Knitting 40 shades of green

Dark Day Challenge: week 2

Normally, before I jump on board with one of the challenges, I make sure that I have some staples and buy extra of those things you always need to have on hand like flour, onions, garlic.  Well, this one I happened upon after it had already started and then I didn't manage to get to the market last weekend.  I have one red onion (and there were no yellow onions at the market this morning) and no all purpose flour (although I do have whole wheat and buckwheat flour).  Yes, and there are grits and corn meal.  I am debating on ordering the white flour -- I kind of prefer to use the King Arthur White Wheat Flour when a recipe calls for white flour and I am never certain of the impact of having a 5 or 10 pound bag of flour delivered by USPS or UPS.  Just not sure it is the most efficient.  I do have domestic olive oil and organic sugar from Florida and a little left from my friend's daughter's inlaws' sugar farm down in Louisiana.  (Are there enough apostrophes in that sentence?)  I guess eating local and looking at where things originate has become more a part of my everyday grocery shopping whether I am participating in a challenge or not.

I whipped up some soup based on what needed to be used up soon and then picked up some greens, cheese and pears for a salad and some sour dough bread to eat with it at the Dupont Circle Farmers' Market today.  I had some potatoes from my CSA which needed to be used along with some cauliflower from the a couple weeks ago when the cab driver bought me vegetables at the Old Town Market.  I had recently had a broccoli cheese soup at supper club and riffed on the recipe to make a cauliflower cheese soup with the local ingredients that I had on hand.

Spicy Potato Cauliflower Cheese Soup

• 4 cups cauliflower florets
• 3 cups cubed potatoes
• 2 cups water
• 3 chile de arbol
• 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
• 1 cup tomato sauce
• 1/8 cup jalepeno slices
• 5 ounces cheese
  
• salt and pepper to taste
  

1. boil potatoes and cauliflower in water with chiles and celery salt until tender (I used my pressure cooker for this
2. mash with a potato masher
3. mix in tomato sauce and finely chopped jalapeno slices (the recipe I adapted from used diced tomatoes with chiles)
4. mix in cheese and heat gently until melted
5. Enjoy!

Local foods

• cauliflower:  not sure of the name of the farm but I know it is in Charles County, MD (20 miles)
• potatoes:  Olin Fox Farms, Reedville, VA (81 miles)
• water:  tap, Occoquan Reservoir, VA (13 miles)
• tomato suace, pantry made this summer from tomatoes from Shlagel Farms, Waldorf, MD (16 miles)
• onion flavored cheese curds:  Fields of Grace Farm, Remington, VA (44 miles)
• jalepeno slices, found these a little freezer burnt in the freezer -- sure they came from the Del Ray Market but who knows which vendor
• mixed salad greens, Archor Nursery Galena, MD (74 miles) 
• pear, Black Rock Orchard,  Lineboro , MD (63 miles)
• feta cheese, Keswick Creamery, Newburg, PA (94 miles)
• honey, my mother's bees, Kents Store, VA (86 miles)
• sour dough bread, Atwater's Bread, Annapolis, MD ? (33 miles)

non local foods:  chile de arbol (Rancho Gordo, Napa, CA) , celery salt, salt, pepper, olive oil (Monrovia, CA), balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard

Roots restaurant: Milwaukee

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is do a little research and have one absolutely fabulous meal at a restaurant that features local foods and a creative menu.  I started out my search with the Milwaukee Lecturer Blog and ended it when I found the Journal Sentinel Dig-In Blog which featured a  list of local restaurants.  After perusing restaurant menus and looking at my schedule, I decided on brunch at Roots Restaurant and Cellar.  It is located in a neighborhood called Brewer's Hill that looks out over the city of Milwaukee.

It was a cloudy day with quite a bit of mist and light participation but the server allowed me to sit out on the balcony over looking the city and the garden which is outside the cellar.

Being summer in Milwaukee, everyone wanted to be outdoors despite the "threat" or reality of rain. 

