Tomato sauce, salsa and pickled radish--oh my!

I canned from 3-9 yesterday and have been at it since 8:30 am this morning. I managed to make 4 quarts of tomato sauce last night, a dozen half-pints of bruschetta topping, 6 pints of salsa and 3 pints of pickled radish--which, wow, is so good! I need to take stock in all I've canned so far this year—I have a stack of jar boxes up to my waist!

I'm getting a little obsessive about this though. My free time has been spent thumbing through canning books, I've bought more vinegar than a normal person should in a week and I should really buy stock in Ball, since I've acquired dozens and dozens of new jars this year. So glad Hilary leant me her jar grabber—that's the key to a pleasant canning experience! Lid grabber, doesn't work so well. Fail.

I'm done for the weekend but definitely not done for good this season. My tomato plants, though riddled with blight, are still producing like mad. There will be more salsa and sauce to come!

Getting Ready for Monster Canning Session #1

After a little searching around last night, I realized my tomato-canning-options are much greater than I initially thought. So I leafed through my canning books last night and made a monster shoppng list so I coud be a litte more creative with what I do with my tomatoes this weekend. I'm going to make bruschetta topping, marinara sauce and tomato-ginger chutney. Also getting supplies for when I have time to play with apples—going to make apple chutney, apple butter and apple sauce. Yay! It's at the point where it's getting fun :)

Under Pressure

I used my pressure canner for the first time last week! A gift from my cousin Joe and his wife Caitlin for our wedding, it's sat in the box since we received it. I finally got up the nerve to use it.

I think it was helpful that I tested the pressure cooking story for EatingWell this year, so I was familiar with how it worked. And it was really the same thing--nothing to be scared of.

I finally killed my cucumber plants--I just couldn't take it anymore. Now I'm swimming in tomatoes. I've made 2 batches of tomato sauce—marinara and fennel-herb—and made my first batch of salsa last night. The dehydrator has been whirring away practically non-stop since I pulled it out—I have quarts of dried peaches, tomatoes and zucchini tucked away in the pantry. Zucchini and peach chips are so tasty!

I'm sad that we will only have this garden for a year. We did manage to find a house to rent in Portland that has a root cellar and raised beds, along with berry bushes. Not sure how we lucked out there but wow! Now I need to get a root cellaring book to see how to store our bounty properly—glad I can put our delicata and potatoes down there, maybe the celery as well. They even cured pancetta and prosciutto down there so perhaps I'll dabble in that too!

 

... and it's still too hot to cook...

My tomatoes are in! I've been desperately waiting for weeks for this and I'm already feeling overwhelmed. I found the most insane tomato today in my garden--like 4 morphed into one. I know, I should've taken a picture. Anyway, I presently have a batch of tomato sauce on the stoe een though it's way way too hot to cook, plus 3 trays of tomatoes in the dehydrater. I love my dehydrater. I dehydrated a lot of stuff 2 summers ago and I loved having that stuff in my cupboard. I'm going to do more of that this year!

Tonight's too hot to cook dinner = What's in the Garden + Fridge Panzanella

ingredients
1 cucumber, seeded and diced
1 wicked large tomato, diced
1 talespoon capers
1 large leaf red veined sorrel, torn
1 small garlic clove, minced
some kosher salt
olie oil and red wine vinegar to taste
2 stale pieces of whole-wheat bread, toasted and torn into cubes

Note: yes, i know, it's not traditional to toast bread for panzanella, but i just love how that toasty goodness absorbs the dressingy goodness.

Comine cucumber, tomato, capers and sorrel in a medium bowl. Mash garlic and salt with the back of a spoon on a cutting board. Add to the eggies. Stir in oil and vinegar to taste. Add bread and let stand until some of the dressing is absorbed.

Serving suggestion: vinho verde

It's too hot to cook...

...ut I did anyway.

Since Dan's been in Maine (mid June) I haven't been cooking much. Aside from making pickles of course. We were on vacation in MI last week and it felt good to eat real (ut too much) food again. So I made a promise to myself that I was going to start cooking again this week.

