This week your bags are full of solanums, or members of the nightshade family! This family includes tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant, huckleberries, and ground cherries. Several of you already got to try huckleberries, but if you didn't last week, you will this week! These can be thrown in pancakes or muffins, fruit salad, smoothies, salad, on top of oatmeal, yogurt, or cereal...the possibilities are endless! Most of you are also getting tomatillos, a versatile member of the nightshade family most commonly known for its prevalence in Mexican dishes. And indeed, they are delicious in salsa or guacamole, or added raw or cooked to burritos, tacos, or enchiladas. But we also like them fresh in salads, thrown in with cucumbers and onions in refrigerator pickles, or added to stir frys or summer pasta salads.
Ground cherries are one of our favorite solanums, and we were excited to share them with you, but, alas, so far some little field mice have beat us to them. We keep checking under the plants to find countless little paper wrappers (like a tomatillo, they have a thin paper covering) and the inside eaten out, and have seen mice running away from the scene of the crime. We've never really had to deal with mice as pests before, and are trying a small gauge wire fence, hoping that you will all be able to try ground cherries one day!