Category Archives: Friends and Farms

Picture Perfect

Posted on August 22, 2014 by AnnieRie

That was dinner tonight.

A trio of food. One from my garden. One from my CSA. And one from Friends and Farms.

My pineapple tomatoes are finally kicking in there and producing. The heirloom carrots from last week’s CSA were oven roasted. The arctic char from this week’s Friends and Farms basket was quick baked at 400 degrees with some honey mustard and lemon pepper on top.

Here’s the rest of the Friends and Farms basket. I need to get creative with some of the items.

Cilantro. Lettuce. Eggplant. Blueberries. Nectarines. An onion. Elephant garlic. Poblanos. Jalapenos. Red Beans.

As for protein.

One dozen eggs. Ground beef. That lovely Arctic char.

And, a loaf of bread. Not pictured.

Thoughts for dinner. Tacos. This basket screams TACOS.

Well, after tomorrow’s Food Preserving program, there will be lots of goodies to eat, or freeze. And, I am seriously considering a major pickled pepper frenzy. Plus, a couple of hot pepper jellies.

Leave a comment

Posted in Food, Friends and Farms, Gardening and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, howard county conservancy, Locavore, tomatoes, volunteering. Bookmark the permalink.

In The Box

Posted on August 14, 2014 by AnnieRie

The view from above.

This is what you see when you open a half share Lancaster Farm Fresh CSA box in the middle of August.

The new one in the box is the bunch of Malabar spinach. I do grow this in my garden, but mine is nowhere near as large as these are. There are nine ears of corn in there. Because I swapped three zucchini for the corn. There is a bag of green beans. A bag of rainbow carrots. An eggplant. And, hidden below those two heirloom tomatoes.

A bag of roma tomatoes, suitable for making sauce. As for the fruit share.

It must be a banner year for peaches, as we have another six in the fruit box. Last and certainly the largest. The watermelon, a red seedless variety.

No pictures of the frozen chicken in my chicken share. There were two large boneless skinless chicken breasts. And, two whole legs of chicken.

Moving over to the Friends and Farms bags. Just a small amount, except for that cantaloupe.

An individual share. Two tomatoes. Two peaches (I have no idea where they are, they aren’t in the picture). One zucchini, I am happy to report. Two ears of corn. Three humongous leeks. Hydroponic lettuce. And that okra. I need to go look for something new to do with okra.

Protein.

Fresh kielbasa. Bacon. Eggs. A new supplier of chicken. Breasts this week. They were already the main item at dinner tonight. Baked in olive oil with a coating of mixed herbs.

Plans for tomorrow. Make tomato sauce. Find a recipe for a curry using the Malabar spinach. Make peach jam. It’s summer craziness when everything starts ripening at once.

1 Comment

Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Gardening, LFFC and tagged cooking, CSA, farms, Food, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, Locavore, real food, tomatoes, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

My Out of Control Kitchen

Posted on August 7, 2014 by AnnieRie

It happens every August. The tomatoes get way ahead of me. I can’t keep up with the processing. I have to dedicate an entire weekend to plowing through the produce and filling the freezer.

Add to it the CSA glut.

For $19 a week you too can be overrun with fresh beautiful vegetables. OK, so there are also some fruit shares here. They are a slight additional cost.

Lancaster Farm Fresh delivered some pretty heavy boxes this week. We got:

FIVE zucchini (seriously? in a half share?)
A bag full of baby sweet peppers
A bag full of hot Hungarian wax peppers (not pictured, more below)
A bag full of baby eggplants
Two heirloom tomatoes
Three slicing tomatoes
Four golden beets with greens
Two heads of garlic

The sugar baby watermelon was part of our fruit share. Along with more of these.

Eight more incredibly juicy luscious sweet peaches.

I swapped those peppers. For a reason to be revealed later.

I did get this.

Three ears of sweet corn from the swap box. You can never have too much sweet corn.

My chicken share this week was a 3.5 pound heritage bird.

As for Friends and Farms, I am glad we moved to an individual share for the summer. That way we aren’t completely overwhelmed with produce.

This was bread and cheese week for the individual share. I picked pumpkin pecan bread from the Breadery. Ewe cream cheese from Shepherds Manor.

Spring Mix. Donut peaches. Nectarines. Sweet potatoes. Heirloom cherry tomatoes. A yellow onion. Green beans. An eggplant.

As for the protein, not pictured, we got catfish, and sirloin steak.

Definitely enough to keep us from the grocery stores for a while.

I just need to get out there and start freezing food.

Leave a comment

Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, GGSAC, LFFC, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, farms, foodie, gardening, GGSAC, heirloom tomatoes, Locavore, real food, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Home Grown Goodness

Posted on August 1, 2014 by AnnieRie

Tonight’s dinner traveled less than 100 miles, for the most part, to our table.

I realized as I was cooking that most of the ingredients, except for oil and spices, were from our CSA, our Friends and Farms basket, my garden, or England Acres.

