Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Farm Fresh Summer

Farm day, one of the last ones of the season, was beautiful. After five days of drizzle and gray, I needed me some sun. 

The blue sky was full of it -- a big, yellow sun. And to temper the heat from said sun, we had a breeze. Not gale force winds, but a breeze. 

 ^ and I harvested lettuces and Swiss Chard. And then we tackled the last of the corn. This corn was still suffering the effects of the hail and we had to husk it to make sure it was all good. Five bushels of corn may take two people an hour to husk. Oy.

Even though the season is winding down, our box was still full of produce. And the two hours in the sunshine and breeze were as good as the goodies. 

We also had week two of our raw food class. I learned some sweet knife techniques and cuts. I learned that I do NOT hold a knife correctly, that I do NOT own a quality knife, and that I definitely do NOT hold the food I'm slicing and dicing correctly. If you've ever seen a chef chopping you've seen the weird way they hold the item they are chopping. The CLAW technique saves fingers, fingernails, friendships and lives. I'll be honest. I've sliced fingernail bits into items I've chopped. (They are clean, really, because I've generally had my hands in water for hours before this happens. And fiber. Lots of fiber. This is my attempt at trying to keep the loss of friendship to a minimum. ) The claw technique makes sure that your knuckles are a guard and buffer for the the safe flat part of the knife. If you keep everything behind the knuckles, you won't slice and dice things you'd rather not slice and dice.