Recipes & Food: April

We have been eating something besides cupcakes. I promise.

On the grill, from the farm share, and via our favorite grill cookbook:

• Lamb tenderloin chops
• T bone w/ Brazilian collards (much faster than traditional collards and good!)
  
• Grilled leg of lamb (Good, but Kyle didn't think this was worth the effort, I don't think)
• Beer can chicken and kale chips (I over-salted them, but they could be good)
  

Quickly becoming favorite standbys:

• zucchini & tomato pasta
• sausage & kale
• meatloaf

Something new:

• chicken in milk: This is a Jamie Oliver recipe and it was really good. I'm really tempted by the Kitchn's Southeast Asian adaptation though. We got another chicken in yesterday's farm share, so I might have to make this before I lose my oven.
• braised mussels: This could not have been easier. And so very good!
• Kyle creation: pasta w/ cheese sauce, mushrooms, cabbage. Yum.
  
• Kyle creation: bluefish broiled with jalapenos and lemon. Yum again.
  

One fancy Easter dinner:

• to start:Prosciutto wrapped pears with Gorgonzola cream sauce
• salad:Spring pea salad with radishes and feta
• main course: Laura's spiced salmon steaks
• dessert: Drunken berries over lemon pound cake

Recipes & Food: March

Ok... the quick and dirty summary for March:

• Kyle made lasagna with farm share beef and spinach
• I made PW's Asian Noodle Salad. It was great, but it was a LOT. I barely had a bowl big enough to mix it.
• In my 2, 4, 6, 8 cookbook, Rachael Ray has a great recipe for spiced lamb patties. Yum.
• Also, in the Rachael Ray cookbook, she has a good mushrooms and cherry couscous recipe, but I didn't have cherries. It was still good, just without the tang.
• After a sad misadventure with the propane tanks (involving annoyances at Home Depot, not explosions) we had oven broiled porter house steak and & roasted Brussels sprouts. (FYI: brussel sprouts are really really good roasted with olive oil and salt. I don't know how people used to cook them to give them such a bad rap, but they are yummy.)
• We tried this braised chicken thighs recipe. It was only eh. I think it would have been better if all the stuff had been in one dish, melding together, and the chicken had been in another dish, getting slightly more crisped.
• I made super easy stuffed shells. I used lamb browned with onion, garlic, a little nutmeg and salt and pepper. I stirred that with mozerella and a handful of bread crumbs, stuffed the cooked pasta shells, and baked the whole thing for 15 to 20 minutes to set.
• Cabbage salad but without the fruit
• Trader Joe's mango sausage sauteed with zucchini & onions.
• After we had the propane: bleu cheese stuffed burgers with broccoli.
  
• A crockpot success: tandoori chicken & rice. Quite good.
• And Punjabi Dhaba--chicken tika and a guava lassi. Yum.
  

Ingredient of the month: chili garlic sauce! People, I love this stuff! I bought it to go with daikon, carrot and broccoli slaw recipe I made in January and we have loved it. I used it on green beans (so good), Kyle put it in the burgers, I put some in the Asian salad, I put some in the stuffed shells. It's perfect for anything that could stand a little bit of garlic and a little bit of heat. Which is pretty much everything.

Crock Pot Secrets

We registered for and received a crockpot as a wedding gift. It's a lovely Crock-Pot Smart-Pot, and apparently they aren't making this exact model anymore because I can't find it on Amazon. It looks somewhat like this one, but this one gets really bad reviews and I like mine.

Anyway. Yay. Crock Pot. So... what does one cook in a Crock Pot? Ours came with a booklet of recipes: a lot of soups, stews, and soup or stew-like recipes. Which is fine, I guess, but not really what I was looking for.

Then somewhere about a month ago I ran across the blog A Year of CrockPotting. The author used her crockpot for every meal in 2008, as well as some art projects, and other random uses. There are some great recipes on there and she is honest about which were good, which were bad, and which were ok, but not really worth the trouble.

But the biggest, most wonderful, most exciting discovery I made via the Crockpot blog: that you can crockpot frozen meat! Maybe everyone knows this, but I did not and it really revolutionized the meat share for me. See, I have a freezer full of wonderful farm share meat -- frozen solid. And I'm not good at getting my act together in time to thaw properly. But with a crockpot, it doesn't have to be thawed properly, and we honestly couldn't tell much of a difference between what we thawed and what we didn't.

