First thing on the agenda for today: something new. A trip to Gilcrease Orchards about 15 minutes away. A newsletter I received yesterday mentioned them. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday you can go to the farm between 7 a.m. and 12 noon and can pick your own vegetables and fruits for $1.00 a pound. The experience was fantastic. It was beautiful. There were plenty of folks around picking and hunting up fruits and vegetables, many with kids. The view of the mountains in the distance was breathtaking. It was still fairly cool.
I picked several different types of squash. Zucchini. Spaghetti. Barq. A giant Patty Pan looking squash called something else entirely. Two cucumbers more different than anything I have ever seen. One is going to go in a cucumber salad with yogurt dill sauce (note to self: stop at Whole Foods to pick up some dill and yogurt).
The orchard also had squash flowers for picking. I have never in my life had them so I picked only four to try out. Then I grabbed some onions. The vegetables really smelled so much fresher than anything you can find in the store.
Tom ended up carrying all the squash around, the bag started getting pretty heavy ... It is amazing how much we left with and how little we spent. What a fantastic find!
When we got back I set out to make a fresh vegetable frittata with squash blossoms. I stuffed the squash blossoms with a little bit of cheddar cheese, caramelized some onion slices and added sliced zucchini. It came out great. You could truly taste how fresh everything was. I have never made anything like it before.
What a great way to start out the weekend! I cannot wait to go back there again.
With squash recipes dancing in my head,
Nicola Byrne
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
-John Lubbock
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