OLS ‘08 Week 12: Eating between processing!

I’ve managed to put a lot of food in the freezer this weekend, including string beans

These pretty purple beans actually turn green when blanched.

pesto, peaches and blueberries (we picked 12 pints in about 40 minutes today – the crop is overwhelming!).

We also had some great meals between all the blanching and peeling and sorting and snipping!

Grilled dinner: corn, eggplant, burgers.

My OLS meal this week is going to be this:

spaghetti with roasted cherry tomatoes, sweet Italian sausage and pesto.  It ain’t pretty, but it’s mighty tasty!  We had a salad of cukes, tomatoes and red onion on the side, along with these delicious blueberry bars for dessert.

While the pasta was boiling, we browned the sausage in a big sauce pan and roasted split, cherry tomatoes tossed with olive oil and salt in the convection toaster oven until they were roasty toasty brown.  Then we drained the sausage, added the tomatoes and some of the pesto I had just made, and the hot pasta, along with a little of the pasta water.  The photo doesn’t look very pesto-y, but it was very flavorful.  The licorice-y  basil, sweet, sweet tomatoes and anise in the sausage were outstanding together.  I think this would also be great with hot Italian sausage, but we only had sweet left in the ‘ol freezer.  Maybe add a few crushed red pepper flakes if you like more heat to balance the sweet.

Now I just need to go put all these in freezer bags before bed!

See? Now they're green!

The round up:

• Cucumbers, tomatoes, basil:  Community School CSA
• Red onion, garlic: Ledgewood Farm
• Sausage: Rock Farm
• From away: olive oil, pasta, salt, pepper, pine nuts, parmesan cheese