I also need to start cleaning out the freezer since the tomatoes are starting to come in and I need some more space.

Tonight's dinner: Asian Wheat berry Salad with Mahi inspired by a recipe by Judith Finlayson.

ingredients
2 cups cooked wheat berries
1 large cucumer, peeled and finely diced
1 medium carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 large radish (like really large, turnip size), peeled and finely diced
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup thinly sliced snap and/or snow peas
Teriyaki dressing
Chile-garlic sauce
2 6-ounce pieces mahi
Chinese five spice powder
Kosher salt
1 medium head radicchio, thinly sliced


Comine wheat berries, cucumer, carrot, radish, cilantro and peas in a large bowl. Toss with teriyaki dressing and chile-garlic sauce to taste. Heat a bit of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle mahi with five spice powder and salt. Cook mahi until just cooked through. Let stand on a clean cutting board for 5 minutes. Flake. Place radicchio in a sering bowl. Top with the wheat berry mixture and the mahi. Drizzle with more teriyaki sauce if desired.

I was missing a few ingredients or else I would've made dressing from scratch. but the teriyaki dressing was an easy addition. Would be delicious with chicken or steak instead of the fish, or some shrimp.

In a Pickle

I really didn't think I was going overboard by planting 4 cucumber plants but apparently I did. I've now made 3 batches of pickles: bread and butter, spicy garlic dill and Mexican-inspired with cumin, coriander, garlic and crushed red pepper.

Too bad Dan doesn't love pickles. But I'm hoping to change his mind.

Cucumbers!

I harvested my first cucumbers yesterday! See? Also harvested some radishes (yep, those are radishes, not turnips!) and snow and snap peas. Along with a mad amount of greens (salad and dark leafy) of course.

I was at first annoyed with Dan for planting as many peas as he did salad greens (OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration) but I've only been harvesting a handful a day—just enough for my once or twice daily salad habit.

New favorite salad dressing: Miso-Ginger. I shook up in a jar: red miso, soy sauce, sesame oil, sunflower oil and ground ginger. It's amazingly good.

Things are looking good in the Garden these days. I finally (oops) got some more tomato cages to put around the last remaining ones. The potatoes are going crazy. The kale I thinned looks beautiful. Carrots and beets are on their way. Beans are starting to flower. The cucumber crop should be banging—guess I'll be pickling this year! Even the eggplants look great, and I've never had much success planting those. Oh and the melons I planted? I started a few seeds and then left them to languish in a cottage cheese container for much too long. But guess what? Bouncing back!

Tonight I need to find a use for all of the (mature) watercress I pulled up the past few days. Maybe a cold creamy soup?

Drowning in salad

Don't get me wrong. I love my husband. Dearly. To pieces. But let's just say sometimes (OK, most of the time) he goes a little too far with projects.

Take our garden for instance. Sure it may be a tad more than we really need, but it's doable. And I don't mind spending some time on the weekend preserving things.

If what's been planted is preservable.

And that leads me to today's rant. Salad greens.

A friend gave us a dozen or so beautiful starts of lettuce which we planted. And then, since our garden was ready for seed before we could plant anything of substance, we planted lots of salad greens.

Lots of salad greens.

We had the transplants. Then we planted rows of them, criss-crossing our 10-foot long long, 4-foot wide beds. And we planted them in between things that would grow tall, shading our salad greens from the hot sun that we knew was coming. It would be great, Dan told me.

That was 6 weeks or so ago. This week is when things got crazy. Salad greens were everywhere.

Now I should add that we did also plant DLGs: beets, 3 varieties of kale, 2 of chard, mustard, bok choy, yukina savoy. Unfortunately got to a lot of it first.

Back to SaladGate. So over the week I harvested 3 beautiful heads of greens from the starts Tobi gave us. Yesterday I began thinning. I cleaned over a pound of mixed greens plus some dark leafy ones. Today I harvested mostof the rest of the headed lettuce--8 heads--plus thinned at least 1 pound more salad plus some extra DLGs. I have 3 more heads that need to be harvested before they bolt. And a good amount that can stand to be thinned right now.

I honestly have so much I might sell bags of mesclun mix to folks at work tomorrow.

