Category Archives: Winter Eat Local

Lasagna vs Lasagne

Posted on February 12, 2013 by AnnieRie

So, what is it? Do you use the Italian spelling when not using traditional Italian ingredients? I have been working on perfecting my lasagna recipe. Lasagna because my recipe uses ricotta and mozzarella, not traditional Italian bechamel and ragu lasagne.

I made a lasagna today, to use the meat sauce I made on Sunday. It just jumped up and said, I need to be in lasagna. It was right. The sauce was made with local sausage, my tomato sauce from the freezer, some onions, mushrooms and garlic and all slow cooked in the crock pot.

I served a small portion of the sauce over penne on Sunday night. The rest really needed to be used as the star in a recipe. Lasagne immediately came to mind. But, now I know that the Americanization of the dish substituted ricotta, mozzarella and egg for the bechamel sauce. I like our version, so at The Common Market yesterday I picked up ricotta, mozzarella and some durum semolina pasta.

There you go! Lasagna from scratch. Ready to go in the oven.

To make this lasagna, you need:

a pound of sausage, browned with an onion and half a dozen mushrooms
at least a quart of tomato sauce, I made mine with tomatoes I blanched and froze
Italian herbs to taste, with salt and pepper

This is the sauce base.

You then need to make the white part. 15 oz. ricotta, 8 oz. mozzarella, 1 egg, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and 4 oz. milk.

I used 8 sheets of lasagne noodles. Layer sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. It comes out looking like this.

Yes, it did get a little crispy around the edges. Foil would have stopped that, but I like mine crispy. We will get three meals out of this. We served it with a Breaux cellar selection Barbera/Nebbiolo blend, called Six Degrees.

And, a salad of grapefruit, fennel, red onion over baby greens, with olive oil and grapefruit juice as the dressing. Mostly local, all organic. Absolutely lovely for a Tuesday night.

Who cares how you spell it?

hocofood@@@

2 Comments

Posted in Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Redefining Local

Posted on February 7, 2013 by AnnieRie

For fifteen months now I have been blogging, mostly about being a locavore. I started out during my challenge to eat locally, by considering only locally grown items. I finally decided that this was unrealistic for me.

Locally grown, locally produced, or locally sourced. That’s my priority now. Beyond that, either organic or as natural as possible. Real food. Food made from scratch.

Things not grown here in Maryland, ever, like olives and most citrus, most spices and chocolate, I agree, are part of my cooking and won’t be avoided. I just try and maximize the local ingredients, and I support our local farms and markets. I buy from them, even the things they sell that they brought in from outside the state.

What has that meant? I shop rarely at grocery stores, and then, only for items not available at local markets, shops and farms. I shop organic as much as possible. I make many items from scratch, using fresh ingredients.

I also don’t eat at chain restaurants, or eat fast food, unless we are in the middle of a turnpike with no other options. I can’t believe how differently I approach dining out. And, how I now cook.

My freezer is full of local veggies, fruits and meat. I shop at farms weekly. I pick up staples and organic items at the grocery stores, usually Wegmans or Harris Teeter these days and very little of my food budget goes to them.

For my winter eat local challenge, I find that I don’t actually eat one meal a week that is local, but rather, I cook almost every meal with something local in it. Most of the time, the local items outnumber the others.

I know this isn’t easy to do, unless you have the time to do it. I really appreciate what our moms did, 50 years ago. Cooking from scratch every day. Eating in season. Stretching the food budget.

I see quite a few people doing the same as we are. Going back to basic cooking. Not eating all those overly processed foods from institutional food services. Not a bad way to spend time.

Bake a few brownies from scratch. Put a crock pot meal on the table. Spend time in the kitchen, instead of a restaurant lobby with a pager. Not a bad idea.

Check out that grill. Everything on it locally sourced. Easy as it can be.

