Oh bread, how you frustrate me

Why is it so hard for me to find a whole-wheat artisan style bread that really works? I was not happy with the results of the 50-50 whole wheat/white flour blend using the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day recipe. I've had some success with loaf pans but I'm a crust girl--I want a freeform loaf with lots of crusty goodness. I thought that the problem when I made the first batch using ABi5MaD was that my yeast was old. But we stirred up another batch with a fresh bag of yeast and it wasn't much better. The search continues...

Go Dan Go!

Dan made dinner last night. He was miffed (I think) that I defrosted a whole chicken this weekend and didn't get around to roasting it myself. But he's done it before, I knew he could!

I arrived at home to a chicken roasting away (and smelling delish!), chopped rutabaga and potatoes on the cutting board, cooked bacon and minced rosemary and garlic. He was going to mash the rutabaga and potatoes, I knew. And he had called asking about bacon cooking. I couldn't believe how delicious the bacon-rosemary-garlic-mashed rutabaga & potatoes were! Wow. I whipped up a red wine gravy from the roasting pan to go along with it. AND he warmed up some applesauce with fresh apple chunks in it for another side dish. What a guy I have, huh? I wish I had taken a picture of his beautiful bird.

Mexican Stew + Fresh-Baked Bread = Divine Fall Dinner

I'll have to take a picture of the stew I ended up making for dinner last night--so divine! This is what I did:

Sauteed onion and celery. Added salsa I froze last summer plus a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes (one of my favorite convenience foods), diced potatoes and some water. Let that cook a bit. Then I added sliced seeded yellow crookneck squash, chopped collards and lacinato kale, diced roasted red pepper chicken sausage and cooked white beans. Oh my! Topped with a bit of sour cream and some hot sauce, it was the perfect dinner for a rainy fall evening.

My bread was pretty much a success. Perhaps I didn't bake it long enough--though it sounded hollow when I tapped it, it was a little soft. It was slightly challenging to cut. That being said, between dinner last night and breakfast this morning, it's almost gone. The rest of the dough is hanging out in the fridge. Maybe pizza tonight? I'll have to bake another loaf tomorrow I imagine.

Fall is here in Vermont

Fall is here. It's a hard time for me because I love fall, it's my favorite season by far, but I don't love winter. I like it enough but I wish fall was longer and winter was shorter. Here are my musings for the day.

Our CSA this summer got hit by late blight. We received nary a tomato. The wet weather also made it a low harvest season. But I feel I still got my money's worth. I was saddened when they sent out an email telling us how hard each crop was hit by the blight or the weather. And one member told the farmers they were upset they joined this CSA again this year. How dare she. That's part of the fun, the adventure, the risk. Welcome to reality.

Our garden was an interesting experiment. The community garden we're in also got hit by late blight. I did manage to get a few tomatoes from the pots at our house. The things that did really well were mustard greens, ground cherries, beets, green beans. We grew head lettuce for the first time. We were too busy to preserve much this summer. We got things in too late and we end loaded our summer with out of town activities to do any meaningful putting up projects. Hopefully next summer we can do more.

Dan made me sad the other day when he said he didn't want to do the winter CSA. He said he's sick of having to eat what we have. I guess we've been in a CSA for over a year now. I can see how he feels that way. He wants to make things that involve other produce we're not getting from the CSA and it's hard for me to justify buying more produce when we can barely eat what's in the crisper now. I guess I have to indulge him occasionally so he'll indulge my love of eating locally.

Today's rainy and blah. I'm trying a new bread project today. I've already made the basic recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. IT was fine, but I really want a whole-wheat bread recipe. I found Alexandra's Kitchen blog yesterday, who wrote about successfully making the recipe with half whole-wheat flour. So, that's working right now.

I also have a pot of beans simmering away on the stove and a chicken defrosting. I plan to roast the chicken later so we can make pho this week (one of the dishes Dan's been craving). Then the beans will go into a Mexican-inspired stew. I defrosted some salsa still lingering in my freezer from last summer that tastes more like chili base than salsa. I think I'll put potatoes and mustard greens in the stew and some chicken sausage along with the beans.

Today's Pickup

Since I don't get emails about what we're getting, let's see if I can remember what I got this week!

salad greens
onions
kohlrabi
broccoli
carrots
red russian kale
dill
cukes
zucchini

leftover from last week: broccoli, onions, cukes

tonight i made:

Salmon with Cucumbers & Dill

to use up some of those cukes from last week. it was pretty good actually!