This opens up a whole new world of options: bookmark favorite recipes, grab a piece of frozen solid meat from the freezer at random in the morning, find a corresponding recipe, throw it into the crockpot and jump in the shower, just before we walk out the door, I'll stir the meat again to break up stuck together pieces, or just turn it once in the sauce. When we get home, I only have to worry about the quick stuff: steaming some green beans or sauteeing some kale or putting together a salad. The rest is ready to go.


We haven't done too many menus yet (holidays, etc.) but we've been pleased with what we have done. I tweaked the lamb chop recipe and served it with kale. We had peppercorn steak over barley. I made Vietnamese roasted chicken with chicken thighs. And right now it's working on a Thai chicken curry that looks wonderful.

(There was a blizzard yesterday--I couldn't see Boston across the river earlier. The Mass Ave. bridge faded into white--so this is great weather for something warm and yummy simmering in the kitchen.)

Beer Can Chicken

This is one I've been meaning to do for some time, but just never ran out and bought a whole chicken to try it with. Luckily, this past month we had the privelege of receiving just that in the farm share, a fairly smallish but whole chicken. Luckily, large enough to accept a beer can.

The procedure is mind-numbingly simple. You empty the insides (luckly ours came sans neck and with a nice little baggie of giblets which we just tossed). You wash the bird inside and out, oil it with some vegetable oil, liberally apply kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, and then add a few shakes of Chef Paul Prudhomme's Poultry Magic seasoning (or, you know, if you're into mixing your own spices, then do that). Next you open your can of beer and-- this is the best part -- drink, about half of it. Apply chicken to beer can as shown in photographs:
Make various jokes. Try not to personify the chicken too much.
Get your grill hot. I have a 3 burner (front to back), so I let it get good and hot with all burners on, but then turned off the center burner, and cut the other 2 down some, I think to where the grill was holding steady at around 500 deg F. Then you just plop your chicken in there and make sure he's propped up just like he is in these pictures. Cook-- for like an hour, or you know, until a thermometer tells you it's the right temperature, whatever that is.
Unluckily in my case, I realized about 15 minutes in that my first tank of propane was empty. I was all but positive I had one in reserve. Turns out I had just a little bit left from another tank from my old apartment, enough to give me another 35 or 4o minutes of burn. At this point, chicken was crispy on outside, but just barely under recommended temperature, so we tossed him in the oven for another 15 minutes or so, and all was well.

The results are quite impressive. Very flavorful, crispy outer skin but moist meat-- the breast was just a tiny bit dry, but as long as you got a bite containing both white meat and a bit of skin it was good, and the dark meat was really really good.

Steak & Potatoes

I've made a couple of steaks in the past week. If I recall correctly, this first picture was of a sirloin, a nice thick cut of meat. I did my usual addition of garlic, olive oil, salt, and grilling.

We also made a couple of delmonico steaks. This time I did the pan-searing method. You may recall from my pan-seared tuna recipe post that this method is great for flavor and bad for smoke detectors. We thought about this and decided the olive oil is largely to blame. It has a low smoke point. Well, we happen to also have some safflower oil, so I gave that a run this time. The smoking was definitely kept to a lower level, so it will certainly help there. However, safflower oil is definitely a different taste. It's certainly not bad, but I think the olive oil flavor is somewhat preferable. So my advice is to have a really good range hood and stick with the olive oil I guess. I said those are 2 steaks, but just so you know, I cooked them, took them out of the pan, let them rest, cut them open, and decided the centers were still cold. It was probably the best steak I've ever made, but we applied some fresh oil and tossed back in the halves until they were cooked to a more respectable medium.


Finally I made another starchy everything, this time with a single red turnip, a single sweet potato, and a couple regular russetts. I went with a very basic finish -- mashed (but not too much), salt, pepper, butter, milk, and fresh diced garlic. I could eat this on a regular basis.

In other news, I made some chicken piccata but failed to take any photos. We've also thrown out a couple of things- the last eggplant just sat in the fridge until we tossed it, along with a few aging carrots and peppers, and finally, 3 of the turnips-- they got really soft rather quickly. We didn't find a use for the cilantro (which makes me very sad), and I just attempted something with the now fairly wilted radicchio-- a quick pan-wilting (redundant, I know)-- the result was too bitter to eat. Only 2 apples left though, we're doing a good job on those. The cabbage is keeping well, and the squash and sweet potatoes would last for approximately forever I think, so we're not in a hurry on them. The crisper is starting to clear out.

