Fresh from Wellspring Charitable Gardens - July 24, 2025

From the Garden Today… Heirloom Slicing & Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic, Green Onions, Green & Purple Beans, Summer Squash, Lettuce, Cucumbers, Carrots, Sweet Peppers, Chard, Cilantro, Basil, Coriander, Melons, Pluots & Peaches

Using Your Produce… by Julie Moreno

Summer is all about tomatoes and basil. I mix the two together with salt, vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil and put it on crostini, on pizza, on grilled eggplant or squash, or use as a salad by itself. The two plants even grow well together. In the pasta salad recipe today, I added artichoke hearts and kalamata olives with fresh mozzarella to the tomatoes and basil. You can use marinated artichokes and mozzarella, if you have them, but be careful with your salt. You might need to add less. Make sure to taste, you can always add more, but you can’t take it away.

Pasta Salad

with Tomatoes and Basil

½ lb. penne pasta, cooked until al dente

1 cup cherry tomatoes halved, or large

    tomatoes cut into a large dice

1 cup mini fresh mozzarella balls

½ cup basil leaves, gently chopped or torn

½ cup chopped artichoke hearts

¼ cup chopped Kalamata olives

2 teaspoons red or white vinegar

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

* Cook the pasta in boiling salted water until done. Remove the pasta from the water and let cool slightly. Add the pasta to a large mixing bowl and combine with the remaining ingredients. Stir to mix and taste. Add salt and pepper as needed.

Best Kept Secret: Homemade Ricotta Cheese,

Quick and Easy

4 cups of whole, 2%, or 1% milk

1 ½ Tbsp distilled white vinegar (5% acidity)

Heat milk in a large glass Pyrex bowl in the microwave or in a heavy bottomed pot on the stove to 190° F.  Stir in the vinegar briefly and bring back the temperature to 190° F if it has cooled.  The milk should begin to congeal and separate into white curds and a lighter liquid.  If this does not happen, add a bit more vinegar, ½ tsp at a time. Let it sit undisturbed for 10 minutes.  Place a sieve over a large bowl and line with a thin cotton towel (also called butter muslin or cheese cloth).  Gently ladle the curds into the towel-lined sieve with a slotted spoon.  Stir in ¾ of a teaspoon of kosher or sea salt. Test the consistency and drain longer for firm ricotta.  Enjoy your fresh Ricotta warm on toast with tomato and basil, in your favorite lasagna or cannelloni, on grilled eggplant drizzled with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, or as a topping on pizza. Use within 4 days refrigerated. It also freezes well. Adapted from My Pantry by Alice Waters.

More Summer Salads…

The summer salad suggestions continue with tomatoes, basil, and a Middle Eastern influence from tahini in the dressing. If you want, try making extra dressing. It’s perfect with grilled eggplant or roasted veggies topped with your fresh homemade Ricotta cheese.

Tomato-Cucumber-Garbanzo Salad with Tahini Dressing

2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 teaspoons red or white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons tahini paste

1 garlic clove minced or crushed

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups tomatoes, cherry tomatoes halved

    or large tomatoes roughly chopped

1 medium cucumber, seeds removed, about 2 cups cubed

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed, about 2 cups

* In a large bowl combine the oil, vinegar, tahini, garlic and salt. Stir well to combine the dressing ingredients. Gently stir in the tomatoes, cucumber, beans, onion and herbs. Serve right away.

Metaphors of Soil and Soul…

Cheeky Peppers

Ronda May Melendez & Keith F Martin

While picking the garden peppers, I learned something about the plants I had not known. Pepper plants – especially the fiery, mouth-enflaming varieties – can be quite sensitive and stubborn; they can dish out the heat but can’t take it. As I pulled at the peppers, some resisted coming off the plant cleanly, despite their being fully ripe and ready. The intractable peppers snapped themselves in two or snapped the branch that had nurtured their growth. Such cheeky behavior got me thinking.

Do peppers feel separation anxiety? Probably not, but it didn’t seem right, even seemed impudent, for these fiery plants to stubbornly withhold their ripe fruit. Just the same, I found a work around for their resistance. I held the pepper stem firmly closest to its branch, pulled lightly with a gentle twist, and off came the pepper undamaged. Win, win, win! The fruit came off cleanly, the branch remained intact, and I held a  fresh pepper to flavor a salsa fresca.

Humans do experience separation anxiety, and like peppers, we also succumb to “cheeky pepper syndrome.” We are ripe and ready to serve, but when harvest time comes, we refuse to release our fruit freely and fully, withholding our gifts and talents from the hands of the harvester. We become anxious, or even possessive, when asked to offer up our precious fruit, which may reveal our doubt that they are ripe or, perhaps, our unbelief that we are ready. Ambivalent, we defiantly cling to our delightful fruit, damaging it or ourselves during the harvest. 

The LORD has planted us to bear abundant fruit, His intent at creation, and He harvests it for His pleasure and good purposes. Be assured of this: You may confidently yield your fruit into His firm hands. Just as I bore up the branch to maintain the integrity of both the pepper and the plant during harvest, The LORD gently handles us at harvest so that our fruit goes forth intact and our branch remains productive.

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser…you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”   John 15:1,5