It's Crisp time!

Our community garden has a bad track record when it comes to attendance and lately its been really bad due to the rain. Even the gardening obsessed gardeners haven't been willing to spend too much time out there. Today I decided to brave it. Despite the rain, we still needed greens!

I was rewarded the moment I walked through the gate. Waiting to be picked, there were 4 beautiful luscious dark red raspberries that had just ripened up. The first raspberries of the season. What a treasure. Anyone who has ever had fresh raspberries right off the plant knows they are best that way. They seem to start losing their zest moments after they have been picked. There were a few more on the other side of the bush so I gave myself a few and saved the rest for the man and child...I know I'm much too nice to them!

The rest of the garden was abundant in greens. The greens are just about the only ones that have been loving this weather. For some reason even though the slugs are out of control, they haven't been attacking the lettuce, just everything else. The peas were going off as well and I picked about a pound and a half of them. YES! The first major harvest from pea plants I seeded directly back in February. Some of the plants are from seeds I saved from last year as well, second generation pea plants. They are looking great and have tons of purple, pink, and white blossoms. I also walked away with two plastic produce bags of greens (red lettuce, romaine, baby chard, the last of the spinach, and sorrel). Salads for days!


On my way out I found a smallish, ripe rhubarb and a few strawberries. I also had a fresh pint of strawberries at home in the fridge and some grocery store bought pears. A strawberry-rhubarb crisp was in the making. If you have ever had rhubarb before, it is very tart, you do not need a whole lot, and you usually need another sweet fruit to balance it out. The stalk was very small and there were going to be more strawberries than anything else in the crisp so it was going to be perfect.

The recipe I used came from the "Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking With Whole Foods" by Cynthia Lair. I got the book when Sorrel was born as a gift and it has the easiest, healthiest, and best tasting recipes ever. The author was a faculty member at Bastyr University (a naturopathic college located outside Seattle) so she knows how to make food that's good for you and tastes really good...and the artwork on the cover is by Nikki McClure a fabulous artist from Olympia, bonus points. Most of the recipes include foods that can be set aside and adjusted (pureed, steamed, etc.) to give to baby. Major bonus points.

I subbed maple syrup for the delicious Hood River honey we got last weekend and kept the rest of the recipe the same. Lets just say I'm glad I took a picture of it before I put it in the oven because it disappeared soon after I took it out. To quote Jason, "It's crisp time! I hope there's some vanilla ice cream in here!" And there was along with four red raspberries set aside for garnishment. Viola!