Twenty Bag | Jul 22

Just as some summer favorites, like the baby tomatoes and curly kale, will be rotating out with the season, something new—Lowland Farms free-range eggs—finds its way into this late July bag. Japanese eggplant makes another appearance along with Sea Island sweet onion, chives, fingerling potatoes and beautiful rainbow carrots.

Thumbing through Deborah Madison’s landmark cookbook, Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets, I found a recipe for egg salad that blends the farm eggs and chives with a few seasonal herbs—and mayo, of course!—for a dish reminiscent of simpler times.

Toss the kale into a power smoothie along with the tomatoes and carrots if you’re in a time crunch. If you’re feeling more ambitious, check out the Post House kale Caesar recipe, graciously submitted to sweetgrass + grits by executive chef Nathan Hood.

I tried a recipe for grilled Japanese eggplant from Food Network’s Bobby Flay that imbued the vegetable with bold Asian flavors by first marinating it in soy sauce, sesame oil and sherry (!) and then giving it a savory char on the grill.