Anyone in VT need some salad greens? Here's the take from day 2's thinnings:

Last CSA Pick-Up

It's strange to title this post Last CSA Pick-up. Most of the folks I know are getting their first pick-ups of the season, or have just had a few weeks. They're all really excited to get their CSAs. Bless their hearts. I'm so ready for it to end. Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of a CSA. I really do. But even as someone who cooks almost every day, it exhausted me. We didn't get through the massive bag of mesclun they gave us 2 weeks ago and I wanted to cry as I composted the rotting remains. If I don't see another cabbage for a year, it won't be too soon. I again felt the frustration of the conflict between CSA members and better-paying customers when we received an email saying, sorry, no lettuce this week (or next!) because of the crazy hail storms, yet when I went to the co-op there were bags and bags of beautiful mesclun for sale.

I do have to say I'm really excited about this last pickup. We got beets with the greens still attached! Wild arugula, which I adore and can never seem to grow without fighting with flea beetles for the crop. And... another tomato? In June? In Vermont? That tastes like a tomato? Oh my...

2 lbs Nicola Potatoes
1 Bunch Chiogga Beets w/ Greens
1 Bunch Lacinato Kale
1 Bunch Scallions
1 Bunch Wild Arugula
1 Head of Napa Cabbage
1 Bag of Spinach
2 Head Lettuces
1 Large Tomato

Elmore Mountain Farmshare White Bread

Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Butternut Farm Maple Cream

Ack! I'm behind... and Pizza Night always makes us happy.

Haven't posted in a while. Here's what we got the last 2 weeks:
Last Week
2 lbs Purple Adirondack Potatoes
2 lbs Chiogga Beets
2 lbs Rutabagas or Gilfeather Turnips
.5 lb Valentine Radishes
.25 lb Garlic
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Frozen Winter Squash Puree
Elmore Mountain Maple Oat Bread
1 Quart Sunflower Oil
Butterworks Yogurt

I totally missed the squash puree which made me sad: i finally nailed my Thai curried squash soup last time and wanted to make it again. Such is life.

This week:
2 lbs Mixed Baby Potatoes
2 lb Kohlrabi
2-3 lbs Green Cabbage
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
2 lbs Orange Carrots
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Pete's Applesauce
On the Rise Pizza Dough
Bonnieview Ewe's Feta
Quebec Grown Steel Cut Oats

Also had a meat pickup today:
Bonnieview Leg of Lamb
Pete's and Greenfield Highland Stew Beef
Pete's Spare Ribs

Looking very forward to the spare ribs!

Tonight's dinner: PIZZA! Took advantage of the fresh dough. Thinly sliced a mess of yellow and red onions, chopped kalamata olives, sliced Italian chicken sausage and cut up some frozen green bell peppers to put on it, as well as a lot of crumbled feta. Also had salad with shredded V-day radishes and a light vinaigrette. I've been really digging making vinaigrettes with the brine from my kalamatas. It's basically salty red wine vinegar. I shake it with a blend of evoo and grapeseed oil plus some grainy mustard. Nice and versatile.

On Monday night, I roasted a lot of root veggies and grilled the yak sausage from VT Yak Co from our previous meat pickup--3 out of 4 were fans of the yak sausage. It was lean and nicely spiced. Not at all gamy. I'd buy it again!

We've been busy many weekends lately so we haven't been the best about using things. I still have 2 (small) heads of savoy waiting to be turned into cabbage rolls. I have enough onions to make onion soup (maybe with the spare ribs? OH!) We haven't been able to finish the sprouts, but this week we're bound and determined to.

Mmm, Spicy Corn Chowder + Homemade Bread

I'm really into these frozen vegetables we're getting from the CSA. We got corn and potatoes this week so I made smoky corn chowder. Here's what I did.

