Cherry Tomato Ginger Jam

Here is a recipe for one of my favorite things to do with the end of the season glut of cherry tomatoes.

ingredients

4 qts Cherry tomatoes (any color)

1/4 cup fresh ginger, grated

Sugar, around 8 cups

1/4 cup lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

instructions

1. Place the tomatoes in a thick bottomed pot and begin cooking over medium flame.

2. Mash with a potato masher. Once they have begun looking like sauce, use an immersion blender to puree (optional).

3. Add the ginger, salt and lemon.

4. Now add your sugar- you have some leeway with the quantity of sugar- you want to add enough that the color and texture of the jam changes and looks more like jam and less like tomato sauce.

5. In general you can estimate around a cup of sugar per cup of tomato puree.

6. Now cook the mixture down until it reaches the texture you are looking for.

7. I put a few little plates in the freezer and when I think the jam is ready I test the texture by putting a spoonful on a frozen plate, returning to the freezer for a couple minutes and then tasting. This way you can both assess the ultimate texture of the finished jam as well as adjust the seasoning.

Cool Cucumber Soup

Most of us get distracted at some point in the season and fail to harvest some of those cucumbers- it’s hard to keep up with them when they really start fruiting! Here is a solution for those overgrown, seedy slicing cukes that are no good for pickling or salads. I like to serve in a small glasses with a crouton on top but it tastes just as good in a bowl!

Ingredients

2-3 large slicing cucumbers, peeled, de-seeded, diced

1 quart your favorite unflavored yoghurt

Handful fresh mint and /or dill and chives

1 clove garlic

1 small shallot

Salt to taste

Squeeze of lemon or vinegar

drizzle of honey

Instructions

1. Mix cucumber, shallot, yoghurt, minced herbs and garlic, salt, honey and lemon.

2. Blend in a blender or use immersion blender to puree.

3. Mix well and allow to sit for an hour or more.

4. Adjust consistency and seasoning as needed. You can use milk or veg stock to thin it out.

Josh's Favorite Beet Recipe

Ever wonder what to do with beets? Well, this colorful root crop starts sizing up in late spring and can be grown all summer and into fall. Options for preparation are diverse and numerous but this is by far my favorite!

This makes a great side-dish to serve with fish or chicken or a beautiful addition to a meal of summer salads

Ingredients

1-2 bunches beets, golden, chioggia or red, with greens

2 tablespoons honey

2 table spoons balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons cooking oil (olive, vegetable, grape seed- your preference)

1 block feta cheese

1 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. First remove beet greens, wash well and put back in the fridge.

2. Trim tails and noses off beets and put in pot of water. Simmer on the stove for approximately 45 minutes or until fork tender (you can also steam them if you prefer).

3. While the beets are still hot, put them into a bowl with cold water and use your hands to slip off the skins.

4. Once the beets are skinned and cool enough to handle, slice them and put them in a bowl. Sprinkle them with the oil, honey and balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper.

5. Next, put them on a sheet tray and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 10 minutes.

6. While the beets are roasting, melt some butter in a sauté pan, chop the beet greens and sauté in butter until soft. (You can also steam the greens if you are trying to avoid the butter.)

7. Now spread the cooked greens on a plate or platter.

8. Next remove the roasted beets from the oven and carefully arrange on top of the greens.

9. Lastly, crumble feta cheese all over the dish and serve warm.

Peak Summer Harvests & Baby Rosenstein

Here we are at peak summer and all that early season work should finally be paying off. All those fruiting plants: the tomatoes and cucumbers, zucchinis and eggplants, peppers and summer squash are all ripening on the vines. The onions, garlic, shallots as well as beets have matured and can be used now. The basil and other summer herbs are still going. Now is the time to be creative in the kitchen and, if you can stand the heat, get your Farm To Table cook on.

Unfortunately, this is also the season of fungal diseases, summer pests and extreme heat- so it can be easy to get distracted worrying about your plants survival. Indeed, the game now is to see how long you can keep some of these annual plants alive and yielding before they succumb to their eventual seasonal demise and make way for the rich hearty flavors of fall.

Truth be told, one of the real skills of a grower is getting the timing right. Many of our favorite fall crops must be planted around mid-August if they are to yield before winter conditions arrive, but often those precious summer crops are still occupying garden space long past that window.

What to do? Well, the first thing is make sure to have a garden plan to serve as a roadmap and guide planting decisions over the course of the season. Edible Eden offers garden plans for any size garden that will help maximize your space over the course of the season.

If you don’t have a plan in place; consider interplanting some fall crops in and amongst your yielding plants over the next few weeks so that when they do go down your kales and cabbages will rise to the occasion and fill their space.

Here at 2601 Taney, we are thinking a lot about timing as we continue our extended baby watch. Teri was at 40 weeks a week ago and now we are trying to go about our lives knowing that at any minute labor will begin and we will need to step away from whatever we were doing and head to the hospital.

It’s a good thing we have plenty of beautiful produce to munch while we are waiting!

Stay posted for news of the soon-to-arrive baby Rosenstein and enjoy that summer produce while it’s here.

Farmer Josh

Potatoes from the Earth with Love

I love growing potatoes! Maybe more then any other crop- digging up glowing gems from out of the soil that translate into real, belly filling food feels like magic. This year we planted three different kinds of potatoes and the Red Norlands rewarded us with this message from below...

