Seafood Stew and the Pain of Volunteering

I love the farm share. I love getting random vegetables every week. I love the adventure of trying to run out the clock by using them all up by the next pick up. What I hate is the mandatory volunteer shift. After four years of farm sharing and getting out of the volunteer component my time was up and, today, I finally had to do it.

It's not that I don't want to help out it's that there really isn't anything to do once you put all the vegetables on a table. Then you have to just sit there for three hours and make small talk with strangers. The only thing I hate more than strangers is small talk.

The first two years I was able to get out of volunteering by offering web hosting services to the farm. Last year I got out of volunteering because a hurricane destroyed the farm. That was probably the only good thing to come out of that hurricane.

This year there was nowhere to run. The time was upon us. It was time to pay the piper.



This week I got to set up the vegetables and had first pick, putting my vegetables aside under the awning so that they didn't get soaked in the immediate pouring rain that drenched us as we handed out the vegetables.

This week we got two pounds of summer squash, six garlic scapes, one head of red leaf lettuce, a head of romaine lettuce, a head of escarole, one bunch of arugula, Bright Lights Swiss Chard, summer spinach, a cucumber, and oregano.



After getting home late from a long day of volunteering (which mostly involved sitting around, greeting people, and telling them to have a nice night) I had to act fast so I made this quick salad with leftover green leaf lettuce from last week, arugula from this week, sliced peaches, tomato, feta, Marcona almonds, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Even Jen, the recent hater of salads, ate her entire salad. I figured if I piled enough ingredients she loves on top of the lettuce I may have a better shot at getting her to eat her greens.



For the main course I made a soup by browning up some garlic scapes in olive oil, Chinese cabbage from last week, onion, fennel, red pepper, chopped arugula stems, chorizo, sea scallops, shrimp, halibut, and calamari. For broth I added in the remaining clambake broth (from the freezer), and last night's steamer broth. The result was pretty tasty and the chorizo in the soup made for a very special occasion:

Portuguese Hat Trick!



After dinner I had my favorite dessert: beer. With temperatures dipping into the 50s tonight I opted to have a delicious beer for dessert. I chose this Scotch Silly from Brasserie de Silly in Belgium. It's been in the fridge for four or five months and I've been saving it for a very special night and with the cooler nights behind us this was the perfect evening to enjoy this beer with an episode or two of the final season of Eureka.

Ahh, Sheriff Jack Carter, you are my favorite way to end the day.