True to character, I started the meal with a glass of champagne and a glass of water and was easily talked into the assortment of mini muffins. I believe they were an assortment of apricot and basil, blackberry, and a ham and cheese served with fresh butter and a nectarine compote/jam.  They were all quite scrumptious and made me wish I had more people to feed at my house so that making a batch of mini muffins every weekend wouldn't leave me eating muffins for every meal for the rest of the week.  I did make a batch of mini muffins from an entirely made up recipe and I think I may need to spend some more time in recipe development -- anyone want to be a muffin taster?

For my entree, I had the crepes which were served toped with a local aged goat cheese and filled with summer squash and corn in a bechamel sauce. They were served with mixed greens and hash brown potatoes.  It was all wonderful!  So, if you find yourself in Milwaukee, I highly recommend a drive up to the Brewer Hill.

Roots Restaurant and Cellar
1818 N. Hubbard St.
Milwaukee WI 53212
414.374.8480

7th Annual Slow Food Dinner

7th Annual Clyde’s Farm Dinner

Clyde's Willow Creek Farm
42920 Broadlands Boulevard
Broadlands, VA (571) 209-1200

Clyde’s, opened the barn door and garden gate at Willow Creek Farm to welcome Slow Food members and friends to tour their organic garden—where all their veggies grow—and to eat a five-course farm dinner.

I didn't get a chance to tour the gardens but the location is absolutely lovely. The food was fabulous.  I didn't do such a great job of photo documenting here but will share what I have.

We started the evening with Blanc de Blanc from Kluge Estates  and glasses of white Sangria with peaches and blackberries and passed appetizers that included some baby tart with chard, pieces of pork belly and a consume with a single cherry tomato floating in it.  The pork belly was a first for me and it was much better than the name makes it sound.

The first course consisted of the cutest poultry breast and thigh I have seen in a long time.  I didn't remember to take a picture before I had devoured the wee bird.  It was described as "Roasted "EcoFriendly Farms" Poussin with roasted peaches, greens, pickled onions, and Willow Creek Farm herbs".  I do believe the cooking method was different for the two pieces of poultry.  This course was accompanied by a lovely dry Rose from Barboursville Vineyard.  (Which is lovely to visit should you get the chance.  I have wonderful memories of climbing around the Jeffersonian ruins in the rain with my father and step mother several years ago.

The next course of Maryland Jumbo Crab Cakes w. local corn and tomatoes and micro greens was accompanied by Jefferson Vineyards' Viognier.  The sweet corn went very well with the sweetness of the Chesapeake Bay crab.  It was definitely the tastes of summers past and brought back memories of sitting at the picnic table in Edgewater picking crabs and eating corn on the cob (possibly stolen from the neighbor's fields and hopefully not the cow corn they put around the perimeter to discourage the likes of us).

The next course was Wood-Roasted Virginia Prime Rib of Beef  served with tomatoes and smoky blue cheese gratin and new and fingerling potatoes.  I am not usually a big fan of blue cheese but the combination of the smokey blue melted with the fresh tomatoes was pretty good.  I may have to experiment with this concept. This was served with a Garnett from Hillsborough Vineyards. 

The cheese plate was a little less local than they had planned but they all came from small craft dairies.  There was a Twig Farm (VT) soft Goat Tomme, a Rainbeau Ridge (NY) Chevre Log along with a Carr Valley Cheese Company (WI) Cave Aged Marisa.  This was served with a desert wine, also from Hillsborough called Moonstone  and  followed by desert of a warm corn cake with sweet corn ice cream and blackberry compote.

All in all it was a lovely dinner despite a rather opinionated table companion who did not wish to be dissuaded from expressing her lack of tolerance for people who held views different from her own.  I think I may have been quoted as saying "Your intolerance is intolerable".  She did apologize at the end of the dinner.

