I told Paul that June was too late to plant snow peas.

(Not that we could have planted them sooner; we had put together the two new raised beds in our front yard in May, and finally had them filled with topsoil and compost in early June.)

But peas are one of Paul’s favorite vegetables, and if we were going to have a garden, he wanted to grow peas. So, as I was setting out chard starts, and hesitantly planting tomatoes and tomatillos in 60-degree June weather, Paul pushed a handful of dry peas into one end of the bed.

And while my tomatoes and tomatillos shivered in their bed, those peas germinated, and the tiny plants pushed their first leaves up. I was still unconvinced that there would be snow peas, as I was sure that summer weather — too hot for peas — would eventually arrive.

True summer never came to Seattle this year. Instead, we had spring weather most of July and into August. My three tomatillo plants made one single husk among them. Paul’s pea plants grew and grew, covering the trellis that we put up for them. The plants blossomed, and then — magic! — tiny peas appeared from within the wilting flowers.

At first, we picked the peas one or two at a time, enjoying their sweet green crunch while watering our raised beds. Eventually, though, the plants bore enough good-sized snow peas that we could harvest an entire handful. (At the same time, I picked my single, $10 tomatillo, the last of the bush beans, and the half dozen cherry tomatoes that glowed ripely orange.)

Over the next couple of days, we plucked more snow peas from the vines, until we had almost half a pound — enough to make a meal of them. How would I cook these peas, the first substantial harvest from our brand new garden? Simply: sautéed with onion from our neighborhood farmers market, CSA garlic, homemade chicken stock and a little low-sodium soy sauce, served over brown rice. Need I say that they were delicious? And even more so because they were from our own garden.

Snow peas from our own yard. In August. Next year, I expect Paul will plant peas earlier… but if he doesn’t, I won’t even think of telling him that it’s too late.

This week’s Local Roots CSA box brought us:

• Bunch of carrots
• Celery (Yay!)
• Bunch of baby bok choi
• Broccoli
• Several cucumbers (including the lemon ones that I love)
• Ozette fingerling potatoes
• Arugula
• Dill
• Green Beans
• One zucchini

And, finally (by which I mean at long last)…

• One very large heirloom tomato Hooray!

In the Local Roots CSA box waiting on my front porch this afternoon I found:

• Bunch of beets
• Bag of arugula! Yay!
• Bunch of tatsoi
• Bunch of pretty purple radishes
• Bag of mixed salad greens
• Head of garlic
• Several small round cucumbers
• Bag of basil! Yay!
• One long green cucumber
• Two large yellow zucchini

We had a no-show at our pick-up tonight, so I’ve just shoehorned double the amount of vegetables in the photo into our refrigerator. Some of those veggies will be going to the office with me tomorrow (where several CSA members’ surplus veggies are left on the kitchen counter to be adopted), but the basil, arugula and garlic won’t be among them. Pesto, yay!

Some foods are as beautiful as they are delicious: perfect strawberries, a golden roast chicken, fresh green spears of asparagus.

Some foods make up in taste for what they lack in looks… such as this fried green tomato and Dungeness crab po’boy that I picked up from Where Ya At Matt at the Queen Anne Farmers Market this evening. Matt handed it to me tightly wrapped in paper, then we carefully carried it the several blocks from the farmers market to home. By the time I unwrapped the sandwich, its crispy fried tomatoes (not nearly green enough for my taste) had softened somewhat, and the dressing on the crab was soaking into the soft bun, but it was still quite a treat.

A couple of years ago, I documented each week’s produce from our CSA with Local Roots Farm. This year, I’ve been a slacker. It’s week 10 of the CSA, and I’m taking my first photo of the vegetabliciousness that arrived on our front porch today. This week’s box contained:

• Bunch of carrots (Yay!)
• Couple of leeks
• Bunch of rainbow chard
• Bag of mixed salad greens
• Purple “green” beans
• Bunch of parsley
• Red potatoes
• One long cucumber
• One large zucchini

I see some yummy vegetable trimmings in our chickens’ futures this week!

These days, I’m cooking almost entirely from our weekly Local Roots CSA box, our freezer full of chickens and On the Lamb beef, and the goodies we pick up at our neighborhood farmers market. Today, vegetables were threatening to take over the refrigerator, so I chopped up a bunch of them to make a quick sauce for the fresh Lagana casarecce (beautiful photos of this shape of pasta here) that we bought at the farmers market on Thursday. By the time I finished cooking dinner, the light was too low for a good photo, and we were hungry, so you, dear reader, will have to use your imagination.

First, I sauteed in some good olive oil:
several small sweet onions, thinly sliced
large clove of garlic, minced
sweet bell pepper, julienned
two large zucchini, julienned

When the zucchini were almost tender, I added:
pint of sungold cherry tomatoes, halved
about a cup of luscious red pepper soup (all that was left from the batch I was savoring last week)
a couple big pinches of red pepper flakes

While the vegetable mixture simmered (just long enough to warm the tomatoes and slightly thicken the soup into a sauce), I cooked the casarecce. When the pasta was done, I added a couple good-sized glugs of balsamic vinegar to the sauce, then tossed the pasta in the pan with the vegetables and sauce, and gave it a couple of minutes for the pasta to soak up some flavor. Topped with freshly grated parmagiano, and we dug in.

The photo of bell peppers above was taken one year ago today, as part of my 365 project.

When we got Mamie, our California White hen, several months ago, she was extremely skittish, and watched from a distance as the other chickens came running when I called them for treats. After a few months of settling in to the flock, and discovering that a human in the back yard generally means good things for chickens, Mamie is now often in the lead running towards me when I go out the back door.

Recently, several of the hens have taken to following me to the house, and hanging out on the back steps after I go back inside. When no further treats are forthcoming, they eventually give up and go on about their chicken business.

This was the first harvest from new our raised beds: a small handful of green bush beans and one perfectly golden and sweet Sungold tomato. There will be another small batch of green beans ready to be picked tomorrow. It’s early days yet for everything else…