In Search of the Perfect Brioche

When I was working for 9 Bean Rows in trade for my CSA share, I became acquainted with brioche. If you’re not familiar, it is a flaky, buttery egg bread. When toasted and slathered with raspberry jelly it easily passes for a jelly donut and is probably just as bad for your diet.

Tired of spending $5 a loaf for the stuff, I decided to make it myself. I bake. It can’t be too difficult, right? Wrong. I tried to make a loaf and it turned out horribly. Dry. Almost crumbly. It was so bad that I didn’t even note which recipe I used. It was then that my quest for a decent recipe began.

I’m still working my way through recipes, but I thought I should keep you posted in case you, like me, are on a quest for The Perfect Brioche. This recipe wasn’t bad. I would actually consider trying it again on a day when I had more time because I rushed it a little and that could have affected the final product. The texture was right, but it was dry. How can ANYTHING with almost a pound of butter in it be dry??  As a dinner roll, the bread was okay. It fared much better as toast, but its real redeeming quality was that it made the best french toast ever. Another plus? This recipe doesn’t require the shaping of loaves, you just dump the dough into a pan or muffin tins and let it rise.

This recipe is from Emeril Lagasse’s Lousiana Real and Rustic.

Brioche

Starter
3 envelopes (6 3/4 tsp.) yeast
1/2 C. warm milk (about 110°)
1 C. flour

Combine the yeast and milk.
Stir to dissolve the yeast.
Add flour; mix well.
Let sit in a warm, draft-free place 2 hours.

Dough

4 C. flour
6 eggs
1/2 C. warm water (about 110°)
3 T. sugar
2 t. salt
3 sticks butter at room temperature plus extra for greasing pans
1 egg yolk, beaten

1. Put 2 cups of flour into a large mixing bowl. Add 4 eggs, one at a time beating thorougly with a wooden spoon after each.
2. Add water, sugar and salt. Mix well.
3. Add three sticks of butter and mix in with your hands until it is well blended.
4. Add remaining two eggs and mix well.
5. Add remaining flour. Mix well and break up any clumps of flour.
6. Knead the starter into the dough with your hands. Continue kneading until well mixed; about 5 minutes. The dough will be sticky and moist.
7. Cover with a clean damp cloth and let rise in a warm, draft-free place 2 hours.
8. Butter two 9″ x 5″ x 3″ loaf pans or two standard 12-muffin pans.
9. Punch dough down lightly and divide into baking pans.
10. Brush tops with egg yolk.
11. Cover and let rise until double, about an hour.
12. Preheat oven to 400°F.
13. Bake loaves 25-30 minutes or muffins 20 minutes until tops are golden.

Goodbye, 2011

2011 was a difficult year both for my family and for this blog.  If you are/were a regular reader, you noticed I wasn’t around much. I hope to change that this year.  Because I didn’t write many posts last year, I wasn’t surprised that most of the top posts last year were older posts.

As a farewell to the year gone by I present:

The Top Five Posts of 2011

1. Brined Pork Roast
2. Homemade Fabric Softener
3. Homemade Laundry Detergent
4. Building A Rabbit Hutch
5. Crusty Round Loaves of Homemade Bread

I am surprised that the Brined Pork Roast recipe was number one. Especially because in my opinion, this recipe is much tastier.

I get lots of searches for green cleaning recipes. Pinterest has been especially helpful in promoting them. I’m glad people are being greener and I’ll try to post some more green cleaning recipes this year.

I am excited to see the rabbit hutch plans make the list.  I wonder if that is because more people are interested in rabbits for meat, or if pet owners just need plans? Regardless, I hope to post more rabbit updates soon. Until then, if you’re looking for rabbit information, check out On Breeding Like Rabbits.

Happy New Year,

Angela

Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011

The start of a new year is always a time for reflection on the past, and hope for the opportunities yet to come.  This year my family starts with some setbacks, but I am optimistic that the future will be bright despite the hurdles before us.

