It’s been a rather rough few weeks in the gardens. High temperatures in June put an end to our hopes for lots of spring crops that we’d planned for the first few boxes. Head lettuce, radicchio, radish, turnip, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, parsley and cilantro all bolted before we got a good harvest, and that’s left us punting. Luckily, we had a fun forage opportunity this week with the explosion of elderflowers in our hedgerows. And all the heat has given the summer crops a huge boost – we’ve already got fruit on the tomatos, peppers, eggplants and squash. You win some, you lose some!

Basil and Sorrel Starts: Here are two yummy herbs you might want to plant close by this summer. We’ll be packing lots of Italian Large Leaf Basil in your boxes for most of the hot season, but this plant is a special variety: Profumo di Genova. So fragrant, do plant it where it will get sun and where you might brush against it walking by. It will release the most delicious aroma – a profumo! Basil will do best if you trim the top off as it matures, and then continue to trim off the growing tips, the highest 5 leaves and the stalk, rather than individual leaves. You’ll get branching then and a bush rather than a straight up stalk. The sorrel is a perennial herb you can harvest off of all season and into fall. It will be one of the first things up in the spring. The leaves are so tart I can’t tolerate them alone. I have a friend who calls them the Sour Patch Kids of the garden world. Zippy! Like lemons, sorrel is high in vitamin C. And chewing a raw leaf is supposed to soothe an upset stomach. I like to tear some into a salad or scissor a few leaves over pasta. In Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Polish cuisine sorrel is used often in soups. In Africa, it’s cooked with greens. See some recipes below. If you ultimately don’t enjoy the taste, you can plant the herb outside in a pot or a garden and you’ll find it’s loved by the larvae of lots of butterflies.

Elderflower Heads – Oh, we love to put these in the boxes if they are in bloom on the day we pack! These white flowers are tucked into your flower bouquet, but in their own little damp paper towel so they’ll be fresh and good to use. Elderberry Flower Fritters are a treat you absolutely must try making in the next day or two. Trust me! The recipe is below, but you can also follow this link for a more in-depth description.

Circle M Salad Mix with Nasturtium Blossoms and Leaves – This is probably the last of the salad mix until fall and cooler weather, which is a great shame since the nasturtiums are just really getting going. We’ll pack some on their own through the summer and you can make some cool appetizers with them, but for now you can just enjoy a preview of their peppery taste.

Royal Oakleaf Head Lettuce – Such a pretty, robust plant! We have this planted in the shade of our potatoes and it’s amazingly bright and green next to the dark, matte potato leaves. We grew these in a cool spot in the hopes that we’d be able to bring you lettuce in the heat, though we didn’t expect the heat so early. Lettuce (and lots of other crops we planned for your first few boxes) “bolts” in the heat and starts to create flower heads and go to seed. We did lose a lot of our head lettuces (and bok choy and broccoli – don’t worry, we grow it in the fall, too!) to the crazy-hot spring, but these troopers have stayed beautiful. Fedco, my favorite seed co-op (order a catalog just to read, if you love veggies), calls this the “Rolls Royce of Oakleaf Lettuces” and a customer wrote in to say “looks like a lettuce with a bad hair day.” Fun and sweet.

Purple Scallions – These rare Italian Rossa Di Milano onions will fancy up an omelet or egg drop soup. They are a bit stronger than typical green scallions, so use judiciously.

Herb Bouquet: – Dill, Chocolate Mint and Chives should be pretty easy to recognize by smell. New and special for your this week are some short, stocky branches of Pineapple Sage and a delicate, ferny stalk of Bronze Fennel. I LoVE the sage in tea, or chopped into a savory lemon pound cake. The fennel is just a wacky taste treat – like a very sweet anise, this is surprisingly delicious in a lettuce salad, but also fantastic in pasta or potato salads. Try with eggs, fish and sugar cookies! I eat this raw all day in the garden. Finally, we’ve included one stalk of Oregano Buds. We had to trim the oregano so it wouldn’t flower, and what we cut was these great stalks full of spicy buds. Just taste one. SO good on pizza.

