First Day Recap

First off, we pulled all of our City Fresh equipment out of our varying basements and loaded it up into our vehicles. Amy did an excellent job fitting most everything into her car.After counting veggies at distribution, we began set up of the stop. Folks new to City Fresh and those old hats all joined in gladly. It's like summer has truly begun!
We readied ourselves for record numbers of shareholders!


I like to add mint to iced tea, ordinarily, but with Toni's garlic scape and mint pesto recipe, I may have to branch out.
Green onions are a great addition to salads, stir fries, chicken, fish, rice... I could go on and on.
Garlic scapes! I have these growing in my garden as well. One suggestion was to make a risotto, which sounds delightful. There's a recipe here.
Toni and O - who will be heading up food samplings and demonstrations for us this summer - used some of the scapes from my garden to prepare this amazing garlic scape and mint pesto. Theirs was vegan, but it can be made with Parmesan instead of nutritional yeast as well. Toni posted the recipe on our Facebook page:

Garlic Scape – Mint Pesto (vegan and not) - wk 1 food sample

1 bunch garlic scapes
~12 mint leaves ( or to taste)
handful of walnuts (or nuts of your choice)
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast or a bit more Parmesan cheese, in which case decrease salt.
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
olive oil/water to blend

Mix all ingredients in a food processor... (use water to start then finish with oil for a “lighter” pesto, or use all oil for a “richer” more unctuous pesto)

In the moments without long lines of shareholders, I was able to take goofy photos of huckleberry jam. This is made by Amish women. There's no need to tour Amish country when Amish country comes directly to you!
One of our volunteers, Chauncey, told me today that huckleberries are a cross between raspberries and blackberries, but this is not the case (though loganberries, boysenberries, and tayberries all are). Huckleberries actually look like blueberries, but have larger seeds in greater numbers than do blueberries. They are the state fruit of Idaho. In the 1830s, the phrase, "a huckleberry to a persimmon," was popular, apparently used as a metaphor demonstrating an unfavorable comparison between things. Knowing that Chauncey is a big Simpsons fan, I'm sure he'll appreciate this bit of trivia from the huckleberry Wiki entry:

Huckleberries featured in an episode of The Simpsons, in which school bully Nelson Muntz is overheard by Principal Skinner uncharacteristically telling fellow classmates: "The thing about huckleberries is, once you've had fresh, you'll never go back to canned..."