Diced a bunch of pancetta and crisped it up in a pan. I took it out with a slotted spoon, then cooked onion and diced frozen green bell pepper. I added some chopped serranos I roasted and froze last summer, along with minced garlic and chipotle chili powder, then diced potatoes. I sprinkled the whole mess with flour then added skim milk. I let that simmer until the potatoes were tender, then added the frozen corn along with sliced scallions, lemon juice and chopped parsley. I made a salad of green leaf lettuce, cucumber and avocado dressed with blue cheese vinaigrette and served it with my favorite non-sweet quickbread, honey oat quick bread. It's so good, I made it all the time because I almost always have the stuff to make it on hand!

It's been a long time since we've had stir-fry night

First, today's pickup:
3 lbs White Potatoes
2 lbs Celeriac
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
Frozen Hot Peppers
Frozen Sweet Corn
1 Quart Sauerkraut
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Bunch of Mizuna
5 lbs Aurora Farms Vermont Organic White Flour
1 lb Honey Gardens Apiaries Raw Apitherapy Honey
Ploughgate Willoughby Cheese
Champlain Orchards Red Delicious Apples

Whew, so we're making our way through the cabbage! Thankfully we didn't get any more this week! (Though we did get sauerkraut, but we'll just ignore that....)

So tonight's stir-fry was delicious. I sauteed yellow onion, kohlrabi, cabbage, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes from the freezer and garlic, then made a sauce of red miso, lemon juice and honey. I added the tofu from last week. I thickened it with a little bit of cornstarch. We put it over rice. I went a little overboard with the lemon (mom, are you reading?) but I tempered it with a bit of soy sauce. Good stuff.

Pork Roast + leftovers

This weekend we had friends up from Massachussetts. I decided it was time to move on to phase 2 of Eat the Pig: time to break out the pork loin. We had a beautiful pork loin roast based on one of my favorite EatingWell recipes, tuscan pork loin. I forgot to get rosemary at the store, so I used dried instead, along with some dried basil. I skipped making the pan sauce at the end. To accompany it, I roasted a boatload of veggies from our CSA, including kohlrabi, turnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onions. I brought home some stewed rhubarb that was leftover from a photo shoot along with some strawberries and whipped up a basic crumble topping for dessert. With ice cream of course.

So then tonight, we had enchiladas. I pulled the rest of the pork off the roast and mixed it with some of the frozen dlgs we've been getting from our CSA and some home-cooked pintos that were hanging out in the freezer. The red enchi sauce came from a can (gasp!) but oh well. I made a slaw with cabbage, daikon and red bell pepper, and I made a small batch of guac. I heart enchi night.

Dinner Tonight: Pretty Salad, Roasted Roots & Salmon Burgers

I'm pretty darn excited about tonight's salad. To deal with the ridic amt of cabbage in my fridge, I thinly sliced 1/2 a head of red cabbage and added it to a handful of the shoot mix along with a shredded daikon and some dried cherries. That's going to be dressed with my tahini dressing.

I have roots roasting: yellow onion, parsnips, carrots and adirondack potatoes with some evoo and dried thyme.

Served with salmon burgers from Costco. For brain power. I know some folks dislike Costco greatly, but everyone I talk to there says it's a great place to work. I can get some sustainably caught fish there, along with some organic stuff. I pick and choose what I buy there, but their wild Alaskan salmon burgers are pretty nice to have in the freezer :)

Pizza Night + Last Night's Pickup

Last night's pickup:
2 lbs Adirondack Potatoes
2 lbs Red Onions
1.5 lb Daikon Radish
2 lbs Orange Carrots
2 lbs Green Savoy Cabbage
Frozen Shredded Zucchini
Frozen Braising Greens
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Red Hen Turkey Red Pain Au Levain
Jasper Hill Landaff Cheese
Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Vermont Soy Maple Ginger Baked Tofu

I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting a tad overwhelmed with cabbage. We still have lots in our fridge and got more. Who's got ideas for cabbage for me?!?

Last night's dinner was delish. I had stashed our pizza dough from last week in the freezer for a rainy day. Yesterday was not rainy at all, but it was nice to have an easy dinner at our fingertips. I had a little leftover marinara. I defrosted our DLGs from the CSA and chopped them up (I had added them to the Mexi-soup last week without chopping them and they were mighty stringy--still had the tiny stems on and all that jazz). Then I thinly sliced a red onion, sliced the last roasted red pepper in the fridge and chopped some kalamata olives. Still had the fresh mozz from last week too.

