Saturday morning's take

I love Saturday mornings because with them come a new box of produce from Full Belly Farm, the CSA we've belonged to for a couple of years. Here is this morning's glorious gleanings.

While this sort of windfall can be overwhelming, I divide and conquer, pairing up like vegetables and making several dishes over the course of a week. For this booty, I already have several things in mind: with the carrots and beets, I'll make carrot and beet juice (drink it as soon as you make it so that it doesn't separate).

The cabbage will be turned into a cabbage-ramen slaw-like salad we call Runner's World salad because the recipe originally came from Runner's World magazine. If I have a chance, I'll post the recipe.

With the green beans and potatoes, I'm going to try the potato-green bean salad with lemon and basil from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. The carrot-beet juice will go really nicely with this.

For the second week in a row, Full Belly has sent a bag of baby apricots. They're about the size of a ping-pong ball, though much denser. Sweet like candy. I keep meaning to put them into a crisp or a cobbler, but in our house, stone fruit doesn't usually last long enough to be cooked into anything. If you've never had plums or nectarines or apricots from Northern California, put it on your to-do list.

A tip: to know when stone fruit is ripe, gently press the little cheeks on either side of the stem end. If they give slightly and have a beautiful, concentrated, unmistakable scent, it's ready. Eat it immediately or store in the fridge. Ah, summer!