One Local Summer: Week 11

All of the obligations of returning to work after vacation caught up with me this week and I had lots of good intentions for cooking but few of them were carried through with the intent I had planned.  Before the weather got to incredibly hot temperatures, I sliced up an eggplant and baked it in the oven intending to make Rollotini  or maybe a pasta-less lasagna.  Between back to school night and other various meetings , it didn't happen.  Not wanting the eggplant to go to waste, I  made this mixture of eggplant, red peppers and ricotta cheese (and a sprinkle of shredded non-local parmesan.)

I had made some Sweet corn and squash soup that I was too lazy to strain but it tasted wonderfully.  I topped it with a few fresh  cherry tomatoes for color.

Maybe not the most beautiful meal but it was certainly tasty.

One Local Summer: week 9

The weekend has been full of fun, friends and eating -- lots of eating and now it is Sunday night and I realized that I haven't put up a post for one local summer this week hosted over at Farm to Philly .  I attended a Slow Food DC dinner last night that was both wonderful and local but that deserves it's own post, so I will see what is in the camera to be shared.

Ah, here is a meal and a recipe to share:  gazpacho with carrot and apple salad (the bread was bought at a the farmers' market as well, although I am unsure of the baker.  I was going to guess Uptown but that doesn't seem right.)

The first of the summer apples appeared at the market last week or maybe the week before and it had been months since I had made my favorite apple and carrot salad.  I was in luck, because after picking up a pair of apples at Bigg Riggs Farm, I wondered over to  Shlagel Farms and found they had carrots which can be hard to find at the markets around here.   The recipe is super simple but the results are quite tasty.

Carrot and Apple Salad
(Very slightly adapted from a Weight Watcher's Momentum Program pamphlet)

2 large apple(s), 1 red and 1 green, cored, thinly sliced, cut into matchsticks 1 1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, or less to taste 3 cups carrots, cut into matchsticks
1/4 cup chives and/or scallions, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp table salt 1/4 tsp black pepper, or more to taste (make sure this is freshly ground) 2 oz feta cheese
Place apples in a large bowl and toss with lemon juice. Add carrots, chives, oil, sugar, salt, pepper and cheese; toss to mix thoroughly. Yields about 3/4 cup per serving. Enjoy!

One Local Summer: Week 8

Mid summer has hit this northern outpost of the South.  My CSA share contained tomatoes, corn, and okra as well as a baby watermelon.  Oh, and eggs, yes more eggs.  The cooler weather we have been having means the chickens are still laying and I am running out of room for eggs in my fridge.  My daily breakfast of  cottage cheese omelet muffins (I will have to share that recipe at some point) only uses about four eggs a week and if I have a few days of cereal or go on vacation for a week or two...well lets just say that there is more than a few dozen eggs in the fridge.  I think I need to make a concerted effort to eat more eggs.  So far I had planned to make some cherry amaretto cookies and had the dried sour cherries soaking in the Amaretto (yeah, I know it only uses one egg but boy are they good), and then I saw Colleen's post  about crepes at the farmers' market and decided that crepes would be on the menu once again here at Chez 40shades as they hadn't made an appearance since week 2 .   While I have run out of all purpose flour from Byrd Mill, I still have plenty of buckwheat flour in addition to whole wheat flour which should be fine for a savory crepe.

I turned to Mark Bittman for inspiration for the recipes.  The crepe filling is a rif on his Okra, Corn and Tomato Stew from How to Cook Everything (a much appreciated gift from my mother many years ago) and the watermelon salad was inspired by some of the ideas in this article as well as Collen's Watermelon gazpacho.  I hadn't thought to use watermelon in a more savory salad.  And since the oven was going on for the cookies, I decided to cook up the sweet potato I  discovered  while getting the potatoes for Potato, cabbage and feta salad that I will take to our "backyard barbeque" supper club this month.
 