Also made a salad with shoots, shredded carrot and daikon, dried MI cherries and that ginger-miso-tahini dressing. I'm totally digging on the combo of the cherries with that dressing right now. We'll have more tonight.

Fried Chickpeas with Andouille & Kale

Tonight I'm making a riff on Mark Bittman's fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach.

Into the pan with the oil and chickpeas went some dried thyme and garlic powder. I'm subbing green kale for spinach and andouille for chorizo. I'm adding a chopped yellow onion, skipping the breadcrumbs and serving the whole mess over red quinoa.

It was delicious. I'd make it again in heartbeat!

Lettuce Wraps

Tonight was lettuce-wrap night. I loosely based this evening's dinner on a recipe I developed a couple of years ago for EatingWell. We were in Montpelier all weekend and I hadn't made any real plan for dinner when we got home. We had ground beef from our meat CSA in the freezer, so I popped it in a pan and let it cook as it defrosted. I minced a can of water chestnuts and added some Chinese five-spice powder, ground ginger, hoisin sauce, chile-garlic sauce, water, soy sauce and a minced onion. I grated carrots and the rest of our daikon from our CSA and snipped some mint from our pot upstairs. I brought home a head of butterhead lettuce from work, and I even ate some wrapped in green cabbage leaves. I love this meal--so light and delicious.

Clean-Out-the-Fridge-Soup

Dan likes to poke fun at me, but I take pride in not throwing a whole lot of stuff out. I can pretty much always find a use for leftovers. I save veggie scraps for stock, turn leftovers into something new, make chicken stock after I roast a chicken.

I thought dinner Friday night was going to be leftover chicken cobbler, but Dan had it for lunch. We were pressed for time, as we wanted to get to Montpelier to start a weekend in our old town. I didn't want to stop anywhere because we had 2 dogs with us that might kill each other if left alone in the car. But I also didn't want to take a lot of time to make anything.

I saw some cooked rice in the fridge and thought I'd start there. I dumped two partially empty boxes of broth in a pan -- one chicken, one beef -- then added a ton of salsa and the rice. I had like 1/2 cup of black beans, that went in too. I had brought home a few raw chicken tenders for Kayla but decided they'd be better in our soup. I also tossed in a handful or 2 of frozen DLGs from our CSA. I let that cook, then ladled it into bowls and topped them with crushed tortilla chips and shredded Cheddar.

Dan declared the "refrigerator schmegma" as one of the top 5 soups I ever made, "which is saying a lot," Dan said, "because you make a lot of soup--and a lot of good soup."

Good husband.

Chicken Cobbler

I've been jonesing for Chicken Pot Pie. Every time I brought it up, Dan wrinkled his nose. So when I saw Mark Bittman's recipe for Chicken & Vegetable Cobbler I thought maybe he'd like that.

First, let me start off my saying I made many tweaks. Swapped a smallish yellow onion for the leek. We got oyster and shiitakes in our CSA this week, so I used those instead of the button mushrooms. Along with the sliced carrots, I added a few diced parsnips. (Shh, don't tell Dan.) Dan had roasted a chicken earlier in the week, so I pulled the rest of the meat off the bird instead of using thigh meat. I also used white ww flour and regular milk in the topping.

I'd say we were both slightly disappointed. The flavor was decent, but next time I'd make it with white flour and make more gravy.

The star of the meal was the salad: the base was our shoots. Then I added some bean sprouts still had hanging around from pho night. Next came some grated daikon. Then a smattering of dried cherries my mom gets me from Traverse City, MI (the best cherries ever!). I made a ginger-miso-tahini dressing made with miso from our CSA and real gosh-darned tahini from a Middle Eastern market in Detroit. I thought I might've stepped over the edge on weird combinations, but it was awesome. Dan even declared it one of the top 3 salads he had ever eaten. Knowing how many salads he's eaten just in the time we've been together, I'll take that as a compliment.

Pasta Night!

