Last year, it was Deb & Rach Make Soup. This year, I was on my own, and the demo, for CSA Fairshare, was preserving summer produce, and then a few things to do with your riches from the freezer. I made a little slideshow: Garden Expo Slides. My plan was to demo blanching and skinning and chopping tomatoes, and argula pesto from Farm Fresh & Fast, and talk about roasting peppers, and how I love to have containers of roasted peppers in the freezer, and also turning peppers into condiments and freezing. Like a pepper & leek & olive crostini topping, from From Asparagus to Zucchini, and I was going to talk about how, for freezing, I’d mix tthe olives in right before serving, because they’re so salty, and that mixing in was to be the last part of the demo. But I was boiling water in the rice cooker to blanch the tomatoes, and it took longer to get hot than I planned, so the tomatoes were actually the last thing in the demo. Then CSA Fairshare volunteers brought out the tomato soup and argula pesto samples, made by Madison Sourdough.
Lat year, we went on at about 11:00, after the pruning lady cleaned up her sticks, and before the home vermicomposting guy brought in his worms. This year, the demo was at 9:30, so first of the day. The set up was a little different too, smaller and a bit cozier. It was a lot easier to get in – I didn’t have to push through crowds of people already at the Expo, while I was schlepping in my gear. And the parking lot wasn’t a sheet of ice, which made it A LOT easier not to run down all the oblivious folk wandering the lot. There were less people in attendence, though, so I think there were way too many samples – but, although I felt a bit crass for my attitude, not really my problem …
I think it went well, but I was glad when it was done. As example of what to do with you blanched greens in the freezer, I made a little square pan of kale-in-place-of-spinach filo feta cheese pie, and brought that along, too (really it was using up the filo and filling from last weekend, Super Bowl snacks) – it was the prettiest, but I didn’t photograph it.
It was still the coldest day of the year.
