Category Archives: Real Food

Going for the Greens …

Posted on March 16, 2016 by AnnieRie

… inspired by our CSA basket, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

That lacinato kale made me think once again of colcannon. So I decided to go looking for a truly Irish interpretation of the dish, one that I have made countless times and blogged about, almost as often.

I never knew about the Halloween connection, or the prizes inside. Amazing what we can find here on the internet, isn’t it?

But, getting back to the CSA basket, the kale and parsnips both made me think of making my version. I have to use the techniques from the web reference, as it hasn’t been the way I’ve finished mine.

As for the rest of my weekly Lancaster Farm Fresh delivery, picked up at my friend’s home near Robinson Nature Center, there were other real favorites this week.

Five of the seven vegetable items came from the LFFC “brand”, which is what they sell to restaurants, stores and buying groups, like Friends and Farms. Two of the items were attributed to individual farmers. We knew that in the winter we would be getting some of the vegetables bought through the cooperative, to supplement what is grown on the local farms year round. Let’s face it, with a CSA that tops out some years above 4000 members, you can’t always get the local farms to have enough every single week. Or, that the small farms can provide enough of one item, so some of our items have the LFFC tag on it, meaning it’s an aggregate of many of the farms’ provisions.

This week we got zucchini. Five absolutely lovely green zucchini. A joy to get them in the dead of winter, and we had been told that farms south of us were being used to supply some variety in our baskets. I have plans for those zucchini. My store in the freezer of zucchini fritters is gone. Done. Inhaled. I love the Smitten Kitchen recipe for zucchini fritters and make dozens of them in the summer, gently layered in parchment and placed in the freezer. We used our last ones a week ago.

I will be grating zucchini and making a nice replacement batch. I have to pick up some plain yogurt at Friends and Farms to make tzatziki in order to enjoy some this weekend.

As for those sweet potatoes on steroids. I have plans for them. They were in the swap box, and I just decided I was tired of beets and sunchoked out, so I put the bags of each of them into the box and brought home those two behemoths. I want to make hummus with one, and bread with the other. Never made sweet potato bread and since I am a prisoner in my house while work is being done (still not finished after four weeks), it’s a good time to try a new recipe.

As for the rest of my stuff yesterday, here are the bread and cheese.

And, the meat delivery of the week.

Yep, bison is back. Along with chicken thighs and bacon. Not what works for tomorrow, but welcome additions to my freezer.

As for tomorrow there will be sausage for dinner. With colcannon. Bread. Cheese. Guinness. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, LFFC, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, holidays, real food, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Chili Weather

Posted on February 9, 2016 by AnnieRie

Another day. Another snow event. Seems to have become the norm around here. After the blizzard a few weeks back, I saw many people posting about the lack of chili ingredients in the local stores. There must have been a run on onions, beans, beef, and peppers.

Never one to be unprepared, I have figured out how to always be ready to make chili. Mostly crockpot chili. Yesterday while we were finishing up on a renovation task around here, I made sure that we had chili fixings, and put the pot on the counter.

Here’s how to be sure you don’t face a chili ingredient “emergency”.

I always have some sort of ground meat in the freezer. Mostly from the CSA or Friends and Farms. Beef, chicken or turkey. Depends on what I have two pounds available at the time. This time, I used CSA ground beef.

My stash from the pantry. I always have three items there. From Costco. Tomato paste. Diced tomatoes. Black beans. I also stock up on Harris Teeter’s beans when I see them on sale. This batch of chili used their organic chili beans in sauce.

In my freezer, from the summer, I have bags of roasted sweet peppers and of caramelized onions. If I can’t find onions at the store, or if I’m out of CSA onions, I can substitute. This time I used shallots, and the hot peppers left in the container from the olive bar. That’s where the heat was introduced in this chili.

Then, there’s the four C’s.

My secret to a sweet, hot chili. Those four ingredients pictured above. Add a little salt and pepper. Put everything into the crockpot. No, I don’t measure. Chili is such a forgiving recipe. Use more beans if you like. More peppers. More cilantro. Skip the cilantro. Whatever tastes best to you.

There will be a couple of dinners out of my latest batch. So far though, we’re just thankful this is supposed to be less than a six inch snow event.