It was pasta night at Chez Tesini. We got local whole-wheat (or ww blend?) linguine from VT Pasta Co in our share today. I made a delectable sauce based on tuna pomodoro. I sauteed a couple of small diced onions in olive oil, then added 2 large sliced garlic cloves, a hefty pinch of crushed red pepper and a bit of dried rosemary and thyme. Then I added some diced tomatoes I froze last summer, plus a couple of handfuls of frozen cherry tomatoes from this week's pickup and the juice of 1 lemon. Oh and I added 2 tomato paste "ice cubes." After that thickened, I added a bunch of sliced kalamata olives, 2 cans of drained chunk light tuna and the zest of the lemon. Served that with plenty of grated Parm over the linguine.

three thumbs up!

Dan's Best Dinner Ever + This Week's Pickup

Go Dan Go! I had an appointment last night and knew I wouldn't get home until at least 6:30 but really wanted to roast the chicken I had defrosted from last week's meat share. So I sent Dan the recipe for Whole Roasted Lemon-Herb Chicken on a Bed of Vegetables from the latest issue of the magazine and asked Dan to start it. We didn't have the exact ingredients to make it, but Dan would rather improvise anyway. He chopped up the remaining red norland potatoes, a celeriac and a beet or 2 for the vegetable portion. I made a salad with most of the remaining shoots, clementines and olives. It was perhaps the best dinner Dan's ever made.

This week's pickup includes:
2 lbs Parsnips
2 lbs Purple Top Turnips
1 lb Valentine Radish
1 Bulb Garlic
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
Frozen Tomatoes
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
Elmore Mountain Flax Bread
VT Pasta Linguine
5 lbs Organic Rolled Oats

I'm laughing a little about the oats because I got 20# of oats last year from Quebec and we're still not even half-way through. Guess I'll be making some granola and then some this weekend! I'm looking forward to the pasta--that's a new thing from my experience last year! We're also getting mushrooms today--were supposed to get them last week but they didn't have enough I guess.

Leftovers Done Right

Finally got around to making something with the leftover smoked pork chops and cabbage. I diced 2 celery stalks, 2 carrots, 1 kohlrabi and 3 or 4 red norland potatoes, simmered it in beef broth with some dried thyme, then added the diced leftover smoked pork chops and the cabbage mixture. Dan said it was surpisingly good :D

Dinner Tonight: Smoked Pork Chops & Cabbage-Apple "Kraut"

MMMMM! I love smoked pork chops! They were from the pig we went in on from the farm we bring our compost to. Delicious! For dinner, I sauteed some sliced red onion in olive oil, then added 1/2 a medium head of thinly sliced red cabbage and a slice Macintosh apple. I poured in some apple cider and cider vinegar as well as a big dollop of whole-grain mustard. I let that cook a bit then put in the smoked pork chops, covering them with the "kraut." When they were hot, they were done!

Dan gave it 7.8/10 stars. He doesn't like bone-in meat.

3.3.10 Pickup

This week's pickup...
1.5 lbs Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes
2 lbs Red Beets
1 lb Celeriac
2 lbs Kohlrabi
3 lbs Green Cabbage
Frozen Braising Greens Mix
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
On the Rise Pizza Dough
Amir Hebib's Oyster and Shiitake Mushrooms
Maplebrook Fresh Mozzarella
Pete's Applesauce

It's also our first meat pickup! I'm so excited. We're getting...
a chicken
lamb loin chops
hot italian YAK sausage
ground beef

I still have carrots, some shoots, a daikon and a head of cabbage in my fridge, plus peppers in my freezer. I decided this week that I'll make a menu on Tues pm/Wed am to help use stuff in a timely manner.

Using what we have on hand and in this week's share I came up with....
smoked pork chops with quick homemade kraut and roasted potatoes

pizza with mozz, yak sausage, greens and salad

roast chicken and vegetables/potatoes

salmon with celeriac-carrot salad

chicken tacos with cabbage slaw

Dumpling Soup

This is in no way local but I have to write this down for posterity's sake.

Dan has a little sinus infection going on and wanted something spicy and brothy for dinner. This is what I made.

