Fattening week

The share gets replenished for the last time this session on Wednesday. Prior to Wed. we're eating nice fattening foods with fewer veggies. Opps!

The share:

Green Cabbage, 2 lbs Purple Top Turnips, 2 lbs Orange Carrots, 1 lb Valentine Radishes, Shoot/Claytonia Mix, Pesto (just basil and oil), 3 lbs Frozen Tomatoes, Elmore Mountain Bakery Flax Bread, Pa Pa Doodles Farm or Gopher Broke Farm Eggs, Dreuxmanna Crackers, Lazy Lady Oh My Heart Cheese


We have officially decided not to take this late winter share. We have more jams and jellies and various other oddball things than we can use. Instead, I'll try to attend the winter farmers market for the rest of the winter and I've signed up for a different farmshare for the string that does only vegetables and not the localvore items. Change is good, right? We'll still buy some of the localvore items we discovered though the share but only the ones that fit our lifestyle. It also costs about half as much. A big change but hey, I'm up for something new! The new share will start in the middle of June and run through October and then maybe we'll pick up a fall share with Pete's Greens again.

Superbowl Sunday: Chicken fricassee and salad. Of course we couldn't be snackless though so I also made guacamole and salsa which we ate with chips.

Monday: Sam's request day -- pizza of course.

Tuesday: Refried bean burritos with guacamole and salsa, salad.

Wednesday: Cheese and crackers from the share, Keilbasa and Share soup - not an official name but I made a soup from many of the vegetables we got in the share this week. Simple and tasty.

Kielbasa and Farm Share Soup

1/2 lb kielbasa, cut into small pieces
1 onion, diced
2 large turnips, diced
4 carrots, sliced
1/2 head cabbage, cut into small pieces
2-3 cups corn
Chicken stock
Salt
Pepper, lots of pepper to taste

Brown the Kielbasa. Add onions and cook until soft. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Thursday: Sam's school was doing a lunch for dinner program to show parents the types of fresh and local foods that are used for the school lunches. We were treated to a variety of foods. Shepards pie, soup, salad bar, fresh bread, apple crisp. It was all much better than any school lunch I've had before.


Friday: It was my birthday and I decided that I really wanted to go to the original Flatbreads in Waitsfield. Mmmm. Sam gets his love of pizza honestly. Alas, we got there at 5:00 and there was a 2.5-3 hour wait which we just couldn't do. We ended up going to a different restaurant where I got a mediocre burger and excellent sweet potato fries.

Saturday: More Julia! I made Boef Gourguignon from the Julia Child cookbook for Ben for an early Valentines Day dinner. I served it over egg noodles with a side salad. He made German Chocolate cake for me.

Ben loved the Boef Bourguignon and I thought it was....fine. It's just not the type of thing I love. It was easy but with all the separate steps, it made a ton of dishes. Oh, and I figured out why she has you boil bacon before frying it - it renders the fat without any pieces of other stuff in it so when I browned the meat in it, I could take the temperature way up. What a mess that made, even with a spatter screen! Post cooking cleaning was substantial.

Kielbasa Corn Chowder

This week's share contained: Head of Lettuce; 2 lbs Mixed Potatoes; 1.5 lb Mixed Tomatoes; 1 European Cucumber or 2 nice Slicing Cucumbers; 1 lb Mixed Zucchini, Patty Pan and Summer Squash; 1 lb Mixed Pac Choi; 1 lb Walla Walla Onions; 1 lb Romanesca or Mixed Cauliflower; 1 Cayenne or Jalapeno Pepper; Sweet Corn (6 ears); Elmore Mountain Country French; BreadVT Soy Maple Ginger Fried! Tofu; Les Aliments Massawippi Tamari

No picture this time! I'm finding I don't have the time lately.

But I did make a soup using some of the ingredients that was just wonderful. I don't remember ever cutting the corn off the cob and using it in soups and such -- it's such a treat that we always just ate it in corn on the cob format. But we've had it fairly often lately so I decided to try something a little different with this simple soup.

