Pot Roast starring the Veggies!

This week's haul included the usual mixed greens, turnips, potatoes, onions, carrots and swiss chard... and now that the weather is crisp and chilled my first thought was pot roast!

Sorting through the veggies

We were able to buy a roast at the Fresh Market in Annapolis and I popped that baby into the crock pot with some of the carrots, potatoes, onions and a few fresh herbs and spices. Swiss chard seemed like the perfect flavor counterpoint to the slightly sweet root vegetables.

I love the colorful chard stems and the fluffy, billowy leaves that seem to grow bigger when you wash them for sauteeing.

This evening, I just added a bit of minced garlic and chopped onions for flavor and then added all the leaves to the pan. The greens cook down to practically nothing, which surprised me - this hardly looks like enough for four people to sample. Luckily, I didn't really care for the Swiss chard and that left plenty for the others at the table. The other goood news: the pot roast itself turned out perfectly - the quintessential autumn meal after a hard day at work. And we were still able to enjoy it on the back porch, a setting that will be too cold all too soon.

Thanks to Kate and Gary for their willingness to try out our veggies this week!

Autumn: Root Vegetables and Love!

Oh Autumn, I love you! I love the crunchy leaves falling in the yard. I love wearing a hoodie to walk the dog. And I love snuggling in with cozy dinners as the sun sets way too early. Root vegetables fit right in! Tonight we roasted a juicy Bell & Evans chicken over CSA onions, potatoes, and carrots.

You'll notice the makeshift roasting pan (a baking pan and a rack), which was a last minute attempt (successful) to save dinner. Unfortunately, the delightful gorgeous roasting pan we purchased this summer (below) doesn't actually fit into our slightly-smaller-than-standard ovens.

Preparation was pretty straightforward. Ina Garten offers a lovely recipe that I modified slightly to include a couple of pounds of our CSA potatoes. Inside the chicken resides a whole lemon, half a head of garlic, a big bunch of thyme and salt and pepper. I brushed the skin with butter and added salt and pepper for flavor and the result was one of the tastiest chickens I've ever roasted!

A co-worker and her husband were kind enough to sample the dinner, along with a big bowl of CSA greens, and a basic starter of tomato jam, goat cheese and prosciutto. L created the perfect pre-dinner bite!

We finished up with bowls of homemade bittersweet chocolate ice cream - again slightly adapted by replacing four ounces of bittersweet chocolate with unsweetened chocolate and replacing the milk with soy milk (because our cow's milk was off). DELICIOUS!

Tomato Jam (with Goat Cheese)

As I've mentioned here before, we end up with what feels like 52 pounds of tomatoes every week, these days, and I am always searching for a new way to love them and make them scrumptious. After tasting some amazing tomato jam at the Imperial Hotel I decided that would be my next project. Where to find a recipe? Luckily, our real estate-agent-now-friend Marian offered up two great recipes for me to choose from. One called for Green Zebras, of which I had two pounds, so we were off to the races.

Tomato jams seem to fall into two categories - very, very sweet or slightly sweet and savory. I chose a recipe that looked like it had a savory component as more suited to our table. This particular recipe intrigued me with its mix of garlic, cumin, ginger and cinnamon (and of course sugar and honey).

After much dicing, grating, measuring and stirring I ended up with a pot full of fragrant, bubbling tomatoes.

It took a little more than 40 minutes of simmering with the occasional stir to end up with remarkably tasty jam that pairs terrifically with a milder chevre and some water crackers! And... I randomly met another tomato jam fan at brunch yesterday who received the smaller jar to take home as a prize!

Recipe after the jump...

Birthday Surprise!

My SIL is with us from Brooklyn this weekend and we are so glad to see her! She came bearing (birthday) gifts to spark my creativity, and I am very much looking forward to putting them to good use, such as here, here, and here.

Thanks, Ellen!

Quick Tomato Salad

Yesterday we picked up two more pints of cherry tomatoes - green, yellow, red and purple. Today's lunch spotlighted their fresh juiciness. Just rinse, halve and sprinkle with feta. A drizzle of balsamic vinegar and lunch is served!

And We're Back... with Tomato Sweet Onion Crumble and Yellow Squash!

