Yesterday, it was as hot as it gets in central Maine. The temperature was over 90 degrees in the shade, which meant that it must have been nearly 100 in the sun. The relative humidity? Pretty much the same. I sweat as I watered the gardens and hung the laundry; I sweat as I ate lunch on the patio. The orange cat lolled beneath my chair, and the dog made a place for himself in the cool shade of the ferns by the house. The black cat joined her brother under my chair, and we all seemed to be in a suspended state, with the heat and the humidity stretching time so that the one afternoon seemed like days rather than hours.

Despite the heat, despite the humidity, I love summer, even the sweat and the stretched time, and the older I get, the more this is the case. Time was when winter’s cold did not faze me. I would stay outside until my face was red with cold, and it did not bother me a bit. Those days are gone, and in deep winter, I now have to steel myself to go for a walk.

Yesterday was also the day that Farmer Kev dropped off our CSA share. The wooden box overflowed with greens, greens, and more greens, and as I surveyed them, I felt a moment of panic. What would I do with all those greens—the spinach, the lettuce, the Swiss chard, and the beet greens with the baby beets? Fortunately, that very morning, I had come across Mark Bittman’s “101 Simple Salads for the Season.” I had even printed it, and I read it while I had lunch.

So I told myself, “Don’t panic. If Mark Bittman can come up with 101 simple salad suggestions, then you can find a way to use those greens. Let Bittman be your guide.”

Once the panic went away, the ideas started coming. There were the usual side salads Clif and I have each night with dinner. That’s the low-hanging fruit, so to speak, and while it does make a dent in the greens, a side salad each night doesn’t even begin to use them all.

Well, our friends Paul and Judy are coming over for dinner on Saturday. Why not make a version of Bittman’s salade niçoise? His calls for green beans, which I don’t have. Instead I’ll use blanched sugar snap peas, which were also included in my CSA delivery. After all, as Bittman noted in his salade niçoise entry: “None of these [ingredients] is crucial; you get the idea.” I do, indeed, and along with sugar snaps I’ll include cooked potatoes, at room temperature; tomatoes; olives, capers, and hard cooked eggs. And they will all be on a thick bed of—you guessed it—greens. I plan to dress it with a simple vinaigrette.

Also for that dinner on Saturday, a pasta and spinach salad with a bit of basil, olive oil, and feta. I made it for our Fourth of July picnic, and it was so tasty, I don’t mind having it again so soon. That salad uses two cups of chopped spinach, which will make a real dent in my spinach bag. I found the recipe in the Portland Press Herald, and this salad is fast on its way to becoming a family favorite. (Note: I substituted little pasta for the orzo in the recipe.)

Then I thought, what about today’s lunch? Why not roast those baby beets and have them in a wrap along with a bit of goat cheese, chopped olives, lots of greens, and a little dressing? That’s just what I’ll do, and I can’t wait for lunch.

So take that, greens! You do not intimidate me anymore.

Addendum—July 7, 2011: I just got an email farm share update from Farmer Kev, and he promised that next week there will be new potatoes. Woo-hoo! I won’t be panicking about how to use those little beauties. Boiled until soft—you don’t even have to peel them—add a bit of butter, and that’s it! I certainly am looking forward to next Wednesday.

One of the challenges of belonging to a CSA program is to use the bounty that Farmer Kev brings us each week. In Maine, the end of June is still early summer, and the harvest therefore consists of greens, greens, and more greens. Radishes and sugar snap peas are also thrown in, and they certainly add dash to the plethora of greens. When it comes to the peas, my husband, Clif, and I do not have to wonder how to use those beauties. We are crazy about them, and in grocery stores sugar snaps—never mind organic ones like Farmer Kev’s—are quite expensive. Into stir-fries, pasta, and wraps the sugar snaps go, delicious to the very last crunch. Radishes keep well in a bowl of cold water in the refrigerator, and my husband, Clif, and I love to add them to salads.

But what about all those greens? Bags and bags of spinach and lettuce? Swiss chard and beet greens.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Clif and I are not all that keen on plain cooked greens. We like them in salads, and we don’t mind them as part of a dish. Every night, therefore, we have been eating big green salads, but they do not use a sufficient amount to deal with the many bags of spinach and lettuce we have in our refrigerator.

I have therefore developed a two-pronged approach. The first is to cook with some of the greens—a bag of spinach will shrink to nothing once it is sautéd in a bit of oil. Last week I made spinach with pasta, and I was only moderately pleased with the results. This week, I had another idea. At the Winthrop Farmer’s market, I had bought some garlic sausage from Wholesome Holmstead. I thought, why not make a garlic sausage and spinach dish? And, why not make a sweet and sour sauce, which both Clif and I love, to mix in with the sausage and spinach? How would that taste? I’m inclined to think that sweet and sour sauce, if it’s homemade, improves the taste of almost anything. All right. Maybe not quiche, but sweet and sour sauce sure is good in stir-fries and on chicken and even with white beans and rice. Still, I’ve been cooking long enough to realize that what the imagination conceives might not match reality. (In fact, this is true of a lot of things.)

I am pleased to report that in this case, imagination and reality were in perfect accord. The sausage and spinach with sweet and sour sauce tasted exactly the way I hoped it would. The spinach and the spicy sausage were a perfect pairing with the sweet and sour sauce. We ate it over rice, of course, and not going back for seconds took tremendous willpower. Good thing a big green salad was waiting for me. And, yes, there was spinach in it.

