Category Archives: Local Businesses

Come Meet Your Local Farmers

Posted on January 16, 2013 by AnnieRie

This Sunday the 20th from 2-4:30 the Howard County Conservancy is presenting a program featuring our local farmers. Come and meet the faces behind the farms. Farms that participate in our markets, that have seed sales, pumpkin patches, mazes, fall festivals, farmstands and CSAs.

Particularly the CSAs. Many of the farms will be explaining how their CSAs work. Here is a shot of last year’s April delivery from Zahradka.

Typical April CSA items

If you are interested in learning more, come join the discussions. Besides having information available a few of the farms have items for sale. Like cheese. Honey. Eggs. You can also find out how and where to get local beef, lamb and pork from our farmers.

Farms include: Clarks, Sharp, Breezy Willow, Love Dove, Bowling Green, Zahradka, and Gorman. Maybe you have visited their stands. Maybe bought their items at the markets in Howard County.

Love Dove, at market, also has CSA

Do you know where they are located? How long the land has been farmed? What they now farm and any changes over the years?

There will be an informal panel discussion at 3 pm, with the participants. Ask what they grow, what they love most about farming, what are they planning in their futures?

Check out all the great products brought to us from our local farms. How about seedlings for your herb or vegetable garden?

heirloom tomato seedlings and plugs – Sharp’s farm

Did you know you can order meat to pick up at Clark’s on Saturdays? Or, stop out at Breezy Willow for eggs, meat, dairy and winter veggies? Find out what is available year round. It may be winter but there is quite a bit available to support our local farmers.

Breezy Willow in January

Join us Sunday!

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Restaurant Weeks

Posted on January 15, 2013 by AnnieRie

I have mixed feelings about restaurant weeks. I know they are designed to bring people into the independently owned restaurants but why do we need an incentive to avoid the chain restaurants and their prepackaged reheated meals.

I love our local small restaurants. Our three favorites these days include Bistro Blanc, Iron Bridge and Elkridge Furnace. All locally owned. All making things using the local farms and cooking from scratch.

I wandered up to Bistro Blanc tonight all by my lonesome as my husband had a club dinner in Frederick. I sit at the bar and talk to Andy or Warren, whoever is bartending. I also get to converse with the locals who frequent the bar as a very casual place to enjoy a meal.

Don’t come here if you are in a hurry. Food here is cooked from scratch. Your burgers are made to order from fresh local meats and nothing beats fresh lamb cooked medium rare, juicy and served on a brioche bun.

The lamb burger was amazing, but so are the frites. Garlicky, with whole roasted cloves of garlic hidden in the bowl. Sprinkled with parmigiano and rosemary. Served with an aioli that is also rich and garlicky. I love my burgers medium rare and it drives me nuts to go to a place that will only incinerate and dry out a burger. But, they usually have premade patties of questionable origin, so maybe incineration is a good thing for them.

I paired the burger with a lovely Domaine Chandon Pinot Meunier. Tuesday is half price wine night. This is a good deal for wines. I brought half of it home for my husband to savor with some cheese later this evening.

Their restaurant week menu looks great. We will be there some night next week for it.

Check out your local Howard County restaurants for their special menus, but more importantly, support them all year long.

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Posted in Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Restaurants, West HoCo, Wine and tagged community, Food, foodie, hoco loco, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food, West HoCo, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Make Mine Mofongo

Posted on January 13, 2013 by AnnieRie

Yes, I finally got around to making the plantains. Another item crossed off my Sixty@Sixty challenge. Lots of local goodies in the dinner. But, not those plantains.

The plantains were not green. Like the recipes call for. They were getting ripe. That just meant they were quicker to cook in the salted water. I have to admit I really liked this dish. It does need more garlic though. I think I underdid the garlic.

I also chose a recipe that called for putting the patties in a saute pan, and not for deep frying patties or balls. This one.

Sort of. I just did the second half of it. Not the chicken.

Aren’t they great looking? There is local food in them too. The garlic. The bacon.

Served with a side salad, mostly local, and a local wine. I combined local dining with non-native ingredients. Making those foodie and locavore worlds collide.

