Spring at the Farmer's Market

On Friday I visited the farmer's market (was not able to go last weekend) and sort of went a little nuts at all the good stuff there:

This all came from the same stand. Leeks, lettuce, arugala, asparagus, green onions, beets, yellow and red onions. We've been having salad for dinner every night. I made half a bunch of asparagus with dinner on Friday (pork chops and corn bread). The leeks were cooked in a little broth with chicken and cayenne pepper for dinner last night. We'll have the beets with hamburgers and the rest of the asparagus in an asparagus tart. Salads all week long. I didn't buy spinach or radishes. I'm told that the strawberries are a few weeks away, and all the rain we had last week didn't help matters much; veggies need sun (of which there is a whole lot today).

So now I'm faced with clearing out my freezer before stocking up with this year's goodies. I still have one container of Hungarian gravy base (which I'll make up this week for the peppers); some green peppers (they'll be used up before new peppers appear in August); blueberries (I'm using them up in my oatmeal in the morning); one pack of green beans (which I can cook up for lunch if there's too much fresh stuff for dinner); and some tomato sauces and salsas. The sauces will be used up before tomatoes are available, but I'm not sure what to do with the salsa. Not too thrilled with it; maybe I can use it in frijoles some time. I'm going to ditch the freezer blueberry jam (don't like the texture and it doesn't taste a whole lot like blueberries) and there's a batch of beans I'm getting rid of as I did not like how they turned out. The only true failure is the bag of sliced, cooked beets in the freezer -- fresh is now available; need to think about how to deal with the frozen.

I planted my basil, parsley, tomatoes and peppers on Friday; put geraniums along the front walk yesterday morning. I want to get four more parsley plants in hopes of having a better harvest than last year. Put in two varieties of peppers (sweet green and hot red Portugals) and three tomatoes (red cherry, Rutgers, and one Ramapo, which will go in the upside down planter). Today I'll plant the corn and fill the window boxes.