It may be impossible for me to explain how very glad I am to have my internet service back, both for blogging purposes and for general connection to the rest of the world. While I missed the opportunity to blog about the Scandinavian limpa bread, the pink lemonade bars, or the Indian Butter Chicken, there are plenty of recipes left for the summer.

This week, I leaned heavily on the simple goodness of the vegetables themselves. We adopted a dog this week, which cut my cooking down a little bit.

Welcome to Brooks!

 We still had some squash sitting in the back of the fridge, waiting their turn at the dinner table. Drew decided on a simple squash and onion roast under the broiler. A bit of olive oil, a dash of pepper and deliciousness ensued.

The trick with this recipe is to slice the squash as uniformly as possible and to err on the thin side. Roasting brings out the tender sweetness of the vegetable and the squash is a wonderful canvas for almost any flavor you want to layer on.

Our growing pile of fresh tomatoes (cherry, heirloom, and red) has been a nagging problem for me. Ever since I learned I shouldn't can on my flat, ceramic cook top I have been at a bit of a loss on what to do with the red, yellow and orange bounty. I've been eating tomatoes and feta for breakfast, slicing them onto every possible sandwich and tossing slices with olive oil and Hawaiian Black Lava Salt. Last night, it was time for a Tomato and Sweet Onion Crumble.

Sauteed onions and garlic formed the base of the dish.

Next up is a layer of tomatoes, basil and oregano.

A quick whirl through the blender, and the parmesan, baguette slices, and butter created the crunchy topping for the tart.

 Delicious!

Sorry for the Delay Folks...

Our internet has been abominable over the last week - we've only had intermittent access at odd hours of the day. So I thought I'd add a quick update without pictures to keep up from falling behind...

We've been taking luscious heirloom tomatoes, drizzling them with olive oil and sprinkling them with black Hawaiian lava salt. I totally lifted this from a local restaurant and it works wonderfully. We've also been popping supersweet cherry tomatoes directly into our mouths and juicing beets. The last of summer lettuces graced our plates last night along with crisp carrots and pistachio nuts.

Coming up, summer squash and tomato gratin, Nicoise salad with fresh tuna, and hopefully some sort of onion tart if I can find the right recipe - and please, please, please let me know if you have one I should try.

In the meantime, enjoy the summer weather and dig into your own local food source!

Squash, Onions, Jalapenos and ... Drew!

This week I really wanted to attend a free tomato canning class at the local farm center and that left my DH to create our Curried Squash Soup. Thanks to my BIL for helping with photography!

I pitched in at the last minute with a watermelon, tomato, mint and feta salad.

Drew started with some of our abundant summer squash. Next to the pot -  some previously frozen chopped onion and some frozen chopped jalapenos from previous weeks. (I love prepping onions and peppers that way to cut down on pre-dinner chopping!)

Because we end up with so many vegetables each week I have started to contemplate preservation methods and proper storage with a lot more focus. A really helpful website can be found here - it spells out exactly how to prepare and store vegetables for the longest life. It is a great planning tool for me; I now know that I can put off the cabbage a bit longer than the squash. I also have started cutting up and freezing any peppers or onions I am not likely to use within a week and washing and freezing herbs. It is very easy to extend the life of you herbs in this way.

Beautiful Veggie Tuesday!

Every week, new vegetables! This week brought us some things we have never tried - big heirloom tomatoes and red cabbage, along with the familiar favorites like green beans, onions, squash and thyme. Luckily I have been haunting my friends for new and exciting ways to use these common plants and I have found some good options. Tomorrow, I'll be trying Laura Norvell's Curried Squash Soup with a tomato-feta-mint salad. Tune in!

Tonight, I just threw some of the new onions, thyme, and a handful of mushrooms into a skillet and covered their sauteed selves with fresh farm eggs and cream. Simple, quick and absolutely delicious when you add a bit of gruyere!

Does anything smell as good as sauteed onions with thyme?

International Onions! After all, it's the Olympics.

For the last two weeks, we've picked up bunches of delicious (and gorgeous) red torpedo onions and I have looked at them, thought about them and done nothing.

Finally, my French heritage asserted itself and I landed on two, old school, recipes from the south of France - pissaladiere and onion confit.

Southern French pizza!

Savory onion confit!