Tomatoes, arugula, wine and cauliflower all from local sources. I have been incorporating local items into many of our meals. Even when I go out there to try something new. I liked this version of mofongo. Less fat than deep fried. My husband said they needed more garlic. I agree.

By the way, the broth used in this recipe was made with those beef bones from England Acres. Awesome broth. Made yesterday.

Beef bones, salt and water. Cooked down until rich. Refrigerated. When taken out, discard that fat layer and leave the clear broth. I used just a small amount of it. The rest will go into a gravy for gnocchi later this week.

I really have changed what I cook and how. It’s a great hobby in retirement. Learning to cook outside your native comfort zone.

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Winter Eat Local Challenge Breakfast

Posted on January 13, 2013 by AnnieRie

The easy meal for my Eat Local all Winter challenge. The challenge is to eat at least one meal a week from locally sourced items. Most of this last week, I have had local items in almost every meal, but Sunday breakfast is the easiest to make.

Particularly, eggs, bacon and toast.

I never get tired of these lovely eggs. Rich orange yolks. My eggs come from three local farms, depending on where I go to pick up other items. These are Breezy Willow eggs. I also now have England Acres eggs in the fridge, and some weeks when I get to TLV, I will buy eggs from them. All are from free range hens.

The England Acre hens, in their portable fenced in area, that is moved around to allow them to find good things to eat. It doesn’t seem to deter a few hens, including this one who “flew the coop” and was wandering around towards the parking lot. Out at England Acres, Judy has small bags of feed that she keeps for children to buy and go out to feed the chickens. An easy way to teach the little ones about the chickens. They are funny. They all run in the direction of any children who come to the farm, even abandoning the area where their feed is located.

I learned a technique for doing eggs. I use just a touch of unsalted butter in the pan, and a splash of extra light olive oil after the butter starts browning. Put in the eggs. Let them cook until white is set, then gently spoon the hot oil over the yolks to set them. Nice sunny side up eggs, perfectly finished. The bacon in the pan added just a bit of fat. I only used a few small pieces of already cooked bacon. The bacon came from TLV, and I cooked up a package to use in a number of meals. It will be used in the mofongo I am making tonight, to use those plantains I bought.

After I defrost the bacon, I cut it in quarters and fry the entire package. I save the grease in a jar in the fridge to use if I am going to make venison, as venison is so lean. This time I didn’t save it, because I have some from a few weeks back when I made chili. Amazing how much fat there is in bacon, isn’t it? This bacon is destined mostly for the mofongo, and for some homemade bacon dressing I will be making for spinach salad topping, and for potato salad to use up the last of my CSA potatoes. One bout of cooking. Four different uses for it. Multitasking again.

As for the toast today, it was Spring Mill Bread. This has become my husband’s second favorite toast bread. After Atwater’s. Too bad Atwaters isn’t in the Olney winter market. Canela is. We have so many great bread makers in the area now. Easy to get a locally produced loaf of fresh bread. Let’s see. Atwater’s, The Breadery, Bonaparte, Great Harvest, Spring Mill, Canela, Stone House. At the markets and some local stores, look for freshly baked whole grain bread,

Seven Grain Crunch. The reason I love this bread is the lack of preservatives, dairy and oils. Yes, I am sometimes bad and put Trickling Springs butter on it, but I love it with just a touch of local jam, or some of my crushed berries from the freezer. Toast to mop up all that lovely yolk left on the plate from the eggs.

Sunday breakfast is a very easy way to make local foods part of your weekly dining.

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Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, CSA, farmer's markets, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

A “Twofer”

Posted on January 11, 2013 by AnnieRie

That is, checking two things off my Sixty@Sixty list. Today being Friday, it’s a day we tend to take day trips. It’s also an errand running day, so we combined the two things. We also gave the pickup some needed mileage. It doesn’t get used much in the winter. We set the GPS today to do back roads, going and coming.

You know, shortest distance, avoid highways. One of our favorite ways to explore. I was on a mission. I wanted to get to Catoctin Mountain Orchards before they closed for three months. They close February, March and April every year. I wanted to pick up some salad dressings and salsa to use a basis for making my own. I wanted to see the ingredients. Compare the taste. Use my frozen fruit from Larriland and Butler’s. I have peaches, strawberries, blueberries and blackberries in the freezer.