I was already poaching chicken, so I used the leftover poaching liquid and added more chicken broth to it, along with minced ginger, chile-garlic sauce, soy sauce and 5 spice powder. I first added sliced celery, diced carrot and diced onion. After a bit I added diced purple snow peas and shredded cabbage. Then I added Ling Ling dumplings! After the dumplings were done, I stirred in whole cilantro leaves and topped our bowls with sliced radishes.

SO GOOD!

Snowy Day Pickup 2.24.10

We almost missed our pick-up this week, like a few other folks it sounded like. Dan was crazy busy all day. I got home at 5:30 (the time our pick-up ends) and it took me a few minutes to wonder where it was. Luckily there was still someone at Shelburne Vineyard when I called and we braved the snow to get it. Yay! Here's what we got this week...

2 lbs Carrots
1 lb Daikon Radish
2 lbs Rutabagas
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
2-3 lbsRed Cabbagge
Frozen Winter Squash Puree
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
Elmore Mountain Pain Au Levain with Sifted Whole Wheat Flour
Champlain Orchards Cranberry Apple Cider
Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Sour Pickles

The bread is incredible--I just had an egg sammy with it for breakfast. Just sour enough. Nom. I'm looking forward to the squash puree--I've had a hankering for a soup I used to make when I worked at Smokejack's that was sweet potato with maple syrup, chipotle and cider vinegar. I have another container of it from last winter (oops!) so I'll be combing the 2. Made a spritzer with the cider and homemade seltzer last night. Also made slaw with a leftover head of cabbage, a couple of carrots, a daikon and a chopped yellow bell pepper with a dressing of mayo, yogurt, vinegar and Frank's :D

We still have some roots in the fridge from last week, but that's good as I'm planning on making root vegetable enchiladas for a party this weekend. I'm a little bummed bc I just bought a 5# bag of carrots Tuesday. I didn't think we'd get them in the share this week because they got them last week. Oh well, we eat those like they're going out of style so no worries.

Looking forward to the meat csa starting next week!!!

Mmmm... Local Potato Soup...

We're in slightly rough shape today. We were in Mass all weekend, culminating in seeing some of Dan's old college friends last night. We were up too late drinking and watching the Olympics and got very little sleep today. We had a big brunch before we headed home and when I started talking about making x when we got home, then y for dinner, Dan was like, let's just have dinner. Right-o.

Our newsletter last week had a recipe for Winter Baked Potato Soup. I made a riff on it. Here's what I did...

Cooked 4 pieces of bacon from the pig we got in a Dutch oven. Added a chopped red onion, sauteed that in the rendered bacon fat, then added all of the nicola potatoes we got last week and a halved garlic clove. I covered it with milk and simmered the mixture until the potatoes were tender. I mashed everything until it was chunky and added grated special reserve Cabot sharp Cheddar and creme fraiche. I toasted some leftover Cyrus Pringle bread and put it on top of the soup along with the crumbled bacon. Nom nom...

To start, we had a sprout salad with grapefruit and avocado and a mustard-white wine vinaigrette.

I love that everything in the soup was grown or processed in Vermont. Two thumbs up.

1st CSA Pickup

So Dan and I decided we needed a break as CSA members. For over a year, we were members of either Pete's Greens in winter and spring and Full Moon Farm in the summer and fall. This past fall we decided we wanted to actually go grocery shopping. Dan was sick of me telling him we couldn't have pho for dinner because we had too many other vegetables in the fridge that needed eating. I was sick of having to deal with the endless number of root vegetables that needed cooking.

Boy, weren't we both wrong.

When we decided to start back up with Pete's Greens for the spring share, it was a relief. We moved to Charlotte this winter and I no longer have the luxury of walking to a terrific co-op or even Shaw's when we ran out of something. Now I had to drive 20 minutes to get to a chain grocery store, longer to get to a natural-food store. I needed the share.

Even Dan was excited. He didn't even question rejoining, which surprised me a little. We made the decision several weeks ago and ever since, each week Dan asked, "Does the CSA start this week?" It was good to see his excitement.

And here I present to you, our first pick-up...

