It Must Be Friday...

Not just an excuse for John's Peanut Sauce (but a mighty good one)-- Spring Rolls!

Ingredient options are endless. Some that we've tried: apples, carrots, cucumber, lettuce, cilantro, tomatoes, tempeh, tofu, beans, and crushed nuts. Bean thread noodles were the only constant.

Wrapped in tapioca paper (see this site for methodology) and either dipped or soaked in peanuty goodness.

7 page recipe, 1 fabulous cake

It's a raw carrot cake with macadamia nut frosting! A recipe that spans 2+ days in the making and yes, seven pages. Hats off to the recipe's creators, Andrea's former roommies, Thalia and Steve (whom I've never met but greatly respect for their taste in cakes).

The to-die-for frosting is made from macadamia nuts and pitted dates soaked in orange and lemon juice, blended with more orange juice and vanilla extract, with juice-soaked poppy seeds folded in. MMmmm!

More Fun with Tomatoes

The order of the day is slicing up tomatoes to put in the dehydrator. At KVG, dried tomatoes help the canned pasta sauce and salsas fill the winter lycopene void.



Though nothing beats a fresh tomato, dried tomatoes can add color and flavor to hummus, bagels, dressings, you name it. After the first 5-gallon bucket full, patterns emerge before your eyes...


But, we're not drying them all. For samosa night we found a great tomato chutney recipe online. I'm still on the lookout for a canning recipe (it seems like this one would be cannable without the addition of a lot of vinegar, since it's basically just tomatoes with some spices, but i'm not a confident enough canner yet to go ahead with that). Becks and Posh have a sweeter version for canning (okay, you got me, i didn't even read the recipe, but the photos were really nice), but I'd want to avoid white vinegar and sugar if possible. So the search is on, to be continued next tomato season.

Breaking down the Garden

Today was a hard day. Not so much in a physical way, though we macheted and hauled most of the rows; it's just difficult to accept such drastic change. The weather's been slowly shifting, but looking at the garden we went from summer to autumn in under 7 hours (and autumn is so flat!).

Some random garden shots

Child of the Corn

Do you remember the first time you had sweet corn raw? I was at the Evanston farmer's market (one summer ago? two?) and one vendor was just sure that if you tried his corn raw you'd have to get some. I'd had cooked corn on the cob before, but more often corn from the can, so I was a bit hesitant...

I'll probably never forget that taste.



We've been cutting a lot of corn for freezing this past week on the farm. And we made these delicious corn-cilantro panackes. Pancakes, patties, I don't know what to call them. But they are good.


Corn's ready when the silk turns brown.



If you think you're safe because you're off in a non-midwestern city--think again!

Basil E. Tomatoweiler

Summer's not over yet! There's still basil to be eaten! Shown here in the form of sunflower seed pesto. This lighter- tasting (and dare I say, healthier?) version is quick and simple to make, but it does require a Vitamix or food processor or perhaps an overachieving blender.

Sunflower Seed Pesto

1 part garlic
4 parts sunflower seeds (or walnuts!)
4-5 parts fresh basil leaves
water/oil as needed

The proportions are actually a big guess on my part, I'd just throw in some garlic, nuts, and basil, blend, and see where the consistency and taste are at. Serve as 1 part substrate: 3+ parts pesto. It also goes really great in tomato soup. Here again, I have no real numbers. Maybe one of the chefs will email me their take on it:

Kyli + Lore's Tomato Soup (as vaguely remembered by Jess)

Saute onions and garlic (lots!), then fill pot with coarsely chopped tomatoes (don't bother removing the the seeds, they'll get strained out later). Cover and let stew for a while, then add lots o' chopped basil. Let stew for a few more minutes, then carefully blend (it's hot!). To each part blended, add a bit of olive oil (we ended up using about 1/8-1/4 of a quart jar). From the blender, strain soup into a pot, heat up again, and serve. If it's too liquidy, let simmer to reduce.

Gad-Zukes!

I don't know which I like better: when vegetables resemble animals or when, wait, there's nothing I like better.

Stop looking at me, swan.

One good way to use up a stockpile of zukes is to make zucchini pizza. It's shown below flipped over on itself like a very thick omelette, but it works as a single layer as well. Sauce and top with whatever your usual pizza works are.

Another is Lorna Sass's zucchini bread. Fluffy, moist, vegan. Need I say more?

Onion harvest

Time to get the onions out before the rains come. The ones at Kings Valley Gardens are especially fierce, I think they even got Justin (the resident onion dicer) crying the other day. I happened to notice that the French Republican Calendar, possibly the most vegetable-friendly time tracking system ever created, has no day named for onions (or garlic for that matter!) Talk about setting up your revolution for hard times. At least these people know what's up.

This site tells you (in science babble) why we cry , this one tells you how to avoid it (try sticking the onion in a freezer for a few minutes before chopping).


And as usual for veggies without any particular recipe, I dug up some facts. Onions originated from the Middle East, and have been eaten, since, well, forever. Lots o' folks thought that they increased strength and courage: they were ordered up for the laborers who built the pyramids as well as the troops of Alexander the Great. Today, the average Libyan eats almost 67 pounds of onions each year (Americans? 21 pounds). The largest onion recorded weighed almost 11 pounds1. Onions have even been used to predict who you'll marry 2. Oh, and the Onion Goddess looks a lot like Lore.

Honey harvest

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best -- " and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called --The Tao of Pooh

In our case the moment lasted for a number of hours--the honey harvest!!! The robbery began early in the day since bees become more active with warmer temperatures. What I remember most is the buzzing sensation on my hands--feeling their vibration through two layers of gloves! I mean, I'd be pretty angry, too.

Kyli and I with our spacesuits on

I think we've already raved about honey's healing properties in a mead post, so i dug out some other random related facts: About 1/2 of the human diet comes from plants that are pollinated by bees. Honey is the only food that does not spoil (they found edible honey in King Tut's tomb!). All the worker bees are female (male bees, called drones, don't collect pollen, and they either die soon after mating with the queen (their purpose) or get kicked out of the hive before winter). And can you guess where most of the world's honey comes from? China supplies almost half, with the US, Argentina, and Ukraine filling in most of the rest (1,2) . It's weird to think about industrial production of honey, especially since the animals themselves are so delicate.

Alright, that's all i've got. Photos of the extraction process here