Although this blog was “born” in 2009, last year was my first full year blogging.  Sometimes I did a better job than others.  Posting regularly was a challenge for me at times but I hope to have a better go of it this year.  I’m not going to resolve to post daily or even weekly, but I think that posting more frequently is a good goal, as ambiguous as it is.  Challenges like the Spice Rack Challenge with its required monthly posts and the Dark Days Challenge with bi-monthly posts until April will help me stay motivated, but so will various things on my 101 in 1001 list (which I fully intend to complete).

But, as a farewell to the year gone by I present:

The Top Ten Posts of 2010

1. Homemade Fabric Softener
2. 28 Day Challenge Final Results
3. June Can Jam~ Herbed Strawberry-Balsamic Jam
4. Crusty Round Loaves of Homemade Bread
5. How I Made Homemade Soap (and Didn’t Screw it up)
6. Lavender’s Blue . . . (April Can Jam)
7. How to Make Your Own Soap (Concluded)
8. Homemade Laundry Detergent
9. Everything but Apple Jacks?
10. Can Jam Challenge Round Three ~ Jerked Onion

I was surprised that some of the posts made the list, but in general I wasn’t.  This blog is (mostly) about me getting back to slower times, cooking and cleaning in a way that is more sustainable.  So I shouldn’t be surprised that most of the posts on the list are in that vein: recipes for homemade food, instructions for preserving your harvests and recipes for cleaning in a more gentle manner. 

And, I was glad to see my three favorite canning recipes make the list!

Happy New Year,

Angela

Happy Birthday Gwen

 

Gwen on her fourteenth birthday.

 

The arrival of my daughter, Gwendolyn, fourteen years ago today was a surprise; she was five weeks early.  She was ready for the world despite everyone else’s schedules and is the same way now; she wants to do what she wants to do when she wants to do it.

Life with a teenager is different.  I could spend hours telling you of our adventures through life but as you probably are already aware, everything a mother does embarrasses a teen; she wouldn’t approve.  So, instead of telling you all the wonderful and not-so-wonderful moments we’ve shared over the years I’ll share the birthday dinner.  It will still earn me rolled eyes but it’s been awhile since I’ve done a food post.

Gwen has been a vegetarian for over three years now.  There was a short stint in the middle when I could get her to eat locally raised and sustainably produced meats but she’s since reverted to her diet of cheese and bread.  Actually, she eats fish and eggs and dairy.  She’ll even eat a lot of vegetables, but when I start combining them into balanced vegetarian meals she turns up her nose. (Ratatouille anyone?)  Since both the boys in our house are devoted carnivores, it makes dinner interesting to say the least.  Generally what happens is that the boys get a protein with a vegetable and grain or potatoes on their plates and Gwen gets the same plate without the meat.  She doesn’t particularly enjoy soy-based meat replacements and I’m not sure I agree with them anyway given how unsustainable they really are.

But, it is her birthday.  Did I mention neither of the boys like fish?  So, in addition to cake I got to make not one, but two dinners today.
Let’s start with the common elements.  

Folded flatbread with an ear of corn grilled in its husk.

 

Everyone had an ear of grilled corn from Olds Farm and a grilled flatbread.  Leave your corn in its husk and soak it in water for an hour or two before you throw it on the grill.  I made grilled breads a lot last summer but since I’ve started using spelt or whole wheat flour, they’ve waned in popularity and nobody cheers when I cook them anymore.  I’ve been tweaking the recipe trying to find a balance of white and whole grain flour that everyone will eat; these were pretty good and nobody complained although I probably could have increased the white flour a little more.  The recipe is below.

Halibut Ceviche with veggies from our garden.

 

Gwen’s entrée was ceviche.  I’ve never made a ceviche before but I was very pleased with the results and will definitely be making it again.  Every time I grill fish Gwen asks, “Do we have anymore lemon?” so “cooking” the fish in the lemon seemed like a natural thing to do.

I want my baby back, baby back.

 

The boys had baby back ribs.  We ordered a half a pig from Olds Farm this year.  It was processed last week and we picked it up on Wednesday.  It feels really good to have a freezer full of good, local meat but at the rate we’re eating it, I’m not sure it will last long.

Nobody will ever guess the secret ingredients.