Buckwheat Crepes

3 eggs 3/4 cup(s) buckwheat flour 1 cup(s) fat-free skim milk 1/4 cup(s) whole wheat flour 1/4 tsp table salt 2  garlic scapes 2 tbsp parsley Instructions Blend eggs with a whisk, add remaining ingredients and whisk quickly until lumps are gone. Cook in  frying pan sprayed with oil (but not too much) over medium heat. Takes about 2-3 minutes per side, depending on the size of your pan.

Okra, Corn and Tomato filling/stew 1 tsp olive oil 2  cups onions 1 1/2 cup red pepper (these were Italian frying peppers) 4 cups tomatoes 1 1/2 cup okra chili powder 2 cups corn parsley salt and pepper to taste Heat a large skillet over medium heat, add oil and once it is heated add onions and peppers.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook for 10 minutes or until onion turns translucent. Add the tomatoes, okra and chili powder, cover and cook over low for an additional 10 minutes.  Uncover and cook off some of the liquid, add the corn and cook until heated through.  Garnish with parsley and serve as is or as filling inside a crepe.

One Local Summer: Week 6

Well, I have been home long enough to pick up vegetables from my CSA and visit two different farmers' markets and now I am trying to use up the fresh produce in my fridge before heading out of town again on Tuesday.  So it has been a race to use of the fresh produce and still eat balanced meals.  Summer has finally hit the markets and they are full of wonderful vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and corn.Oh, and the fruit like blueberries, watermelon, blackberries, apricots, and peaches.  It was tough not to over buy produce.

 

I had bought a couple of Japanese eggplant as well as Anaheim peppers before my last trip that weren't getting any fresher in the crisper, so I mixed them with the onions, yellow squash, and tomatoes that I had received in my CSA and made a ratatouille that mostly went into the freezer.  I served this with  the green beans and tomatoes  in a sherry vinegar dressing sprinkled with the last of the feta cheese from Blue Ridge Dairy.  Then I had to figure out a plan for the 9 ears of corn.  I headed out to the West End Farmers' Market for a reddish pepper (it is a little early for red peppers but I did find this one) .
 

Here is the recipe

Fresh Corn and Goat Cheese Salad

• 4 ears of fresh corn, cut off the cob
• 3 medium scallions
• 3/4 ounces goat cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 2 tablespoon lemon juice
• salt and fresh ground black pepper

Steam or microwave corn until tender. Cool, then cut kernels from cob. Stir together corn, diced scallions and red pepper in a medium bowl.

Combine chopped scallion, goat cheese and lemon juice in a blender or food processor; process until smooth. Pour over corn mixture and toss well; season to taste with salt and pepper and toss again. Yields about 3/4 cup per serving.

One Local Summer: Week 5 -- on the road

I am in San Diego for work this week and so have been eating out quite a bit.  Somehow the fruits and vegetables seem so much more flavorful and prevalent on menus here in California.  I have been trying to make it a point to support local and independently owned restaurants.  The first of my eating adventures that I would like to share with you, is Jsix.  I got the recommendations from San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project, and since it was walking distance from my  hotel.  I thought it would make a nice leisurely dinner for my first night here before all the rush and hubbub of my conference/representative assembly started. 

The service was great and I took my waitress' recommendation on a cocktail to start dinner.  She recommended a Pear Flower Lemonade which was Grey Goose Pear Vodka, St. Germain,
and fresh squeezed lemonade.  It was nice but a little on the sweet side.

They brought out fresh baked sour dough bread and olive tepenade which tasted so much better than the sour dough back on the East Coast (or maybe I just haven't been buying much bread lately and have forgotten how good sour dough bread is...as an aside, before it was readily available, my father would always bring back a loaf from his trips to San Francisco, oh it tasted so good in those memories).

With dinner, I ordered Sterling Vineyards, Chardonnay, ’07, from Mendocino which is made with organic grapes.

The salad was a lovely Boston butter lettuce, with goat cheese and stone fruit vinaigrette.  It was sprinkles with carrots, celery and cucumber as well as croutons.  The vegetables tasted very fresh and it made a lovely start.