Kielbasa Corn Chowder

1/2 lb kielbasa cut into very small pieces
oil
2 medium onions, diced
corn cut from 5-6 ears
3-4 medium potatoes, diced about 1/2" cubes
bok choi or other greens, cut into very small pieces
6 c or so of stock (I used turkey because that's what I had)

Brown kielbasa, add onions and remaining ingredients. Cook until potatoes are tender and flavors are blended.

More and more green!

Potatoes, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, Swiss chard, kale, kohlrabi, Napa cabbage, scallions, cilantro, fennel, Red Hen potato rye bread, unbleached white flour, sunflower oil.

I forgot to put the bread in the picture. Oops! But with all the greens I'm not sure it would fit anyway.

We've had so much rain I'm amazed we're getting anything at all. Our vegetable garden looks pretty bad so obviously they're much more successful at coaxing food from the ground.

I processed some of the greens for the freezer again.

Fewer greens, more veggies

Tomatoes, basil, red bore kale, bunch of carrots, parsley, garlic scapes, Napa cabbage, scallions, Easter egg radishes, dill, broccoli, Elmore Mountain bread, eggs, Dancing Cow Minuet Cheese,
Castleton crackers, and cheddar we were supposed to get last week.



Lots of herbs this week so I'm going to make lemon, dill, broccoli pasta for dinner tonight. I'll add some goat cheese or whatever cheese I have floating around that might make it taste good. No recipe, just toss and go which seems to be my normal cooking mode.

I tried roasting kale this week, just because I like to use the greens first because they're refrigerator hogs. It's easy, 350 oven, remove stems, wash, spin dry, coat with olive oil and seasoned salt and bake 10-15 minutes until crispy.

They were okay right out of the oven but they rapidly moved to a texture that is somehow equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. I don't think I'll try that again.

June Share

We're sharing the share with different people this time around so it's going to be a bit more sporadic. We'll have three weeks in a row starting this week but there will be a couple of times when we're without the share for two weeks.

This week we have mesclun, lettuce, French breakfast radishes, 2 lbs Nicola potatoes, green kale, dill, garlic scapes, beet greens with little beets attached, scallions, dandelion greens, tomatoes, Red Hen mixed northeast grain bread, maple cream from Echo Hill Farm, and chicken stock. We were supposed to get 1 lb Grafton Village farm cheddar but it didn't make it onto the truck. I noticed the tomatoes didn't make it into the picture -- there were two of them.



I processed some of the greens for the freezer, cooked the beets for salads, made a lemon dill potato salad, cleaned the radishes for easy eating, and made dinner, all after picking up the share as if it's not convenient, we don't use it in a timely manner.


Chickpea, Italian Sausage, and Greens

3 Garlic Scapes, chopped
1 onion, diced
olive oil for sauteing
2 Italian Sausages, sliced
2 cans chickpeas (the medium size cans), drained
3 tomatoes, skins removed, diced
1 bunch beet greens, blanched and chopped
salt and pepper to taste


Cook the sausage. Add olive oil and saute garlic scapes and onion until soft. Add remaining ingredients and allow to simmer for an hour or so adding water if necessary.

Shareday

Mesclun greens, lettuce, Nicola potatoes, basil, sweet salad turnips, beet greens, sorrel, wild arugula, Easter egg radishes, pac choi, cilantro, red giant mustard, Vermont Cranberry Company balsamic vinegar, Vermont Butter and Cheese fresh goat cheese, and Elmore Mountain Bread pizza dough.

Lots and lots of greens today! Too much for the refrigerator so I blanched, chopped, and froze five bags of assorted greens for future use. Two bags of beet greens, three bags of a mix of turnip, radish, mustard, and arugula. We like greens just fine in soups and such but we don't really appreciate the plain old cooked greens.

I struggle with the pac choi as well. We've gotten in in the last three shares and I've ended up composting most of it.

I made potato and sorrel soup with a recipe from the share newsletter and it's pretty good although a tad thick. I used sour cream in place of the cream because that's what I had. Very rich and tangy soup.


Sorrel & Potato Soup

The recipe below is adapted from a classic French sorrel soup recipe. It is also good cold, particularly with some plain yogurt swirled in. Serves 3 or 4.