 

I should have made homemade ice cream to go in Gwen’s ice cream cake but since I was already cooking two separate dinners and baking a cake in a 90 degree house, I cheated and bought some. 

Everything was a hit (even the sneaky cake) and Gwen had a great birthday.   Here are the recipes:
Grilled Flatbreads

2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 cup warm whey (or water if you haven’t made cheese recently)
1 1/2 tsp sugar
3 T. olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups sifted whole wheat flour
1 3/4 cups white flour plus more for dusting

1. Combine yeast with whey or water and sugar and let stand about 10 minutes.
2. Stir in oil, salt and flours to form a dough that comes away from the sides of the bowl; add more flour as necessary.
3. Knead the dough with your KitchenAid mixer until the motor dies or the dough is smooth and elastic, whichever comes first. (My mixer died at just about the same time the dough was ready so I guess I got lucky there.)
4. Oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and drizzle the top with oil.  Cover with a damp towel or cloth napkin and let rise until double.
5. Punch the dough down and roll it into a two-inch cylinder.  Cut the cylinder into 8 pieces.  Roll each piece into a ball and keep covered with a damp towel.
6. Preheat the grill to high.
7. Roll each dough ball into a thin disc about 8″ in diameter.
8. Drizzle each disc with oil and sprinkle with salt before placing onto the hot grill.  Flip when the breads bubble and the bottoms brown nicely and cook until the other side has browned.

 

Birthday Ceviche

About 2 lbs. Halibut from Alaskan Premium Seafoods cut into 1/2″ chunks
1/2 cup lime juice
two small onions pulled from the garden along with some of the greens finely chopped
a medium yellow and two small Roma tomatoes pulled from the garden and chopped
two small hot peppers pulled from the rainbow pepper plant minced
several lime basil leaves finely chopped
2 tsp. salt

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive bowl.  Stir gently to blend and place in refrigerator.  Stir again every hour or so to ensure all parts of fish come into contact with the lime juice.  The fish is ready when it turns from translucent to opaque.

Scoop into bowls with a slotted spoon to remove most of the juice and serve.
Ribs

There isn’t really a recipe for my ribs.  I had the oven on for the cake so I rubbed the ribs on both sides with salt, pepper and garlic and dumped them in a glass baking dish.  I poured half a beer in the pan, covered it with foil and threw it in the oven while I prepared and baked the cake.  When the cake was done I left the ribs in while the oven cooled and then finished them on the grill with the corn and the flatbreads.  My sauce is also very complex:

1. Dump the drippings and beer from the ribs into a sauce pan.
2. Add a liberal amount of brown sugar and a big squirt of ketchup.
3. Boil until desired consistency is reached.

 

Birthday Ice Cream Cake

1 quart ice cream
1 1/2 cups purple puree*
1 stick butter
2/3 cup chocolate chips
2 eggs
1 T. vanilla
1 C. sugar
2 C. whole wheat flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 T. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
Chocolate frosting *

* Purple Puree is something the Sneaky Chef does, but mine is a little different.  Last summer, in an effort to use all the kale I was getting from my CSA, I decided to use purple kale to make a puree to add to my cakes.  It’s a little coarser than I think a spinach puree would be, but I haven’t had any complaints.  
In a saucepan, heat 1/4 cup water to boiling.  Chop a large bunch of purple kale (3-4 cups chopped) and add it to the boiling water.  When the kale is thoroughly cooked, add it and the water to your blender or food processor with two cups of blueberries and a teaspoon of lemon juice.  Puree the mixture on high-speed until it reaches a smooth consistency.  This will make over 2 cups of puree; you can freeze any extra.

Before mixing your cake, remove your ice cream from the freezer to soften (unless you just made your own and it is already soft) and line a 9 inch cake pan with plastic wrap.  Scoop ice cream into the lined pan and smooth it down so that it takes the shape of the pan.  Place the pan in the freezer to allow the ice cream to harden.

Preheat oven to 340 degrees.