Veggie Party

Our friends Charles and Lauren were with Red Fire Farms last year, but switched to a closer one this year so they could visit the farm more often-- Waltham Fields Community Farm. Anyway, it's been interesting comparing what we've gotten and what we've done with it over the past few months. Since the beginning we talked about getting together and having a veggie party. Well, we finally got around to it Sunday. A little unfortunately we've moved beyond the bulk of variety and outdoor grilling options that would have been the highlight earlier in the season. We still had a nice time and some great food.

I made us some more butternut squash in the simple walnut and butter method, since we had 5 to work with (still have 3 left).

I also whipped up some everything starchy mashed goodness-- consisting of red and russet potatoes, rutabagas, parsnips, and even 1 pear (for curiosity's sake). Alli found me this recipe which sounded pretty cool, and I loosely followed it-- the caramelized onion topping is a great touch. Of course the pear was my own addition. I also forgot to use any garlic, and added a few slices of cheddar as the mixture was going into a casserole dish. It was a hit I think, quite tasty.

Alli came through with a braised chicken and celeriac recipe she found. It was also quite good, especially the celeriac. We used 2 chicken breasts from our meat share, which are relatively thick and thus don't really flavor through all the way. Oh and yes, this was a veggie "party fowl" (Charles' joke), but we're not really sticklers.

Alli also made us a new apple pie. Delicious as always, though slightly different this time, chiefly, I believe, due to the different variety of apples. These were Rome apples, the really pretty red ones-- less tart than what we had prior.

Alli has gotten quite adept at her pie-making skills. So adept, in fact, that she hardly even has to pay attention any more. Well, there were a few leftover apples that would not fit in the pie this time. Alli had one, and was surprised to find it was not nearly as good before as after baking. Several minutes later, as we were walking out the door, I also had one, and concurred. This is when it occurred to Alli that she had forgotten a rather crucial ingredient-- sugar. Off came the masterfully crafted top crust, out came the filling, sugar was added to appropriate degree, back into the pie, and the crust was reformatted. No harm done. This only worked because we were running late and chose to actually bake the pie at C+L's. We could keep this information to ourselves, but where would the fun be in that?

Oh and I also brought some lambic to share. Charles was definitely a fan.

C+L came through with roasted turnips and kohlrabi. Unpeeled, just cut into french fry shapes, oiled, salted, and peppered, I believe. Good and easy.

They also committed their own party fowl by making turkey-loaf muffins. I'd never considered making a meat loaf into a meat muffin, but it works out pretty well. Don't know any details on the recipe there, but they were topped with something spicy that was nice.

Beefy Cabbage Bake and Brussels Sprouts

We finally got around to using our week+ old cabbage a couple nights ago. We'd thawed some ground beef, and so I just searched for ground beef cabbage recipes and basically made the first thing I found. It isn't super complicated in flavor, but does take a while to make, so I finished it just after Alli went to bed for the evening. Anyway, it was pretty good-- the cabbage part especially, and it made enough to last for about 3 meals. Here's the cabbage all cut up and ready to go:
I also used the brussels sprouts we got this week, in a very simple manner. I washed them, tossed them in a bowl, splashed in some olive oil, kosher salt, and ground pepper, tossed, and baked in a single layer at 400 deg F for about 25 minutes. We decided we're fans of brussels sprouts. My only thought is I would probably take off one more layer of outer skin next time, it became a little too tough, but the mini-cabbage beneath was good. I don't remember the last time I had any brussels sprouts- I would describe it as something between cabbage and broccoli, and tasty.

More Frittata

A frittata is becoming a standby too. Sort of like farm share soup. It's so easy and filling.

Tuesday night we had a ground beef and pepper frittata with sauteed bok choy.


For the frittata (an omelet I don't have to flip), I browned my beef, drained it, and added chopped peppers and garlic and sauteed until it was all tender, then added a drained can of diced fire roasted tomatoes. I beat 6 eggs with pepper and then poured the eggs on top of everything. I pulled back the edges of my filling to let the egg flow under it and let it set. Then I grated parmesan on top and popped the whole thing in the oven for about 20 minutes.

It's quick and easy and served us both for dinner and lunch the next day. Plus I got rid of 4 of those peppers!

