We’re excited about so many things this week – the start of tomatoes, cukes, zucchini! – but the most exciting finds for the boxes weren’t in the gardens. Oddly enough it was the swamp that brought me the most delight! Those of you who live near some of Madison’s many marshy areas already know that in the past few days the native flowers have hit a high point.

For your bouquets this week, we had a ball foraging around in rubber boots on a sunny late afternoon for several kinds of milkweed (both with pink blooms, and sweetly fragrant), blue vervain, white boneset, two sedges (the grass heads) and the chartreuse stalks of un-bloomed goldenrod. The funny-looking baskets are Queen Anne’s Lace gone to seed. From the garden we have allium seed heads and the super fragrant greens of sweet annie. What a treat for the senses! And for the butterflies!

As you probably already know, monarch butterflies eat milkweed and lay their eggs on it. So we’ve had the privilege this past week of watching three tiny monarch caterpillars grow and transform into jeweled pupae on a bouquet in our house. We actually witnessed the miracle of one shedding it’s caterpillar skin! You can visit this link to see what we saw. But you might also get lucky and have some of these stripey black-and-white caterpillars on your milkweeds, too. Just let them eat and they’ll transform in about a week. (Put a placemat under your vase because they will poop!)

Apparently the pupa takes another two weeks to produce a butterfly. I guess we’ll all see. Did you know that we have three generations of monarchs born here every year that hatch out, live for two weeks as butterflies, lay eggs and then die? The fourth generation born, though, somehow knows that it has to live and flies off to Mexico for the winter. It comes back in the spring to lay eggs, die and start the whole cycle over again. Amazing.

A bug we love to see – monarch!

And one we don’t – the tomato hornworm!

We dealt with caterpillars of another kind to get the food this week, too. Tomato hornworms! These are quite fantastic if you don’t mind losing whole plants to them in a matter of days. Unfortunately we do squish these after we enjoy the hunt of tracking them down. Since many of them are 5 inches long you think we’d have an easy time, but they are well-camouflaged! Here’s what’s in the box:

Green Beans – These big beautiful beans are perfect lightly sauteed or just steamed and sprinkled with olive oil and vinegar. Sometimes we add a little thyme with salt and pepper. Another great dressing is lemon juice with lemon balm.

Herb Bouquet: We’ve noticed the fruit flies are starting to proliferate around our kitchen compost and fruit bowl, so we’ve put sprigs of ferny-looking Tansy in the herb bouquet this week. Don’t eat it – it tastes bad, and it doesn’t smell too good either, which is why a few sprigs in your compost and fruit will repel bugs. You’ve got a big branch of fuzzy Pineapple Sage, some grey Sage, grassy-like Chives, a curly strong Peppermint, a few Parsley sprigs, a head of Dill seeds and finally, some Lemon Balm. We’ve been waiting for the lemon balm to get tall enough to cut for some weeks now, and we’re quite excited because it is a wonderful herb to make a tangy dressing for green beans.

Arugula – This should be the last of this delightful green – it’s spicier now, so you’ll likely prefer it mixed in with pesto, sauteed in pasta, or otherwise used as an addition rather than a salad. All of our greens got really beat up in the rains this week, so use quickly because they are bruised and will rot faster than usual. There are a lot of stems in the mix and you can use them, too – even hotter!

Swiss Chard – These baby leaves continue to be so tender and sweet this is what we’re eating for salad in these dog days of summer when lettuce has petered out. But a friend of ours, Sarah, recently posted a facebook status about having a Swiss Chard Smoothie for breakfast, so we had to get that recipe for sure. We’ve published it below. Ignore the holes from the rain – just use quickly!

Summer Squash – Hooray! These first squash are of the large sort since the plants aren’t doing quite enough for us to pick every day. As it is, if a few days go by, they are already huge! You can dice and saute them in olive oil, or grate and use in bread, but you can also try the recipe below for the traditional English Stuffed Marrow which is for larger summer squash. You might have a green zucchini, a white zucchini, a white scallop, a yellow scallop or a yellow crookneck. Hopefully by the end of the season you will have tried all of them, plus our multicolored pattypans.

New Potatoes – A lot of you have been giving us rave reviews over the new potatoes. We agree! Yum! This week the larger spuds are Satina and the small are German Butterballs. Both are butterless potatoes – so creamy they need none! Here’s someone else waxing poetic on the butterballs, with a great recipe included: German Butterballs

Green Tomatoes – The tomato vines are so vigorous and heavy with fruit many branches flop over in spite of the fact that we are tying new growth up to the trellises every few days. So we decided to pick any green tomatoes touching the ground since they’ll likely rot before ripening. The bonus is that we’ve been eating some amazing Fried Green Tomatoes. You’ve just got to try this tasty Southern treat. The tomatoes, once cooked, taste nothing like a ripe tomato, but they are delicious in their own right.