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Posted in Food, Real Food, Weather and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, Food, real food, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

60/40

Posted on January 14, 2016 by AnnieRie

So I have a question. What percentage of your dinners are take out, restaurant or delivery? Are you like we were, back in the days when our commute dominated our lives in Howard County? Did you eat out more than half the time, every week? How about changing your percentages, to four days home. A 60/40 mix.

Believe it or not, you can change to eating fresher, more “expensive” food at home. It just takes a little effort to change dining out from majority to minority. Something so simple as one more night in, instead of outsourced.

I really love the protein and dairy bag from Friends and Farms. You can easily do four nights in, and still have three nights “out” with this affordable protein option. My $43 a week basket feeds the two of us, and provides us with the protein on our plates for at least four meals, sometimes five or six.

Take this week.

There are chicken legs, chorizo, breakfast links and rainbow trout in our basket. Along with the weekly eggs and, in our case we have turnips since we don’t do the milk thing.

I can make two meals from the chorizo. Two from the chicken. We use the breakfast links in weird ways, like in tomato sauce or in soups. Not a big fan of pork for breakfast but these tasty links can be cut up and used in so many savory dishes. Eggs. For Meatless Mondays, they make great omelets or frittatas.

But getting back to the original thought. You can make a very simple meal from the trout. One that would cost major bucks at a restaurant. Less than 30 minutes. How?

Plop those trout in a baking dish. Cover them in lemon infused olive oil, white wine and lemon pepper seasoning. Bake them at about 300 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

I made two simple side dishes. Boiled baby potatoes. Microwave steamed Brussels sprouts.

Looks great, doesn’t it? I put the potatoes on while prepping the trout. I steamed the sprouts two minutes before the fish was done. Open a bottle of white wine and you have an excellent meal. With a little effort, and a little help from Friends and Farms.

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Posted in Food, Friends and Farms, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, hoco loco, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Spring Has Sprung

Posted on December 21, 2015 by AnnieRie

Yes, I know it’s the first day of winter. But here in Howard County, some of the cherry trees have buds on them. The temperature on Christmas Eve is predicted to be 73 degrees F.

And then there’s this.

That would be the garlic greens aka spring garlic that was in last week’s CSA box. Obviously the fall plantings are taking off in all this warm weather. Besides the garlic we have been getting lots of greens. Usually they are done by this time of year.

There was a bag of spinach. A bag of “spring mix”. A couple heads of romaine. Plus, those watermelon radishes, which I love.

Sliced thin. Sprinkled with a little kosher salt. Perfect appetizer.

As for those garlic greens. A great addition to colcannon.

This week’s base for colcannon was a combination of items from two weeks of CSA deliveries. Parsnips, turnips and potatoes, cooked. A mix of garlic greens, Napa cabbage and spinach. Not a traditional colcannon. But a very tasty one.

Here’s another rendition of my colcannon. With the post that tells how I made it.

A simple dish to make, in any season. Some white stuff. Some green stuff. Some milk and butter. What’s not to love about colcannon?

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Posted in CSA, Food, LFFC, Locavore, Real Food, Weather, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, Locavore, real food, value of CSA, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Cookie Central

Posted on December 15, 2015 by AnnieRie

I miss Gourmet.

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For twenty five years, I subscribed. Not just for the cooking, but for the writing.

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The seasonal articles. The travelogues. I can’t just get recipes from Epicurious. I have kept my back issues, preserved in a bookcase. Archived by month. Every December I pick a few years to read and relish.

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This year’s trip went back twenty years.

I am baking most of my cookies this year from past issues.

A few new ones.

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Like the lemon butter cookies, which taste just like those you can buy from the local Otterbein bakery. Which I sometimes pick up in Boarman’s while standing in line to check out.

A simple recipe. Cream together 1 1/2 sticks of butter and 1 cup of sugar. Add an egg and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Meanwhile whisk together 2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Slowly add to butter mixture in a stand mixer. Add 1 heaping tablespoon of lemon zest, and 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Make a log of the dough. Refrigerate. The longer the better. Mine was put in two days before baking. These cookies will get soft quickly, so I cut the log in half before slicing and kept the rest refrigerated until ready to do two more sheets. I got six dozen small cookies from this recipe.

In a preheated oven, I use convection bake at 350 degrees F, but the recipe calls for 375. I have learned that my convection bake setting cooks faster and you can lower the heat making it easier to get good cookies without burning the bottoms.

