Photo credit: Amazon.com
I’ve mentioned here before that we here in my family are big fans of farmers’ markets. Even though we have a good-sized garden just steps from our back door, we still like to head downtown on our bikes every Saturday and see what our local farmers have for us that week. We invariably pick up lots of great foods — including fresh cheese, grass-fed beef, and plenty of veggies — to feast on for days.
While we usually buy our favorites, we also often come across new veggies that look interesting. Last summer, for example, we were fascinated by blue potatoes and bought them several weeks in a row. We then experimented with preparing them different ways and discovered that roasting them was great, but mashing them was bad, as the color leached out and they ended up looking gray and sickly.
But there have been some foods that we haven’t been quite sure what to do with or have wanted to try new ways of preparing some of our old favorites. Thus it was that I was excited to read about Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from American’s Farmers’ Markets by Deborah Madison. It’s a fascinating book — part history of farmers’ markets, part cookbook, and part coffee table book (the photos are gorgeous). This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to eat locally and seasonally, as the author has sections on the different vegetables and fruits you’ll find at the farmers’ market throughout the growing season and then gives you a plethora of ideas of how to eat all that bounty.
So if you’re a fan of farmers’ markets or just a fan of eating seasonally, I encourage to you get your own copy of Local Flavors and start cooking!
Photo credit: Yahoo Images
With berry season upon us, now is the perfect opportunity to preserve some of the bounty for the cold months. The easiest way to do this is by freezing.
Freezing is simple, simple, simple. Wash the berries and let them dry. Put them on a baking sheet and stick them in the freezer. Later on, transfer the fruit to freezer-safe containers. That’s it. Next winter, you’ll have fruit galore to bake muffins and pies and add to your oatmeal and more.
Now is also the time to preserve cherries. In Charlottesville, the pick-your-own places have cherries now (this is earlier than usual), but you should also be able to find cherries at the farmers’ market and other places. C’ville Market has local cherries in stock now too.
Freezing cherries is almost as easy as berries — the only difference is that you’ll need to remove the pits first. I worked through two pounds in about 30 minutes yesterday and will be doing more today.
Yes, this is a tiny bit of work — and yes cherries are a wee bit messy — but the pay-off will come several months from now on a chilly morning in October when I’ll make oatmeal and stir in cherries for a burst of flavor. Mmmmmmmm…
Another way my family eats cherries is this simple cake recipe, which has been in the family for almost 50 years:
Cherry Cake
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1 teas. baking powder
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1/8 teas. salt
- 1/2 teas. flavoring (almond or vanilla extract)
- cherries (1-2 cups frozen or one can of comstock)
- powdered sugar
Instructions
- Heat oven to 375 Fahrenheit.
- Grease 8 x 8″ pan.
- Mix all ingredients except cherries and powdered sugar.
- Pour battered into pan.
- Add cherries on top.
- Bake 30-35 minutes.
- Sift powdered sugar (to taste) on top and serve warm.
Enjoy!
My younger daughter got a fresh, homemade popsicle at the farmers' market last weekend. Mmmm...
Now that June’s heat is upon us, my thoughts have turned toward cold frozen treats. I went to the grocery store recently and made the unpleasant discovery that a lot of the ice cream and popsicles available are loaded with high fructose corn syrup and other undesirable ingredients.
Luckily, I have an ice cream maker and I know how to use it. Last weekend, we dusted it off and got busy. Actually, one of my daughters and her friend made the ice cream while I supervised. (Too bad they didn’t also clean up afterward…) The ingredients for chocolate ice cream were wonderfully simple — cream, sugar, unsweetened chocolate, and a splash of vanilla. No HFCS or other unpronounceable chemical concoctions. Making ice cream is incredibly easy — mix up the ingredients, put them in the ice cream maker, and turn it on.
All ice cream makers come with recipes, but over the years we’ve learned that the best source for ice cream perfection is Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book.
Another thing my family likes to make is ice cream sandwiches. We layer homemade cookies or graham crackers with ice cream and create absolutely divine desserts. Some of our favorites are chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on chocolate chip cookies, cookies and cream ice cream on chocolate graham crackers, and coffee ice cream on ginger snaps. (It sounds odd, but you have to try it.) My husband normally doesn’t eat sweets, but even he will dive into our homemade ice cream sandwiches.
As for popsicles, you can use store-bought molds or you can simply use small cups as your molds. This is a simple food project that doesn’t require a lot of fancy equipment. You can simply freeze juice and fruit in the cups or get more elaborate and try some of these yummy recipes. The important thing is that YOU can control the ingredients and don’t have to worry about the aforementioned chemical cocktails. My younger daughter had a homemade strawberry popsicle at the farmer’s market last weekend and one thing that made it really stand out (besides the incredibly fresh ingredients) was chocolate shavings in the popsicle. Yum. We’ll definitely try that at home this summer.