1 bunch fresh sorrel
4 cups water
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2/3 pound potatoes, cubed
1 large egg
1/4 cup crème fraiche or heavy cream (or more to taste)

Wash the sorrel and de-rib the leaves if necessary. Put it in a saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring, until the sorrel has melted into a purée and nearly all of its liquid has evaporated. Add the water and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook over low heat until the potatoes are cooked through — about fifteen minutes. If you prefer a creamy rather than a chunky soup, put the soup into a blender or food processor and then return to the saucepan. Combine the eggs and crème fraiche in a warmed serving bowl. Mix until well blended. Add a ladle of the potato and sorrel mixture and blend well. Pour in remaining potato and sorrel mixture and serve immediately.

This week's share

Green pac choi, 2 lbs frozen strawberries, scallions, Easter egg radishes, cilantro, Norland and Nicola potatoes, baby spinach, Vt Soy maple ginger baked tofu, Maine sea salt, pink turnips, some sort of greens that could have been, sorrel or red giant mustard, Pete's chicken stock, European cucumber.


I wasn't sure what to do with all the greens so I made up a recipe to use some of them and then blanched and froze the turnip and radish greens for future use.


White Beans with Cilantro Pesto

Amounts are approximate

1 small bunch of greens
1 bunch of cilantro
1 jalapeno pepper (including seeds and ribs for some zip)
1/2 onion
Olive oil
Juice and zest of one lemon
Juice and zest of one lime
Salt

1 can small white beans.

Mix all ingredients except the beans in food processor to desired texture. Drain and rinse the beans, then mix in as much of the pesto as desired. Serve over salad greens.

I had a lot left and froze it for future very easy dinners on hot days. Ben and I each rated it as a thumbs up dinner. Too spicy for Sam though.

Spring greens

Basil, bag spinach, purple and green pac choi, spring dug parsnips, Adirondack potatoes, European greenhouse cucumber, lettuce, VT Butter and Cheese Bonnie Bouche cheese, Red Hen maize bread, mizuna, and Elmore Roots plumberry jam.

We're getting a backlog of jams as we rarely use it. What are some alternative uses? I've used some as a glaze on cake. Cupcake filling?

Pesto for dinner tonight, with a nice side salad.

Spring is coming

Today we got a basil plant with our share. I like to tear off a few leaves, tear them up, and add them to a salad.



This week we've got: Nicola potatoes, carrots, European greenhouse cucumber, pac choi, mesclun mix, 8 oz of Pete's onion puree, eggs, 1 pint Bonnieview ewe's feta, Champlain Orchards red delicious apples, and one basil plant.

I decided to use a lot of these ingredients in dinner tonight but it also had to be a quick dinner since I worked today. I decided to make the chickpea pancake again but this time add some potatoes and pac choi. I sauteed the potatoes for a bit, added the onions, then added the pac choi. I didn't use a lot of any of the vegetables, just enough to give it a bit of body. I also tossed in some fresh thyme from my yard although I can't say I could really taste it.

When it was done it looked like this:


I served it with a salad of greens with basil, pine nuts, cucumber, and feta cheese.

Three thumbs up! Sam finished it off even though right before dinner he ate a banana, an apple, and 1.5 slices of bread. I think both legs are hollow.

March 25 Share

I realize I've never talked about what it's like to go get the share. The share is being hosted by my neighbor, about 2 houses away. It's all kept on the porch so when I walk in, this is what I see.

From Share Mar 25

The porch is just packed with goodies! This week we got bread and that's all packed in a nice big box.

From Share Mar 25

Most of the veggies are packed all together in one bag. In the summer these bags are often overflowing with greens.

From Share Mar 25

There are coolers full of various things. This is frozen butternut squash.

From Share Mar 25

And this one has cheese!

From Share Mar 25

Boxes of jars of honey.

From Share Mar 25

There were also big boxes of totes of apples. This makes for a lot of stuff to carry so I bring a bag so I can get all of it in one trip.

And this is the share.

From Share Mar 25

This week we got: Potatoes, celeriac, carrots, onions, valentine radishes, baby spinach, shoot and mesclun mix, Red Hen whole-wheat bread, empire apples, honey, and Blue Brebis cheese from Bonnieview Farm.

