This post is a followup to the Summer Gardens at the Their Best. On our all school clean up day, part of the clean up efforts focused on the CLC Garden and harvesting what was left from the summer. It turned out to be  a fabulous “CLC Farmer’s Market.” I even got to harvest some of those crazy garbanzo beans (which, as it turns out, you can eat green like edamame, or dried like any other bean or lentil).

We tried each kind of chard – white, red and yellow; and kale, purple and green. The consensus was that everyone liked the chard a lot better than the kale. The kale was much chewier than the chard. The chard was not bitter at all. It was cooked with a bit of beef broth and salt & pepper.

We tried the mini eggplants and onion which I cooked with some of the fresh thyme and green peppers (probably the hot ones). This dish was a favorite – even for the kids, who swear that they hate eggplant. I’ve spent a bit of time this summer trying to cook eggplant in a way that everyone will eat it – I think we found a way finally!

We tried a lemon cucumber and tomato. The boys tried the cucumber under protest and refused to even try the tomato (mostly because Greg doesn’t like tomatoes and that viewpoint has rubbed off on them without them even trying the tomatoes – that’s OK because it means more for me:)

We tried the green beans and bush beans. The bush beans were a little over-ripe and were a bit tough. The green beans were fantastic.

Hopefully others who “shopped” the CLC Farmers’ Market enjoyed their produce as much as we did. Thank you to Elysha & Jenn for keeping it going successfully through the summer!

Aug 23 note: I can’t wait to get into the egg rotation and try those – the chickens looked like they were all set when I saw them on the first day of school.