Clif’s response to the sausage and spinach dish? “Pretty good,” he said. And since Clif comes from a long line of Yankees, this is his version of high praise.

My second approach with the surplus is to give some of it away. This week, I brought Swiss chard and beet greens to my friend Lee Gilman, who lives up the road from me. She was happy to receive the greens, and I even threw in a bunch of radishes, since Farmer Kev had given me two bunches this week.

As I drove to deliver the greens and radishes to Lee, black clouds scudded across the sky. The water on the Narrows Ponds, upper and lower, was dark and choppy, and thunder rumbled close by. Keeping an eye on the sky, I spoke with Lee for a bit, and her Sheltie, Lucky, watched us in the bright way that Shelties have. Lee had come in from her own garden, and she was holding a hoe. As we said our goodbyes, Lee moved the hoe back and forth, and with a happy growl, Lucky chased it. Home I went, getting inside just as the rain poured down, making it too wet for Clif to mow the lawn. Ah, well. At least he could get the spinach ready for cooking.

Sausage and Spinach in a Sweet and Sour Sauce

This is more of a guideline than a recipe. Unfortunately, I cannot share the sweet and sour sauce recipe, as it comes directly from a cookbook, and I make it pretty much the way it is written. However, there are many recipes online and in cookbooks. I will tell you the ingredients of the one I use: sugar, cider vinegar, pineapple juice, ketchup, and garlic powder, something I rarely use but is somehow perfect in this recipe. Then, I boil the mixture and thicken it with water and corn starch. Now, at least, you have something to go by.

For last night’s dish, I used 7 ounces of garlic sausage. Any sausage would be good, but that garlic sausage was outstanding, perfectly spiced and with just the right amount of fat. As with any dish, the better the ingredients, the better the results. Not putting any oil in the frying pan, I stir-fried the sausage, which came in a solid pack rather than in links. By the time I was done, I had nice little chunks.

When the sausage was cooked, I added a bunch of spinach. No, I did not measure. I just threw it in until it seemed like enough. (It was.)

Ditto for chunks of pineapple, from a 20 ounce can. Last came the sweet and sour sauce, and I used the entire batch. A pound of meat and more spinach would take a double batch.

While I was cooking the sausage and spinach, I had a pot of jasmine Thai rice simmering on the back burner. Brown rice is better for you, I know, but I can’t help it. I am just crazy about jasmine Thai rice, and that is what we eat in our house.

When the pineapples were heated through, the mixture was spooned over rice.

Time for dinner.

I have a confession to make. Spinach is not one of my favorite foods. In fact, the same could be said for all kinds of greens, ranging from Swiss chard to beet greens. Perhaps it’s because my introduction to them came from parents whose idea of cooking greens was to boil them to a slimy, green pulp, which was then smothered with vinegar. Back in the old days, when I was a child, you had to eat what was on your plate, so mostly I ate those greens. Sometimes, if dinner consisted of too many things I didn’t like, I would ask to eat in the living room. I would insist that there was some special show or movie I just had to watch. I couldn’t do this very often because I knew my mother would become suspicious and would deny permission. So I saved it for a night, say, when a clump of spinach would be served with a casserole made with Veg-All, cream of mushroom soup, ground beef, and macaroni. (Not all of Mom’s cooking was like this. She was a great baker, and her cookies, cakes, and pies, all made from scratch, were delicious.)

Safely ensconced in the living room, too far from the kitchen to be seen, I could sneak food to our dog, Frisky, who was right by my side. I’d eat some of my meal, of course, but well over half would go to Frisky, who thought boiled spinach and Veg-All casserole were just dandy.

Over the years, my stance toward spinach has softened. (However, my take on Veg-All casserole remains unchanged.) I like spinach in quiche or lasagna or any number of dishes, and I have come to love spinach salads, especially if bacon and hard-boiled eggs are involved.

It’s a good thing my attitude toward spinach has changed because in the span of two weeks, Farmer Kev has delivered three big bags of spinach. As of today, we have gone through nearly two of them, mostly munching our way through salads.

Last night, I decided to sauté some of that spinach with garlic and have it with pasta. I looked on the Internet for suggestions and discovered that other than using lots of garlic, there wasn’t much to it. While a pound of penne was cooking—I always make too much—I chopped three cloves of garlic and removed the stems from half a pound of spinach. In a big frying pan, I sautéd the garlic for a minute or so, added the spinach, and stirred it around until the greens were wilted. Then, I added enough of the cooked penne—probably half—until I thought there was a good ratio of pasta to spinach. I tasted it. Not bad, but a little bland. I added a tablespoon of chopped, fresh oregano and a bit of pasta water I had reserved before draining the penne. Better.

My husband, Clif, is not exactly a spinach enthusiast, either, and while he made a comment about how the spicing “wasn’t exactly right,” he went back for a second helping. I thought the dish was good enough, but I certainly wouldn’t serve it to company. Because Clif had a point—the spinach and pasta was still a little bland, even with the addition of the oregano. What would make it better? Lemon juice? Feta cheese? Chickpeas? All of the above? Any suggestions, readers?