Ripe Tomatoes – These few ripe tomatoes are just a foretaste of the bonanza yet to come. We’ve got so many heirloom varieties out there, you’ll have lots of different tastes and flavors as the season progresses. But for now, you mostly have small Red Zebras, oblong Amish Paste and orange Ida Golds along with some hybrid Early Girl reds.

Basil – Yum!

Cucumbers – Just a few so far – don’t peel, the skin is so tender and sweet.

Sweet Corn – Full disclosure: we didn’t grow this corn, a neighbor did. Our sweet corn is still growing out there, and it should be beautiful and ready in a few weeks. But when our neighbor put this out at the side of the road this week, we snapped a bunch up and thought we’d share it with you, too. So we can’t guarantee it’s organic like the rest of the food we grow here, but you can be sure it’s as fresh as fresh can be.

English Stuffed Marrow
In England, small summer squash and zucchini are called courgettes, while larger squash are called marrows. This is a wonderful, hearty way to take advantage of a zucchini that’s grown too big to just slice and saute.

A good sized marrow
¾ lb good quality sausage meat. A cheaper, and lower fat, option is to use sausage meat mixed with cooked lentils.
Two medium sized onions
Cooking oil
A bay leaf
Sage, 1 level teaspoon of dried herb or six leaves of fresh sage.
Salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 425°F. Chop the onion and gently fry until slightly brown with the bay leaf. Meanwhile, slice the marrow into six 2 inch slices, and hollow out the soft core of seeds from each slice with a knife. Discard. Lightly grease an oven dish, and lay the slices of marrow in it. Chop the sage if fresh. Mix the sausage meat , cooked onion (discarding the bay leaf), sage, salt and pepper with a spoon in a bowl. With clean hands and a tablespoon, fill the core of each slice of marrow with the sausage meat mix so that the mix bulges a little from the top of the slice of marrow. Roast for one hour, reducing the oven temperature to 375°F after half an hour. Baste two or three times during cooking; a low calorie cooking oil spray is ideal to keep the dish moist without adding excess calories. Serve with a buttered baked potato and summer vegetables and good gravy, such as this simple recipe.

Simple Gravy Recipe
Mix a little meat stock, or instant bouillon/stock, with two tablespoons of plain white flour and mix to a paste. Add a cup of bouillon liquid and whisk hard with a fork or whisk until the mixture is smooth. Heat the mix in a small pan over a low heat, stirring constantly. When the mixture simmers, take care to mix vigorously to avoid lumps; the gravy will gradually thicken. Boil through thouroughly for two minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, remembering that many bouillon or stock mixes are already heavily salted. Pour over the piping hot, stuffed marrow.

Swiss Chard Smoothie
This recipe comes from my Chicago friend Sarah Anna who is a fabulous photographer. Click here to see how awesome she made our farm look! Thanks, Sarah!

3 to 4 TBS Swiss chard (We wash and then freeze it in large zip lock bags. This makes it easy to smash in to small bits, away from the center stem which we do not use. This also helps in keeping the smoothie cold!)
Banana (We freeze with skin, cut in four put in blender like ice cubes.)

Blend it up with fresh and frozen berries, whatever you have, and a bit of Greek yogurt or protein powder. Add a little juice – fresh orange juice or what ever you like. Blend, serve, drink! You won’t taste the swiss chard, but you may feel the extra kick!

Fried Green Tomatoes
4 green tomatoes, or whatever you’ve got
2 eggs
1/2 C. milk
1 C. flour
1/2 C. cornmeal
1/2 C. breadcrumbs or crushed crackers
2 tsp. coarse kosher salt
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
Vegetable oil for frying

Wash and slice tomatoes between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. Mix eggs and milk thoroughly in a medium deep bowl. Measure flour on to a plate. Mix cornmeal, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper in a pie pan. In a large skillet, heat about 1 inch of oil on medium-high. Dip tomatoes in flour, both sides, then in egg/milk mixture, then in cornmeal/bread mixture. Place tomatoes in frying pan 4 or so slices at a time, so they don’t touch. When browned, flip and fry other side. Remove and drain on paper towels. Do not use the ends. Serve with sea salt, ketchup or mayo to dip.