First, I found a bread, called a pissaladiere, which is essentially a French flatbread. Believed to have been introduced by the Italians during the French papacy, it is common throughout the south of France. Similar to pizza, pissaladiere generally features vegetables but no cheese.

Kohlrabi, Coconut, and Chili

A quick survey of friends and colleagues revealed a nearly universal shrugging of shoulders when it comes to kohlrabi. While it is a gorgeous, purple vegetable it is also something of a mystery. Luckily, the dear husband found a recipe for Chili-Dusted Kohlrabi Fries over at Five and Spice that appealed to me right away. (And even luckier was the presence of a test audience of 10+, over for evening cocktails!)

Kohlrabi is a member of the same family as broccoli, turnips, kale, and cabbage, and was "created by artificial selection." Its turnip-like texture and broccoli scent are a bit confusing to the first-time cook but they work really well together when roasted.

When preparing, be careful to cut away both of the tough, fibrous layers of peel or you may end up with something too bitter and stringy for most tastes. In this recipe, the fries are coated in coconut oil (my choice - vegetable or olive oil would also work), tossed with chili powder, cumin, and sea salt before roasting in the oven.

Paired up with yogurt mixed with cilantro and lime juice, the fries were a modest hit and will probably be back on the menu later this summer!

Whooo-Hooo: This Week's Crop!

Wheeee! This week we have a generous haul, in large part due to the "bonus" items available for the early arrivals. We ended up with two melons, pattypan and summer squash, two pints of heirloom cherry-type tomatoes, scallions, and "red torpedo" onions. We also have beets, carrots and anaheim peppers. On the herb front, we ended up with cilantro & basil. It will be a mammoth job to use this whole crop before it expires but I'm looking forward to the challenge!

(Also in the photo, Barbara Kafka's Vegetable Love, an invaluable resource during this experiment.)

Bacon, Corn, and Potatoes - Breakfast Extravaganza!

The biggest surprise from the CSA so far has been how easy it is to incorporate fresh veggies into my breakfast and brunch plans. In that sense, this has already been a successful experiment - I am eating more fresh produce before ten-thirty in the morning than ever before!

This weekend, Smitten Kitchen pointed the way with Bacon Corn Hash.  Paired up with some fresh bread from a local bakery and home made Blackberry-Ginger jam - we had a great contrast of salty-savory with sweet-spicy.

The hash was not difficult to create, though it took a lot of dicing (dark red norland potatoes), and slicing kernels off of the sweet corn cob. Total, I spent about an hour and forty-five minutes prepping, sauteeing, and otherwise making this happen.

Tomatillos, Pork, and Mango Lassi Ice Cream, oh my!

Everybody loves a slow cooker recipe - the general belief is that they cut down on prep time and make the cooking process a piece of cake. While this is true 80% of the time, the remaining 20% I am consulting the Gourmet Slowcooker by Lynn Alley. The meals in this book are fantastic go-tos, especially if you don't mind the two hour prep time generally required.

This week's Saturday night dinner featured Pork and Tomatillo Stew from the Gourmet Slowcooker. This is one of our favorites and we included the tomatillos, white onions, garlic and peppers from this week's crop. Tomatillos are covered in a slightly gummy husk that requires removal and lots of hand soap.

The recipe called for three pounds of the fruit, which gave me the opportunity to pull out my new kitchen scale for measurement. Once the tomatillos were roasting in the oven, it was time to chop the onions, garlic and pork.

Jenny Lind Delight?

Now, I am not much of a melon fan - when I was nine years old I entered a watermelon eating contest and remained traumatized for years afterwards. "Mixed fruit bowls" that consist of nothing but cantaloupe and honeydew drive me nuts when I visit restaurants. So when I set eyes on the Jenny Lind melon from the CSA this week I was not terribly excited. The Jenny Lind, named for a famous European opera singer, is a type of cantaloupe that is not generally commercially grown. Apparently, home gardeners tend to favor it because of its relatively small size and temperate nature but it is too delicate to transport long distances.

I started my exploration with the traditional sniff test - this melon smelled like candy, very sweet and light. With this much sugar in it, I thought, how bad can it be?











