When was the last time your kids participated in a spitting contest? No, not spitting at each other — spitting watermelon seeds?

One summer when I was growing up, our local library’s summer reading contest culminated in a summer festival. I remember the highlight was, not the free books we’d earned, but facing off against my little brother in a seed-spitting contest. My son has a while to wait before he can challenge his little sister to a contest, but he does know to spit out the black seeds when eating watermelon. But with the rise of seedless watermelons in the grocery store, will that lesson become irrelevant?

The Washington Post’s Jane Black examines the issue in today’s paper. I won’t give away my stance on seeds vs. seedless, though loyal readers will likely guess … but read the article to see what I and others had to say. (And that lovely seeded melon pictured above? From our CSA farm.)

What’s your stance? Pro-spitting? Or are seeds too much hassle for today’s busy children?

(This is actually the second time I’ve been quoted in the Post talking about watermelon. I guess that makes me a melon expert, right? If you’ve got a fresh melon around this holiday weekend, you might enjoy my Watermelon Gazpacho and/or Slushie recipes.)

{Editor’s Note: I’ll be on “maternity leave” for the next couple weeks. Posts are scheduled to keep you satiated (including a whole month of cherry recipes!), but please forgive me if I don’t respond to comments promptly.}

As we prepared to welcome baby #2, this holiday weekend was an exercise in clearing out our CSA produce from the fridge. We grilled flank steak one evening, and I had chimichurri on the mind but was missing jalapeno peppers. (Chimichurri is a South American pesto-style green sauce, typically made with parsley and peppers. We first tasted it at an Argentinian steakhouse in Puerto Rico, on our honeymoon.) When my dad arrived back in town, imagine my surprise that a garden-fresh care package from my sister-in-law in North Carolina contained … jalapenos! I used the last of our CSA garlic scapes, and parsley from my herb pots. Unfortunately my basil plants have quite overshadowed my parsley, so I didn’t have quite as much as I would have liked. But this turned out delicious just the same. We also roasted beets, zucchini and yellow squash on the grill. Simple and tasty!

Recipe: Garlic Scape Chimichurri
(If you don’t have garlic scapes, substitute fresh garlic cloves.)

Ingredients:

• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded (leave seeds in if you like it extra hot)
• 3 garlic scapes, cut into 1-inch pieces (or garlic cloves, peeled)
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1/3 – 12 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions: Place peppers, garlic and parsley in food processor and process until finely chopped. Gradually add olive oil until a pesto-like consistency is reached. Stir in salt and store in refrigerator until ready to use.

Notes: I rub a generous amount onto flank steak, place it in a pan and add half a bottle of beer, then marinate it for at least 1 hour before grilling. Then serve extra chimichurri along side the cooked steak. It’s also great tossed with potatoes and/or zucchini before roasting them. Enjoy!

Please join in and share what local foods you’ve enjoyed this past week!

Local Potluck Tuesday — a few guidelines:
1. Share a relevant post — a recipe, menu or pictures of a meal featuring local foods, from the farmers market, CSA, farm stand or your own garden — using the MckLinky widget below. In the link title field, enter both your post title and your name &/or blog name, e.g., “Lemon Cucumber Salad — Colleen @ FoodieTots.”

2. Bonus points if you included your kids in picking, growing, purchasing or cooking the ingredients for the meal! (And by bonus points, I mean increased likelihood of seeing your post featured in a future post.)

3. In your post, please link back to this post here at FoodieTots, so your readers can find the potluck and be encouraged to join in as well.  Of course if you don’t have a blog, you’re welcome to share in the comments.

That’s it! I hope you’ll join in and share what you’re cooking up that’s fresh & local to you!

Swiss chard is pretty much a weekly constant in our summer CSA share. I enjoy it just fine sauteed on its own — but the boy doesn’t (yet) eat leafy greens and the husband has merely grown to tolerate it over the years. Attempts to boost flavor with dried cranberries and/or bacon didn’t impress, but a recent variation with garlic and cherry tomatoes actually had the husband voluntarily eating a second helping. (No, this was still no help with my tomato-averse son, but that just leaves more for us.)

Recipe: Swiss Chard and Cherry Tomatoes

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch Swiss chard, rinsed well
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• sea salt & pepper

Instructions: Trim the ends of the Swiss chard stems. Cut the stems into 1-inch pieces, and cut or tear chard leaves into 1-inch strips. Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Cook garlic for 1 minute, then add the chard stems and cook for 2-3 minutes, until they start soften. Add cherry tomatoes, cut side down, and cook another minute. Add chard leaves to the pan, add vinegar, cover and cook until leaves wilt, about 5-6 minutes. Remove from heat, drain any excess liquid and season with salt and pepper. Makes 2-4 servings. Enjoy!