Here’s to really good food. Made with love.

hocofood@@@

8 Comments

Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, crockpot soups, farmer's markets, Food, foodie, grilling, hoco loco, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

My Super Bowl Chili Recipe

Posted on February 4, 2013 by AnnieRie

Yesterday before sitting down to watch the Super Bowl, I put up a quick post without the recipe for my venison chili. This time it had less local items in it than I normally use, but I wanted to try these products out. I also have been trying different spice combinations and different textures for the chili. The first batch of chili I made in December when we got the venison delivered.

This time I put everything but the venison in the crock pot set for eight hours on low. I wanted to brown the venison in a pan on the stove with spices and add it halfway through the cooking. The venison is very finely ground and really almost disappeared in the earlier version. Venison is such a lean meat, I am learning how to treat it to get the best flavors.

I also played around with the ingredients. I used the last of a bag of sweet corn from the freezer as well as using a frozen jalapeno and grated carrot.

I started out with a can of Rotel diced tomatoes with cilantro and lime as a base. Added 12 ounces of tomato sauce from my freezer (made in August from my Amish tomatoes). Added one green pepper, bought at Roots. Added one large onion, diced, one of the last of my CSA sweet yellow onions. Put about six ounces of the sweet corn in, too.

Then, I got to grating, one small frozen carrot and one frozen blanched jalapeno.

The carrot adds that touch of sweetness. The jalapeno, grated, allows you to determine how much heat. A frozen jalapeno can be grated using the zester, and you can avoid all the seeds if you wish.

Use the tip of a knife to scrape all the jalapeno “zest” into the pot. I then added a large can of organic black beans with their liquid. My spices this time omitted cinnamon. I used chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne and white pepper. Lots of garlic powder this time. I also used cilantro. And, of course, salt to taste.

I let all of this cook for four hours. In order to thicken it up, I took out some liquid and mixed a tablespoon of corn starch in it,then returned it to the pot. This is what the pot looked like before I added the corn starch, and before I added the venison.

The venison went into a large pan to brown. A touch of grapeseed oil to keep it from sticking. Add garlic powder, salt and pepper while it is browning.

I strained it before adding it to limit the amount of fat in the crock pot. The chili when it was almost ready to serve looked like this.

My husband liked this version better than the first version in December. He specifically requested that I don’t use cumin or cinnamon, but keep it on the simpler side of spice.

But, he also suggested that I next time I should try using chipotle. After all, you can always tweak a good chili recipe.

hocofood@@@

3 Comments

Posted in CSA, Food, Locavore, Real Food, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, Locavore, real food, tomatoes. Bookmark the permalink.

Eating Locally: The Big Game

Posted on February 3, 2013 by AnnieRie

Yep, Super Bowl Sunday. A local grazing meal. For my Eat Local Winter Challenge. Getting ready to watch the game. The venison chili is in the crock pot.

This is just a quick post of what we are serving. Details about the chili tomorrow. Besides the chili being mostly local (yes, the deer lived across the road from us), I am putting out some other local goodies to nosh on.

How about spicy sweet potato chips?

I baked quite a few chips to have sitting out while watching. As for the beer, it has to be Yuengling, from my husband’s home county in PA.

Dessert. Picked up at England Acres market today. Sugar cookies in Ravens colors.

Go Ravens! Off to watch the game.

hocofood@@@

1 Comment

Posted in Farmer's Markets, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, West HoCo, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, farmer's markets, Food, foodie, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore. Bookmark the permalink.

The Sauce Boss

Posted on January 31, 2013 by AnnieRie

That would be me. Trying to perfect my tomato sauce. I would never have thought ten years ago to make my own sauce. Tomato sauce in a jar or can. Testing Bertolli versus Barillo versus Classico. Yep, that was me circa 1990s.

Now, I make it almost from scratch. I may use some pureed tomatoes from a can or the Pomi box. Depends on what I am doing.

Yesterday I was in the mood for spaghetti. I decided to raid the freezer and cook up some sauce.

Blanched tomatoes from the CSA. I know they will throw off lots of water. These are basic tomatoes. Blanched, peeled, seeded and frozen. To make good sauce from these, you need to thicken it. Yesterday I used some paste and a can of Muir Glen organic tomato puree. I wanted to make a thick rich chunky meat sauce.

