Meatless Monday - Friday, Week 1

It was an article in The New Yorker, specifically on test tube meat, that prompted Dan to suggest we try eating meatless Monday through Friday. Why not? We're trying to eat more healthfully and it sounded like an interesting challenge.

I think it was pretty successful, although we both accidentally ate meat. I completely forgot when I was out to eat. Dan said he did think about ordering something meatless, but the siren call of a special Italian sandwich was too strong. Oh well, it was just week 1, right?

So far, so good. Perhaps the  most exciting part is trying new recipes. I made a beautiful rice, beet, celery and feta salad for dinner on Monday. Tuesday I was gone (Dan ordered veggie pizza). Wednesday we bad black bean and guacamole tacos. Thursday I made these fantastic red lentil patties with cilantro sauce from Myra Kornfield's book, The Healthy Hedonist. They were so delicious! I'm freezing the leftovers—I will report back on how those hold.

We decided that we would eat fish on Friday, then eat meat (or not...) on Saturday and Sunday. I like the idea of always have fish one night a week—since moving to Maine I definitely have not taken advantage of the ocean as much as I should. Today I got some beautiful haddock at the store—I'm planning on making some Thai red curry dish stew with chard and potatoes for dinner. Can't wait.

CSA Season is Back!

We may have shot ourselves in the foot. Thinking we wouldn't be gardening this year, I signed us up for a CSA from Laughing Stock Farm in Freeport, Maine.

We have raised beds at the house we're renting but the owners mentioned some lead issues. Very minimal ones, but nonetheless they did the raised beds, which is what you're supposed to do with lead. But Dan is paranoid and long story short, I didn't think we'd be planting anything to eat, just flowers.

I decided to get the soil tested in the beds and wouldn't you know, no lead. And then Dan did some research and decided that he would eat the fruit of the plant, just not any leaves (ie tomatoes good, kale bad).

Also, I had put us on the waiting list for the community garden, not thinking we'd get in until next year at the earliest. Of course, we got a spot this year.

So now, we have 6 raised beds in our backyard, 3 beds at the community garden plus a CSA. Eeek!

I was much smarter about planting our community garden (read: I was in charge of seeding...) So there's not much there: 3 tomatoes, 1 tomatillo, 6 broccoli, 2 fennel, thyme, rosemary, chamomile, 2 boxes of broccoli rabe, red iceberg, wax beans, carrots and zucchini. At home, we're going to put in 3 peppers, 2 eggplant, 3 tomatoes, 1 tomatillo and tons of flowers. We also have strawberries and raspberries.

Our CSA is nice so far. The past 2 weeks have been the same: radishes, salad turnips, arugula, head lettuce, mesclun, chard and spinach. Nom leafy greens. Last week we also got some potatoes from Goranson Farm, which, ironically enough, I'm possibly writing a story about for EatingWell.

So what have we done with our bounty so far? Well really just salads. Which is terrific, of course. Salad season is the best...

What's Fresh Friday: Spent Grain Bread

It takes me a little bit to motivate when it comes to brewing beer. I'm not sure why, it's incredibly easy. I guess it's the time commitment involved. We bought a bunch of brewing supplies in December and that sat, staring at me for weeks from the bench near the back door. I finally moved them downstairs so I wouldn't feel guilty, tucking them away in the root cellar where I was sure to forget about them for a few more weeks. Then Dan went down to Boston for the night last weekend and I decided it couldn't be put off anymore.

We had gotten ingredients to make a Fat Tire clone, though with a darker malt extract and a bit more hops. The original plan was to add some spices to it, but I just wanted to get it over with so I just brewed it. 

Although I always compost the spent grain, I knew from my homebrewer friend, Kat, that you can cook with it. I started at the bag, wondering if I could motivate to do something with it. After a quick Google search, I found this recipe from beer100.com. I adapted it slightly—and will continue to tweak it—but I do have to say it's one of the best breads I've ever made. Lucky for me, I can continue to make it. Kat clued me into a secret: that you can freeze the spent grain for later use. So I'll be making it again very soon!

Spent Grain Bread
Adapted from Joe Thompson's recipe on beer100.com

1 cup warm water
4 Tbsp sugar
1 pkg dry bakers yeast

2 cups spent grain
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp salt
4 cups bread flour

Whisk together water, sugar and yeast in a large bowl. Let stand until the yeast begins to bubble, about 5 minutes. Stir in salt, oil, spent grain and 1 cup  flour. 

Mix well. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a stiff dough. 

Knead well, cover, and let rise until doubled. Punch down the dough and shape into a round loaf. Place on a greased baking sheet, cover, and let rise until doubled. 

Preheat oven to 425 with a pizza stone on the lowest rack for 30 minutes. 

The dough will have spread out a little on your baking sheet. Pull the ends under to form a tighter round loaf, make 3 slashes across the top with a serrated knife and transfer to the stone. Bake until an instant read-thermometer inserted in the middle reads 204-206 F, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

The crust was great and the texture was good (even though I underbaked it a tad). I thought it was a tad sweet so I'll cut or eliminate the sugar next time. 

Thai Red Curry Root Vegetable Soup

I'm back. Not that I have any real followers who care ;) We moved to Maine in October and I haven't been very inspired to type here. But I'm going to change that. 

I've struggled a bit with finding local foods here. There's no brick-and-mortar co-op in Portland proper. There's a Whole Foods, but at the moment they only have 4 or 5 local produce items. I'm unsure if that will change as it gets warmer. There is an old school buying club, but they only have a local produce order once a month. It's better than nothing though, and luckily the house we're renting has a root cellar for storage!

Last month was our first order. Here's what we got:

Yukon gold potatoes, rutabaga, yellow and red onions, celeriac, canola oil, frozen blueberries, goat cheese with kalamata olives, stew meat and ground beef.

Also once a month they partner with local business who don't necessarily sell to consumers. The first month we got whole-wheat and pumpkin-raisin bread, locally roasted coffee and mint chocolate cookie gelato. This month we're getting seaweed! Woo!

My plan is to try something called What's Fresh Fridays. My plan is to make something new and exciting on Friday and post about it here. It may be a recipe using something fresh and local, or it may be just a recipe using a new ingredient, or simply a recipe I haven't tried. I just want to keep my cooking fresh.

So this past Friday I made a spin on a soup I've made for years. The roots of the recipe are from culinary school. The chef that taught our PM Fine Dining class made it occasionally. It was a squash or carrot soup with Thai red curry flavors. I've made it over and over again at home. This time, I changed up what was in the soup a bit.

Thai Red Curry Root Vegetable Soup

2 rutabaga, peeled and diced

8 small carrots, peeled and thickly sliced

1 cup sliced celery

1 14-ounce can  "lite" coconut milk

2 cups chicken broth

Water if needed

2-4 T Thai red curry paste

2-3 T lime juice

1-2 T brown sugar

Fish sauce or salt to taste

Sliced scallions and sriracha for garnish

Put rutabaga, carrots and celery in a Dutch oven. Add coconut milk and broth. If the liquid doesn't just cover the veggies, add some water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat so the soup is simmering. Cook until the veggies are very tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Turn off the heat then puree with an immersion blender (or puree in batches--carefully!--in a blender). Add curry paste, lime juice, brown sugar and fish sauce or salt to taste. Serve with scallions and sriracha.

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!