Weekend Farmers' Market Blogging: Week 6

Welcome to week 6 of Weekend Farmers’ Market Blogging. This weekly series is devoted to sharing the joys of eating locally — both through farmers’ markets and by growing your own food.

Garden Update

We harvested cabbage this week, which my kids were so excited about. They love boiled cabbage as much as I do — a strange love, I know, but it’s ours.

We also spent some time staking the rowdy tomato plants and fencing the cucumbers. That was a huge success — the cucumber plants are already grabbing onto the fencing.

Unfortunately, we had to pick and toss a few tomatoes that had blossom end rot. It’s not contagious or serious, but those tomatoes were duds. We also have many cherry tomatoes growing and plenty of other tomatoes coming in. Now, just to figure out how to best treat the soil.

We also plucked the last of the radishes from the ground this week, immediately replanting lettuce in their place. One shishito pepper was ready, so we plucked that along with two cucumbers. This week, we’ll harvest more Swiss chard, cabbage and hopefully the first few tomatoes.

All in all, a good week. Learning about what was wrong with the tomatoes was pretty interesting too.

Farmers’ Market Recipes from Around the Web

With our bounty of radishes, I made pickled radishes to enjoy on rice bowls, salads and more in the coming weeks. Mmm. Tasty.

What’s Gaby Cooking has a recipe for Grilled Chicken Panzanella. Panzanella is bread salad — a tasty concoction of veggies, bread, vinaigrette and more. This version adds some flavorful grilled chicken to the mix. Yum!
Frugal Foodie Mama has a recipe for a Farmers Market Frittata. With bell peppers, chard, sausage and more, it sounds delightful.
One Heart One Family has a recipe for Swiss Chard au Gratin. Sounds like a delightful way to fall in love with greens. Mmm. Cheese.
And check out my newspaper column, Maine Course, for The Bangor Daily News for a recipe for Clams with Pancetta, Onion and Basil.

Weekend Farmers’ Market Blogging is open to anyone who wants to blog about eating locally. Find out more here.