Share - Mar 11

Carrots, onions, garlic cloves, mix of shoots, baby arugula & mustard greens; mixed potatoes, frozen strawberries, wheat berries, tamari from Les Aliments Massawipp, and mushrooms from Amir Habib.

Sam ate the strawberries immediately. Yes, in their frozen state.

Feb 25 Share

I'm not posting many recipes lately because over time, it's gotten easier to use the various things I get in the share so it's not such a high priority to post them. I'm still posting share pictures though!



I'm also very happy that there are no radishes in this share....

Carrots, potatoes, celeriac, beets, garlic cloves, mix of pea, sunflower & radish shoots (they're trying to decrease the portion of radish - yay!), sprouted beans; Red Hen pain au levain; Champlain Orchards apple butter, and Cabot clothbound cheddar.

The brown share

It's hard to get excited about the share at this time of year. It's all roots and we get similar items each time. It's not that it's bad, it's just that I replaced potatoes with potatoes, carrots with carrots, etc. The localvore stuff is more interesting. We ate all the cheese curds immediately and made good headway on the bread. The stock goes in the freezer with other stock I make -- I love having a nice stash on hand.

This week we've got: potatoes, carrots, daikon radish, purple top turnips, garlic, shallots, black Spanish radishes, Red Hen sprouted wheat levain, Vermont Milk Co cheese curds, miso from Les Aliments Massawippi, and Pete's chicken stock.

The radishes are back to challenge us. I wish I could find a way to serve them that we all love but, no, we've never found one. We tolerate them best raw after peeling, slicing, and salting.

Last share of 2008

A full year of the share! Lots of cooking, lots of eating, and a freezer full of good stuff. I've learned a lot about cooking with local ingredients this year and it was also the first year I've had any sort of garden since our second summer we lived in this house. It's so nice to be able to go to the freezer to build different meals with much less effort than having to make everything from scratch. For instance, I made a beef and barley soup using beef gravy from the freezer and leftovers in the refrigerator on Tuesday and on Wednesday I pulled out greens, cilantro pesto, and cilantro to make two types of stuffed bread for a potluck party last night. I'm now out of greens which is amazing to me since that's one of the things I sort of dreaded getting during the year.

The variety of foods we've eaten here over the last year is much wider than we've eaten in the past and I've discovered I really lots of things I didn't expect to like. However, I'm still struggling with radishes.

I hope to continue with the share, probably every other week as it's just too much food for us every week, and expand my garden for next summer. I'm hoping that Sam will eventually start eating more of it rather than tastine a "no thank you bite" and declaring "Yuck!"

The share this week: yellow potatoes, carrots, onions, sweet salad turnips, red cabbage, curly parsley, Butterworks Farm black turtle beans, Vermont Cranberry Company cranberry juice, Pete's Greens Kitchen frozen pureed squash and sunflower oil from State Line Farm.

Bountiful share

Orange storage carrots, parsnips, garlic, mars onions, curly parsley, red and green Cabbage, mesclun, bright lights chard, Butterworks Farm maple yogurt, pearled barley, mushrooms from Amir Habib, Red Hen squash bread, two red kuri squash, and purple top turnips.

The squash and turnips are making up for the share before Thanksgiving when they were originally scheduled to appear.

Tonight I cooked a pulled pork loin (cooked covered at 275 with shallots and apple cider) and made the chard and one of the squashes to go with it. I almost always try to use the greens first because they take up so much space in the refrigerator. I'll likely use some of the pork to make a mushroom and barley soup too.

Thanksgiving share

Potatoes, shallots, onions, parsnips, brussels sprouts, greens (claytonia and tatsoi, also looks as though there is a bit of kale in there), 2 mini decorative pumpkins, Butterworks Farm Early Riser cornmeal, and Vermont Cranberry Company cranberries and hot Italian sausage.





Delivery and capacity glitches meant that the kale, squash or pumpkin, and turnips planned for the share this week didn't make it for delivery.


The on-stalk brussels sprouts are so pretty - I very rarely see them in the store this way and I can understand why. They take up too much space! I'm going to cook these as part of our Thanksgiving feast on Thursday.

