This is a difficult post to write. I can’t find the right words to articulate the way that I’m feeling, elaboration feels incongruous, and every word I type just doesn’t compute, it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t feel real.

So here are just the facts: on Saturday, Ashes died. She was my friend and companion for 20 years, and now she is gone. Sweet and grumpy, soft and small, she was a gift for my 10th birthday. Ashes loved rubbing her face against the zipper on the cat nip bag, laying in puddles of sunshine on the kitchen floor, and sitting with Tom and I on the couch each weekend morning. She loved and was loved and will be loved for a long time. I am sad. I am heartbroken. And I want to say so much more. I want to write a post dedicated to her memory, and to the excavation of this tangled knot of emotions, the mysterious hollow space in my life where once she lay. I want to write something that will make you see just how important she was and how special. How do you capture 20 years of love in a blog post? For now there are just the facts and the grief.

It feels weird to talk about vegetables now, but I still want this record in time. A memory for the future: remember this summer, when fresh vegetables filled my house each week and meals were had and my cat died. This was the summer when we could not vacation or eat out at restaurants, but at least there was a farm share, and also it was the summer where my cat died. A strange, incongruous knot of emotions, conflicting experiences, and lives. “Oh strange it is to be anything at all.”

And so, about those vegetables:

Week 4 was exceptionally leafy! We ate the arugula in salads and on smash burgers.

I was thrilled to see that this week’s cilantro still had roots, and planted it in my garden next to some catnip. Its feathery and fragrant leaves brightened up quesadillas. The parsley was paired with a smorgasbord of savory foods: roasted potatoes, scrambled eggs, barbecue, beets… if it could be garnished with parsley, it was.

More leaves: lettuce, kale and bok choy! The four slender heads of crisp, cool lettuce accompanied the arugula in salads. I braised the tender bok choy with soy sauce and sesame oil, and served them with dumplings.

This bouquet of Russian kale was stunning: the grey-green scalloped leaves were tinged with shades of purple and rose, a picture-perfect plant that looked as though it had been plucked from a beautiful botanical wallpaper illustration. It was gorgeous, and it was a conundrum. Remember when I told you that I don’t like kale? I had frozen it in the past, but this kale was too pretty to freeze. I considered displaying it in a vase like a flower, but that seemed like a waste. So I became determined to make the kale palatable to my palette… and I think I succeeded. Enter, a quiche:

Up top, the quiche just before it entered the oven. On bottom, cooked and ready to eat!

 

Quiche are one of my favorite meals to make. Satisfying and sumptuous, I like to make mine in a buttery, crumbly pastry crust, with little to no cheese. For this pie, I de-ribbed the leaves and sliced them into ribbons, then massaged them with olive oil, garlic scapes, green onion and spices. I added it to my pastry crust, topped it with the egg mixture, and into the oven it went. And it worked! The finished quiche was a reliably tasty treat. It wasn’t my all-time favorite flavor creation (that honor goes to my leek-lemon zest quiche), but it was good, and a great way to use up the kale.

We also sauteed some of the kale in garlic, then mixed it into some mac-n-beans (Annie’s Mac and Cheese mixed with Ranch beans, one of our favorite lazy-night dinners.) I’m so glad that we cracked the code on kale!

Finally, these beets crashed our leaf party! Lucky for them, I’m a big fan. I was able to add to this share with roots from my own garden. We roasted them all, the perfect side dish for a summer barbecue plate.