So this summer, don’t automatically buy ice cream and popsicles when you’re at the store — try doing it yourself at home. It’s easy and the results are worth the little bit of extra effort.
We're growing Russian Banana Fingerling potatoes in a grow bag and are looking forward to harvesting them later this summer.
Remember a couple of weeks ago when my confidence in my gardening plans was shaken? Well, it was completely renewed this weekend.
Our peas have come in and we’ve been gorging on the tiny green orbs for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I pulled out the vines, as they were starting to die back from the heat. I sat in a chair in the shade and sorted out all the remaining pods, which should be enough for at least two more dinners, although the snacking I did while I worked might have set us back a little.
My family has always liked peas and we tend to eat a lot of frozen peas during the winter, but having them fresh is just so much better. My daughters and I have been eating them raw from the garden, but for dinner I’ve been cooking them for a few minutes, then dressing them with a smidge of butter and salt. Yum.
THIS is why I garden.
So now that we’re finished with the spring veggies, I’m impatiently pacing around, waiting for tomatoes, cucumbers, edamame, beans, potatoes, and more to come in. If I thought it would help, I’d get a cheerleader’s megaphone and shout words of encouragement at my plants.
As for fruit, we still have strawberries, as I planted everbearers this spring and they got biz-ay as soon as they hit the ground. My blueberry bushes are covered in unripe berries, which I expect to start eating in a few weeks. I planted two grape vines this year and they’re both growing well, but I’m not counting on getting anything from them during this first year.
My herb garden is producing too, so I’ve been able to add lots of fresh herbs to our meals. I planted garlic there last fall and expect to harvest that in a few weeks.
There’s also the farmers’ market, which provided us with a wonderful bounty this past weekend. We picked up early zucchini, which I’ve thus far simply roasted with a little olive oil and salt. We got loads of berries, as well as some late carrots and broccoli. Sunday’s dinner was burgers from beef we got from a local farm, as well as lots of veggies, including plenty of peas. Last night’s dinner was local chicken that we barbecued and, of course, more peas and other yummy local veggies. Dessert was homemade French Vanilla ice cream. Delish!
Local foods. Seasonal foods. Homemade foods. Really, do meals get any better than this?
Photo credit: Yahoo Images
One thing that has been a hurdle for me as a cook over the years has been facing some of my fears in the kitchen.
I didn’t really learn to cook until I was 30 and a new stay-at-home mother. Before that, my husband and I cooked together after work, but he did most of the work and I was his assistant.
Once my daughter was born, however, and I was home all day, it was time for me to learn how to cook. Back then, I stuck to recipes and didn’t venture too far off track. And there were a lot of things I didn’t try because I was afraid — the recipe was too complicated or time consuming or I simply didn’t know how to handle some aspect of the preparations
For example, I bought already-roasted chickens for years (as in, almost a decade) before I got brave enough to do it myself. Now, I roast chickens once or twice a month and it’s one of the easiest things I make.
After that success — and this was less than two years ago — I started getting braver in the kitchen.
In another example, for years I remembered my great-grandmother’s meatballs wistfully, wishing that someone would make them for me. Why didn’t I make them myself? Because I thought they were too hard. I tried to fake it by buying frozen meatballs, but we all know that they don’t even come close. Finally a few weeks ago — YES, just that recently — I gave it a try. It was SO easy. In fact, earlier this week, I mixed up the meat and other ingredients and made the meatballs with one hand while my other hand was busy holding the phone to my ear.
Now I’m looking around and trying to figure out what’s next. What other food fear do I have that I need to face? Nothing comes readily to mind, unless I want to delve into Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but the fact is that I’m not all that interested in cooking organs or dissecting a lobster.
But I’m curious: Is it just me or do some of you have food fears that you’ve faced or that you want to face?
Last week, my daughters made a chocolate cake and frosting (from scratch, natch) for their grandfather's birthday.
The other day I was talking with someone who spoke with great pride about how she had recently made dinner from scratch, including making a box of “really yummy rice with herbs.” I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything — and those who know me know how hard that was — but today I want to talk about this a bit. Call it therapy for the way I repressed myself, if you will.
Cooking from scratch does not mean opening a box mix and whipping it up. What it does mean is mixing together ingredients and creating a fresh, delicious dish. In the example of the herbed rice box mix, what would have been more delicious, not to mention healthier and less expensive, would be if the person had made some basic rice and then added the flavors she wanted. Now THAT is cooking from scratch.
But the fact is, there are a lot of so-called convenience foods out there. In general, they’re more expensive and less healthy than they should be. They almost always contain high amounts of sodium and hard-to-pronounce ingredients that you really don’t want to ingest.