1. Melt a stick of butter with the chocolate chips in a large, microwaveable bowl.  I used milk chocolate chips because I had them on hand,  but I would advise semi-sweet for a more chocolatey cake.  Stir the chips and butter until blended.
2. Add 1 1/2 cups purple puree, vanilla, sugar and eggs and mix well.
3. In a medium-sized bowl combine flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.  Mix until blended.
4. Combine wet and dry ingredients into the larger bowland mix until combined.
5. Grease two 9″ cake pans.
6. Divide batter evenly between pans and bake for 25 minutes.
7. Allow cakes to fully cool before assembling the ice cream tower. 
8. Invert one cooled layer cake on a large plate.
9. Remove plastic wrap from ice cream and stack onto cake.
10. Top ice cream with second cake layer.
11. Frost with Chocolate frosting *
12. Place cake in freezer until ready to serve.

Chocolate Frosting

1 stick room temperature butter
powdered sugar and cocoa powder in a ratio of about 4:1
splash of vanilla

1. Dump softened butter into medium-sized bowl.
2. Add 1/4 C. powdered sugar and a T. of cocoa powder.  Stir until mixed.
3. Add a splash of vanilla and stir again.
4. Continue adding cocoa  and sugar until the frosting reaches a workable consistency. 

This post has been added to the Family Food Fridays bloghop.  Check it out for a selection of delicious recipes!

Spring CSA Update

So, you’ve signed up for a CSA.  You’re excited because you know the local produce you’re going to pull out of the box is the freshest produce you can get.  You also know that you’re saving money because even though you’re paying $20-$30 a week for your share, you’re actually getting a lot of veggies for your money.  But then, you get the box home and open it up and think, “What have I gotten myself into?? I don’t even know what half this stuff is let alone how to cook with it.”  I felt that way a lot last year.  I ended up making lots of salads.  So far this spring I’m still getting a lot of “salad greens” but there have been plenty of other goodies as well.  

Let’s start with week two:   

Week 2 of my 9 Bean Rows Cream of the Crop Share.

This is the whole share.  Stephanie gets half of it, but a half  has worked out really well so far.  This box had collards, Red Russian Kale, blue kale, Easter Egg Radishes, Mizuna, Kaleini, chives, oregano, Ruby Red Chard, Arugula and two loaves of bread.   

So, as I mentioned before, it’s a really “salad-y” share.  Mizuna and Arugula are both peppery lettuce varieties, and radishes are primarily a salad vegetable.  However, a quick Internet search revealed 10 Tasty Radish Recipes including one for radish chips.  I think I’ll have to try that one out.  My husband, once a chef, has always been perplexed by radishes.  Cooking them generally turns them to mush and blanches most of the flavor out.  Chips might work.   

Once the salad vegetables have been eliminated, we’re left with herbs, cooking greens and Kaleini.  Kaleini is an invention of Nic’s.  I’m pretty sure it’s not a hybrid but the young flowers from kale plants, but I couldn’t guarantee that.  Sautéed with butter and garlic, it was delicious and reminiscent of Broccoli Raab or broccolini.  

I gave all the herbs to Stephanie because I grow both chives and Oregano.  It seems silly for me to split them when I have a whole yard full of herbs including so much Oregano that I generally pull it out like weeds and compost it.   

Chard can be sautéed like spinach or used in most cooked spinach recipes.  I ate some sauteed in roast pork tenderloin drippings for dinner tonight.  I haven’t tried it yet because I am not a huge fan of eggs, but Barbara Kingsolver has a recipe on her Animal Vegetable Miracle website for Eggs in a Nest.  

Although I like it, kale is something I still haven’t figured out.  I can never seem to eat it all even though we are splitting a share.  Fortunately it lasts a while. Unfortunately as soon as I think I’ve eaten it all, I get a fresh supply.  So I will admit that I have fed kale to my chicken.  But, there really are lots of things you can do with kale.  You can find (literally) millions of recipes for kale chips on the Internet.  You can add kale to smoothies.  You can chop kale and add it to soups or stews.  I’ve even steamed it, ground it up and added it to chocolate cakes without being discovered by my family.  Those cakes were the most moist, delicious cakes you could imagine.  To my daughter’s great disgust I added chopped kale to curried garbanzo beans.  First she whined.  Then she begged to pick the kale out.  Then, she came back for seconds.  

