Archive for the 'Cooking' Category

One Local Summer – Week 13

Juliets

Whoops! Didn’t mean to miss two weeks of dinners there. We did have local meals both weeks but we ran off to the ocean for some of that time and couldn’t find the energy to document our meals while the sand and surf were calling. This week I made an enormous batch of ratatouille. We got one meal from it and I froze enough for two more meals plus a few lunches — school starts next week — that we’ll enjoy on a cold day this winter. We had crispy lamb meatballs and non-local rice on the side and it made quite a good meal.

- thyme, basil (0 miles)
- lamb (17 miles)
- tomatoes, peppers (30 miles)
- eggplant, zuchinni (92 miles)
- oil, rice (non-local)

All Food, All the Time

It’s been all food, all the time around here recently hasn’t it? I’ve been busy putting by the summer’s bounty for this winter. Last year we ran out of lots of things — raspberry jam and applesauce particularly — before the cold season had really set in and I realized some of the problem was I had no idea how much I canned each year or how much we used either. I knew I needed a system and asked around a bit but most people either don’t have a system or use a journal of one kind or another. Well, rather than putting pencil to paper I decided to keep an online canning record. It’s nothing much at this point but I know some of you — Melissa — are interested in knowing what I’m making and others — my family mostly — are interested in knowing what they should take from my pantry when I’m not looking.

A Small Batch

We give jam to our friends every Christmas and they always say how much they enjoy it. And making jam is really easy. We can other things too — salsa, barbecue sauce, pickles, relish…. — but jam is really so simple. It’s something my mother did and something I’ve done since before I was married, before it was back in fashion. If you haven’t ever tried putting by some jam I really encourage you to try it. I have to warn you though, you will never want store-bought jam again.

The Taste Test

One Local Summer – Week 9

Dinner

Our all-local meal this week was herbed lamb patties with veggie pizza on the side. The local ground lamb was combined with garlic and parsley from our CSA, and mint and rosemary from our garden and shaped into patties and then fried in a little non-local oil. The pizza dough was made with local spelt flour and topped with local ricotta, and a sauté of local summer squash, onions, and shitake mushrooms. After the pizza was cooked we added some basil and drizzled a totally non-local reduction of balsamic vinegar over the top. You can see Papa went a little overboard in his reduction artistry.

- basil, mint, rosemary (0 miles)
- lamb (17 miles)
- ricotta (19 miles)
- spelt flour (30 miles)
- garlic, parsley, squash (30 miles)
- shitake mushrooms (78 miles)

CSA – How We Eat It All

I think the most frequent question I get about our CSA share is if we use it all and how we use it all. I seem to be getting the question even more this year so I thought I’d try to share my answers with everyone. The first thing is that when you are in a CSA you start to learn what produce needs to be used quickly and what can languish in the fridge for a little while. For example, in what we got this week we’ll need to use the basil and chard especially quick, before the weekend really. On the other hand, the potatoes, garlic, and onion will be fine in the fridge for a few weeks. Things like the beets, eggplant, and squash fall somewhere in the middle. Knowing how quickly your veggies will be inedible helps you plan your meals accordingly.

Dinner

When there is an abundance of some things I usually freeze some for use in the winter. We have a separate chest freezer that we use for additional cold storage. Like this week we got a whole bunch of okra. The only way we’ve found that we like okra is in gumbo. We’ve had gumbo every week for the last few weeks and we’ll have it again this week but we have enough okra that I’ll be making extra gumbo to store in the freezer for sometime when I can’t cook. When the tomatoes really start coming in I oven roast them and freeze them and some ingredients I just chop and freeze like fennel, celery, and herbs. My best advice is to freeze these types of ingredients in usable amounts — 1/4 cup for the veggies and a tablespoon or two for the herbs — that way you don’t have to defrost 2 cups of chopped chives to get the little bit you need to garnish your soup.

Lunch

A lot of recipes, especially older recipes, call for ingredients that are in season at the same time. We’ll be having ratatouille this week because it’s a meal made with eggplant, peppers, onions, squash, garlic, and tomatoes. In fact when I picked up our share this week it just about shouted ratatouille to me. Finding dishes that use a whole bunch of ingredients from a CSA share is actually easier than you might think.

One Local Summer - Week 7

Another quick way to use up some veggies is to sauté up whatever you’re trying to use in some olive oil with onions or shallots if you have them and use it to top pasta, rice, or pizza. We love halved cherry tomatoes with corn, summer squash with red onions, green beans with garlic. This is a great way to use up the odds and ends the day before your next CSA share arrives.