For an entree, I ordered local scallops with a sage and rosemary pesto.  The scallops were served over a bed of pea shoots with onions and some kind of cured pork, maybe the house made smoke cured Prosciutto.  It was wonderful and I do wish that I had saved room for the peach panna cotta but at this point, I was full and jet lagged and so headed back to my hotel.  It was a wonderful meal and I highly recommend the restaurant if you find yourself in San Diego Gas Lamp District.

J six
616 J Street
San Diego, CA 92101

One Local Summer: Week 4

I am headed out of town for a week and have been making an effort not to go to the markets, the grocery store and to try to use up the food that is sitting around the house so that it doesn't need to be thrown out.  All of my meals have had local components in an effort to use up CSA produce but often I throw in a nonlocal element that also needs to be eaten, which disqualifies the meal for the challenge.  There have been some interesting combinations this week , like crepes with stuffed pepper filling and cheese, bok choy, grape tomatoes and jalapeno chicken sausage, and teriyaki stir fry with rice stick noodles.   For my local meal this week, I think we will have to use the "clean out the fridge" omelet.

I sauteed some onions and zucchini, added in some cherry tomatoes, a half of an Anaheim pepper,some refrigerator dried basil and two or three pickled jalapeno slices.  I then beat two eggs with a dallop of milk and salt and pepper as well as the last of the smoked mozzarella and cooked that over low heat.  It was pretty good but made a huge meal.

One Local Summer: Week 3

I was shifting some things around in the freezer when I came across some ground beef I had bought at the farmers' market from Valentine's Country Meat in Orange, VA and should probably think about using before it developed freezer burn.  So I popped it into the fridge to defrost without a thought about how I would use it.

I don't cook red meat very often and since I spent so many years as a vegetarian, I don't have a repertoire of recipes for different cuts of meat.  What I do have is all kinds of vegetables spilling out of my refrigerator.  You open the door and as likely or not some bag of greens or a bunch of radishes are going to come crashing off the shelf to land at your feet due to the incredible amount of food crammed precariously around the half gallon of milk, some beer, bottles of seltzer water and wine not to mention the condiments.  Yes, my fridge is full and still I go to the farmers' market and buy more veggies. 

So, as I contemplated the ground beef, I needed to consider something to use up some veggies as well.  After a bit of contemplation and web surfing for recipes, I decide on stuffed peppers and immediately headed out to the West End Farmers' Market to see if they would have any.  (hm, maybe this isn't the best way to solve my problem of produce abundance).  Luckily, I found some. (I also found some cherries, potatoes, and Anaheim peppers, oh and a couple of Japanese eggplant.  So much for produce reduction) These were not big round peppers ideal for stuffing but they would do.

I started by chopping up the last of a bunch of onions I had bought at J & W last week and throwing it in a saute pan with some  garlic that I had picked up from Westmoreland Berry Farm.  Next I added an Anaheim pepper that was beginning to change to orange/red for a little color.  As the onion started to soften I threw in a quarter of a cabbage which had been languishing in the crisper and let this cook down a bit.

   

I moved the vegetables to a bowl and then browned the beef with some more garlic and some Italian seasoning, salt and pepper.  I mixed the browned meat with the vegetable mixture and mixed in a bit of Blue Ridge Dairy smoked mozzarella, I discovered behind some Metala Greek Salad leftover from last weeks' lunch salads ( I bring in lunch for three of my colleagues since we barely have time to breath let alone go out and get lunch and this time of year I find myself making large batches of grain and vegetable salads).   I then stuffed the filling into peppers I had sliced in half (their unusual shapes and small size made this seem the best method of stuffing) and baked them in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. 

 

I ate these for lunch with a bit of the green and yellow bean salad with chunky tomato dressing (from Cooking Light) made from beans and tomatoes (the first of the season) from Three Way Farm and feta from Blue Ridge Dairy that I was taking to my supper club this evening.