Pears – Ohio Farm Share Week 19

Pears are such an exciting fruit to get in our farm share and not what I expected to receive in NE Ohio in October. I know that apples are available at this time of year, but the pears are such a delightful surprise. What you see in the featured photo this week is my half of our share. We had our grandchildren for the weekend and I didn’t get a chance to photograph the full share. Speaking of the grandchildren, they’re the reason there are only two pears in the picture when there should be three! HA — they love fresh pears as much as I do.

Nothing is more fun than to hear one of our grand-daughters ask if she can have a tomato off the several platefuls on the kitchen table from our garden. Sure, I tell her, I just need to wash it for you first. “Can you wash all of them?” she asks. Oh my, I couldn’t stop laughing. She wanted to share some with her sister and needed to be sure they would have plenty. Of course, if they want to eat tomatoes like candy, I’m not going to deny them. They both decided that the “brown” tomatoes (Black Cherry) tasted like brownies. Hmmmm. I want their taste buds!

Getting Pears and a delicious Havarti cheese in our farm share made me think immediately of a fruit and cheese tray with a glass of Sangria. I may have to visit the winery!

This week our small Vegetarian farm share included (no photo)…

Cornmeal – 2 lbs
Cheese – 8 oz Dill Havarti – from Mayfield Road Creamery
Spaghetti Squash – 1
Pears – 6
Onion
Cabbage – 1 head green
Broccoli – 1 head
Sweet Potatoes – 3 lbs
Eggplant – 2
Swiss Chard – 1 bunch
Beets with tops – 1 bunch

My half of the Vegetarian small share this week (top featured photo) and what’s left since Friday, October 9…

Cornmeal – 1 lbs
Cheese – 4 oz Dill Havarti – from Mayfield Road Creamery – dill cheese is a favorite and this is amazing – I ate an ounce to make sure!
Spaghetti Squash – 1
Pears – 3 – 2 left, but not for long!
Onion
Cabbage – 1/2 head green – I’m super excited about cooking this up to freeze for soups and making some cabbage and noodles.
Broccoli – 1/2 head
Sweet Potatoes – 1.5 lbs – I just bought some of these so I’m excited to compare the Ohio farm raised with the purchased.
Eggplant – 1
Swiss Chard – 1 bunch – this is very pretty – not sure what I’m doing with it, hopefully something creative.
Beets with tops – 1 bunch – my parents got these in their half and I got the squash.

RESULTS…

I made a big pot of Vegetable Beef Soup (recipe coming soon!) and we ate that for several days. I love soup for using up vegetables. I don’t use much meat in my soups, only enough to flavor. I stuff my soups with a variety of vegetables. Then I stretch the soup by adding some water each day to the broth and adding more vegetables so that the soup changes a bit in flavor but we get the most out of it. It’s also a great way to use up leftovers so some of the yellow beans from last week’s farm market visit landed in the soup and some landed in the freezer. The green beans from the farm share landed in the soup in the first batch, along with some carrots, potatoes, onions, come of the broccoli, our roasted tomatoes, mushrooms, etc… I should probably call my soups “dump soups,” as I’m usually dumping whatever I find into them.

Other than the soup and beans, I didn’t do much cooking. The weather was gorgeous and we wanted to be out in it so that was our focus. I start to panic at this time of year because summer is over and winter is coming, so I’m only inside when it’s raining. I did freeze the peppers that were left in the refrigerator as well as several containers of stock, then ran out of freezer space. I have a bottom freezer in our cabinet depth refrigerator, plus a 5.1 cubic foot chest freezer and they were both full after I did the beans and peppers. I ended up taking some of the excess to store in my mom’s upright freezer to make room to buy some fish and to freeze some applesauce.

Meat prices have increased so much that I’m watching for the best deals and freezing small packages for soups this winter. We’ve committed to the Winter Farm Share program at Fresh Fork Market so I know we’ll be getting something frozen most weeks. It will be interesting to see if I end up buying an upright freezer or another chest freezer to keep up with the volume. When I make soups, I like to freeze half of the batch for another day, so I’m going to need room to do that.

This is the year of experimenting with food storage and consumption so I’m glad I’m blogging about this so I’ll know what I need to do next year. I dislike our winter when it gets below 30 degrees so I always stock up so I don’t have to go to the store as often.

What about you? Do you stock up or just buy what you need for the week or a couple days?

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