RSS Feed

Monthly Archives: October 2017

Stove Top Suppers

Posted on October 29, 2017 by AnnieRie

I was standing at the stove cooking Friday night. Using three of the four burners. Sipping a glass of wine, and chatting with my husband. For whatever reason, it brought back memories of growing up. My parents making a meal, sometimes mom, sometimes dad. We would be doing homework at the table under their eyes, while the day wound down.

Suppers were in the kitchen.  Dinners, on Sundays, and special occasions, were in the dining room.

I don’t know when things changed and we stopped cooking from scratch. When did prepared foods take over our lives? Throw in microwave, hit button, and eat when hot.

Back then, there were simple suppers. Burgers. Hot dogs. Fish Sticks. Mac and cheese. Liver and onions. Scrapple and scrambled eggs. Yes, back then we did “brinner”, breakfast for dinner. And, yes, we actually loved liver and onions, with gravy.

What have we lost, by not cooking as a family? Back then, we learned to cook, by watching our parents. We could scramble eggs. Make burgers. Make meat loaf (yes, I know, not stove top).

To me, now, it is interesting that I have reverted to cooking from scratch. Dirtying pots and pans. Frying. Not fancy stuff, and not preservative  laced, sodium laden meals.

Friday night is date night around here. Dinner and a movie. Or, catching up on our favorite shows. For a fraction of the cost of going out. Dinner cost less than $20. The expensive part of the meal. The Wegmans marinated sirloins for $10. Pan fried.

Served with butter beans from Harris Teeter. I still buy simple flash frozen vegetables to use in soups and stews, and these beans were leftovers. About a buck worth of beans, heated and served with butter. Lovely pappardelle that I picked up at Boarman’s. Half the $6 bag. Homemade pesto, from the scraps of our CSA. Carrot tops, radish greens, celery leaves. A handful of blanched almonds. Handful of parmesan. Olive oil. The almonds were probably the most expensive part of the pesto.

I had a pan frying steak. A pot boiling pasta. A small pot heating beans in a pat of butter on low. Yeah, some clean up required, but the dinner was wonderful.

Stove top cooking. Taking it easy and enjoying the results. Remembering the days of our youth watching our parents cook for us. Not a bad idea to just make it simple and savor a meal.

2 Comments

Posted in Food, LFFC, Real Food, Remember When and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

CSA Tidbits

Posted on October 19, 2017 by AnnieRie

It’s been a while since I talked about my farm share from Lancaster Farm Fresh. Our spring/summer 26 week season is about to end next Tuesday, and then fall shares begin. We have already transitioned to fall vegetables, which I love, but the official “seasons” are off by a few weeks.

Some of the favorite things we get these days.

Radishes.

Exotic ones, like the watermelon radishes. I swapped this week to snare some of these. The medium shares got them, and we didn’t. Radishes come in spring and fall, and some of the hardiest ones, the daikon for example, come in the winter. These more delicate radishes can be enjoyed raw, with a sprinkling of salt. Those daikons, and the really heavy black radishes of winter, they have to be roasted to bring out their flavor.

Turnips.

Hakurei are my favorites. They can be eaten raw, and unpeeled, but I like to roast them or cook them with their greens, like Vivian Howard, of the Chef’s Life fame, has in her cookbook, Deep Run Roots. The “pot likker” alone is worth it. Yesterday I cooked up a mess of greens and added these roots to the pot. Nothing like intensely flavored greens, and buttered turnips. No pictures of those. They weren’t that photo worthy.

What is photo worthy? This.

Restaurant quality, if I say so myself. Greens from the CSA. A Cherry Glen Monocacy Ash cheese, picked up at Evermore Farm when I got my meat share. The blackberries? From Baugher’s in Westminster, right down the road from Evermore Farm. I love to stop there after getting my monthly allocation of meat and eggs. The blackberries were end of season, and a bit mushy, but still bursting with flavor. I ended up mixing some plain yogurt with lime juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and mint, for the dressing.

There are a few slivered almonds there, too.

Finally, the first soup of the season.

Lentil soup. Made using some fresh stuff, some frozen stuff and a bag of French lentils. Started with celery, a leek, carrots and onions, all from the CSA. Added a quart of turkey stock made in the spring and frozen, using Maple Lawn farm turkey drumsticks. The bag of lentils. A bay leaf from my plant. French thyme from Penzeys. Salt. Pepper. After it cooked about an hour, I blended part of it to make it creamy. Added a cup of milk at the end of cooking.

Enough for at least three dinners. One Tuesday night. One this weekend. One will be frozen for later this winter. It was the first time I made lentil soup and it won’t be the last time.

Before I sign off on this CSA update, I have to include the picture from Tuesday.

$33 a week. All organic. If I priced this out at Roots, I know it would be much higher, even if I could find all these items there. Watermelon radishes are hard to find. So are Hakurei turnips. French breakfast radishes.