Wrapping Up Week 17

I left my camera at the last wedding, so I'm a little short on pictures. But just to wrap up the week:

Monday: Steak from the meat share cooked my Dad's way with sauteed bok choy. It was a "Delmonico steak" which, according to Wikipedia, can refer to 8+ cuts of steak. Helpful. Ours was good, but not quite as good for this preparation as tenderloin.

Tuesday: lamb chops and sauteed pea tendrils. Kyle really wanted to try the pea tendrils, but we weren't sure what to do with them. He read a recipe somewhere online for sauteed tendrils, and decided to go with this simple preparation. However, in the meantime we lost internet connectivity at home, (Augh! But Kyle fixed it. He is my hero.) so when he actually prepared the tendrils, he went from memory. His memory was that you just wash 'em, cut 'em up, and, well, saute them. He added some garlic and olive oil. When things weren't getting so tender so quickly, he added some water and a lid. 30-45 minutes later when things were still not tender he gave up. Some parts were good and some parts were way too tough (think tree branches), but I'm not 100% clear on where that line was. Pea tendrils have not been mastered.

Lunches/snacks: a salad with chopped apples and walnuts, leftover soup, more apples, etc.

Wednesday: Dinner out with friends, which was nice.

Thursday: another flight, so airport food again! Whoo hoo. Special thanks to Charles who will pick up our food tomorrow when we are several states away.

Sunday Dinner

Sunday after church Kyle went back to work and I cooked. A lot. For about four hours straight. I don't feel like I have nearly enough to show for my efforts, but then I did spend at least half of that time washing the same dishes over and over again.

Above you'll see the main course, poorly lit: Swiss steak and a salad. Swiss steak is my mother's favorite meal when my grandmother cooks it. I don't think she'd say the same for this version, though it wasn't bad at all. Just not the same.

I used minute steak from the meat share, breaded and browned, then baked with canned tomatoes, sauteed peppers and onions, and served over rice. Nana uses her own home-canned tomatoes and I think that helps immensely. After 13 weeks of fresh produce, I thought the tomatoes tasted really "canned;" I could tell a difference. On the side, a fresh and spicy salad. The mixed greens had a real kick to them this time.

For dessert: apple pie, of course. You can't get a dozen New England apples without making apple pie. I used a recipe that my dad clipped from somewhere and mailed me about a year ago. It's a reliable, good and easy pie. Though I've yet to master a basket-woven top crust, this year's version looks better than last year's. And apple pie is fantastic for breakfast in case you were wondering.

Besides that I made a mushroom bisque loosely based on the New England Soup Factory recipe using dried mushrooms and farm share potatoes and onions. We'll have that for dinner tonight.

I also made a smoothie, but that hardly seems worth mentioning. (Except that I mentioned it. See, dinner, dessert, another dinner, and also a smoothie! All in one Sunday afternoon!)

Beefy Noodles, Green Beans, and Chard

Man we're getting behind on this posting thing. Well here's the only memorable thing I cooked this week. I was in charge of the beefy noodles. We were going to have steak, from this top round steak we had, but our better homes and gardens cookbook said grilling might not be the best choice for this cut, plus it was raining outside. So I just kept looking in that cookbook and found a recipe for beef and noodles. It went roughly like this:

I cut the beef (about 18 oz steak) into 3/4inch cubes, and browned them in some oil in the bottom of a large pot. I removed the beef, and cooked a diced onion and some of those pretty peppers for a little bit. Then I added back the beef and 4 cups of homemade chicken broth (didn't have beef broth) and a little bit of vinegar, salt, and pepper. Then you let this just simmer covered for about an hour and a half. Next, you bring the mixture back to a boil and add noodles, about 8 oz. We had macaroni, so we went with it. Let these cook until they're happy. Drain the meat and noodles. Add about 2 TBS flour to the liquid, add it back to the pan, and cook it down to a nice bubbly gravy. Add back the meat and noodles, voila. I was pretty happy with it, but it tasted like something that was very simple, despite all the time it took to create. The chard was sauteed with olive oil and fresh garlic, the beans were just boiled briefly. Here's how busy our stove was:

In the back right corner there, I'm performing a real experiment. I took our 2 week old beets, that looked like they weren't worth a thing, sliced them up, and boiled them to extract their sugar. Then I boiled that down until it was a thick syrup, and left it to cool overnight. In the morning I was supposed to have beet sugar. I did not. I had and continue to have beet syrup. It tastes interesting though, quite sweet, with some molasses-y, sort of beet-y dark flavor. I'm not sure if we'll use it for anything, but the beets were going in the trash anyway.

