Overwhelmed

This is what I saw on Sunday afternoon after I dragged everything out of my top vegetable drawer and washed it.  Lovely, no?  So colorful, so seductive.  And yes, you read correctly, I said my top vegetable drawer.  I have two vegetable drawers, the bottom one containing greens, two monster-sized daikons, more cucumbers, cabbage, and more peppers.  This photo also does not picture the stuff I leave out of the fridge:  onions, garlic, potatoes, and tomatoes (the ones I couldn't resist from Blue Moon farm at the Urbana Farmers' Market).  Just the top vegetable drawer.  It seems a little like a tent or a car in Harry Potter book, or the TARDIS of Dr. Who fame—much bigger on the inside than on the outside.  How could one tiny drawer contain so many vegetables?  And they're just so gorgeous, how could I deny them at their peak of flavor and beauty?

So…this is the time of year when I question my sanity and my decision to join two CSAs, for a total of one and a half shares.  It’s usually like this at some point with just one share, but later in the season.  This year’s severe drought has forced our CSA farmers to harvest as much as they can earlier in the season, because the season may just not last very long.  And so, I’m faced with an overabundance of yellow squash, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, etc.

As I stare at this pile, frantic thoughts run through my head.  “Whom could I give this to?”  “Could I just sneak it onto someone’s doorstep with a little note?” “We could run a test to see how long these veggies hold up until they rot, write down the results, then have a guide for next year.”  “I can’t let this go to waste, I paid good money for this!”  “I could make a zucchini bread, then pickles, then I could make moussaka for dinner!”  Never mind that it was already 4:00pm and the natives’ tummies were already getting restless.  Never mind that the lamb was still frozen, and every moussaka recipe I found on the internet took at least two hours to make.  Never mind that I was tired from a super-busy week, cranky from the heat, and achy from long hours in the car from two trips to Chicago earlier in the week.  Never mind that it was Sunday night, and I had promised myself to get more sleep before my workweek.

I poured myself a gin and tonic with lots of lime and ice, the perfect avoidance strategy.  I sat out on my front porch and thought about vegetables.  I felt a little bit like crying.  Whether the gin and tonic gave me courage, or I just got sick of listening to myself, I finally got up, went back in the kitchen, washed my hands, and called the crew to come downstairs from their computer silos.  With a silent thanks to Anne Lamott for the “Bird by Bird” strategy (used for the writing process, but also works for anything that currently seems insurmountable), I started with the yellow squash.  The plan:  I would cut off the ends and brown bits, and the nine-year-old would write the date and contents on the Ziploc freezer bags.  We alternated shredding and scooping into quart bags.  As much as I hate plastic, I have to admit that the bags are the most practical and take up the least amount of space in my freezer.  If they lie on a relatively flat surface for the initial freeze, they become very easy to stack or put side-by-side for easier viewing.

My husband joined us to peel eggplant, cut peppers, chop onions and peel and chop tomatoes for caponata.  This delicious little appetizer also freezes well, and has been a very easy thing to pop out of the freezer and thaw quickly for impromptu guests.  I love it on Wasa crackers or thin multigrain toast.  I love this simple recipe at Cooks.com, and it’s very easy, and uses so many ingredients I have on hand:  eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, green olives, capers, red wine vinegar, sugar and pine nuts.  There is a lot of chopping, though.  My added note to the recipe is to make sure everything is chopped very small; this makes for faster cooking and easier dipping.  After blanching the corn, I dunked it in ice water, then my husband cut the corn off the ears with a tool from my parents’ canning and freezing days (this can also be done with a very sharp chef's knife).  We would now have frozen corn kernels, begging to be made into winter corn chowder.  I prepped the cucumbers for agurke salat, another favorite recipe that’s an easy pickling process, and keeps well in the fridge.  I just wish I wasn’t the only one in the family that liked cucumbers and pickles.

Finally, the caponata was bubbling on the stove, the sweet-sour vinaigrettes were prepared, and it was almost my son’s bedtime.  “But we haven’t had dinner yet!” he complained.  Ironically, I had totally forgotten about dinner, so deep was I into food preparation.  But how to explain to my son that none of this was for eating immediately?  The caponata needed to be chilled for 12 hours, the agurke salat had to be rinsed and sit in the vinaigrette, the freezer items were, well, for the freezer.  I’m not sure how my grandmothers and great-grandmothers did it, all day in the kitchen to prepare for winter, at the same time keeping up with the daily needs of hungry people.  They didn’t have huge refrigerators or freezers.  They canned everything they could, a laborious process.  I feel like a total wimp.

Fortunately, once again, leftovers came to the rescue.  I went to bed after we all cleaned up the kitchen, and felt happy with my efforts.  That is, until I remembered our next CSA pickup was just two days away…..