My friend Claudia lives on 30 acres and is getting set up as an organic farm. Like me, she has 3 kids and homeschools and has to be realistic about how much time she can reasonably devote to anything else. This year she asked me and another friend (Jane - who also has 3 kids and homeschools) if we’d like to come over on Fridays and do farm work in exchange for the results. We’ve been going for several weeks (when the weather has co-operated) and the early spring vegetables are starting to mature. Claudia has started a blog about her farm and I wrote a guest post with a recipe for using some of the early spring veggies. I’m going to go ahead and post it here too:
Friday Farmhand Recipe - Spring Tacos
Today from my home garden I had my first modest harvests of spring planted lettuce, cilantro, and radishes. I have been plucking onions (as green onions) all winter and pulled 2 red and 2 white onions also - they are starting to get thicker!
Spring Tacos
I washed and chopped the 2 cups of baby lettuce, handful of cilantro, 10 radishes and 4 thick green onions and mixed them in a bowl. We also had refried beans, cheddar cheese, sour cream, and salsa and assembled our own tacos.
Verdict: YUM. I never would have thought of putting radishes on a taco, but the last time I went to my fav Mexican grocery store I saw piles and piles of radishes and then just *had* to know how they were being used. I wasn’t actually brave enough to ask at the store, but my pal google came through and I also found out that radishes are apparently somewhat common as a taco topping in California - who knew? Turns out that the crunchy/spicy-ness of radishes is what your taco has been missing all along! The green onions added another layer of spice and crunch, and the cilantro threatend to push my tastebuds over the top but the lettuce mellowed it all out and kept all the flavors balanced.
Variations: This would also be really good in a burrito or with black beans instead of refried beans. If my grill wasn’t out of gas I could have grilled some corn tortillas (brushed with olive oil) and made tostadas. If I was serving meat eaters I would probably slice up a couple grilled chicken breasts.
Harvesting lettuce? Now that makes me jealous. The maxim here is don’t plant until Mother’s Day. Tonight we have several inches of snow. But I guess I won’t be so jealous of your weather in August, so it sort of balances out.