1st june pickup

wow, it's so exciting as the growing season gets warmer here in vermont. things have picked up the past few weeks thanks to pete's greenhouses. our pickup last night included:

Mesclun Greens; Head of Green or Red Lettuce; 2 lbs Nicola Potatoes; 1 Bunch of Basil; 1 Bunch Sweet Salad Turnips; 1 Bunch of Beet Greens; 1 Bunch of Sorrel; 1 Bunch of Wild Arugula; 1 Bunch of Easter Egg Radishes; 1 Bunch of Pac Choi, 1 Bunch of Parsley, 1 Bunch of Red Giant Mustard, Vermont Cranberry Company Balsamic Vinegar; Vermont Butter and Cheese Fresh Goat Cheese;
and Elmore Mountain Bread Pizza Dough!

so last night we had a beautiful salad with leftover greens from last week, the salad turnips, grated carrots and beets (beets from a week or 2 ago). then i was strapped for time from staying so late at work so we had pasta with tomatoes i dehydrated last summer, pesto from last summer and chopped olives. yum.

tonight was a salad of shredded napa (from last week) and sliced cucumber, carrots and radishes with a miso vinaigrette (we got miso twice this winter) and frozen dumplings (ha).

i'm very excited because i seem to have finally found a whole-wheat bread recipe that i think i can work on and improve. it's from bob's red mill's baking book. stay tuned for more on that.

Spring!

Spring is here and we're getting more and more fun stuff! Lots of segues have been happening. There are less shoots in our bag of greens, more other mixed greens, more and more spinach. We got our first sunchokes, which we've enjoyed raw in salads (were delicious instead of celery in curried chicken salad!) We got a bunch more parsnips much to Dan's chagrin. When I was cutting some up tonight to make roasted roots, he was like, more parsnips? Poor guy, he has been such a good sport.

So tomorrow we're getting

Nicola Potatoes; Carrots; European Greenhouse Cucumbers or Baby Salad Turnips; Pac Choi; Mesclun Mix*; 8 oz of Pete's Onion Puree; 1 Dozen Farm Fresh Eggs; 1 Pint Bonnieview Ewe's Feta; Bag of Champlain Orchards Red Delicious Apples; and...one basil plant!

Pasta Night

Yes, yes, it's been a while. Life is stressful and blogging isn't my top priority right now. But here I go!

The snow has mostly melted and I'm thinking about all things spring and summer. We went to a seed-starting workshop 2 weeks ago and tiny sprouts of hungarian wax peppers, broccoli and basil are coming up. The chocolate peppers are taking their sweet time. I'm starting to collect seed starting paraphenelia in anticipation of planting boxes and our community garden plot. It's hard to believe I'll be growing my own food again!

Still have Pete's CSA. Our vegetables are dying off, and that's sort of ok with I'm pretty much over root vegetables. I still have rutabaga and celeriac in my fridge and we just got more parsnips this week. Here's what else we got:

Red Onions; Mixed Colorful Carrots; Parsnips; Mixed Greens and Shoots; Frozen Strawberries; Japanese Style Miso from Les Aliments Massawippi; Oyster -or- Shitaki Mushrooms from Amir Habib; Butterworks Farm Cornmeal; Butterworks Farm Buttermilk; Grafton Classic Cheddar Ends

I had defrosted some of my homemade marinara for dinner tonight, so I seared the oyster mushrooms, sauteed a bunch of chard, added some red-wine braised onions leftover from last night and dumped in a jar of my sauce. We had that over pasta. Nom Nom.

I've also made homemade bread the past few weeks. The first week I tried a no-knead recipe from Mother Earth News. The flavor was incredible but the bread was short. Last week I adapted a honey-wheat bread recipe from Allrecipes that tasted great. I experimented with a loaf, a round loaf in a cake pan and a free-form loaf on a pizza stone. It was a tad sweet for me, I'd cut down on the honey next time. Now I have a chef starting for a pain de campagne from a bread cookbook. It takes 4 days to make, so I guess Saturday we'll enjoy it.

Sick of Mexican Food, Who Thought It Possible?

After a weekend of eating Mexican food, we were over it. But that's pretty much what our refrigerator was full with.

We had lots of milk. We had lots of cheese. So I made Mac & Cheese.

But I didn't have the frozen broccoli the recipe called for, and we needed something to jazz it up. So I sauteed some red onion and oyster mushrooms from our share in some olive oil. Added some red wine, chard and broth. Cooked until tender. Then I tossed in the remains of our sprouts/salad greens mix and let that wilted. Then stirred it into the sauce along with the cooked pasta. Pretty good for a quick meal!

A light fish dinner was in order

After a weekend of what seemed like nonstop eating, a light fish dinner was in order last night. A friend had posted a recipe for Ginger-Glazed Mahi, so I tried that with tilapia. Fired up the rice cooker (oh rice cooker, how I love you!) and made a great veggie stir-fry with mostly CSA vegetables. I used shallots, carrots, purple cabbage, celery and shredded daikon, with lots of ginger and garlic. I added the rest of the fish marinade at the end and let that glaze the vegetables. Delicious!

Ah, I miss city life...

It's great having a father-in-law who's a dentist. I broke a filling last weekend so Dan and I ventured down to the big city (aka Boston) for 2 days. He fixed my filling and we had an amazing meal in the North End later that night. We met Dave at the entrance of the North End and since we had some time to kill before meeting his partner, we scooted around the side streets so he could introduce us to the fellow who helped Dave get his Italian passport. Dan and I might be getting dual citizenship as well, so he thought he should introduce us to this guy. It was like stepping back into the past, his small office had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with old leatherbound volumes of ancient mythology. We then stopped into an Italian grocery where we sampled cheese and bought some to bring home. We stepped back onto the street, which was busy on this balmy late February afternoon. It was so warm, people were sans jackets, sipping espresso on the sidewalk. I really felt like I was in Italy (almost).

