This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here. You can find our second month of meals here.

This was such a packed month of cooking that I broke the post up into two parts. This is part two and covers the desserts, canned goods, and fermented projects for the month. If you are interested in what came in our share this month and the main-course dishes we made, check out this post.

Picking up where we lift off in the last post, here are the sweet and unique ways that I used the fruits and vegetables in our farm share.

Desserts/Breakfasts

If you want to eat dessert for breakfast, you’ve come to the right place. I’m nothing but an enabler on this front, BUT only if the dessert is fruit-based. No, wait, I also eat cake with my coffee.

This was a good month for feeding my dessert-for-breakfast habit. With weekly peach deliveries, and a few weeks with plums, there was plenty of fruit for the baking.

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Stone fruit tea cake (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : peaches and plums

We made this cake twice during the month, the first time with just peaches, the second time with peaches and plums. Even though it’s called a cake, Calder and I both thought that it was the best cobbler we’ve ever tasted. It’s delicious straight from the oven with vanilla ice cream.

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Peach crisp (a simplification of the apple crisp recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookbook) : peaches

I have to confess that I made this for our camping trip with the full intention to only eat it for breakfast. I packed a few small cups of Greek yogurt, and the combination was perfect.

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NYTimes {famous} Plum Torte : plums, eggs

I came across this recipe after reading the NYTimes article about it being the paper’s most requested recipe.

I don’t know why my plums sunk. Is it the altitude? No matter, the torte was still amazingly delicious. I think the boys and I ate half of it for our afternoon snack before Calder even got home from work! We have a few plums left, and I’m thinking of making this one more time for the season.

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Fermentation Experiments

I have to admit that for all of my interest in learning new things and experimenting, I’ve shied away from home fermentation projects. I always thought of it as such a risky venture with the chance for contamination, but after being gifted a few fermentation-related tools (this mason jar fermenting set and a couple of ceramic fermenting weights), I thought it was time to give it a try.

I’m working on both a jar of giardiniera and another of sauerkraut. Neither batch is done yet, but this is the week I get to test both, and when they’re done, whether good or bad, I’m excited to do a follow-up post to share my results along with a deeper discussion about why fermented foods are good for your gut.

*This isn’t my first foray into fermenting. It all started with kombucha! This is just my first time throwing vegetables into the mix.

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Giardiniera : basil, onion, carrots, broccoli, green bell pepper

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Sauerkraut (from Preserving by the Pint) : cabbage

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Canned Goods

I’m hoping to do some more canning this fall, but keeping my expectations in check, I’m focusing on small-batch canning. A couple of great resources that I heavily rely on for small-scale canning are the books Food in Jars and Preserving by the Pint. Both are written by Marissa McClellan, who writes a canning-focused blog called Food in Jars (another great resource for canning recipes, tips, and tricks).

If you’re nervous about canning, then doing a small batch is a great way to start. You can do it with the pots already in your kitchen, so you aren’t investing in new equipment. You can also do it with a smaller quantity of produce, so the prep-time is less, as is the clean-up, and it’s not a big loss if the batch fails (it won’t).

This month, I focused my canning efforts on that big box of peaches we received, making both a peach salsa and a peach bbq sauce.

Peach BBQ Sauce (from Preserving by the Pint) : peaches, onion

The BBQ sauce recipe makes about two half-pint jars. We’ve been using it on grilled skinless and boneless chicken thighs this month, and it’s so good that I ended up making three batches of the sauce so that I’d have enough to pass around to my family!

Peach Salsa (from Food in Jars) : peaches, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno

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Needless to say it was an exciting month in the kitchen. We tried so many new-to-us dishes, and all were delicious! I can’t wait to see what the month ahead brings, and I’m really excited to push myself to try even more canning and fermentation recipes.