One Local Summer - Week 6

Probably our last resort is to give food away or compost it. I have a neighbor who loves beets. We have yet to prepare them in a way that is palatable to anyone in the house — though we did like them at the solstice dinner — so this weeks beets will probably be a gift to her. She’ll love them and I’ll be happy they don’t go to waste. Sometimes our chard ends up in the compost bin. I really try to avoid this but we just don’t like chard that much. If I’m thinking ahead I chop it, blanch it, and freeze it for use in a lasagna later but often it’s too far gone before I’m ready to deal with it.

One Local Summer - Week 3

So there you go, that’s how we eat through our CSA share each week. Believe it or not we head to the farmer’s market every Saturday morning too. Admittedly, we buy mostly fruit, cheese, and meat on Saturdays but we do get more veggies too. Each week our share is a bit like a puzzle and we just have to figure out which pieces to put together for the best meals all week.

CSA 2009 – Week 9

CSA 2009 - Week 9

CSA Bag Contents: chard, basil, beets, onions, garlic, plum tomatoes, okra, eggplant, squash, peppers, potatoes, flowers

See what we got in CSA 2008 Week 9.

One Local Summer – Week 8

One Local Summer

I thought we’d switch-up our local meal and make a brunch this week. A successful brunch for me needs to have something sweet and something savory. For sweet we had plum kuchen made with local plums, eggs, butter, and flour — no local baking powder, sugar, or cinnamon. I also made a crustless quiche — I hate rolling out pie crusts — with local eggs, bacon, chives, milk, and cheese. Both were made last night so after church today I just heated the eggs and then we dug in. Yum.

- cheese (17 miles)
- butter (19 miles)
- spelt flour (30 miles)
- chives (30 miles)
- eggs (32 miles)
- plums (69 miles)
- bacon (88 miles)

One Local Summer – Week 7

One Local Summer

This weeks meal was made in an effort to use up some of what we had in the fridge that was nearing the end of it’s usable life. The roasted chicken was leftover from another meal, and the summer squash was a week old. The fresh pasta is made somewhat locally and our CSA farm sells it at their roadside stand. I combined the chopped squash with minced shallots and diced tomatoes from our garden. In the meantime I made a roux — with local flour — and added chicken stock and local cream to make a sauce. I added a splash of wine and about 10 oz of shredded local gouda cheese to the sauce and stirrred it until smooth. The only thing left was to combine the pasta, vegetables, and cheese sauce and top with some basil from the garden. Yum.

One Local Summer – Week 6

Local Dinner

Baked Chicken with Herbs, Garlic, and Shallots, Roasted Beets, Spelt Bread.

I’m so happy I’ve found a source for local flour. This time I got spelt flour and I need to figure out how to make bread with it. This bread ended up being a flat bread but it still tasted good. The chicken is a nice easy recipe and very good. The roasted beets were not a hit. In years past we’ve always given any beets we get in our CSA share away but we enjoyed some at the solstice dinner so thought we should try them. We need to figure out another way to prepare them.

- rosemary, thyme (0 miles)
- chicken (17 miles)
- butter (19 miles)
- spelt flour (30 miles)
- beets, shallots, garlic (30 miles)
- olive oil (non-local)

Barbecue Time

Did you all have a good Independence Day? We had the cousins together for a parade, a visit to the water park, and then a barbecue at Grandmom and Granddad’s house. Aren’t they cute:

Independence Day

Earlier this week we had good old fashioned pork barbecue for our all local meal. We actually had ribs too but I’m not a big fan of ribs so they weren’t on my plate. The local pork butt was cooked on the grill, the local pork spareribs were roasted in the oven, the local veggies were mixed into coleslaw, and I canned the bbq sauce last summer from local ingredients.

BBQ

- corn (17 miles)
- cabbage, kohlrabi (30 miles)
- pork butt, pork ribs (88 miles)
- vinegar, spices (non-local)

One Local Summer – Week 3

One Local Summer - Week 3

Last week our local meal was lamb kebabs and a cucumber-feta salad. The lamb kebabs were seasoned with curry — a favorite of Katie’s — and grilled. The cucumber salad was made with local cucumbers and feta and seasoned with herbs from our garden. As usual the only non-local ingredients were the oil, vinegar, and spices. I need to find a local source for the vinegar at least but I am excited because I found a local source for grain this week. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the other local meal we had this week. Oh my.
- dill, mint (0 miles)
- lamb (17 miles)
- feta (19 miles)
- onion (69 miles)
- cucumber ()

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