November 12 Share

It's another big share!

Red kuri squash, russet potatoes, mixed beets, 2 stalks brussels sprouts, torpedo onions, bag mixed spinach and claytonia, pac choi, cilantro, sweet salad turnips, rolled oats from Quebec, Butterworks Farm whole-wheat pastry flour, Red Hen pain au levain, and a dozen eggs.

I don't think I've ever seen brussels sprouts sold on the stalk so they were fun to get that way but I immediately cut them off since refrigerator space is always at a premium.

I tossed the oats and whole wheat flour into the freezer since I've still got some from before. I need to remember to use the whole wheat pastry flour when I'm baking! I'm sure the green tomato cake I made yesterday would have survived it very well without being dry or overly heavy.

We had the spinach/claytonia mix last week and it's a very nice mix. I never even heard of claytonia until it showed up in the share but it's a sweet and tender green, excellent for salad. I much prefer this mix than the mesclan mix we've been getting.

Surprise share

On Thursday night my neighbor, the person hosting the share, called and said that someone hadn't picked up their share and asked if I'd like it except for a couple of things she'd already used. Turn down a share? Of course I didn't! But no pictures. Too late in the evening to bother with it I guess.

We got: Red kuri squash, acorn squash, garlic, Walla Walla onions, head lettuce, green tomatoes, bag mixed spinach, baby tatsoi and claytonia, sweet salad turnips, kale, bunch sorrel, oyster mushrooms from Amir Habib.

I spent a lot of the day on Friday cooking. I made chicken and biscuits for friends with a side salad (the lettuce, some salad turnips, and the sorrell which I'd never had before and it's a very citrusy and tasty green), and squash. I cooked the squash from this week and last and froze some and made the butternut squash into a squash, bacon, kale, barley and white bean soup. The soup was only okay so I'm not bothering to write it down.

Very large share

It's huge! We got kohlrabi, sugarsnax carrots, leeks, daikon radish, savoy cabbage (3!), red kuri squash, delicata Squash, red mars onions, bright lights chard, bull's blood beet greens, cilantro, Butterworks Farm plain yogurt, Champlain Orchards liberty apples, and a frozen chicken.

I always like to attack the greens first as they don't keep very well and take a lot of space in the refrigerator. Today I cooked the chard in butter and used it in some baby quiches.


Chard Quiche

425 degree oven
Makes about 16 mini quiches

Recipe for 2 crust pie

(amounts are approximate)
1 bunch chard, cleaned, chopped, cooked in butter
1 small onion, diced, sauteed in butter
6 eggs
1/2 c milk
4 oz assorted cheese, grated (I used aged cheddar and jalapeno cheddar)
salt and pepper to taste

Make the pie crust and roll out as usual. Cut into 4" circles and fit the circles into muffin tins.

Mix all filling ingredients. Spoon filling into the crust. Bake 20-30 minutes until firm. Remove from pan to cool.



Verdict: Sam loved these! He ate 3 1/2 of them. I thought they were really good too but isn't anything good when encased in pie crust?

Oh, I also made myself a salad using the beet greens in place of lettuce. Excellent. Very similar to spinach but with a much more interesting color.

Mid October Share

Bunch Leeks, mustard greens, peppers, brussels sprouts, garlic, spinach, celery, pie pumpkin, salad turnips, Champlain Orchards macintosh apples, Red Hen whole-wheat bread, Deborah's eggs.

This was a pretty big share! Since I'm going to be gone this weekend and I know Ben won't eat them while I'm gone I processed the mustard greens and turnip greens for the freezer. I also trimmed the celery and leeks and used those to make chicken stock. I can deal with the pumpkin when I get back. In hopes that Ben and Sam eat veggies of some sort while I'm gone I cut up a bunch of raw veggies - carrots, salad turnips, celery, peppers -- and put them in plain sight. Any bets on if they'll still be there when I get back?

I made BLT's (well, BST's - spinach - and tomatoes from my garden) for dinner then cooked up the brussels sprouts in the bacon grease. Very tasty!

This is the last week of the summer share and now we begin splitting a share with friends so I'll just be getting the share every other week. But I'll still take pictures.