We got a few medallion steaks from England Acres. These were the last ones. I pan seared, then oven finished the steaks. Each was petite. Just the right size. About 4/10 of a pound each.

The vegetable mix was easily made, as well.

It is so simple to pan fry a mix of fresh vegetables. Start with a good light olive oil. Get it really hot, but not smoking. Add the onions first. Then I added the specialty squash. Then the baby eggplant. Then the tomatoes. I sprinkled these with fresh thyme from the garden. A little salt and pepper. The best part. A small slab of unsalted butter.

The other component of this dinner was a microwaved potato. Covered in pan juices after taking the steak out of the pan.

You can eat locally all the time. Not just during the Buy Local Challenge. Oh, I forgot. The wine was local, too. But I didn’t remember to take pictures. It was a Glen Manor Petit Verdot. From Virginia.

2 Comments

Posted in Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Locavore, Real Food, Wine and tagged cooking, farms, Food, foodie, Locavore, VA wine, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Tabouleh Time

Posted on July 31, 2014 by AnnieRie

Sometimes one item in a CSA box or a Friends and Farms basket will inspire me. This week, in our Friends and Farms individual share, there was a huge bunch of parsley. All I need to make tabouleh, that I don’t have, is red onion.

Tabouleh only requires parsley, bulgur, tomatoes, onion, lemon, mint, olive oil and cucumber. Salt and pepper. I actually have bulgur in the pantry. This weekend I will be making my version. We will see how it turns out.

As for the rest of the basket, a peak into the insulated bag.

This week is my eggs and yogurt week. I chose vanilla yogurt, to use up some of the fruit around here to make popsicles. More on that later, too. We got one large pork chop (in an individual basket, there isn’t that much meat, which is a good thing). We also got a small package of “party wings”. Grilled wings next Monday or Tuesday, I think. The pork chop was seared, then finished in the oven, for dinner tonight. A little lemon pepper and olive oil. That’s all.

Two ears of corn.

They were also served at dinner. Can’t get much fresher than this.

The rest of the basket.

One Savoy cabbage. One container of Baby Bellas (which will become mushroom sauce for a special dinner with filets of beef). Two green peppers. Three potatoes. Three Lodi apples. Four yellow and four purple plums from Catoctin Mountain Orchards. One cucumber (for that tabouleh).

I like the size of this basket. I like the fact that we only get bread every other week. Three weeks of eggs for us, as we get eggs instead of milk. Cheese once a month. Breakfast meat once a month. Yogurt once a month. A good rotation, so you can use it up and not waste it.

And, the plums are delicious. Can’t decide my favorite. But I love Catoctin Mountain Orchards. We like to drive up there and find little treasures in their market. They are just north of Thurmont, off of US 15.

A good basket this week. A way to use up some of my tomatoes, that’s for sure.

1 Comment

Posted in Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, Food, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Is It Extreme #buylocalchallenge when …

Posted on July 25, 2014 by AnnieRie

… it’s the normal way you live?

This isn’t a challenge. It’s our life. We can thank Friends and Farms, Lancaster Farm Fresh CSA, Howard County farms and markets, and my garden for making the vast majority of our food come from local sources.

Like this luscious fresh fruit in our CSA share. Without worries of bacteria. We got plums, peaches and blackberries from LFFC on Thursday. The plums are gone already. My husband must have had a couple with every lunch and dinner. They are so ripe, so flavorful.

LFFC also gave us this.

In a half share.

Golden Beets
Rainbow carrots
Red potatoes
Royal burgundy beans
Ping Tung long eggplant
Heirloom tomatoes
Corn (I swapped zucchini for these)

I gave up four zucchini for two ears of corn. There is way too much zucchini in my garden.

As for the add ons.

The cheese share included: Millich Kivvel, a raw milk cheese reminiscent of Camembert. Aged Goat Cheese, and Goat Feta.

The chicken:

Thighs, drumsticks and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. These chicken deliveries have been one very welcome addition to our food sources. Last week I slow baked legs and breasts. Served the legs for dinner and the breasts became the center of a Caesar salad for lunch.

I love having antibiotic free, hormone free chicken in our diet. Once you tasted free range chicken, it is really hard to settle for those bland tasteless store bought chickens.

As for Friends and Farms, and my individual share. We got ground beef and ahi. I forgot and put them away before documenting my food.

There was a large quantity of heirloom squash in the bags. A few assorted tomatoes. Two peaches. Blackberries. Green beans. Kale. Frisee. Eggs and bread this week. Honey whole wheat from The Breadery.

Tonight for dinner I grilled the ahi. And some of the squash. Brushed with Italian dressing and seasoned with salt and pepper.

The individual basket is perfect when you have a garden, or for one or two people. I like getting bread biweekly and eggs three times a month. Cheese once a month. Breakfast meat once a month. A good rotation. One that we customized to fit our needs.

