Tag Archives: cooking

Jennys Is Open

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One of my favorite milestones in springtime. The opening of Jenny’s Market off Rte. 32 just north of us. Today the market opened. I borrowed a picture from their Facebook page. It shows every reason why I love them. They are a family business. One that cares about us, and that we care about.

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For me, this picture below from last May is the main reason they are a favorite place to shop.

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I can’t grow these items. No local farmers do, either. For me, having access to bananas, avocados, mangos, and citrus, without having to drive 20 miles round trip is a huge plus.

Today I picked up a couple of avocados and bananas. Some new red potatoes. It was just fun to go visit on opening day.

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They also have hanging baskets and seedlings. And, watermelon from Florida. I might be tempted to stop in for a watermelon this week. I have feta. I have mint. I can get limes at Jennys. Time to make one of these.

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Transitions

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Winter has finally left the building.

It is almost farmers market season. The spring and summer Community Supported Agriculture deliveries will soon begin. Our Friends and Farms basket will have ASPARAGUS!!!!!! in it. Do I sound ready for something other than root vegetables?

We got a mixed basket last week.

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The good additions. Lovely leaf lettuce, hydroponic tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, cucumbers. Good things to grill too, like country ribs.

I am so happy that the markets are about to open. The week of the 4th of May. The same week we get our first CSA delivery. There will be seven markets in Howard County this year. Three on Saturday. That should prove interesting. For us, the return of Glenwood is awesome. We love having a local market. Where we can run over for bread or fruit or plants. As for veggies, not so much. Between my garden and the CSA, we won’t be buying many veggies.

We are transitioning to a full share in our CSA. Transitioning to a protein and dairy bag from Friends and Farms. That should provide us with the right amount of food to keep us out of the grocery stores for a while.

I also structured our garden planting to be able to provide us with the ingredients necessary to make sauces and roast tomatoes to fill my almost empty freezer. This year I made it to May with my frozen sauces and tomatoes. I say May because I have three containers left of sauce.

The sauce has found its way into many meals. Like those killer lasagna.

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Tomatoes from my freezer. Peppers from the CSA. A slight tweak on the traditional lasagna.

Besides the large amount of tomato sauce in the freezer, there was quite a bit of pesto. And herb butters.

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Nothing like pasta with pesto.

Here’s to celebrating spring. And all the goodness it brings.

Parsnip-ity

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As in parsnip overload. By my choosing.

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Today was my last week of the winter CSA. Three weeks until the spring/summer season begins. I decided to load up on parsnips from the swap box. Good thing our site host is a friend and lets me swap more than one item if I give her some stuff she likes. I swapped kale and cabbage today to get a triple share of parsnips. They keep well. I like them. I even have made colcannon with them.

These are destined to become roasted veggies. Colcannon. And, I am thinking parsnip and sweet potato fries. I have quite a bit of both left.

Enough to take samples to Greenfest this Saturday. Our site host and I are staffing a table to promote our CSA. We need to guarantee our pick up site by recruiting a few more members.

Our Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative CSA is one that provides us with so many great vegetables. Fruit. Meat. Cheese. Eggs. Bread. Herbs. Milk. Tofu. The list seems to be endless. They have grown by leaps and bounds. Now delivering to six states and the District.

The rest of this week’s final basket.

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Spinach. Chard. Mushrooms. Aeroponic butterhead lettuce.

Add ons.

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The pantry item was mint tea. The cheese was a raw milk farmer’s cheese. The meat share was 1 1/2 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast.

In three weeks, we will begin the next season. Six months of food. I ordered a full vegetable share. Bread. Cheese. Fruit. Meat.

All I need with the exception of staples to keep us supplied with fresh organic non-GMO food.

Now, off to find new recipes for those sweet parsnips.

See you Saturday at Howard County Community College. Look for the Lancaster Farm Fresh table and stop to say HI to us.

The Incredible Edible

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Eggs.

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For years, they got a bad rap. Now, we know they are one very packed source of many vital nutrients. We stopped buying them during that period. Now, they are an important part of our diet. Maybe that’s why my eyesight has stabilized. And why my “good” cholesterol keeps going up.