It seems like it would be easier to whip up rice or pasta (or cake or brownies) from a mix, but it really isn’t all that much faster or simpler. With mixes, you always have to add other ingredients, so why not make something truly delicious?
All that said, I know that people are busy and that it would be hard to convince everyone to give up all convenience foods. However, if I can convince you to give up anything, here are three things that you should never waste your money on:
- gourmet frozen vegetables — Buy plain frozen veggies and doctor them up with herbs, spices, olive oil, or butter (but not too much).
- flavored rices and pastas — Buy plain rices and pastas and add the flavors you want. To boost the flavor of rice even more, substitute broth (chicken, vegetable, etc.) for cooking water.
- spice mixes — The first ingredient in most special mixes, grill seasonings, and rubs is usually salt. A lot of it — more than the average human needs. Instead, make your own custom combos for a fraction of the price.
My daughters (9 and 11) are learning to cook and it has been interesting to see things through their eyes. Yesterday, we made oven fries, which is just a simple matter of chopping some potatoes, tossing them with olive oil and a little kosher salt, and putting them in the oven. Seriously, prep time is five minutes from start to finish. I used to buy bags of frozen fries, but the flavor was lame so the fries never tasted good.
So here’s my challenge to you: As you’re making dinners this week, try something new. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is and you’ll love the flavor!
Photo credit: zanypurr's Flickr photostream
How would you like to wake up in the morning and eat farm-fresh eggs with your breakfast? If you had chickens in your backyard, your eggs couldn’t be of a more recent vintage.
Yes, that’s right, I am suggesting that you might want to build a coop and start raising your own Chicken Little and Henny Penny. Long thought to be the domain of country dwellers, keeping chickens has become more popular with urban farmers in recent years, as people are realizing the benefits of having their own source of free range hens and organic eggs.
Chickens not only offer up eggs and the potential for the occasional Sunday dinner, they can be fantastic weed pullers while at the same time ridding your garden of pests. They’re also omnivores who love leftovers, so you can feed them your kitchen scraps. And think of the free manure!
Rumor has it — and I am getting this information from people I know who raise chickens — that becoming a poultry farmer is relatively easy, although you will need to do some research in advance, as well as prepare a home for your flock. Also, if you’re considering keeping poultry, check your local ordinances for restrictions (if any) and definitely check with your neighborhood association.
If becoming a poultry farmer seems a bit daunting, you might consider going in with some of your neighbors. That way, everyone shares the responsibilities and costs. And think of the community-building experience!
For more information on keeping chickens, check out Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News for a wealth of helpful articles.
If you don’t have chickens in your backyard, where can you get local eggs? In Charlottesville, I’ve seen them at the farmers’ market, as well as C’ville Market, Rebecca’s, Integral Yoga, and Feast.
As for me, I don’t have chickens in my backyard — yet. My husband and I have discussed it, but haven’t taken the plunge. It helps that we get fresh eggs from a relative, so we already have a nice supply in our fridge. We’ll keep thinking about it and, who knows, maybe one day we too will have a coop behind our house.
I think we all can agree that cookies are among the most important food groups for humans.
(The other ones being chocolate, Italian, and au gratin.)
My daughters certainly agree and every Sunday evening as I’m putting the week’s grocery list together, I’m often besieged with requests for things like ginger snaps, oatmeal raisin cookies, and Newman-O’s (the organic version of Oreos).
While I will occasionally indulge the need for Newman-O’s, I am generally of the opinion that cookies are best when homemade. So if my kids want cookies in their lunchboxes or after dinner, we’re going to make them.
I don’t particularly enjoy baking, but I do it because my family eats better that way. No high fructose corn syrup or other hard-to-pronounce ingredients. I tend to make cookies that don’t need to be rolled out and that can be simply dropped onto the cookie sheets. When I mix up a batch, I freeze half of the dough for a later time — we don’t need four dozen cookies in one sitting and it’s nice to have some already-made dough in the freezer for those times when my daughters’ friends swarm the house.
Most of my recipes either come from The Joy of Cooking or the backs of bags of Nestle chocolate chips. Cookies don’t need to be fancy or complicated, so I suggest that you stick with the tried-and-true recipes that have been around for decades. Also, any recipe that is touted as being lower in fat or sugar is probably going to taste terrible, so don’t waste your time. Just make the real thing and savor it.
One thing that has been the Holy Grail of cookies for my kids is Nilla Wafers because I refuse to buy them — in my opinion, they’re not all that good unless they’re mixed into banana pudding, not to mention the ingredients turn me off. A couple weeks ago, I was at Whole Foods and I saw that they sold Vanilla Wafers. I don’t know why I broke the “no store-bought cookies” rule, but I did. My girls loved them. They raved so much, in fact, that I tried one too. Oh my word, those things were GOOD. Crispy and buttery and very vanilla-y. Then I got to wondering if homemade Vanilla Wafers might be even better.
