you can eat, or if you want to stock up on veggies at your local farmers' market, check out this website. Be sure to follow instructions closely. If foods aren't preserved correctly, they are not safe to eat.
How to Preserve Foods at Home

Eating in Tune with the Seasons

There are no seasons in the American supermarket. Now there are tomatoes all year round, grown halfway around the world, picked when it was green, and ripened with ethylene gas. Although it looks like a tomato, it's kind of a notional tomato. I mean, it's the idea of a tomato.

- Michael Pollan, from Food, Inc.

Today it is hard to imagine that everyone once ate only fresh produce that was in season. There was a time when you couldn't get a fresh tomato in the middle of winter. Many of us don't even know when certain foods are in season, because they are always available to us at the supermarket. But there are many benefits to eating seasonal foods. You can buy them locally, supporting your local economy and reducing the energy needed to ship those foods. When foods are allowed to ripen naturally in the sun, they contain more vital nutrients than their artificially ripened imitators. And they just taste better! Below is a link to Sustainable Table's webpage about seasonal foods. At the bottom of the page, you can enter your state and the season, and a list of seasonal produce for your area will be brought up. It's a great tool to re-teach us how to eat in tune with the seasons.

Seasonal Produce Guide

New Blog Feature

Blogger now has a new feature for blog posts. At the end of each posting, there are squares you can click on to share that posting with others. There are options to e-mail the posting, share it on your own blog, on Facebook, etc. If you know of someone who may be interested in one of my postings, but doesn't follow my blog, please feel free to use this new feature! Thanks!

Waste Not, Want Not

Many of us end up throwing out much of the fruits and veggies that we buy. There are a few tricks to making your produce last longer, and not waste all of that food. Vegetarian Times has a nice article about what to store in the fridge, what foods should be stored together or separated, and other tricks for keeping your fruits and vegetables in their best shape!

Produce Storage Guide