A weekly fall produce guide to what’s in season right now based on the contents of our CSA share, with CSA and farmer’s market recipes and ideas. This week’s mid-September inspiration: heirloom apples, concord grapes, and plums.
There are a lot of reasons we spend so much time here urging people to eat closer to home. It’s good for local food systems and economies; beyond this, local food, produced at small scales, just tastes better. Much of the food in a typical grocery store is grown for shelf stability rather than flavor. Foods are picked before they’re ripe so they’ll transport better. This winter, I had a Granny Smith (all the way from New Zealand) that was so hard I couldn’t get my teeth into it. [Read more…]
This deep into the growing season, I’ve found the novelty of slice and eat summer meals has worn off. Now, it’s the cooking that’s exciting. It started with canning, but continued into sauces, stews, and even roasted vegetables. Right now, summer eating is all about tender zucchini, smoky corn, and slow-cooked tomatoes. Along those lines, I’ve rounded up a mix of cooked, roasted, and grilled recipes fitting for a late August feast. 
This week brought a palpable shift towards fall. Summer produce traded bright greens and reds for saturated jewel tones. The hue of the tomatoes deepened, red peppers appeared, pale green summer apples made way for early MacIntosh with their flashes of scarlet, and even the late season peaches and nectarines took on rich maroon hue. I spotted the first green acorns under foot. And, in what may be the biggest harbinger of all, a friend brought a bunch of backyard concord grapes to a party. 