Celebrating the Bounty of Summer

I’ve written before about not being a food gardener. Tomatoes and herbs in pots on the deck suit both my interest and my unwillingness to do battle with bunnies, squirrels, fox, coyotes and deer that would find a food garden just too attractive.

But because we love fresh vegetables and because we love the idea of Community Supported Agriculture, for the past two years we’ve purchased a CSA share from Homestead Hill CSA. I knew this would be a great CSA to invest in because Pam, one of the owners, was the Master Gardener Coordinator when I took the class in 2007. She taught our vegetable gardening section of the course and her passion for raising food crops was obvious.

Pam’s husband Steve comes from a long line of fruit farmers so CSA share members have the opportunity to buy their spectacular strawberries and cherries as well as vegetables.

But the bounty of our share challenges us to find new ways to use each week’s supply. Fortunately we have a stock of cookbooks as well as internet access for recipe searches. As tomatoes have begun ripening here in Northern Michigan I’ve had a craving for gazpacho and went in search of a great recipe. I found one from Chef John that uses fresh tomatoes. Without the addition of any cream the pureed tomatoes gave the diced vegetables a creamy base that was just delicious. We loved it. That started a conversation about the gazpacho we made early in our marriage years, very different from the one we made this year but also very good.

To the cookbooks we went, hoping we hadn’t sold or given that book away over the years. But we were in luck. It was on our bookshelves - The Best of the Best by Arthur Hettich, then editor of Family Circle, which was the largest selling women’s magazine. The Best of the Best is a compilation of recipes from some of the notable American restaurants of the 1970s, leaders in the culinary arts like James Beard, Mimi Sheraton and Craig Claiborne and celebrities like Burt Reynolds.

We quickly went to the index and found the recipe for Chilled Gazpacho Soup from the Tack Room in Tucson, Arizona, which unfortunately closed in 2003. What an interesting recipe that was! Years before the emphasis was on farm to table eating and before lots of fresh ingredients were as easy to access as they are today, this soup could even be made in winter. (Brrr if you did it in Michigan.) However the gazpacho recipe we used this year is focused on fresh and that’s what’s appealing to me right now.

From there we went on exploring recipes and remembering names. When I happened on Peg Bracken, I remembered her I Hate to Cook book. With a little online sleuthing I found that book had been reprinted in a 50th anniversary edition. Since I’m not the cook in the family, I checked out a couple of her recipes and was rewarded with Peg Bracken’s Sour Cream Cole Slaw. Bracken describes her preferred recipes as “hard to spoil, easy to make and remarkably good tasting.” The Sour Cream Cole Slaw recipe seemed to fit the bill so I gave it a try and it is delicious.

I’m going to explore further some recipes in the book for using this week’s summer share and I’ll keep you posted.