I love getting the tops of the radishes and the turnips, too. They made that dinner last night. Rainbow chard, radish greens, turnip greens, all cooked down for a long time. The lettuces will be gone by the weekend. Salads at lunch and dinner. I will be roasting cauliflower this weekend. Tuscan kale. Destined for a salad on Sunday. The sweet peppers? Stuffed with goat cheese and Canadian bacon. Served with short ribs this Sunday night. With a little planning, a CSA share can give us a week of healthy eating.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in CSA, Food, LFFC, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Napa and Sonoma

Posted on October 12, 2017 by AnnieRie

I think if there was one place that we would love to live, and that we loved visiting, it was California wine country. For me, the combination of agriculture, culture, climate and activities made it one of our favorite vacation spots.

It depresses me to see it burning out of control.

We spent 10 days there, a decade ago. Rented a house. Visited wineries. Cooked. Grilled. Strolled through amazing farmer’s markets. Ate at awesome restaurants.

Chateau St. Jean. In the news now for the damage to their property.

It was one of the first places we visited. Picnic in the gardens while enjoying a glass of wine.

We went to over two dozen wineries that trip. Some of them were known because of our wine dinners at Iron Bridge.

Like Corley.

Family owned. Transplants from Virginia. We still get wines from their wine club, and we hope they are doing OK. They are between the Silverado Trail and Highway 29, fairly far north in the valley.

We first met them at a wine dinner in 2005. Out there, they remembered my husband and were so nice to take us everywhere on the property.

We made other friends out there. One, St. Helena Olive Oil. I would order their oil on line to be delivered here. They lost part of their production facility, although Peggy posted that her house was spared.

The impact on all of us. The loss of produce and fruit. Sonoma was a humongous producer of vegetables and fruit, for the US market.

US olive oils. Hopefully, those old, heavy producing olive trees survived. Otherwise, it could be years before production comes back to normal.

Avocados. Nuts. Citrus. Berries. The melting pot in Sonoma.

Makes me nervous when Florida and California have losses in citrus. Between the hurricane and these wildfires.

Add to it all, the disruption in income when all these businesses can’t open. For them, and their workers.

It’s been a crummy year here in the US, hasn’t it?

Leave a comment

Posted in Commentary, Food, Weather, Wine and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Pilgrimage to Penzeys

Posted on October 6, 2017 by AnnieRie

Ever heard of Penzeys. The spice place. Known to bakers, cooks, and those who love the freshest of ingredients. I went there today to find fresh whole spices for Indian cooking.

Because of this cookbook.

The October selection of our cookbook club. A cuisine that we both have loved ever since we first met. There are many excellent Indian restaurants in our area. Ananda comes to mind as a personal favorite. And, garam masala is a staple in my cooking.

But, this book is different. Home cooking, not restaurant meals. Simple, flavorful, and tempting me to create my own garam masala from scratch. And, to make simple dishes like the masala omelet.

I think I am set to continue my cooking, and to grind my own masala. Not pictured are the peppercorns. I do have cloves which are also called for in her recipe for garam masala.

Penzeys store is located in Rockville, even though their website says Penzeys Bethesda. Just south of MD 28 on Rockville Pike. Right now, if you go to their store and spend $50 (not hard to do with spices), you get two free jars.

Not going in my Indian cooking, but definitely a plus for some of my other recipes. Their prices are actually comparable to good sources of spice in specialty stores, but they are so fresh.

I also stocked up on a few staples, like these.

Yeah, I know, addicted to cooking. Just like my mom, who couldn’t pass up a yarn, knitting, craft store.

You can also buy online, if you don’t have a store close to you. What’s to keep you from having some awesome dinners?

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in cookbooks, Food, Hobbies, Real Food and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

San Francisco Bay

Posted on October 1, 2017 by AnnieRie

Coffee.

If there was only one environmentally friendly packaged coffee out there, I hope it is this one. We have a Keurig for convenience, for those days we don’t want a whole pot. I do buy some Green Mountain coffees, but don’t like their wasteful packaging.

Way back when, I discovered this family business that packaged their coffees without all that extra plastic stuff.

Use it. Put it in the compost. Even their outer wrap for the 10 pod packages is made of compostable material. I made special trips to Wegmans to buy it.

Now, it’s gone. Probably because it doesn’t work in K-2 machines. It was a bargain. Less than 40 cents a pod.

But, you know, when you can’t find something, you can always turn to Amazon, can’t you? Yep, the 80 cup pack on line for less than what we paid at Wegmans. With Prime, and free shipping, 30 cents a cup.

And we wonder why brick and mortar stores are hurting.

By the way, this is an excellent dark roast coffee. Low in acid. High in flavor. The dark roasts are so much nicer for those of us who want to avoid acid.

1 Comment

Posted in Commentary, Food and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.