A couple weeks ago we got together with our the friends we split our farm share with to celebrate a bountiful growing season. We decided to each make a dish or two, and we did little in the way of advance menu collaboration. By little, I mean none. Given how late in the season it is, we ended up with a pretty carb-heavy meal (root veggies are a late-season crop that keeps well), but we didn’t care. Ironically, as much as a reason as the food was for this soiree, it took a backseat to the enjoying each other’s company. However, as this is not a social blog, let me share a bit about the meal.
The true culinary highlight for me was the vegetable quesadillas. The very ones I briefly mentioned in a June post. While I didn’t love them when I made them, their creator, Taina, did them justice. Now I can understand why she adores them so much. Maybe it was her spectacular sous chef husband – let me tell you, these two have an impressive system for quesadilla assembly. Each time the four of us rapidly devoured (by which I mean slowly savored) one quesadilla, out would come another one perfectly cooked half-moon of deliciousness!
We made a couple other dishes, roasted potatoes and Moroccan chick pea stew, and while I don’t mean to diminish them by excluding them here, it was truly the quesadillas that stole the show.
During the evening, Taina and I also lamented a return to regular grocery shopping and meal-planning. I’m not sure it has sunk in yet. Long gone are my concerns about relinquishing control over the ingredients coming into my home and worries of too many rutabagas (we got a half of one this season). Now I can’t wait for next year’s share to start again!
And as we move on, I can’t help being so appreciative of Amanda and the team at Waltham Fields Community Farm as they put the farm to bed and are certainly already hard at work preparing for another great season of fresh local ingredients for my kitchen next year!