 Collard greens are delicious, but so far I’m the only one in my house that will eat them.  I thought for sure Mr. Hippie would like them cooked in bacon, but he wanted them to be saltier.  Next time I think I would add garlic to the end sauté.

Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas 

Medium-sized bunch of collards
2-3 slices bacon
1 1/2 cups black-eyed peas, soaked overnight 

• Boil black-eyed peas in seasoned water 60 -90 minutes.  (I added salt, pepper and minced garlic.)   
• While peas are cooking, cut stems out of collard greens and feed to your chickens (or compost if you don’t have any chickens yet).  Once the stems have been removed, chop the collards into 1/2″ strips and add to boiling salted water.  Cook for about  30 minutes.
• Meanwhile, cook bacon in a very large skillet and let cool on a paper towel.  Reserve 1-2 Tablespoons of bacon fat but pour most of it into your fat jar to make soap with later.  Or, if you want to make your dog really happy, drizzle it over his kibble or add it to homemade dog food or biscuits. 
• Once the bacon has cooled, chop it into bits and return it to the pan with the bacon fat you saved.
• Drain the collards and the black-eyed peas and add them to the skillet with the bacon bits and fat.  Sauté until heated through and season to taste. 

In addition to the veggies and greens there was, of course, freshly-baked bread.  Yum.  Mostly we just slice it and eat it with butter, but sometimes I toast it or make French Toast.  French Toast is really delicious with Jen’s bread. 

Week three looked very similar, but included some new items.  

My week three Cream of the Crop share from 9 Bean Rows.

Homemade bread is a given although the loaves were oblong rather than the roundish loaves we got the second week.  More kale, more collard greens, more radishes and Arugula.  Mixed salad greens made a comeback this week which is great; I’ve been eating salad for lunch most days.  This week’s  herbs were chives, Oregano,  tarragon and parsley.  I kept some of the parsley because I don’t have any growing, but gave the rest of the herbs to Stephanie again.  I’ve never grown parsley because I’ve never been a fan of it.  That all changed last year when I started getting it in my CSA box from Providence Farm.  I started making tabbouleh and now I’m addicted to the stuff so I’ll definitely be planting some parsley this year.

New this week were ramps or wild leeks.  When I got these ramps, I wasn’t sure what I’d do with them.  I usually harvest some from the woods when I’m foraging for morels, but never this many at a time.  Then I found this post about wild leeks and thought hmm. . . pickling them would be fun.  I think maybe I’ll use my jerked onion recipe from last month’s Can Jam challenge.  But then, Stephanie said that she was using her leeks in fajitas.  What a great idea!!  I cleaned up the leeks, cut the bulbuous white part off and saved them for canning and cut up some of the leafy parts to use in my fajitas.  You can chop the leeks up into salads with the rest of your early spring salad greens.  I just had an inspiration!  My grandma makes “ham roll-ups” at Christmas time.  I think a leek would work in lieu of a scallion:  Lay a thinly sliced piece of ham on a plate.  Spread the ham with cream cheese.  Place the leek along one edge of the ham slice and roll it up.  Cut the ham cylinder into one inch spirals.  I never eat them except at parties, but even if I pickle the bulbs of my leeks I’ll have a lot of greens leftover.  I think even my son would eat the leeks in roll-ups.

This week I couldn’t pick up the share because I was at the Family Wisdom Conference ALL DAY on Saturday.  It was great, but exhausting.  So, since I couldn’t make it to the market, Stephanie picked up the box and split it for me.  Since Stephanie already split the produce, this is only my half of the share. 

My half of the 9 Bean Rows CSA Share from week 4.

First, let me say that Jen’s Brioche was so delicious that I started eating it before I remembered to take a picture.  My husband loved it so much that I’m afraid he’ll never eat regular bread again.  I’ve already researched brioche recipes.  As soon as I figure out which one is the best, I’ll do a post so you can share in the bliss.  (Or, head on over to the Mercato next week and buy a loaf or six.)

