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!