Scenes from my morning walk around Lowell

A place to rest your horse

City limits

Something used to rest here

Left (or abandoned?) in the street

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World Peas CSA – Week Six (sort of…)

No produce on the counter photo this week, Gist was kind enough to pick up the CSA and put it away all while I took a nap. Instead I am showing off this sunflower that I grew with my own hands. This is my third year of container gardening on my balcony and, up until now, I have never been able to grow a flower from seed.

This week’s share contained:

World Peas CSA – Week Five

The weather this year is so different from last year and it has really made a difference in the amount of produce we’re receiving.  This week we got:

World Peas CSA – Week Four & Fettuccine with Mustard Greens and Mushrooms

This week’s CSA haul:

• Mustard greens
• Chinese broccoli
• Summer squash
• Slicing cucumbers – the whackadoo yellow kind
• Carrots
• Green onions
• Radishes
• Thai basil
• Blueberries

With some of my CSA haul I made a variation of Michael Chiarello’s Fettuccine with Mustard Greens and Mushrooms. 

World Peas CSA – Week Two

In this week’s share:

• Lettuce
• Baby Bok Choy
• Turnips
• Kale
• Basil
• Cherries

The milk is from the dairy.

World Peas CSA – Week One

Finally! YAY!

This week we got:

• Pea Tendrils
• Chinese Broccoli
• Swiss Chard
• Lettuce
• Garlic Scapes
• Radishes
• Mint (which I left in the swop box, my mint plant is double-OC)
• Strawberries
• And of course I picked up some milk at the dairy!

This year, for the first time,  World Peas is offering a small share which is what we signed up for.  This filled up the small (1/2 bushel) box pretty well, so I am interested to see what our yield is as the season progresses.

Just ten more days…

…Until my CSA starts. I can’t wait!

I love the WorldPEAS CSA and if you are in the Merrimack Valley or Boston area, I encourage you to check it out. 18 weeks of delicious produce, some of it ethnic and unique to WorldPEAS.

WorldPEAS’s parent organization, the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project assists people with limited resources, many of them immigrants and some of them urban teens, with beginning to farm in Massachusetts. NESFP provides training, support and a market (the CSA and Lowell Farmer’s Market) to the new farmers, creating local, sustainable economic development.

Plus, they’ve introduced me to such delights as ground cherries, pigweed, spey cabbage, thai eggplant, and sweet potato greens!

Goat Cheese & Roasted Corn Quesadillas

This is, no joke, a really quick and easy recipe (in fact, I wouldn’t even call it a recipe it’s so easy.)  It’s also crazy-delicious.  It is so quick, easy, delicious, and easily made from items I have on-hand, that it was the perfect dinner solution last night (and saved us from ordering pizza.)

See, Gist and I had been camping all weekend, and arrived home smelling of campfire, in desperate need of showers, hungry, and totally relaxed (in other words, there was no way I wanted to cook anything complicated.)  Warning – camping bliss detour ahead:

Doors Open Lowell

This weekend was Doors Open Lowell, a chance to tour historic properties throughout the city.  Gist and I had a great time visiting 14 of the 25 buildings.  Our only regret? That we weren’t able to visit more!

This is Appleton Mills, which was built between 1902 and 1914. They Mills were among the last buildings built in the Appleton millyard and are currently in the midst of construction into artist live-work space.

Pawtucket Gatehouse (1847) is the largest on the Lowell canal system and controlled the flow of water into the Northern Canal.  Still in use today, the gatehouse contains much of its original gate raising equipment.

Fennel Pizza with White Bean Purée

Thanks so much for all of your nice comments about Sebb. He was a well-loved cat and he is missed. His feline diabetes, however, is not. To both cheer me up and acknowledge the fact that we no longer have to be at home at 7:00 am and 7:00 pm to administer insulin, Gist and I headed out to Western Mass. for the weekend where we enjoyed my favorite food:

Pizza, it’s what’s for dinner.