I baked these for 14 minutes. The recipe calls for regular baking of about 15 minutes on that higher temperature.

I also made the chocolate version of these butter cookies.

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These were more difficult to work. They tended to crumble. They were drier in handling. The difference. Add 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa, 10 1/2 ounces bittersweet melted chocolate and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda to the mixer after adding the flour mixture. Don’t add the lemon like I did to make the cookies above. This mixture was very stiff and much drier. They taste intensely chocolate. Not that sweet. I sprinkled demerara and sparkly sugar on them before baking.

I am still doing cookies today. There will be sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies and maybe gingerbread. This year there will be boxes given to many of the family and friends who celebrate with us.

I love it when the house smells of cinnamon and nutmeg.

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Posted in cookbooks, Food, Hobbies, Real Food and tagged baking, Christmas cookies, cookies, Food, Gourmet magazine, holidays, traditions. Bookmark the permalink.

You Can’t Get There From Here

Posted on November 29, 2015 by AnnieRie

At least, not easily. Sometimes it’s how we feel about all the long and winding roads in our part of the county. Roads that are lovely to look at, but make it slow going if you want to get to another nearby town on an errand.

Two examples in the last couple of days involved traveling to Olney. A fellow blogger lamented the fact that getting to the Olney Theater requires driving a very circuitous route. For me, as I was signing up for my winter CSA, my two options for pick up were Columbia or Olney. Olney is closer to me, as the crow flies, but is longer over the roads, and takes almost twice as long to drive than to the Columbia pickup point.

Olney market Sunday mornings

I suppose that is why I find little enthusiasm among friends for heading over to the year round Sunday market in Olney. It isn’t an easy trip across Rte. 108. It meanders and winds and seems to take forever. We can take a more direct route, using either Mink Hollow or Brighton Dam Roads, but you have to know the territory.

I decided when signing up for the CSA to make Olney a second choice, and I’ll cross my fingers that we get the minimum number of members to keep Columbia going all winter. I love our winter CSA, particularly the meat share, the bread share, the cheese share and the pantry items.

Yes, we get repetitive vegetables. Samples from last year’s omnivore share, where we got a pantry item, a meat item, and a cheese item with our vegetable delivery every week.

January 2015

February 2015

March 2015

April 2015

Carrots were always there. Mushrooms, too. I know I can get most of these items at the year round markets, but I like going to the CSA pick up point and chatting about recipes. I also like supporting the farmers through the winter. Over 100 of the Amish farmers that supply our CSA count on us to keep them solvent.

If we don’t meet our minimum, I may be heading over the river and through the woods to Olney. Fresh food all winter is a big incentive.

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Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, LFFC, Real Food and tagged CSA, farmer's markets, farms, Food, real food, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Here For The Food

Posted on November 27, 2015 by AnnieRie

An old favorite cookbook that made the turkey easy. A simple brine. A simple technique. Whenever people think it’s too hard to cook or bake they should pull out this book.

If you want a turkey this good, they should google orange juice brown sugar brine. It will take them to Amazon where this recipe was featured.

The turkey was perfect. The brining took 15 hours for my 13 pound turkey from Maple Lawn. Their web site will be updated on December 7th for those who want to try turkey for Christmas.

For us, the small hen was easy to handle and fit into the dorm sized refrigerator for brining.

I put a platter out for our Thanksgiving dinner. I made soup with the wings and the one drumstick my husband didn’t eat.

I also made 5 quarts of turkey broth with the innards, skin and bones after making the Thanksgiving meal.

Three jars went into the freezer, and two quarts went into that soup. I will be making sandwiches for a few days, and a turkey casserole this weekend. All told, that bird will yield at least a half dozen meals. Not bad for $33.

And, I gave my mom about a half pound of perfectly cooked moist breast meat to make sandwiches and a dinner.

Local food. Easy to make. Worth the time it took. If you haven’t tried making a turkey, you should get over to Maple Lawn and buy a small 10-12 pound hen. You really don’t need to brine it. But, it really improves the taste.

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Posted in cookbooks, Farms, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, farms, Food, foodie, holidays, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

It’s Turkey Day

Posted on November 23, 2015 by AnnieRie

The rush is on. At Maple Lawn Turkey Farm. Our local farm that raises free range turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

From 7am until 5 pm, before Thanksgiving, and then they still have hours after Thanksgiving, but these are the busy three days. I am brining my turkey overnight tomorrow, and cooking it Wednesday. Getting ready ahead of time and then I only have to brown it for the dinner. I am finding that to be a bit more manageable.