We also found a bonus for my husband. Venison sticks and sausage. We get venison sausage when we visit Linden, and here was a version from Pennsylvania, for him to try. Not sure where we will use it, but what the heck.

We also found cow’s milk feta from Hagerstown. Time to compare to our favorite from Bowling Green Farms. After leaving Catoctin, we decided to stop at a market we never visited. Gateway. One of my goals on my challenge. Visit new markets and farm stands. Nothing like a candyland, farm market, convenience store and liquor store. Gateway is truly interesting. If you are into candy making, they have one incredible wall full of molds, ingredients and other things you need to make candy.

They also have bins full of penny candy. Not that it is a penny anymore, but these fulfill my challenge to relive childhood memories.

These are the candies we bought before going to the movies. They bring back memories of Saturday matinees, and bad for your fillings chewy candies. My husband has already gotten into them. I did pick up a few other favorites. Rock candy and coconut slices.

The rock candy will be used two ways. In tea, in place of honey. Really strong tea for when you feel under the weather. And, with some Pikesville rye. Making memories like my dad did. Rock n Rye.

The coconut slices. Yum! An old friend. Something that just makes you smile.

All in all, a good day tripping Friday. Here’s to more adventures in the coming months.

Encore!

Posted on January 11, 2013 by AnnieRie

It sounds way better than leftovers. But, lasagna is one of those things that just gets better the second time you bake it. Crispier. Richer.

I made this a mostly local dinner tonight. For my Winter Eat Local Challenge. I had major locally produced elements throughout the dinner.

Like the bread. Semolina from the indoor winter Olney market, now out the Sandy Spring Museum on Sunday mornings. Canela Bread. The wine. A 2001 Breaux Nebbiolo, from Virginia. The salad greens from Our House, again the Olney market. The feta on the salad. Bought at England Acres from Apple Tree Goat Dairy. One of the farms from Lancaster Farm Fresh. England Acres is buying items from the cooperative that supplies my summer and fall CSA.

The lasagna wasn’t local. That is true. Except for the eggs in it. And, the mozzarella. I am now using local items in almost every meal, although I rarely have been making what we would call the 100% meals we did when I did last year’s Dark Days Challenge. I have evolved my shopping and my cooking to include local items during breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every meal has some farmer supplied items in it.

Big change from how I shopped, cooked and ate just a few years ago. As for dinner tonight. The wine was fully mature. Nebbiolo isn’t common in this area. Breaux is one of the few wineries that grows this grape in our area. But, now that Dave Collins left Breaux and is soon to open his own winery in Maryland, we hear that he is planting Nebbiolo in Washington County.

His 2001 Breaux offering is elegant, reminiscent of the Barbarescos we have had. Not anywhere near the weight of a Barolo (nor anywhere near the price of one), this is a lovely wine. We had two bottles from many of his vintages. 2000, 2001 and 2002. Drinking well now, but could still stand some more time.

I look forward to this new winery opening. It will be a welcome addition for the locapours around here. As for the dinner tonight, the pairing of lasagna with Nebbiolo is a very good match.

The rest of the lasagna is now residing in the freezer, to be brought out in a few weeks when I get an urge for Italian food, and can open a Breaux or a Barboursville Italian style wine from “just down the road a piece”.

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Classic Lasagna

Posted on January 9, 2013 by AnnieRie

It’s what’s for dinner.

I christened my new lasagna pan today. Made it a combination of local and organic foods. Sort of followed what my mom would have made. The basic cheese layer: mozzarella, parmesan and ricotta, mixed with two local eggs. The cheeses were from Wegmans.

The meat: half Boarmans’ sausage and half England Acres ground beef.

The lasagna sheets from Wegmans were fresh, thin and melted in your mouth. The tomato sauce was their organic Grandpas recipe. I didn’t measure. I didn’t follow any recipe, just winged it. Sometimes that getting back to basic cooking is so satisfying.

This dish will make six dinners. Four will go in the freezer, and after tonight, one this weekend. Made any real food from scratch lately?