All in all, doing the Buy Local Challenge is easy, when you have local food sources delivering the bulk of your protein, dairy, vegetables and fruit.

CSA chicken, with my onions. And CSA heirloom tomatoes. Dinner Thursday night.

Leave a comment

Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Gardening, LFFC, Locavore and tagged buy local challenge, cooking, CSA, farmer's markets, farms, Food, foodie, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, Locavore, real food, tomatoes, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Extreme #buylocalchallenge

Posted on July 19, 2014 by AnnieRie

As is eating something local at every meal. Easy to do if most of your food comes from a CSA, a regional food service, and your garden.

I count my garden as supporting local farmers as most of the plants were purchased from local farms. I don’t buy plants from national chains like Lowe’s or Home Depot, but from local farms like Sharp’s or Greenway. Both Howard County farms.

Today was the first day of the challenge. Breakfast included toast with CSA raspberry jam, for me. And for my husband, cereal with CSA blueberries.

Lunch for him. Tuna salad with my onions. For me, cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots, dipped in a yogurt dressing. Yogurt from PA. Cucumbers and tomatoes, my garden. Carrots, CSA.

Peaches from the CSA for a snack.

Dinner tonight.

Local wine!

Big Cork, from Rohrersville MD. Ready to go to the table with some of my flowers from my front yard.

CSA chicken thighs being baked with CSA potatoes, my onions and Wayne Nell smoked bacon (Friends and Farms supplier from York PA). They buy from farms in the area surrounding York.

The salad.

Baywater Greens from Salisbury supplied the leaf lettuce. CSA spinach, beets, gouda, blueberries.

Oh, I forgot, there was corn on the cob, too. From the CSA.

Very little today that didn’t come locally. Off to a good start. On to Day Two tomorrow.

Leave a comment

Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Gardening, LFFC, Locavore, Wine and tagged buy local challenge, cooking, CSA, farms, Food, foodie, gardening, Locavore, MD Wine, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Friends and Farms “Buy Local”

Posted on July 18, 2014 by AnnieRie

We got our Friends and Farms basket Thursday, just in time for the Buy Local Challenge.

I am happy to see at the Buy Local Website that they don’t require the farms and markets to be in Maryland. Just “local”.

Depending on where you live, food from across a state line may be more local than in state. Like for us. Cheese from Lancaster is closer than cheese from Firefly Farms in western MD. Not that we don’t love Firefly. It’s just that MD is a wide east west but narrow north south state.

For us, foods from MD, VA, WV, DE and PA are all considered local. Mostly within a 100 mile radius to our home.

Our Friends and Farms basket this week was full of local foods by that definition. We can take the Buy Local “Extreme” challenge and include local foods in every meal, using the goodness of our basket.

The pork butt and bacon came from York PA. The chicken from Freebird, in the Lancaster area of PA. The eggs, from MD.

Clinton MD. We also get some vegetables from Miller Farms too.

This week the lettuce was from Salisbury MD. That’s where Baywater Greens is located.

The berries, from VA. Agriberry blackberries.

We also got jalapenos. Cilantro. Sweet corn. Green peppers. An eggplant. Elephant garlic.

I added a quart of plain yogurt. Need to make tzatziki while the cucumbers are still producing.

It will be easy to eat locally with all this food. Along with my garden and my CSA. Who needs grocery stores? Oh yeah, toilet paper.

Leave a comment

Posted in Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Gardening, Locavore and tagged buy local challenge, farms, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore. Bookmark the permalink.

Growing Onions

Posted on July 16, 2014 by AnnieRie

This is the first year I have attempted onions in the garden. I have white onions, yellow onions, plus I have shallots and leeks, both related to the onions.

The onions look great as they are growing. I am still in that learning curve though. I didn’t stop watering them when the tops started falling over. Then, we got 1 1/2 inches of rain. So, some of them look to be soggy and beginning to rot at the top.

I took eight of them out today. Trimmed them back. I hope to dry half of these, and I have a couple in the pot with the chicken carcass, making stock.

My Tractor Supply starter set had eighty onions in it. They were bulbs, which are easier to grow.

I have to admit. These have been a really good producer. I know in the future there will be onions in the garden.

Tomorrow I get eggplant, eggs and bacon from Friends and Farms. I have squash. I have mega amounts of zucchini. I have onions and shallots. I have garlic. I have tomatoes. Sounds like ratatouille pie to me.

Leave a comment

Posted in Food, Friends and Farms, Gardening, Real Food and tagged cooking, farms, Food, foodie, gardening, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Taking the Buy Local Challenge

Posted on July 14, 2014 by AnnieRie

For the third year in a row. The MD Buy Local Challenge. Dates are July 19-27.

This year I almost forgot about it until I received the reminder email. Since most of our food is local or regional, we already eat at least one item every day that comes from our Lancaster Farm Fresh CSA, our Friends and Farms basket, a local market or farm, or my garden.

If you wanted to join in, it is easy to do. You don’t even have to cook. Buy some fruit.