Summer Squash, Angel Hair

Y'all like pictures? Y'all like squash? Y'all like angels and their hair? Ain't nothing easier than this.

Here's what you do:

1) Get yourself some really nice summer squash (I got mine from Wooden Hill Farms)

2) Slice yourself some really nice squash and toss them slices with some EVOO--that's Extra Virgin Olive Oil for all y'all fans of ole Rachel Ray--and some fresh herbs

3) and roast or sautee those puppies until they get some nice color--don't be afraid of some burn

finally) plunk that shit on some angel hair or whatever and eat


Oh and make sure you salt and pepper them, ya hear?

y'all come back now!

Wooden Hill Farms

I just returned from Wooden Hill Farms. I returned with a grocery bag full of fresh, organic vegetables. Really nice ones, of course, because the farmers at Wooden Hill trained at the Cook CSA. An extension of the Rutgers university agricultural college, the Cook CSA is among the oldest and most well known organic farms hosted by an agricultural college in this country. In fact, the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) at Rutgers provided a model for the CSA movement throughout this country. Basically, this means that the farmers at Wooden Hill really know what they're doing AND what they're up against.

Here's one of their foes: it's the Colorado potato beetle, and it's totally gross. This is the adult form. The Colorado potato beetle, as the name suggests, through its own miraculous education, seeks out and somehow finds potato plants...and then it attempts to eat devour their leaves and reproduce its kind.

Here are a couple immature potato beetles. They have not hardened up yet. You can just squish them with your fingers. See all that munching they've done? Little bastards.

Anyway, here is a gorgeous "eight ball" squash:

but I don't mean to suggest that Wooden Hill grows nothing but cabbage and potatoes and squash. They don't. They grow all kinds of things, and all of their vegetables are beautiful. Cultivating just under two acres (it's their first season), Wooden Hill is technically a garden, but if my visit taught me anything, it taught that these are some dedicated organic farmers, and you can be sure that their fields will expand year after year.

Megan, their biggest horse