In addition to the brioche I found more chard, more leaf lettuce, more salad greens, more kale, more ramps, sage and oregano.  However, I also got the first turnips of the season.  I’ve never cooked mine, but they can be cooked like potatoes and added to soups.  I add turnips to salads with the rest of my salad-y vegetables.  I also found the first spinach of the season (yay!), baby potatoes and peas shoots. 

I don’t eat spinach raw.  I almost always saute it or throw it in the pan when I’ve finished cooking the meat until it wilts in all the delicious drippings.  I like the taste of raw spinach, but there is something about the way it feels on my teeth that I just can’t handle.  Potatoes are pretty easy.  I still have 20ish pounds of Russets in storage, but my Yukons and Redskins are on their way out (in both quantity and quality).  I like new potatoes like these boiled then tossed in yogurt with salt, pepper, garlic and fresh chives or dill (or, minced ramp leaves if that’s what you have around). 

Pea shoots can be chopped into salads, but I’m thinking of adding them to a stir fry at the very end instead of pea pods.

What do you do with your CSA Share?  I’d love to hear your ideas!

To CSA or Not to CSA?

When I first started “blogging”, I wasn’t actually blogging.  I was using the ‘Notes’ tab on Facebook to journal.  I started out with weekly updates of my CSA share from Providence Farms and included recipes and anecdotes.  Partly it was a way for me to share with friends what I was doing, but in the back of my mind I was writing a book and I needed a place to keep notes that could be eventually incorporated into my book.  My book dream hasn’t died, but the Master Plan has evolved along the way.  So have the notes. 

The notes are now this blog and it is so much more than a diary of my CSA share.  In fact, because I didn’t sign up for a winter CSA share I haven’t blogged about a CSA much at all.  Why didn’t I sign up?  First of all, Providence didn’t offer a winter share.  Second, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t going to do a CSA share because I would be growing more of my own veggies this year.  I still plan to grow more veggies, but in the past I haven’t had a lot of luck in my garden.  I’m hoping that I can remedy that this year, but I’m nervous about doing it all on my own.  Plus, at the moment I don’t have a greenhouse, or a hoophouse, or even a cold frame.  I have a plastic seed-starting tray.  This limits the winter and spring growing I can do.

I started seeds two weeks ago, but so far only the onions and cauliflower have sprouted; old seeds will do that to you.  I’ll purchase some fresh seeds and try again, but crop failure is always a risk when you are a farmer or a gardener or even an urban homesteader which I think is what I’m aiming to be at the moment. 

When a friend asked if I wanted to split a CSA share, I hesitated.  Then I did a little research and decided to go for it.  We started a share with 9 Bean Rows Saturday morning.  We decided on 9 Bean Rows for a few reasons. 

First, their timing was perfect.  Instead of offering “summer” shares starting in June and running through October ike most the CSAs around here do, they offer four sessions that start and end with the changing of the seasons.  Since we just celebrated the Vernal Equinox, Stephanie and I were just in time for a spring share. 

Beacuase the sessions are shorter than most CSA shares, the initial expense is less too.  Most CSA shares run $450-$500 for the season.  At $350 for 12 weeks, the weekly cost works out to be about the same as the longer shares only in a smaller dose.  Plus, they let us pay in four installments; I’m paying two, Stephanie’s paying two.  It hurts less that way.  

Another nice thing about 9 Bean Rows is that they offer three different tiers of shares.  The Herbivore share is for salad lovers.  Each week you receive a variety of greens, herbs and edible flowers to make interesting salads year-round.  Tastes of the Garden is the basic share.  It is probably the best value and if I do a summer share, I might downgrade to this share. It has whatever is in season picked fresh each week.  The Cream of the Crop share that I’m splitting with Stephanie is the “premium” share.  Each week you get the basic share plus a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs and frequent “value added” products.  These could be wine from Blackstar Farms, jams and jellies in their season, morel mushrooms, syrup or herb butters like the chive butter tucked into my share this week.  My logic on springing for this share may be twisted, but here it is:  It’s spring.  Not a lot of things are growing yet.  As they start to come into season, the Cream of the Crop shareholders will get the first of those newly emerging products.  That means that as rhubarb, asparagus, wild leeks and even morels start poking their heads up from the cold earth, (Stephanie &) I’ll be the first to enjoy them.  We’ll also get more of these goodies than the standard shareholders and as the season runs out on these goodies, we’ll get the end of the run too.  When pickin’s are slim it seems worth the extra investment.