I went online and found several recipes and tried this one the other day. The recipe was so simple that my nine-year-old daughter did almost all of the work in mixing things up and plopping the cookies on the baking sheet. The results were quite good, although now I’m curious about some of the other recipes I found online and how they might differ, so I think we’ll try out others this summer.
So the next time you have a hankering for some milk and cookies, don’t buy pre-packaged crap-laden ones — whip up a batch of the real thing.
Photo credit: http://peanutbuttermilk.wordpress.cocm
One of the many great things about early May in Virginia is that it’s strawberry season.
Strawberries might just be one of Nature’s most perfect foods. They’re at their best when they are grown organically and then eaten right after they’ve been picked. Strawberries grown in California (or further afield) and then shipped to your grocery store in January just can’t compare.
Strawberries are easy to grow, but you do need to keep an eye on them so that they don’t take over your garden. Or, you can keep them contained and grow them in a raised bed or pots on your patio. For more information on growing berries, check out this article at Organic Gardening.
If you don’t have a garden, I suggest that you get yourself to your local farmers’ market or a nearby strawberry farm to get some berries. One of the wonderful things about strawberries is that they freeze well, so you can save Spring’s bounty for future eating. And, of course, there’s always strawberry jam…
Some of you may not know this, but the best way to store strawberries is NOT in the fridge. Yes, strawberries last longer when kept chilled, but they lose flavor rapidly. Instead, leave them unwashed and unsliced at room temperature until you’re ready to eat them. Be advised that they will only last a couple days this way, so be prepared to dig in soon.
What is my favorite way to eat strawberries? With this amazing fruit, simplicity is the way to go:
- Strawberries taste amazing with plain or vanilla yogurt.
- Angel food and pound cakes are also quite wonderful when topped with fresh strawberries.
- Strawberries dipped in chocolate!
Strawberry season always seems too short to me and then I have to wait patiently for it to roll around again the next year. Luckily, blueberries and raspberries are right around the corner!
Home-canned pickles. Photo credit: firefly64's Flickr photostream
I’ve been gardening for about 15 years now, but didn’t really have much of a kitchen garden until a couple of years ago. Last year, my family moved into a new house with a blank slate for a yard, which gave me the opportunity to imagine all the possibilities and just how big my kitchen garden could get.
As of this spring, I have about 400 square feet dedicated to food, which is my largest garden yet. I created all this space, as well as my surrounding flower beds myself, most of it last year after we moved in. Needless to say, I have invested hundreds of hours in creating this little botanical utopia. I’m not even going to stop and calculate how much money I’ve spent on seeds, plants, dirt, mulch, and more.
I love gardening. I believe in gardening and its positive impact on my health, my family’s health, and our environment. Nothing pleases me more than to walk outside on a July afternoon and pick veggies and herbs for our dinner. Once October rolls around and my garden stops producing, I miss having fresh tomatoes and basil and more.
My husband is on board with all this too — he benefits from all the great produce, but also from having less yard to mow, and he believes in gardening for the same reasons I do. Like me, he loves having a freezer and pantry full of last summer’s bounty. However, last week, he said something that stopped me in my tracks and which I have been thinking about ever since.
I was telling my husband about my plans for something in the garden — canning pickles this summer — and he commented, “Why bother? It’s less expensive to just buy them at the store.”
Why bother? That really stuck with me and I’ve been pondering it for days, wondering if what I’m doing is really worth the time and effort.
The answer is a resounding YES. Growing my own food and eating locally and seasonally IS worth the effort. Cooking from scratch and preserving the bounty of my garden means that my family eats better throughout the year. Our food doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup and other additives, plus home-cooked food using fresh ingredients just tastes better.
As for those pickles, it costs me almost nothing to plant the cucumbers, dill, and garlic I’ll need for dill pickles. Vinegar is cheap too. One day in July or August, I’ll find that I have too many cucumbers on hand, so I’ll pull out some jars, various ingredients, and my canner and I’ll whip up a batch of pickles, which should cover all the cook-outs and barbecue dinners my family will have in the next year.
When I can my own pickles — or make spaghetti sauce or chicken broth or bread crumbs — I control what ingredients are used. I know that my food doesn’t contain crap that I don’t want my family to eat. I know that my cucumbers, garlic, and dill will be organic, because that’s how I garden. I know that my pickles won’t contain any ingredients that I don’t want in them.
Yes, there is a cost to my time to make the pickles and preserve, but that doesn’t concern me because I’m making them because I want to — because I want to bite into one next winter and remember the bounty of Summer 2010.
