The last time I went to the Midtown Farmers’ Market, summer was in full swing with a great variety of vegetables, but most of the vegetables were still pretty small: baby beets, tiny zucchini and summer squash with the flowers still on, new potatoes, spring onions, young greens, etc. After three weeks, the same vegetables have gotten bigger: red potatoes the size of two golf balls, baseball-sized onions, large squash and beets, and full-sized, adult lettuces.

There were a few new vegetables available, signalling the arrival of mid-summer: carrots, green and yellow beans and cucumbers. Cucumbers are one of my favorite things about summer–it is amazing how much sweeter and full-flavored they taste in season versus their year-round counterparts, which are just watery.

I also picked up some still young vegetables–radishes and green onions–which must be cultivated and replanted throughout the summer.

This is one of the most exciting times of the year around the market: there is a large enough variety to keep the kitchen well-stocked and interesting for the week and the most exciting vegetables of the year are just around the corner. I heard talk of sweet corn if we can get a little warm weather and the first cherry tomatoes were already in evidence. This time of year can’t be beat for prices either. What might have been $3 at the beginning of the summer, like the beets, can now be had for one. There’s no better time to be at the market!

Amy Thielen has an article in the The Star Tribune today entitled “MYOB {make your own butter}” that is very much worth looking over, even if it may seem like a far-out idea for some. It’s true: Tom is now making all of our bread, all of our yogurt, pickles of all kinds, and has attempted cheese on a few occasions. However crazily I may sometimes view these mysteries of home cooking and creation, Amy’s piece makes me want to MMOB (that’s make-my-own-butter). I especially like how she recounts the differences between winter butter and summer butter here in Minnesota:

Excepting the green months (May to October), your homemade butter made from Minnesota cream will be stone-white, which is a bit of a shock if you’re used to yellow butter, as most of us are. I thought immediately of Ma Ingalls in “Little House in the Big Woods,” and how she would color the winter cream by grating a carrot into a fluffy mass and squeezing its juice into the cream before churning…. Ma was a genius. Not only does the carrot juice tint the butter so it looks like it came from July’s prairie-grazing cows, but it also lends it a faint sweetness.

We are in the green months! There’s no better time to try… For the Strib’s recipes, try here. Have any of you done this before?

As projects go, what else is on the horizon? This is, of course, pure speculation as I can’t speak for Tom… Maybe beer, but with our hot water heat it’s hard to know if that’s a good idea. Canned goods fresh from the market to keep for winter’s un-bounty are a must (I look forward to learning more about this and helping as well), perhaps home distilled fruits concoctions? Our recent visit with my Aunt Martha and her husband Peter has inspired us down this road at some point for sure. My only (food) contribution of late has been sprouts, glorious sprouts grown right on my countertop. Once my day by day photo series is complete I will happily share how fun sprouts can be.

photo: http://belladia.typepad.com

Remember that roast pork from a couple of days ago? I sure do! I always get really excited when I have leftover roast pork on hand, because it inevitably leads to one thing: cuban sandwiches.

In addition to roast pork, a cubano contains dijon mustard, ham, pickles and swiss cheese. Real cubanos are made on soft white Cuban bread, but I used my usual wild-yeast boule. After all, I’m not a real cubano either.

When everything is stacked together, the sandwich is ready for a hot plancha, griddle, or cast-iron pan. And then comes the crucial step in cubanos: pressing. Pressing the sandwich compresses all the ingredients together and gives it a nice, thick texture and also seems to make the grilled surfaces of the bread extra-crispy. Home cookery stores sell all kinds of ridiculous weighted accessories with handles for this purpose, but you could just as easily use a culinary brick or anything else that’s heavy. I use a second cast-iron pan.

This sandwich is so great because it combines a lot of contrasting flavors into a neatly compressed package: hot dijon mustard, sweet, salty pig meats, tangy swiss cheese and sour pickles, all forced together into a warm, crispy amalgam. It’s rare that I will make a pork roast expressly for the purpose of making cubanos, but it’s even rarer that I’ll roast pork and not make sure there’s plenty leftover to fulfill my cuban sandwich needs.

A few weeks ago I got a nice surprise in the mail:

I don’t usually keep herbes de provence on hand, let alone a huge box of them, so I wasn’t sure what to do with my newfound friend. One whiff of the box and I was thinking one thing: pork. But how to ensure that each bite of pork would taste deliciously herbaceous? Stuff that pork!

The pork I ended up with was a very economical yet ethically produced pork butt from Beeler Farms via The Wedge. If I were feeling lazy and had a lot of time, I might just rub down the outside of the roast with herbs, salt, pepper and oil and roast it slow for a few hours, then pull the pork in order to distribute the herb flavor. But since I only had a couple of hours for roasting and was feeling slightly less lazy, instead I cut the roast into a big, flat sheet o’ meat. This is actually really easy: I just started making a cut into the roast about a half inch from the edge and kept cutting, always keeping 1/2″ of meat under my knife and rolling the roast away. If you want to get really fancy you can pound this to an even thickness.

At this point, the meat is ready to be stuffed, which is to say covered in stuff. Inspired by my herbs-by-mail, I made an herb paste. I used probably a third cup of herbes de provences, mixed with olive oil, a chopped shallot, lots of salt, and cracked pepper and slathered it liberally on the meat.

With herb paste covering the whole surface, I rolled it back together. With a little twine it was good as new, but with surprises hidden inside, peaking out the edges. At this point, it was practically begging me to sear it and roast it at 350°F to an internal temperature of 145°F.

The great thing about taking the trouble to stuff and roll a roast like this is that it distributes the herb flavor throughout the meat, rather than having it hang out on the surface. Additionally, because it doesn’t require flavorings to be applied to the outside of the roast, you can sear the meat without getting the bitter flavors of burnt herbs.

And then there’s the presentation. Each slice has a little spiral of green goodness encircling fields of pink pork. If you should be so fortunate as to be gifted with a box of herbs through the mail, there are worse ways to show them off.

After following a link in a tweet from SimpleScott to the Post Family’s home page, I found a link to the website of Kennedy Prints, self titled “A Letterpress Printery.” Here are a few of my favorites. In explanation of the first which bears the quotation, “It is the duty of children to wait on elders, and not the elders on children,” Kennedy says, “…by now you should know that we have a thing for proverbs.” I like. As for the third pictured below, I might just have to try and buy one as a means of motivation.

The following series is best seen all at once. I’m missing the last two (they were on a different page) that say “Buy Art,” appropriately with black text on a green square, and “Art Saves Lives!”

If you’re interested in buying, see the note about purchases on their site. Happy browsing!