I started with two links of Boarman’s Italian sausage. One sweet. One hot. Put in the pot with onions and peppers. Onions from Breezy Willow. Peppers from Roots.

The sausage is cooked in olive oil. A little garlic powder and Italian herbs.

The frozen tomatoes are put in another pan with more garlic powder and herbs. You need to do it this way so you can drain off all of the water from the tomatoes. Here is what the tomato pan looks like at the end of the process. I had drained almost two inches of water out of it while I was working.

Note that if you had tried to make tomato sauce with frozen whole tomatoes, it would have been extremely watery. Here is a shot of the sauce pan, with the tomato puree, the sausage mix, and as I was adding tomatoes from the other pan.

This is the type of thick meaty tomato sauce that is perfect for lasagna, or as a filling for ravioli or shells.

The finished sauce.

Meat sauce this thick can be thinned with a little pasta water. I took some of it and thinned it out and served it over spaghetti. The rest will be used with some tiny shells as a lunch later this week.

I didn’t take pics of the dinner plate, but I want to show the killer wine we served with it. A 2002 Barboursville Barbera Reserve.

After all, I need to uphold my locavore image. Local wine in an Italian style. Ten years old. Lovely. As for making the sauce, much of it was local. It was almost completely organic. The pasta was organic, whole grain. Hitting most of those Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical (SOLE) buttons.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged CSA, Food, foodie, heirloom tomatoes, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food, tomatoes, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Eating Locally: Foraging in the Freezer

Posted on January 27, 2013 by AnnieRie

It is Sunday night. Time to post about our winter challenge. Cook a meal using mostly local foods, in the middle of winter. My cyber community linked on my food challenge page is doing OK. Not as much posting as we used to do, but people are still into sourcing their food from near their homes.

I went shopping in my freezer this weekend.

Oven dried tomatoes from my CSA this summer. Beef broth made earlier this month. Lovely beef short ribs from a trip to Breezy Willow a week ago. Add to it some celery from Olney market, carrots (not pictured) from Zahradka, an onion from England Acres and a can of organic black beans. Put it all in a baking dish. Add seasoning and olive oil.

Put it all in the oven on the slow cook setting for five hours. Somewhere near the end, put a loaf of Stone House Rustic Italian bread, out of the freezer, into the other oven to defrost and crisp up.

Serve it all with local wine and local butter. It looks wonderful, doesn’t it?

Mission accomplished. Another almost totally local meal in the dead of winter. The beans weren’t local. Neither were the seasonings. Other than that, it is a tribute to what you can do around here with farm stands, markets and the contents of your freezer.

hocofood@@@

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

Three Meals, Locally Driven

Posted on January 22, 2013 by AnnieRie

Last year I thought that locally sourcing my food would be difficult. Little did I know that there were numerous sources year round in the Howard County area. Now, it is a cinch to eat locally, and reduce my dependence on long distance processed foods.

Monday was one of my now typical days here. Since I have a freezer and refrigerator full of local foods, meals contain a majority of items from “right up the road”.

Breakfast Monday. Local eggs from Breezy Willow Farm.

We seem to have rediscovered eggs after years of avoidance due to those scary cholesterol “studies”. Now, free range eggs are a joy one or two times a week.

As for lunch, we heated up the last of the pork BBQ from our visit to Breezy Willow Saturday.

Dinner, venison. Right across the highway, locally harvested venison. This is a rump roast.

We put it in the crock pot with root veggies, onions and some organic mushroom soup. Added some Mother Earth mushrooms just before it was finished.

The Canela bakery rosemary bread will be sopping up the gravy created by the veggies, and some of my stock from the freezer. What does it look like when it is done?

You can see the mushrooms, and the turnips. The sweet potatoes are melting into the gravy. The roast is peppery, tender and not gamey at all. I don’t get the gamey aversion. Dark meat has more flavor, due to muscle. Venison is lean, with lots of muscle, therefore it is “gamey”. It still was lovely.