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Sixty @ Sixty Using the Yacon

Posted on January 4, 2013 by AnnieRie

My personal challenge in turning sixty. Use six new exotic veggies. Tonight it was the yacon. Remember the yacon? The weird veggie in my CSA just before Christmas.

Yacon is a relative of the sunflower and the Jerusalem artichoke, only slightly sweeter. Grown mostly in the Andes, this veggie made its way to our home in our organic CSA box, from the Amish in Lancaster. I found a recipe that used it raw in a salad with other fruits and veggies. I decided to try it out this way.

Shaved with the mandoline. Paired with apple, carrot and greens. Finished with pomegranate seeds, pistachios and pepitas. Sprinkled with goat cheese feta.

The salad, and a roasted chicken, were dinner tonight. Served with a Glen Manor wine. The chicken from a local farm. The wine, one of my favorite Sauvignon blancs out there. It tastes like a New Zealand wine.

But the star of the dinner, I have to admit, was the Stone House multigrain bread. Taken out of the freezer and baked for 15 minutes. Crisp crunchy crust. Tons of flavor. It was the highlight of dinner. Thank you TLV farms, for having them at the tree cutting days at the local farm. I stocked up in the freezer with their breads.

Back to mostly local cooking, and good for us veggies. The holidays are over, but good food is still out there. Oh, and the other highlight of the dinner. My birthday roses are still hanging in there. Way to go, Raimondis.

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Posted in CSA, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Sixty@Sixty, West HoCo, Wine and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, hoco loco, local businesses, Locavore, real food, West HoCo, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Covering All the Bases

Posted on January 1, 2013 by AnnieRie

New Year’s traditional food bases, that is. What do you eat for good luck? Prosperity? There are dozens of traditional foods, eaten for luck, or just because it’s something an ethnic group always does. Like our having pickled herring in our German dominant family. I don’t do pickled herring, so I threw out that tradition.

I did succumb to a few. The pork one, for instance. Pork is good luck because it is a fatty animal symbolizing wealth and prosperity. Plus, it roots forward, and that is a good thing. Don’t eat chicken on New Year’s. It scratches backwards to eat, and it is also a winged fowl, which means your good fortune could fly away.

I like researching the traditions, and following ones that fit our style of eating. Today I did make cabbage, greens, beans and pork in the crockpot.

The platter included smoked pork shank, butter beans, mustard greens, and I split a cabbage to steam on top of everything else. Added a bit of beef stock to give it a richness. Lightly seasoned. Garlic, salt, pepper and parsley. Six hours in the crockpot and it was warm, comforting and a good match for a local wine.

A very nice light cellar selection VA wine, from Breaux. It didn’t overwhelm anything, and was light and fruit forward.

We also started the day with a tradition. Bacon and eggs. Only I pared it down to one slice of bacon each, and I made Breezy Willow eggs. Check out the yolk on these eggs. I don’t know if eggs from a chicken are good luck, or bad, but the brunch was wonderful. Mostly local, too. Local bread and butter. Local eggs, and bacon from Boarman’s (source of the hog not known). It counts as my brunch dish for our winter eat local challenge.

Any traditions for the New Year at your place?

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One Lovely Birthday Dinner

Posted on December 29, 2012 by AnnieRie

Compliments of my husband, Wegmans, Raimondi’s and England Acres. Today really turned out nice, in spite of the snow. My husband had flowers and strawberries sent to the house, even though it took a while to get here. Seems FedEx delivered, as we are out in the boonies beyond the normal delivery area for the florist. He was sweating them getting here, but at 4:30 they arrived.

It was an easy dinner to do. Rockfish, and cauliflower, both baked in the oven. The cauliflower went in first, then the rockfish.

A simple salad using those pomegranate seeds. Oranges picked up at England Acres last week, and fennel from Wegmans. Lemon olive oil, orange juice, red onion, salt and pepper. Served over arugula.

Dinner in the dining room. All decked out for a party. Finished later with the strawberries and a dry sparkling Domaine Carneros. Dinner served with a Puligny Montrachet from Chanson. Not a bad celebration, and a fraction of the cost of going out. My better half did the dishes for me. What more could you ask for?