This week’s box includes: Okra, honeynut squashes, zephyr summer squash, sweet Italian pepper, banana peppers, potatoes, garlic, apples, eggplant, spaghetti squash. You can see a photo that can help with identification on our Facebook page or check out our weekly video on Instagram.
Need storage instructions? Visit our fruit & veggie home pages. Click on the pic and a new page opens with storage instructions and a list of recipes curated by Conne Ward Cameron over the years.
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Apple season has arrived! Now that they’re here, Charlotte confirms that we’ll see apples every week until the last delivery of the 2026 CSA in November. Take a moment to brush up on apple storage on our apple page. You’ll find a cold storage idea from Conne Ward Cameron via the University of Minnesota.
I’m in the mood to celebrate the arrival of apples with a cake. There are 11 apple cake recipes on our apple recipe page, including the intriguing Apple Pecan Chipotle Cake. Serendipitously, the Splendid Table’s enewsletter today featured this Apple Crisp recipe from Ruth Reichl, the legendary food critic and Gourmet Magazine editor-in-chief-until-it-ended-too-soon. It’s from her cookbook My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life.
But really what I’m craving is the fluffy Grandma’s Apple Cake that the Rogue Baker (psst, it’s Annie) would leave as a treat for Grant Park CSA members in years past. Delicious & easy, the GAC was one of her reliable standards.
Grandma’s Apple Cake
1 cup sugar
1 cup shortening or butter
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour (mix of white and whole wheat)
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon baking powder
4+ cups chopped apples (ok to leave peels on)
Topping
2 tablespoons melted butter
½ cup packed brown sugar
1 cup chopped nuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons flour
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease & flour a cake tube or a 9 x 13 pan.
Cream together the sugar, shortening, and salt. Add milk, eggs, vanilla. In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Slowly add the dry to the wet ingredients; mix just until incorporated. Fold in chopped apples.
Put batter into a greased & floured tube or 9×13 pan. Spread topping evenly. Bake 45-60 minutes, depending on the pan, until a tester comes out clean.
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Eggplant, peppers, garlic, summer squash augmented with any other peppers and onions you have around calls to this ratatouille recipe from Melissa Clark of the New York Times. Somewhere she mentioned a prep time of 5 hours. The involved time is far less – the oven does all the work caramelizing the veggies until they melt together in bliss. Use it as a topping on roasted and shredded spaghetti squash or baked potatoes from this week’s box.
Ratatouille
4 garlic cloves
2 medium white onions
3 medium zucchini
2 medium eggplant
3 sweet red peppers, such as bell peppers, red cubanelle or any other sweet variety
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
6 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup olive oil, more as needed
2 large heirloom or beefsteak tomatoes
2 small bay leaves, ripped in half
1 ½ teaspoons fine sea salt, more as needed
Freshly ground black pepper
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare the vegetables: Smash and peel 3 garlic cloves, reserving the 4th. Halve onions through their roots, and slice halves into ¼-inch-thick pieces. Slice zucchini into ¼-inch-thick rounds. Cut eggplant into 1-inch cubes or spears. Seed peppers, and cut them into ¼-inch-thick strips.
Spread each vegetable on a separate rimmed baking sheet (use extra sheets as necessary). Add the 3 cloves of smashed garlic to the onion pan. Add 1 sprig rosemary and 2 sprigs thyme to each of the pepper, eggplant and zucchini pans. Sprinkle salt lightly over vegetables. Drizzle 3 tablespoons olive oil on each of the pans.
Place all the pans in the oven (or work in batches if they don’t fit at once). Cook until vegetables are very tender and lightly browned at the edges. This will take about 35 to 40 minutes for the peppers (their skins should shrivel), 40 to 45 minutes for the eggplant and zucchini (the eggplant should crisp slightly and the zucchini should be well cooked, so let them go 3 to 5 minutes longer than you normally might), and 60 to 65 minutes for the onions. Don’t worry about the vegetables being pretty; they will meld into the ratatouille. Shake or stir the pans every 15 to 20 minutes or so, especially the onions.
In the meantime, prepare the tomatoes: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add tomatoes and blanch until the skins split, about 10 seconds. Use a slotted spoon to quickly transfer the tomatoes to a bowl filled with ice water.
Using a paring knife, peel the cooled tomatoes (the skins should slip right off). Halve tomatoes across their equators. Set a sieve over a bowl. Working over the bowl, use your fingers to seed the tomatoes, letting the seeds catch in the sieve and the juice run into the bowl. Discard seeds but save juices. Dice tomatoes and add to the reserved juices in bowl.
Finely grate or mince remaining garlic clove. Add garlic to tomatoes along with bay leaves and a large pinch of salt. Set aside.
Once vegetables are done cooking, combine them on one baking sheet or a large shallow baking dish and add ingredients from tomato bowl. Toss well. Vegetables will be stacked, and that’s O.K. Cover generously with olive oil, using remaining ¼ cup oil or more, and sprinkle with salt. Everything should have a good coat of oil, but should not be drowning in it. Cook at least 1 hour, stirring every 15 to 20 minutes, until vegetables are very tender and imbued with juices and oil. Add salt and pepper to taste, then serve warm, or let cool.
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Yes, I’ve got no salad recipe this week. Eat Cake. Hope you enjoy this week’s harvest,
~Suzanne