Arugula – Mmmmm. Yummy Italian summer green. Sort of spicy, sort of bitter, all delicious. Try raw on pizza, salad or a sandwich or try sauteed in olive oil on pasta or risotto.

Easter Egg Radishes – These delightful radishes some in such a stunning array of colors. Quite spicy!

Fresh Garlic

Garlic and Leek Scapes

Flower Bouquet: Asparagus foliage, lady’s mantle blooms, wild yarrow, giant yellow bachelor’s buttons and pink astilbe.

Elderflower Fritters
This recipe come from the London Sunday Times.

Oil for frying
1 cup flour
1 cup cold sparkling mineral water or soda water
1 organic egg
Pinch of sea salt
Powdered sugar, to serve

Inspect the elderflowers for insects and other nasties and remove. Heat about a 1 inch depth of oil in a deep frying pan. Beat together the flour, sparkling water, egg and salt in a bowl. Holding by the stem, dip the flowers once in the batter — they should not be thickly coated but thinly veiled, so you get a lacy, crisp result rather than a stodgy cake — dilute the batter with a little more soda water if too thick. Place the flowers batter-side down in the hot oil and fry until golden. Drain on kitchen paper, snip off the stem, flip over onto a plate and dust generously with icing sugar. Eat pronto.

Sorrel and Goat Cheese Quiche
This recipe comes from the Luna Circle Farm newsletter.

2-3 cups sorrel, coarsely chopped
a few scallions, chopped
3-4 ounces goat cheese (chevre)
3 eggs
1½ cups milk
¼ teaspoon salt
Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spread goat cheese (or any strong flavored cheese) in the bottom of a piecrust. Cover with chopped sorrel and scallions. Beat eggs, salt and milk together. Pour over greens. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until top is golden brown.

Peach Granita
From Martha Stewart Living

4 ripe peaches (about 1 1/2 lbs), peeled, halved, pitted, and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar, plus more if needed
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice Coarse salt
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh basil (optional)

Puree peaches, water, sugar, lemon juice, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a blender; add more sugar to taste. Transfer to an 8-inch square baking dish. Freeze for 2 1/2 hours, scraping with a fork every hour (mixture should be icy and fluffy). Stir in basil.

More Ideas for Using Herbs
My mother-in-law is a a Master Gardener and a great champion of herbs. She’s been making and using various delicious concoctions with herbs since I’ve known her. This week she sent me some herb butter recipes and some ideas for making herb vinegars, which are a great alternative to drying herbs for use later. She makes herb vinegars in the spring and summer and uses them as a substitute for liquids in recipes all year long. This is a fabulous way to get dill flavor into your potato salads and

Basil Butter
1 cup fresh, sweet cream butter
2 tablespoons to 1 cup Basil leaves, destemmed and chopped fine
Soften the butter to room temperature and then cream it with a wooden spoon( or mixer or food processor- this is an old country recipe). Throughly blend in the basil. Using wax paper, form into a log. Wrap tightly and refrigerate.

This is good on french bread with pasta or any bread or buns, you can saute vegetables in it, stir it into pan juices for added flavor. If you are making bread or biscuits, add a little herb butter to the batch.

Herb Vinegars
Flavored vinegars are a simple way to add zest to your salads, sauces, marinades and desserts without any added fat, sugar or salt. Vinegar of all sorts is a preservative, but the best suited to these herbal mixtures are apple cider vinegar, wine vinegar and rice vinegar. However, when using purple opal basil, chive blossoms, nasturtium flowers or other strongly colored herbs, you’ll want to take advantage of the pretty dye and use plain white vinegar which will turn lovely pastel colors.

Dry and wash whichever herbs you intend to preserve. Moisture will cloud the vinegar. A rule of thumb is to use one cup of vinegar per 1/2 cup of fresh herbs. Use double for dill. Using glass jars that have been washed and sterilized in boiling water, place the herbs in the jar, bruise with a wooden spoon and pour in vinegar. Set in a sunny window for several weeks, and turn occasionally. Or heat vinegar til nearly boiling and pour over, then you can use the vinegar in a day or two.