You’re probably wondering why I’d pay extra for a share that offers eggs when I’m harvesting my own now.  Well, I’m not.  Stephanie and I both have chickens and didn’t want the eggs, so the folks at 9 Bean Rows swapped out the eggs for an extra loaf of bread each week.  This is perfect for us because now we each get a loaf every week instead of splitting a loaf.  It’s actually a better value for us too, because even when I was buying eggs, I was paying less for a dozen local eggs than they charge for a loaf of their delicious bread.  I bake a lot of my own bread, but it’s nice to change things up once in awhile. 

And, the last reason I decided to go with 9 Bean Rows this season?  Well, you may remember that I’m on the Family Wisdom planning comittee this year.  Jen from 9 Bean Rows is speaking at the conference this year.  She’s agreed to do a session on how to cook from your CSA share or from what’s in season at the Farmers’ Market.  It seemed like the right thing to do.  You know, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” 

Our share was short a couple things this week because I signed up at the very last minute and they had already harvested and sorted everything, but Jen said she’d catch us up next week.  So, if you need one more reason to try a CSA, here it is:

My Cream of the Crop share: Spring Week 1

Dark Days Week 19

Well, the true “Dark Days” are officially over with the arrival of spring, but the other challenge participants and I are playing along for the rest of the month.  This week I made one of my husband’s favorites, a modified Shepherd’s Pie. 

 I had loads of local onion leaves left from processing all the onions for the Can Jam challenge last week, so I started by chopping the scallion-y leaves  into a skillet with a drizzle of olive oil.  I added a couple of cloves of crushed garlic from Providence Farms, a pound of ground beef from Olds’ Farm, a little salt & pepper and sauteed the whole mixture until the meat was cooked through.

Meanwhile in a pot of boiling salted water, I cooked four or five redskin potatoes from Westmaas Farms.  When the potatoes were cooked fully I mashed them, skins and all, with some homemade feta cheese. 

Drain the extra fat from the cooked ground beef.  Scoop the feta-mashed potatoes out of their pan and spread them onto the beef.  To make the whole mess extra tasty, grate some Black Star Farms Raclette on top before baking.  Everything is fully cooked so you only need to bake the pie long enough for it to become golden and delicious.  Or, you can preassemble pies and bake them another day when you need a quick meal and don’t have time to cook.

Fresh from the oven.

I love this dinner because it is simple, I almost always have all the ingredients I need for it in the house, and everyone in the family will eat some variation of it.  Sometimes I add corn kernels or other veggies to the ground beef, but it is good without them. 

To round out our meal I made a salad with local romaine lettuce, more onion greens and the yogurt-feta dressing I made last week but didn’t eat because I was out of lettuce. 

Last Saturday was “Shop Your Community Day” so while I was wandering around the Commons after my trip to the Farmers’ Market, I popped in to Pleasanton Bread and picked up a loaf of their wood-fired brick oven whole wheat bread.  It was delicious toasted with this simple meal.

A wintry meal for a spring day.

Dark Days Week Eleven

I cooked this dinner earlier this week.  It has been so long since I prepared it that I had to look at the photo to remember what I made!!

I started with a pork tenderloin from Shetler’s.  I usually just get dairy from them, but when I stopped at the Mercato Saturday morning, they had cuts of meat available as well; I was pleasantly surprised. 

The bread starter was already in the fridge so I just had to pull a chunk glob out and form it into a loaf to rise.  I turned the oven on and scrubbed some redskins from the root cellar back porch.  I washed and quartered the potatoes and threw them into a bowl.  Next, I pruned some sprigs of rosemary from the pot on the back porch that has (to my amazement) managed to live this long and minced several cloves of garlic from my stash of Providence Farms garlic and threw them into the bowl of potatoes with a little olive oil and some salt and pepper.  Once the potatoes were coated in herbs and spices, I dumped them out into a hot, cast-iron skillet and put the tenderloin into the potato bowl.  I added a little more seasoning to the bowl and let the pork rest for a few minutes while the potatoes cooked.