We get eggs weekly now in our Friends and Farms basket. Really fresh, wonderful eggs. The kind with that bright yellow yolk.

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Eggs on Sunday morning is standard fare at the house. Served with whatever fresh bread we get.

The markets are opening in a few weeks. If you want to experience the taste of fresh eggs, you should pick up a dozen from one of the local farmers.

If you really get hooked on fresh eggs, you can always find out how to raise chickens in your yard (how’s that for a segue into Greenfest?). Cathy Hudson and Van Wensil will be offering their workshop at 12:30 pm at this year’s Greenfest at Howard Community College on April 18th. Always popular.

If you can’t raise chickens, you can find them at many of the local farms, like England Acres. I like to go there and watch the chickens run all around the farm, while you are checking out the goodies in their farm store.

Tomorrow, April 12th, they are open and grilling their beef for tasting. Eggs and other local goodies in the store. They are just west of Mt. Airy. Most of the lamb we eat comes from them.

What does this have to do with eggs? Nothing, really. I am just very happy to see spring has arrived and the farms and markets are opening weekly.

As for the eggs. How about a few more of my favorite ways to enjoy them.

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A frittata.

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Or a spinach salad.

I also love to make egg salad for sandwiches.

Such a versatile food. Easy to make. Easy to digest. Easy to find. And, quite good for us, too.

Aeroponics … and More

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What are aeroponics? Why do I want to know? Because of this.

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It arrived in today’s CSA basket. With this inside.

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It seems our Amish CSA is using aeroponics to grow butterhead lettuce. Another way they continue to surprise us. Considering the fact that we still seem to be in the midst of winter, and we keep getting those everpresent root vegetables. There are signs of spring though.

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This is the next to last week of our winter share. Spring/summer doesn’t start until the week of May 3rd. Still, I appreciated the lettuce and the young rainbow chard. Added to it. Carrots. Sweet potatoes. Green beans. Dinosaur kale and portabello mushrooms.

Another new item. This cinnamon scented muesli.

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It was our pantry item. We did get hot Italian grilling sausages (maybe it will get warm enough to grill?). The cheese was an artisanal goat cheese. Rich, and creamy.

I headed off to Friends and Farms after picking up the CSA. There, we found a few signs of spring as well.

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Hydroponic arugula and a head of romaine. There were also parsnips, apples, mushrooms, sweet potatoes (really? Do you know how many types of sweet potatoes are hanging out in my pantry?), butternut squash puree. My apple cider for milk substitute to use to make that beautiful bone-in pork roast. A couple of chicken breasts. Destined to become chicken salad. Eggs. Bread. Breakfast links.

Another week. Another full delivery of regional specialties to cook with.

I did add on some seafood this week. Rockfish.

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It quickly became dinner tonight. Panko breaded with a glaze of honey mustard under the breading. Excellent meal.

Illusion of Springtime

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Compliments of our weekly food baskets. Which are changing slowly into springtime items. Like arugula.

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A pound of baby arugula. Also known as rocket. Peppery. Fresh. Just the perfect green to evoke memories of last spring. Too bad it’s going to snow tonight. We still think we are getting closer to springtime around here.

Then there’s microgreens.

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I swear microgreens are one of those prized items created by farmers. You know, “hey, let’s thin the seedlings and sell those thinnings for major amounts of money to unsuspecting consumers.” I have a garden. I know all about thinning the greens. Still, I do love the intensity of them.

How about lamb?

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An Easter tradition in my house. Lamb always reminds me of springtime.

This week, here was the total Friends and Farms basket.

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I had the salmon marinating even before I took the pictures. It ended up like this.

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With the green beans from my Lancaster Farm Fresh basket. Corn from the freezer, and a cut up carrot.

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My favorite thing this week. That lovely ham steak. I am thinking of saving it for Easter. I may be waiting for snow tonight, but there are definitely signs that spring is coming.