2 lbs Nicola Potatoes; 2 lbs Celeriac; 2 lbs Parsnips; 2 lbs Red Onions; 1-2 Heads of Garlic; Frozen Sweet Mixed Peppers; Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Salad Mix; Red Hen Cyrus Pringle Bread; Champlain Orchards Empire Apples; Butterworks Whole Wheat Flour; Vt Butter and Cheese Creme Fraiche

And the first pick-up, of course, brought the same challenges.
Dan hates parnsips.
I baked 2 loaves of bread this weekend that we still have parts of.
I just bought apples.
We both dislike green peppers.
I rarely cook with creme fraiche.

BUT! As always, we will embrace it! I'm out of whole-wheat flour. And garlic. And onions. Dan loves celeriac. And potatoes!

Presently I have roasting in the oven diced apples, celeriac, parsnips, onions tossed with canola oil, salt, pepper and dried thyme. It smells heavenly. Speaking of which, I should go eat it right now.

Best Valentine's Day Ever?

Even though Valentine's Day didn't turn out exactly as I wanted it to, it definitely ranks as one of the best Valentine's Days ever.

I had high hopes for enjoying the first bacon of our pig along with homemade pumpkin-oat-bread French toast. I made the dough from the artisan bread in 5 min a day book last night, but didn't realize until I woke up this morning that the bread needed 2 hours to rise before baking for another hour. Thankfully, Martha had a pumpkin pancake recipe on her website that was quite possibly the best pancake recipe I've ever made (OK, maybe #3). The only pork we've eaten from our pig was Italian sausage, which was great. The bacon was pretty darn good, though less salty than run-of-the-mill bacon, which wasn't necessarily bad.

After refreshing Pain de Campagne part II, we headed to Montpelier for a cheese, chocolate and beer tasting at our favorite beer haunt.

And what an event it was. Lots of delicious pairings, but one of the most amazing things were these truffles from Laughing Moon chocolates which were quite literally this amazing cheese from Jasper Hill Farms (Willoughby) dipped in dark chocolate. :swoon My favorite match-up of the day was that same cheese (Willoughby) with a really nice Trappist trippel. Nom.

We were just going to stay for a glass of the cask beer (Allagash Black!) but ended up having another. And another. And another. Whoops! Luckily we stopped at a friends' house for a bit to sober up and made it home in one piece. And luckily there was leftover soup in our fridge to chow down on....

Now I just have to stay awake long enough to let the bread rise and bake...

Back in Bread-Baking Action

My friend works for a market-research company. I signed up to take surveys and I get points for each one I complete. I had enough to cash in, so I got Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. I had played with one of the recipes from the book that was published in Mother Earth News and thought maybe there would be some other ideas in there.

Dan saw a recipe for these pastries made with brioche dough, pastry cream and apricot halves. We went for them last weekend. I was so proud of him--he did 99% of the work. Unfortunately they didn't meet our expectations. Either our oven is too hot or there was an error with the cooking time (most likely the former), but we pulled them from the oven 10 minutes early and they were on their way to burning. They were edible, but just weren't the sweet, decadent delight we had expected.

Next.

When I was dabbling with baking bread this summer, I was playing with a pain de campagne from another bread book I have. I tried it again this week. It takes 4 days to make and rises with wild yeast alone. I unfortunately didn't get the timing right--to make it work you really need to start the dough at night, not in the morning as I did, unless you want to stay up until 3 am baking bread. Which I did not. So I opted to retard the dough in the fridge after the final refreshment. I baked it last night. It wasn't a total failure--it desperately needs more salt (I used kosher salt, but I'm guessing they wanted me to use table). I pulled off a section to use as the starter so I'll try again this weekend. It's a tad bit dense, but I'm hoping if I made it properly this time, the texture will be better.

Also up this weekend: Oatmeal-Pumpkin Bread. I think that will be fabulous in my favorite pancake recipe, Bread Pudding Pancakes.

Our winter CSA starts back up again this week. I'm desperate for it to begin again. We took a hiatus after being CSA members for nearly 2 years non-stop. We also bought into a meat share, which means we get 4-5 different meats each month. Yay!