Once the bread had risen, I threw the loaf in the oven.  Fifteen minutes later I threw the tenderloin into the skillet with the potatoes.  When the bread was finished I pulled it out to cool and flipped the tenderloin.  A few minutes later, dinner was served:

Roemary-garlic roasted redskins and Shetler's pork tenderloin with homemade bread and butter.

Dark Days Week Ten

This week I’m remarkably ahead of schedule!!  I’ve already cooked my Dark Days Dinner and I’m writing the post before the weekend??  On top of that I attended (and spoke at) the school board meeting on Monday, created a canned citrus concoction for the January edition of the Can Jam, wrote the post that went with itand helped hubby and the kids finish all the laundry.  On top of all that, I found the secret ingredient I needed to re-attempt the Can Jam!

Good thing we live close to a buffalo farm. . .

Ok, so the house is still a mess and we’re now out of laundry detergent, but I can’t do everything.  

This week’s Dark Days dinner was pretty straightforward.  I started with a buffalo roast from Oleson’s. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and garlic from my summer CSA share.   Then I went out to the back porch (my winter walk-in cooler) and grabbed a handful of russet potatoes from the 50 lb. bag I bought at the Farmers’ Market.  I chopped them roughly, threw them in the pan with the roast and added a few sprigs of rosemary from the plant that I’ve managed to keep alive in the back porch.  I can always keep one until February or March before I kill it.  I sent Dylan out to the porch to get one of the squash that came in my CSA box this summer and he returned with a squash of unknown variety.  I baked it cut-side-down in an inch of water until it was tender then flipped it over and filled the cavity with honey and butter before tossing it back in the oven to finish.  The broccoli came from Old’s Farm via the freezer and what Dark Days Dinner would be complete without homemade bread??  (Now if I could just find the time to bake sandwich loaves. . .)

Dark Days Week Nine

I can’t believe that the Dark Days Challenge is already half over!  I feel like aside from meat and greens, which I can buy at the Farmer’s Market, I am still pretty well-stocked for the rest of the challenge.  However, if I were eating all local meals every day, I would be running out of most things. 

For example, I have a limited number of jars of tomatoes this year.  Most of them are sauce or salsa.  This summer, when I was canning them, my kids said, “Holy cow, do you think you have enough tomatoes???”  Every time they asked, I told them the same thing, “No.”  Then I proceeded to do the math aloud until they quit asking.  My goal in the coming year is to put up enough tomatoes that I don’t have to buy any next winter.  That’s a big order.  I eat a lot of salsa.  Plus, I’ve been on a canned tomato kick.  Every day for lunch, I’ve been eating canned tomatoes.  At the moment, I don’t even have enough jars to can all the tomatoes I’d need to put up to get me through the year; I’m going to have to preserve a lot more this year if I want to eat locally more consistently next winter!

So, what did we have this week?  Chicken noodle soup and of course, homemade bread.  I started with some broth and picked chicken from the roast chicken we ate earlier in the week.  I added some sprigs of thyme that I dug out of the snow, a chopped shallot and some minced garlic cloves from my CSA share and several quarts of homemade chicken stock from the freezer.  After that I scrubbed a few redskin potatoes from my fifty pound bag and diced them into the boiling stock.  Once the potatoes were tender, I added a pint of frozen corn kernels from the freezer, sliced two local carrots from Oryana and diced up the celeriac leaves from Providence Farm that I had in the fridge. 

Hearty soup with homemade bread.

I’d like to say I made homemade noodles.  I had every intention of making homemade noodles.  I actually put this dinner off for two nights thinking that I would make homemade noodles.  But, I didn’t. 

I used to have a pasta roller.  I’m afraid I may have taken it to Goodwill years ago because I can’t find it.   I wasn’t ready to hand roll and cut my noodles, so I ended up buying locally made egg noodles. In a pan separate from the soup, I boiled salted water and cooked the noodles.  I added some noodles to each bowl and ladled hot soup over them.