Ol' Dirty Lettuce

The Monday rush was on as I raced down 95 to get home and pick up the farm share. I've missed the mad rush home to pick up the farm share. I just pray that I don't eventually end up missing a pick up like that one sad, sad day in 2009.



If I do miss it (and I hope I don't) this was not going to be the week. I made it with time to spare. This week's haul consisted of: Butter Head Lettuce, Green Towers Romaine Lettuce, Red Sail Lettuce, escarole, garlic scapes, radishes, summer squash, summer spinach, and a bunch of oregano

There have been heavy rains which have kicked up a huge amount of mud onto the lettuce resulting in the dirtiest lettuce I've ever encountered. Last week was the same which turned the small crack in my salad spinner into a gaping canyon of leaky water. Thus was the end of its life and I had to pick up a new one today.



Old and busted.



New hotness.

Still I had to wash my lettuce more than ten times. On the tenth or eleventh wash (I lost count) there was still dirt in the water. Eventually I figured I just gave up when my fingers had wrinkled as if I'd spent all afternoon in a pool. Eventually one has to accept some level of grits and just get on with dinner.



The Red Sail looked beautiful so I made a salad with that, the radishes, some lime, cilantro, olive oil, salt, pepper, the remaining Zima tomatoes, and feta cheese.



The farm recommended a recipe for garlic scape pesto which sounded pretty good. I pretty much followed the recipe by cutting up the scapes, adding some toasted walnuts, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The only thing I really did differently was adding a lot of extra olive oil and omitting the yogurt.



I served the pesto with some of my homemade gnocchi along with some ricotta. Sadly my gnocchi just don't freeze all that well. Last time I made them I put them into the water still frozen and by the time they were cooked they had bloated to be the size of golf balls. This time I thawed them out and they were soft and messy before they hit the water.

At any rate, the gnocchi was pretty good despite its messy appearance and texture.



For beer I opened this In-Heat Wheat from Flying Dog Brewery. This is a beer both Jen and I could easily enjoy. It has something for everyone. For me it was a nice light summery beer to pair with this late (extremely late) spring dish. For Jen it was a hefeweizen which is the main thing she looks at in a beer: is it or is it not a hefeweizen? It passed this test with flying colors.



For dessert I served up some slices of my rebranded blueberry custard pie (previously known as Blueberry "Napolean") from the other night.

I thought tonight we may carry our Abrahams and Zucker streak into this week with some of the Naked Gun movies. Instead I chose not to recommend this. Jen has been more than accommodating with this week's movies so I didn't want to spoil a good thing.

Besides, it's been nearly ten days since we've watch an episode of Top Gear. Who can live like that?