I also picked up a few extras.

Drumsticks. Six to a package. Seven pounds. $5 for the package. The ultimate winter staple. Destined to become a number of pots of turkey noodle or turkey rice soup. I split them into two packs and vacuum sealed them. They are back in the freezer. The smoked breast will become a meal sometime next week. I put the breast and the turkey in the little fridge in my laundry room. Set to 35 degrees to keep them fresh.

I got a 13 pound hen. Wrapped in butcher paper. Brought it home. Cleaned it up. Plopped it in a big bowl and put it away. Tomorrow I will make the brine and get it ready to cook.

It wasn’t that bad there this morning. At 10 o’clock, there was still close in parking and no real lines. You have to pay by cash or check. They do have a portable ATM outside, for those that forget. You can also pick up turkey bacon, ground turkey, wings and tails/necks, frozen, to take home for future use.

Can’t get any more local than 10 miles down the road. The price is great, too. Thanks to the Iager family.

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Posted in Farms, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, West HoCo and tagged cooking, farms, Food, foodie, holidays, local businesses, Locavore, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

She Wolf

Posted on November 11, 2015 by AnnieRie

Bakery. In Brooklyn. With breads that just amaze with flavor.

This is sprouted spelt. The description from their web site.

“Bread that comes out of the oven on a Saturday has a production cycle that began on Tuesday! Whole spelt berries are soaked and sprouted over the course of the week, mixed into the dough on Friday, which then undergoes an overnight cold proof before being baked on Saturday. The enzymatic activity of the sprouting process converts starches in the grains into sugars and releases an array of vitamins. Roughly 50% wheat flour, 50% whole spelt flour and ground sprouted spelt berries.”

This is our second week of the fall Community Supported Agriculture from Lancaster Farm Fresh, and this season, the bread share is back. They found this bakery in Brooklyn. Our driver tells us he picks up freshly baked loaves on Monday when he delivers produce to the restaurants and the CSA pick up spots in New York. We get them on Tuesday.

The first week, a sourdough that probably is close to the best one I have ever found.

Chewy, dense, with just the perfect sourdough taste. We devoured that loaf in three days. I was considering adding a second bread share to have enough for a week.

The ingredients.

While searching for information on this provider, I found a video on Bon Appetit. It gives a little more insight into the bakery, and the baker.

It doesn’t get much fresher, and it’s why I love buying from smaller regional producers. I hope they offer this bread in the other seasonal CSAs, but I wonder if they can cover the demand. The last bakery, in Lancaster, couldn’t handle the numbers that our CSA wanted.

I think that’s a good thing, in my view. We are supporting and nurturing more small entrepreneurs and looking for the best quality, and not going to the big box stores and the chain stores.

Can’t wait to see what ones we get for the next six weeks. Crossing my fingers for caraway rye and for miche.

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Posted in Commentary, CSA, Food, LFFC, Locavore, Real Food and tagged CSA, Food, foodie, Locavore, real food, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Pumpkin Spice

Posted on October 9, 2015 by AnnieRie

Flavoring that seems to have taken over the stores, restaurants, drive throughs and other places all over the area. So, what is pumpkin spice?

You can buy it from McCormick.

According to most people, it includes cinnamon, cloves, mace, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg. Me, I get a little adventurous.

This was in the pumpkin hummus I made a few years back. Post is here.

This hummus is one of my favorites, and a way to deal with large pumpkins, like the ones seen all over this county at our local farms and markets.

We know there are cooking pumpkins and “jack-o-lantern” pumpkins. Some are stringy. Some have very little flesh. So, we tend to use butternut squash for our pumpkin recipes. Just like they do in the canned “pumpkin pie filling”. Read this blog entry to see what we mean.

I use what we have. If we get cooking pumpkins, OK. If we get heirloom squash, like our recent Sucrine du Berry, we use it.

Today I decided to experiment with that squash. I roasted it yesterday. Scraped it out. Went looking for recipes. Found one for lasagna. On the Big Oven APP.

Made my squash component. Made my spinach too, using tatsoi from the CSA. The three cheeses. Mozzarella, pecorino and ricotta. I didn’t go heavy enough on the “pumpkin spice” but I should have.