We shared our meal with our company, Charlotte. She and Alli watched The Women on my laptop as it seems my DVD player has passed away. I think Charlotte liked the food. She did the dishes for us, so it must have been at least somewhat good. Thanks for doing the dishes Charlotte. I hate the dishes.

Oh, and one more thing. Alli said in the week 13 post that we got 1 melon. What an understatement. We got a melon which looked like it could have been a cantaloupe, but for some reason I thought it was honeydew, and I was right, I think. It was the sweetest best honeydew I've ever had in my life. sooo good. I hope I get another one of those today.

The Soup Solution

Don't get me wrong, I love the farm share. But come mid-week, I am using up veggies, not eating them. Well this week, on top of everything in the fridge, we ended up with a stock pile of food that our neighbors left us. They moved to Abu Dhabi last weekend. Yep. Abu Dhabi. Welcome to Cambridge.

Anyway... LOTS to use and little time. Enter: soup. Yay, soup! Last night (after a long night at work) we had frozen "farm share stew." Tonight, more soup. Kyle is still at work; I hope he doesn't mind.

I have been in the mood for corn chowder. I have no idea why and we don't even have any fresh corn. But... neighbors that moved to Abu Dhabi (NTMTAD for future reference) left a 1 lb. bag of frozen corn and I had a can of corn in the pantry from when I meant to buy creamed corn and can't, apparently, read labels.

So, without further ado:

Alli's corn chowder (including only things found in her kitchen -- either farm share or NTMTAD's -- and based on various recipes)

1/2 quart sized Ziplock of frozen bacon ends from the farm share
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
1.5 onions (discard the slightly old parts and prioritize onions for future use) diced
1 clove garlic
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 bunch (stalk? head? you never answered that question) slightly weedy celery, chopped finely
5 red potatoes from the NTMTAD's pantry, peeled and diced
2 shakes of worchestershire
5 cups chicken stock (4 from Costco, 1 made by Kyle)
2 cups milk
1/4 cup sake
2 t. arrow root
sea salt
pepper
dried thyme
cayenne pepper
coriander seed
2/3 c. (maybe) finely grated parmesan from NTMTAD's fridge

Cook bacon bits and pieces in stock pot. Remove when done and set aside to drain. Using bacon grease (no more than a tablespoon or so), saute onion, carrot, celery, bell pepper, and garlic until tender. Add potatoes and chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Remove 2 cups (heavy on the solids) to a blender and blend until smooth. Add back to the stock pot. Add the milk, worchestershire, salt, pepper, thyme, cayenne, and coriander to taste. Mix about 2 t. arrowroot powder with whatever sake is left in the kitchen (1/4 cup), add sake to the grocery list, and add to soup to thicken. Add parmesan.

Yum.
In case it's relevant, NTMTAD also left a bottle of wine and a bottle of champagne, which may or may not have contributed to this post. (not both, of course, or either whole bottle. A glass.)

What To Do With Eggplant

I don't think I've ever bought an eggplant before. I've had eggplant parmesan, of course, but it's just not a vegetable that makes it onto my grocery list very often. But this week we had two that we needed to learn what to do with (see: farm share, point of).

On Tuesday, I found a recipe online involving eggplant, cabbage, fresh mint, fresh parsley, and onion. I had every one of those ingredients. The mint was from a coworker, not the farm, but everything else was farm share food sitting in my kitchen. Unfortunately, having all the ingredients on hand does not mean that the recipe will be good. (Shocking, I know) This turned out similar to my last cabbage-from-the-internet recipe. Sort of... eh.

I chopped the red cabbage, onion, and eggplant (just onion on top of eggplant shown) and cooked it with canned diced tomatoes with their juice and herbs and spices. The results look very pretty:
But it's just not that flavorful. We served it over rice and we've had it for dinner and a couple of lunches (it made a LOT), but it's definitely not a recipe I'll be trying again. It was just sort of boring.