Potatoes can be harvested starting in early July- and many farmers will start digging them early for market considerations. The best for home growers however is to wait until the plant starts to die in mid-late summer and then dig up its nest of starchy treasures. If you dig them before the plant starts to die you might be missing some additional tuber set.

Different varieties of potatoes have shorter and longer growing seasons so best to plant a few different varieties and have a long harvest window.

While theoretically any piece of potato with eyes planted in the early spring can generate a plant and create more tubers- supermarket potatoes are often treated with a chemical that inhibits sprouting and not the best idea for growing your own. Seed potatoes are available from most seed suppliers. I splurge on Maine Potato Lady as they have great organic varieties and you can get smaller and larger amounts of different kinds. Not cheap however!

In any case- the heart shaped potato played a starring role in this morning's garden produce hash served with fried eggs and feta.

Preserving the Harvest

With the Fall coming on quickly thoughts turn to preserving some of our harvest so we can enjoy local foods during the cold months when little is growing. We have multiple options available to us when it comes to putting up goodies for the off season. The simplest and quickest option is  blanching and freezing. Many vegetables lend themselves to blanching and freezing and hold up well in the freezer. Zukes and summer squash, beans, carrots, beets, turnips, peas, and kale are all good options for blanching and freezing. To do this, wash and chop them into suitable sizes, drop them in boiling water for three minutes, then into ice water until cool, then lay them out on a cookie sheet and freeze. The next day put them in clean, ziplock backs, label and forget about them until January!

Another great craft to explore is pickling. When creating pickled delights we can choose to lacto-ferment or vinegar pickle. Lacto-fermentation is an artisanal method of food preservation that has many heath benefits and creates amazing and unique flavors. It involves creating the right conditions for healthy microorganisms to come and do their work of breaking down sugars and releasing lactic acid which acts as a preservative. Old school sour or half-sour pickles, dilly beans, saurkraut, and kim chi are some great options for fermenting. Vinegar pickling involves making a boiling brine of vinegar and seasoning and pouring it over fresh vegetables. Cucumber, sliced beets, baby onions, asparagus and okra are great veggies to vinegar pickle. This method is the best way to get a shelf stable product that doesn't need to be kept in the fridge and can create some really fantastic flavors, although it has no health benefits.

Canning is the process of creating a shlef stable product by sealing mason jars using heat. With canning you really need to follow correct procedures to avoid food borne illness so best to do it according to concise directions- or better yet, do it with a friend or family member who has experience with canning. Pureed tomatoes, jams, and vinegar pickles are all good options for canning.

Dehydrating is also a good option for preserving veggies; if you have a dehydrator you can create the best backpacking foods ever!

Regardless of how you go about it, make sure to try out a food preservation technique this late summer as there is nothing so satisfying as eating homegrown produce from your MidAtlantic garden in the cold weeks of February.

To learn more join us at another free Edible Eden workshop on preserving the harvest Sunday afternoon, Sept 20, 4-6 pm.

Hot and Wet

When was the last time you watered your garden...? Oh, you say, not since May? That may be because it has been raining pretty consistently all summer long. While I have certainly enjoyed the might and glory of our Mid Atlantic thunder storms, and it's nice to never worry about watering... the ramifications for gardening are not so great.

You might have noticed most tomato plants wearing some forlorn yellow to brown leaves around their base- those are signs of Early Blight or Septoria, fungal diseases that get worse when the plants never get to fully dry out.

I've also seen different kinds of fungal diseases on everything from bush cherries and Monarda to Columbines and Lilac bushes. Earlier this season a fungal pepper disease came through that wreaked havoc with farmers. I heard of one well-known local organic farmer who lost their entire crop of specialty hot peppers they had been growing for a local restaurant. And hot peppers are really hard to kill! They never seem to suffer the way sweet peppers do...

I've also noticed mosaic virus and downy mildew on cucumber and squash plants- these fungal diseases usually take down your squash and cukes...but not until the end of the season. With so much rain they seem to be moving faster and earlier then usual.

All this to say, every season is different, sometimes it's dry and if your irrigation system is weak or faulty you start loosing plants. Some seasons it rains every day and while we never need to worry about watering...everything dies from a fungal disease.

Here are some things to consider:

-First of all, if you have an automatic irrigation system- make sure it is not adding insult to injury by watering when all your plants want is a chance to dry out.

-It's a good idea to remove the small branches and leaves around the bases of your tomato plants to create more airflow.

-Mulching with straw could help keep fungal spores from bouncing up from the soil to the lower leaves of plants.

-If you are only seeing the beginning of fungal disease on your plants you might consider spraying some Actinovate or another organic fungicide to try to beat back the progress of the disease.

Regardless, let's enjoy the moisture and warmth while it is here and hope for a crisp fall that is just a little bit dryer...

-- Josh Rosenstein 443.547.9268 www.EdibleEdenFoodscape http://www.EdibleEdenFoodscapes.coms.com http://www.EdibleEdenFoodscapes.com

Cool Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

2-4 Cucumbers (Grated)

1 Clove Garlic (Pressed)

1 Small Bunch Fresh Cilantro (Finely Chopped)

2 Cups Plain Yoghurt

Salt to Taste

Wedge of Lime

Instructions

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl

2. Let sit for at least half an hour

3. Serve chilled