After a glass of wine, we went to Trattoria Il Panino for the best Italian meal I've enjoyed outside of Italy. We got to sit right in front of their open kitchen, which was about the size of a galley kitchen, and watched the 5 cooks and dishwasher dance the dance of dinner service, never bumping into each other, never burning anyone, never a harsh word. It was really beautiful. And so was the food.

For my first course, I had Carpaccio di Bresaola, very thinly sliced dried cured beef topped with a pile of lemon-dressed peppery arugula and lots of shaved aged Parmesan. Then I had (at the suggestion of our server), Paccheri al Ragu, a Neopolitan dish of rigatoni tossed with the most magnificent beef and tomato ragu. I ate my meal so slowly that night, enjoying every bite. Unfortunately, we went to a cafe afterwards where I had the most mediocre gelati. Not the best way to end an amazing night. But that pasta is etched into my brain forever.

Simple is good

I'm starting to feel a cold coming on and I got home late tonight so dinner was simple but delicious: panini with our clothbound cheddar and apple butter. I put some locally made kraut on mine. Yum.

Quick Apple-Cabbage "Kraut" with Kielbasa & Roasted Potatoes

Knowing we're getting more potatoes and feeling slightly overwhelmed by the multiple heads of cabbage lurking in my fridge, I made this quick dish.

Roasted cut up potatoes and quartered garlic cloves.
Seared halved kielbasa in a bit of oil. Took that out of the pan and sauteed 1 sliced red onion until slightly tender. Then I added 1 1/4 small heads green cabbage, thinly sliced, about 1/2 cup of cider and 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar and a bit of salt. I cooked that until the cabbage was tender, then added a sliced apple and the kielbasa. After the apple softened a bit, I added some more apple cider vinegar.

I tossed the potatoes with lots of chopped parsley and served it all with some grainy mustard on the side. And a cold beer of course.

Bread Pudding Pancakes

So we go this maple apple bread from our CSA and I thought we'd use the end of the loaf to make French toast. I"m more of a savory breakfast kind of girl but Dan loves sweet stuff. He made himself French toast on Sat morning so I didn't want to make it for him Sunday. I recalled finding a recipe for Bread Pudding Pancakes at some point so I did some searching online.

These were quite possibly the best pancakes ever. I added some dried cherries to the mix and a touch of vanilla--yum yum yum. Light, tender, great texture--even better with the chai maple syrup we got a month or so ago!

Local Tofu

We're very lucky to have Vermont Soy, which makes soymilk and artisan tofu. We got some of their baked soy-ginger tofu in a share a week or so ago. Dan's been wanting lettuce wraps for several months now, so I made some with the tofu. They were great, here's what I did:

Cut up about a bunch of scallions into small lengths, chopped some leftover broccoli, cut up some leftover red bell pepper into thin strips and sauteed that in some canola oil. I added about a cup of leftover brown rice, the cubed tofu, some hoisin and sambal olek. We also got some shiitakes last week, but I have a bad childhood memory from them (really) so I sauteed them separately for Dan. Then I shredded carrots, a daikon and chopped some fresh mint. I crisped some green leaf lettuce and dinner was ready in about 20 minutes. Yum!

Root Vegetable Gratin

I wrote a story on root vegetables for the December issue of EatingWell and accompanying recipes. One of my favorites--and most challenging to develop--was Root Vegetable Gratin. It was one of my favorite recipes once I finished it, but even though I've had a plethora of roots from my CSA all winter, I didn't actually make it at home until last night.

Dan has a love-hate relationship with roots, as in he loves carrots and beets and hates parsnips, turnips, celeriac and rutabaga. So I thought he might not like it since I used celeriac, beets and turnips. But he did and enthusiastically dug into a second piece. I didn't have Gruyere but had Parmesan, so I used that instead. My sauce was a bit too thick, probably because I didn't accurately measure my flour (ahem) so I thinned it with a bit more milk. I served it with a salad made with our spicy sprouts, julienned red bell pepper and grapefruit tossed with grapefruit juice and evoo. Delish. And so were the leftovers today!

so behind...

Things have been too crazy to blog, but I'm going to try to start getting back into it again!

This week's pick up:
Mix of Sunflower & Radish Shoots; Mixed Colorful Carrots; Daikon Radish; Red & White Beets; Green Cabbage; Shallots; Garlic; Frozen Squash Puree; Butterworks Farm Organic Yogurt; Vermont Soy Maple-Ginger Baked Tofu; Champlain Orchards Apple Cider; Oyster -or- Shiitake Mushrooms from Amir Habib.

The shoots have been great. The thing I disliked most about our winter share was that we didn't have much green stuff as the winter progressed. I get it, but I'm also trying not to buy many veggies since we have so many from our share. So the shoots have been most welcome.

But I'm waaaay over the daikon. Who's got some good recipes for me? I'm dying here!