However, to redeem the evening: more pain de mie! This time I split the dough into two loaf pans and eyeballed the baking time. The loaves were not perfectly shaped because they didn't fill the pans fully. Next time I'll give them a little more rise time and shape them to better fill the pan and hopefully not rise with lumps.
But the crust was a pretty golden color and the crumb was light and moist. And it is so fantastic with our LAST jar of freezer jam. (I'm sad about that. Have I mentioned that I love the freezer jam?)
Last night, we had another eggplant to contend with and this time Kyle grilled it. I'd been lobbying for grilled eggplant all week and last night he had enough time to do it (while I did much laundry). He doctored eggplant slices with olive oil and salt and pepper (from the grill cookbook that we highly recommend) and threw them on the grill.

How pretty are those? They were great--especially fresh off the grill. The texture was perfect and the seasoning was just right. The skin was a little tough, but necessary to hold them together. Kyle discarded his as he ate them; I ate mine.

Along with the eggplant slices we had burgers from the farm share topped with a pat of brie and the 3 lonely new potatoes that I missed last week somehow. So do you have any other eggplant suggestions? We didn't need appetizers last night (we needed dinner) but these grilled eggplant wraps with goat cheese from The Kitchn are calling my name. Clearly grilled is my favorite right now, but I'm open to other ideas. We get new stuff today!

What We've Been Eating This Week

Ready for a food roundup with a lot of pictures and a string of recipes and links? I mean really, who isn't? Best thing you've read on the internet all week!

We did a better job this week of planning since we're not at home. We're pup-sitting. More on that to come. But for the food...

Monday
We had quinoa and beet salad with walnuts and a handful of cilantro, tomatoes (store bought) and cucumbers thrown in on Monday. We eat heirloom quinoa which is already red, but the beets did add their own color. It was good and very filling.
[Tangent: Quinoa (keen-wa) is the seed of a flowering plant common in South America. It is distantly related to the magnolia, (who knew?) and as a crop it's easy going and altitude-hardy, so it's been grown in the Andes mountains for thousands of years. The seeds are eaten and cooked like rice, just boil them in water and mix with something good. Quinoa has become popular more recently because its protein content is high (12% to 18%) and unlike rice or wheat, it contains a balanced set of amino acids, is high in fiber and iron, and is easy to digest. This Ends the Educational Portion of Our Show]

Tuesday
Breakfast! In honor of being in a new house (with a dog that woke him up), Kyle made a full breakfast on Tuesday morning including bacon and eggs from the meat share. The bread was a new recipe I tried (from the Bread Bible): pain de mie, a French sandwich bread usually made in a pullman pan. I don't have a pullman pan, so I made it in a regular loaf pan which yielded the monstrous slice you see bisected here. It was fantastic--the best sandwich bread I've made-- but next time we're going for one recipe, two loaf pans. We topped the homemade bread with Kyle's strawberry freezer jam, which has become one of my very favorite things in the world. It's so good.

Dinner: grilled T bone (meat share) and corn (store bought). The flavor of the meat was good, but maybe not the best cut to grill? The texture left a little to be desired. Not pictured, roasted potatoes. Also good, but not done at the same time as the rest of the food. They were dessert. I'm working on that "timing" thing.

Wednesday
Wednesday I planned to cook chicken breasts from the farm share and I had a simple plan involving herbs and a little flour. But then I got home and realized that the breasts were not boneless, skinless, and in a three pack as I'd imagined, but one whole bone-in, ribs-on chicken breast. This should not have been surprising since the meat came from the farm share and not the grocery, but um... don't shake your head at me yet, it gets better.

Would you believe that I have never cut apart a chicken breast before? I've never had to! I had to look it up in the Joy of Cooking to make sure I was doing it right (hint: cut down the middle dummy, it's not brain surgery) (it's breast surgery. ha.) I roasted the breast with olive oil and salt and pepper (Thanks Joy of Cooking!) and was a little nervous about knowing when it was done, but I figured that out when I cut into it and it wasn't not-done anymore. It was really quite flavorful and good.

[Pause for all the women I know to quit laughing...]

And finally... at the bottom half of that picture you'll see rice noodles with kale, pine nuts, and ginger. This was a really great variation on our kale+pasta standby. The Thai rice noodles were ready after a hot water soak while I sauteed chopped onion, garlic, kale, and minced ginger (not from the farm share... wonder where they grow ginger?). I tossed everything in the pan to stir fry together and topped with sesame oil, soy sauce, and pine nuts.

We'll return to this one time and again, I already know. I love kale and we are guaranteed to have the soy sauce, sesame oil, onions, and garlic on hand. Plus I'm a sucker for anything involving fresh ginger. We don't always have rice noodles, but these were so good, I think we're going to have to venture to Chinatown to see what we can find in an Asian grocery. I'm convinced we could do better than the stuff in the Asian section of our regular grocery.