Your turn: Please join in and share what local foods you’ve enjoyed this past week!

Local Potluck Tuesday — a few guidelines:
1. Share a relevant post — a recipe, menu or pictures of a meal featuring local foods, from the farmers market, CSA, farm stand or your own garden — using the MckLinky widget below. In the link title field, enter both your post title and your name &/or blog name, e.g., “Lemon Cucumber Salad — Colleen @ FoodieTots.”
2. Bonus points if you included your kids in picking, growing, purchasing or cooking the ingredients for the meal! (And by bonus points, I mean increased likelihood of seeing your post featured in a future post.)
3. In your post, please link back to this post here at FoodieTots, so your readers can find the potluck and be encouraged to join in as well.

That’s it! I hope you’ll join in and share what you’re cooking up that’s fresh & local to you!

Our Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA bag was full of ripe summer tomatoes last week, after a slow and soggy start to tomato season here in Virginia. Unfortunately, we were leaving town the day after our pick-up. Of course, that was also the day we got the notice that the boxes of surplus canning tomatoes were available, and I was feeling panicked at the thought of not putting up tomatoes this year and faced with a pile of tomatoes we certainly wouldn’t be able to finish before leaving. I had recently seen a recipe for tomato jam and decided that was the perfect project for the night as it mainly involves simmering on the stove for a couple hours, giving me time to pack. A huge thunderstorm kept the boy awake so I put him to work slicing up the excess cherry tomatoes we also needed to use up. (Using a kid-safe knife, of course.)

I made slight alterations, using turbinado sugar and a touch of honey and a splash of Virginia’s North Gate Petit Verdot that was also in need of using up. (Not that I couldn’t have used a glass or two, but it would’ve made it even less likely that I would get all our luggage packed that night.)

For the recipe, see: Tomato Onion Jam by Jennifer Perillo/Tasty Kitchen. My alterations: 1 1/2 cup raw (turbinado sugar) and 1/4 cup raw honey, omit the brown sugar. Add 2 tablespoons red wine in lieu of lemon juice.

This weekend was the Canvolution kick-off — a nationwide effort to restore the art of preserving food, launched by former Washington Post blogger Kim O’Donnel and a host of other food writers and bloggers. Visit the Canning Across America website for a host of canning resources and advice, particularly this great article on canning with kids.

The highlight of my first mother-son canning experiment was seeing the pride in my son’s eyes as he handed his aunt and grandma their jar of jam, declaring, “I made this myself!”

What have you canned lately?

We’re already more than a third of the way through our CSA season, and we’ve finally left the abundant leafy greens behind and moved on to the baby vegetable phase. Well, there were some full size sweet onions this week, but everything else seemed perfectly sized for the toddler — baby beets, baby yellow squash, baby potatoes (white and blue), and even a few small tomatoes. One of the things that surprised me our first year with our CSA farm was the lag in the bags behind what’s at the market. Something about quality over quantity, yada yada yada. (Seriously, the farm’s vine-ripened tomatoes are worth the wait, but some weeks can be a little frustrating.) Faced with a shortage of fridge supplies after a week away, the hodge podge of veggies, cheddar from our “emergency” stop at the Wednesday King Street Market for some of Mr. Tom’s cheese, and some random pieces of meat unearthed from the freezer, I came up with this summer veggie nacho supper.

Recipe: Mid-Summer Nachos with Squash and Tomatoes

Ingredients:

• 1/2 bag tortilla chips*
• 1/2 cup tomatillo salsa*
• assorted chicken pieces, diced
• 1 sausage, preferably chorizo but I had Italian
• 1 large or 2 small yellow squash, halved length-wise and sliced
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

Instructions: Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and crumbled sausage, cover with salsa and cook until meat is cooked through. Remove from heat. Meanwhile, spread tortilla chips on rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with half of the shredded cheese and arrange squash, tomato and onion over top. Spread meat over and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Place under broiler and cook 4-5 minutes, until cheese is melted and bubbly. Cool slightly and enjoy! Makes 4 servings.

*Chips and salsa from Las Glorias at the Crystal City/Crystal Farms Market.

One Local Summer is an annual challenge in which people around the world join together for 13 weeks of seasonal eating, supporting local farmers and exploring their local foodsheds. Visit FarmtoPhilly on Tuesdays for the weekly round-up; here’s what my neighbors in the Southern region cooked up this week.