We sliced it open (reminded me a bit of a cross between an acorn squash and a cantaloup) and jumped right in. It was even sweeter than it smelled. I'm not big on very sweet things - I don't sweeten my coffee and if it isn't 70% dark, chocolate doesn't make my shopping list. So this melon was interesting, but not a favorite.

I probably won't go out of my way to find another Jenny Lind melon, but it is kind of cool to try something new, especially something that generally cannot be found at the store.

Sweet, Sweet, Sweet...Sweet Corn and Carmelized Onions!

Summer has truly arrived when the sweet corn appears, and this week we received a half dozen ears! While there is nothing like sweet corn grilled in the husk or flash boiled in milk, I wanted to use at least one ear on a more complex dish. Pairing sweet corn with sweet onions seemed like a no-brainer and a quick search of my favorite food blogs turned up a great combination - Goat Cheese Cornbread with Carmelized Onions.  Luckily, I had a house full of guests willing to be my test group so I picked up some goat cheese, some cornmeal and a bit of buttermilk and jumped right in.

Deb at Smitten Kitchen recommends soaking the cornmeal in buttermilk overnight, but naturally I opened the recipe an hour before I wanted to start cooking. So I soaked the cornmeal during that hour and it seemed to be fine.

Next steps: chopping and sauteeing the farm fresh onions and strip the kernels from the corn cob.


Stripping kernels is easy as long as you (1) hold the cob at an angle and (2) cut AWAY from yourself. I managed to nick myself a bit by failing to remember that basic technique!

Bubbly Back Porch Brunch!

One thing I love about our new country life is having the time and space to welcome friends to a relaxing, slow-paced environment. Between the Bay, the farmer's market and our own back porch, we have plenty of chances to connect with nature and our meals often reflect that connection. This weekend I was thrilled to welcome some amazing DC women to C-town and they were kind enough to sample the various CSA (and farmers' market) experiments, culminating in this morning's brunch.

Hope you're hungry!

We pulled together ingredients from Lockbriar Farms and Colchester CSA as well as the lovely folks who brought us the Freixenet for our OJ. Our al fresco brunch included Baked Oatmeal with Blackberries and Ginger (which could use more candied ginger),  Orange Sweet Rolls (just perfect), Anise and Plum Phyllo Crisps (good ol' Martha), a tasty scallion and gruyere omelette (you can't go wrong, really) and fresh plum tomatoes, sugar plums and apricots. 

We rounded out the meal with farro porridge with blueberries, coffee and mimosas. Many thanks to the gorgeous DC and C-town guests who made the meal into an fabulous event!

Tomatillos, Sweet Corn, Potatoes

This week, Drew picked up our share of the harvest out at Colchester Farms, where he had the opportunity to walk the fields and cut a bouquet for the kitchen (where the wallpaper backing and shelf plugs make a lovely backdrop).

Check out the summer festival of vegetables!

We have sweet corn, potatoes covered in dirt, huge white onions, bright kohlrabi, garlic scapes, luscious ripe tomatoes, crunchy jalapenos and, best of all, little green tomatillos! While we will find fun and creative ways to use everything, I am particularly thrilled with the Aztecs' favorite fruit. Tomatillos pair well with pork and pack a serious nutritional punch but they aren't always widely available. Check back later in the week for a slow-cooker pork & tomatillos stew, goat cheese and onion cornbread and an exciting kohlrabi creation!

Where the Magic Happens

While I suppose the real magic happens on the farms, in the fields and in the dirt itself, the kitchen is also a place of transformation. Our kitchen was probably the number one selling point of our new home, at least for me. I have never had so much counter space or two (!!!) ovens, which revolutionize making brunch for a picky, sleepy crowd. That being said, our kitchen was formerly wall-papered within an inch of its life (including the ceilings) and we are now in the process of ripping the blue and white floral paper off the walls and substituting a bright, cheerful paint.

Blueberries, in the Morning!

Fresh blueberries manage to insinuate themselves into every meal of the day - which is why I can't pick enough of them this summer! Here they appear in a bowl of farro porridge. Some identify farro as the grain that fed the Roman Empire before the time of Christ until Rome fell in the fifth century. I can't confirm or deny the history, but I can assure you that it is considered a superfood and when you pair it with blueberries you more or less hit the nutritional jackpot!