So for the one person left still reading (Hi Kyle!), we've been snacking on the blueberries, and we've got lots of zucchini (I have a plan for that), carrots, and red cabbage left. And tomorrow is Friday!

Wrapping Up Week 5

Last night I made up for (some) of my cooking reticence while Kyle was at soccer, and I used a fair amount of food in the process.

For dinner, I made pasta with a meat and veggie sauce featuring ground beef from our meat share, sliced zucchini, basil, garlic scapes, and mushrooms (dried, Costco bought) in a jarred tomato sauce base. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was good and we both had it with a salad again for lunch today (salad with cucumbers!) and I froze a quart-sized bag for later.

packaged meat from the meat share

For the weekend, I made carrot top soup, which has become a favorite of ours. You need a bunch of carrots with the tops attached, leeks, dill, a little rice and chicken stock. The tops of carrots, cleaned and chopped, have a great light carrot flavor. I used three leeks (store bought), eight cups of broth, and a half a cup of rice to bulk it up a bit.

all the goodness before I added broth and rice

We ate kale, sauteed with garlic and onions, the other night with chicken strips and BBQ sauce. The kale surely redeemed the chicken and BBQ sauce, right? As for the blueberries, Kyle made some fantastic blueberry pancakes last weekend and I made a blueberry cobbler this weekend that we snacked on for breakfast.

That leaves us with just the beets from Week 5, and a box to unload from Week 6.

Barbecued Chicken, Grilled Corn, and Sauteed Kale

For dinner tonight I grilled chicken legs/thighs from our meat share. I basically followed a recipe from the book "How to Grill", by Steven Raichlen. I used some Corky's barbeque rub (a wedding present, along with the book) to coat the chicken, let that sit in the fridge for about 15 minutes, then grilled it at 350-400 degrees by indirect heat, turning it a couple of times, and mopping it every 5 minutes or so with a vinegar mix-- 1 cup white vinegar, 1/2tbs kosher salt, 1tsp ground pepper, 2 small red spring onions, sliced, and a good dose of tiger sauce, whisked to dissolve salt and mix. I let this go for about 45 minutes, before slathering on some sweet baby ray's bbq sauce and putting it in direct heat for 2 or 3 minutes per side.
On the side, I grilled us some corn (not from our farm share). I've done it in this general manner several times, pulling off the outermost dry husks and removing the silks from the end so they don't burn, then grilling over pretty direct heat until the outside is charred good. This time I modified my procedure slightly by first folding back the husks and pre-buttering the corn, then re-covering with the husks, and grilling as usual. This way all I had to add was salt when it came off the grill. Worked pretty nicely. Here's a pic of the corn fresh off the grill.
As a side, Alli cooked up both of our varieties of kale-- at least we think they are both kale, though as you can see, they look different. Feel free to vote on whether they were in fact both kale. She sweated about 3 mini white onions, sliced, with some olive oil and minced garlic. The kale was de-stemmed, torn into small pieces, and boiled for ~5 minutes, then added to sweated onions with a dash or two of salt. She would have added vinegar, but she's having tooth issues after a new filling, and vinegar makes her unhappy. I doctored mine with some red wine vinegar and more tiger sauce, and they were quite yum, I think one of our better uses of kale thus far.
I got rave reviews on the chicken.

Cabbage Quinoa Creation

For dinner I started by realizing we have no thawed meat of any sort, and deciding I would use some quinoa as a good base, since it is apparently a very good source of complete protein, and it's pretty tasty too. Then I decided to throw some cabbage in as a primary ingredient, and I just tossed a few other things in.

Ingredients:
1 cup cooked red quinoa (I use my rice cooker, 2x water to 1x quinoa)
1 head cabbage, quartered, cored, cut into slices
4 medium size carrots, sliced
4 small spring red onions, sliced
salt
ground sage
red pepper flakes
1 fresh ripe tomato, cut into small slices
1 handful cilantro (because everything should have cilantro on it these days)
2 slices bacon (I took these straight from the freezer)

Directions:
Heat bacon in large non-stick saute pan over medium-high heat until cooked, remove from heat and crumble. Add cabbage, carrots, onions, salt, sage, and pepper flakes. Cook 2-3 minutes until vegetables are wilted. Cover, cook additional 5-6 minutes until tender. Add tomato, cilantro, and crumbled bacon, re-cover, remove from heat. Serve over quinoa in ratio of your determination. Of note- in the photo, there's a good bit more quinoa on the bottom, not thoroughly mixed in yet.