Yes, the gravy looks a little orange because the sweet potatoes melted into it. I need to put them in much later than I did. To finish the localness of this meal, the wine is local as well.

Malbec and venison are supposed to be a good match. And, they are. We decanted this 2005 Breaux Cellar Selection wine, to let it breathe. Really a delicious wine. A lighter version of Malbec as these were young vines.

All day. Local food. Local wine. How I have changed in what I cook.

hocofood@@@

3 Comments

Posted in Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, Food, hoco loco, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Eat Local on Game Day

Posted on January 21, 2013 by AnnieRie

Big game day! After a very successful Conservancy event, we came home to nibble during the game, and have pulled pork sandwiches at half time.

For my Eat Local Challenge, I had pulled pork I bought at Breezy Willow. I had the picture of it in yesterday’s blog. I did not waste time during dinner to take pics of the sandwiches, but that pulled pork is really good.

We nibbled on pumpkin hummus and ate some Bowling Green cheese during the game. I picked up the cheese at the mini market at the event today. Got some good veggies from Zahradka today to add to what I bought yesterday from Breezy Willow.

George Zahradka brought those wonderful romanescu cauliflower, and some sweet carrots. And Brussels sprouts. And, more but my husband went over and picked up these items.

Denise Sharp sold out all her kale before I could get some. She also had huge rosemary “bushes” just like the ones I bought from her last spring. She told me again in April will be our chance to come out and buy plugs and seedlings.

All in all, one great day. A very successful event and a Ravens win.

hocofood@@@

Grocery Shopping: West County Style

Posted on January 19, 2013 by AnnieRie

Today I went shopping. West county style. Hit Breezy Willow Farm Store, open from 10-2 on Saturday. They were doing a brisk business. No milk there, but BBQ pork to make sandwiches for the Ravens game.

The pork BBQ will be served at halftime. That pumpkin hummus from yesterday and also some of my baked veggie chips will be the snacks. Just think, a locavore football party. But, pulled pork needs cole slaw and buns. Royal Farms to the rescue. What can I say? Drive all the way to Clarksville to save a few cents or pick it up at Royal Farms. I did Royal Farms, and also got Cloverland Farms milk for cereal.

As for the rest of my shopping, I bought onions, apples, broccoli and honey graham ice cream (to celebrate or commiserate). The broccoli looked wonderful today.

I also got a dozen eggs. Love that green one among all the brown ones.

Made egg salad today when I got home to use up my “old” eggs. They still won’t float, which means it is a bit harder to peel the eggs. Old eggs are best for egg salad, but with farm fresh eggs you have to leave them sit around a while. These are two weeks old and still don’t have the void inside that makes peeling easier.

While at Breezy Willow, I observed. I was the “old lady” there. Families with little ones. Young shoppers. It seems farm to table is really happening, and not just a slogan. It is good to see people buying locally, and choosing real food for their tables.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in Farmer's Markets, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, West HoCo, Winter Eat Local and tagged farmer's markets, Food, foodie, hoco loco, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, real food, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

Pumpkin Hummus Take Two

Posted on January 18, 2013 by AnnieRie

It looks like an explosion from my spice rack.

That’s almost everything other than the chickpeas, sriracha and the roasted squash. Two cans of chickpeas. Three roasted squash.

I roasted the squash yesterday. Scooped it out, other than the stuffed ones that will be part of dinner Sunday. Easy to reheat before the Ravens game. To make the hummus, I decided to just do it all by taste.

Put two cans of chickpeas in the processor. Add roasted garlic, I used six cloves. Salt, pepper, all the other spices, a heaping tablespoon of tahini, a teaspoon of sriracha, a drizzle of sesame oil, lemon juice. Mix it all up. Taste. Add the squash. There were three cups of squash. Adjust as you go.

I really enjoy messing around with the last of the CSA squash. This recipe made the equivalent of three containers of store bought hummus. This is garlicky, spicy, sweet and hot all at the same time. A perfect appetizer for a Championship football game. Got to go get some pita chips.