Once you realize it's kind of bland, add more salt, or in our case, a good grating of parmesan cheese. Really not so bad once it's doctored up a little. A bite complete with bacon and parmesan is quite good, but then what isn't once you add bacon and good cheese?

Meat Share Month 2

We picked up our 2nd month's share of meat on June 28th, so as not to conflict with the July 4th holiday.
Here's what we got:

2.46 lb ground beef
lamb sausage - 3 links ~1 lb
beef franks - 7
bacon - 1 lb+
ham hocks - 2
chicken breast - 1
beef top round steak - 1.3 lb
pork sausage

There's been a little mixup about pork-- we don't want pork... except bacon, and that's what we got 1st month, but apparently that was coincidence and we were actually on a pork plan. This month as you see we received some pork, but that's okay, Alli will be happy to eat it. We think it's straightened out now.
We still haven't used our t-bone or chicken legs from last month's share.

Everything Stew

It being Tuesday and us having used none of our vegetable share items yet save some lettuce and strawberries (just ate them as usual), we decided to make a big stew incorporating several of the remaining items, including turnips (and their greens), kale, garlic scapes, scallions, and dill.

I didn’t really go with any recipe but sort of threw it together as such:

Ingredients:
½ red onion, chopped
handful of garlic scapes, chopped
small bunch of scallions, chopped
5 medium size turnips, peeled and chopped into roughly ½ inch cubed pieces
associated turnip greens, washed and chopped into bite-size pieces
1 bunch kale, washed, chopped into bite-size pieces
1 cup barley
1 cup red lentils
80 oz chicken stock
1 28oz can petite diced tomatoes
extra virgin olive oil
½ cup balsamic vinegar
¼ cup sake
D.L. Jardine’s Texas Champagne cayenne pepper sauce
Handful of dill, chopped fine
1 ½ cups dried gourmet mushroom blend, rinsed well
1.5lbs turkey sausage, casings removed, browned in a skillet
Salt

Instructions:
In a large stockpot, sweat the onion, garlic scapes, scallions, and turnips in a small amount of EVOO until just tender. Add chicken stock, tomatoes, barley, lentils, sake, and balsamic vinegar. Heat to boil, cover, and reduce to simmer 20 minutes. Add kale and turnip greens, replace cover, simmer additional 20 minutes. Add dill, mushrooms, hot sauce, sausage, and salt to taste, simmer additional 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat. Serves 2 (on about 4 or 5 consecutive occasions).

Here are garlic scapes, for those who've never seen such a thing. You just kind of cut them up and use them as you would garlic. They tasted strong enough eaten raw, but I didn't really taste the garlic in the final product. Not sure if that's just because of all the other flavors or if they are weaker than real garlic.

Here's our kale.

Here's the goods. I'm quite pleased with the results

What's a farm share anyway?

We keep talking about shares and farm shares and CSA's so I thought a little glossary would be helpful.

CSA: Community Supported Agriculture; is a way for the food buying public to create a relationship with a farm and to receive a weekly basket of produce. By making a financial commitment to a farm, people become "members" (or "shareholders," or "subscribers") of the CSA. Most CSA farmers prefer that members pay for the season up-front, but some farmers will accept weekly or monthly payments. Some CSAs also require that members work a small number of hours on the farm during the growing season. A CSA season typically runs from late spring through early fall. The number of CSAs in the United States was estimated at 50 in 1990, and has since grown to over 1000.

Vegetable Share: We are members of Red Fire Farms for our vegetable CSA. We bought one share, which averages out to about 10 lbs of vegetables each week. The farm delivers shares weekly on a set day and time to several different locations in our area. K picks up our share on Fridays where he works. Each week we get one share of whatever is in season that week on the farm. Red Fire also offers pick your own strawberries and peas. At any time we can go to the farm and pick our own.

Meat Share: We are members of Chestnut Farms for our meat CSA. Again we bought one share which comes to about 10 lbs of meat per month. We pick up our meat USDA cut, labeled, wrapped and frozen each month. We pick up a cooler and return the one we took last month. We get a variety of pork, chicken, beef, lamb, and fresh eggs.