Catching Up

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One of the things I put together ever since I started my blog was my weekly catalogue of What is in the CSA basket. Somehow I have been shirking my “duty” the past two weeks. Maybe it’s that time of year when we get so tired of winter, and those boring stretches of root vegetables, stews, soups and crock pot meals.

We yearn for the weather to stay nice enough to grill, for a change. For many winters we did manage to grill a few times, but the brutal cold, and the snow covering our grill for weeks, made that impossible. Until, hopefully, this week, when we want to do something, ANYTHING, out there. I have a couple of petit filets I would love to make one evening, or my favorite, kofta.

Yesterday we cleaned the grill, since the snow has finally melted all around it. Thankfully, no little critters took up residence in it this winter. Last winter a chipmunk decided the side burner was a perfect spot to store everything they could carry up there.

As for what has been coming from the CSA for two weeks, here it is.

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The highlights from Lancaster Farm Fresh were the pantry item, maple sugar and the new goat cheese. We also got some kielbasa sausages in our omnivore add on. The vegetables. Standard except for the green beans. They were a treat. I swapped radishes to get double the carrots. There has been cole slaw made more than once the past two weeks. I made root vegetables again, to take to a Slow Food dinner this week. They must have gone over well, as there was almost nothing left. I still have a bag with the collards in it. They have to get cooked soon.

A few days ago, the latest basket.

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I am calling this the year of the celery root. Never had it before a CSA share delivered it. Now, we get it two or three times a month, it seems. Yes, there are two of them. I swapped the rutabagas for the second one. I like the celery root in that roasted honey glazed medley. This week we got honey. We got chicken. We got a new cheese. Pecora. Smoky and tangy. Good with a glass of red wine.

As for the rest. Beets in a salad. Chard as a side dish last night. The shiitake mushrooms, with the other ones from Friends and Farms a week ago, became a very lovely mushroom soup for dinner.

Speaking of Friends and Farms, they were invited to present to the Slow Food Dinner group. They brought their latest basket and they talked about how they operate, and what made them the company they are today.

The basket from the 4th of March looked like this.

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The best part of this basket. The rainbow trout.

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Simply cooked. We enjoyed that dinner, for sure. The Individual Quick Frozen corn is also very good. Makes us yearn for summer.

The rib eyes would have been great to grill, but not to be, due to the weather.

As for Wednesday, the basket that I picked up hours before the slow food dinner.

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Yes, there’s chard in there. Yes, there’s a chicken. And kielbasa. And sauerkraut. And carrots. Notice those similarities.

YES, I am officially tired of winter vegetables. I want to plant that garden, and go to farmer’s markets for fresh greens.

We still are eating well, even if it is getting a bit boring these days.

Going Whole Hog

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Sort of. Not completely. We haven’t gone for buying whole or half portions of beef or pork. We did once do half a lamb. It was more than we expected.

But, I have seen where we are now using more and more of the pork products available at our local farms. And, we are stretching our food dollars by making meals that use 3-4 ounces of meat per serving. Getting better quality meats from the farmers and butchers in the area. Yes, and paying more than that $1.99 a pound stuff out there.

I find it interesting to see McDonald’s and COSTCO both touting their changes. Where once I thought our local farmers and small organic markets were going to suffer, now I notice quite a large turning away from factory farmed, overly processed meats.

Quite an increase in CSA and Friends and Farms members. An increase in farmer’s markets. An interest in my web pages with links to local sources. All of this is a good thing. Besides lowering our exposure to antibiotic and hormone laden meats, we are decreasing our carbon footprint when we buy locally. We are keeping our local farmers and small butchers in business.

Remember when you could go into any grocery store and have a butcher wait on you, to get you the cuts of meat you wanted, in the quantities you wanted? So many of the stores today have removed that position.

I am grateful we have good butchers in the area. Boarmans. Treuths. Wagners.

We also have good farms selling meat. Copper Penny. Maple Lawn. TLV Tree Farm. Breezy Willow. Carroll Farm. England Acres. Clark’s Elioak. Wagon Wheel.

I did this post over a year ago. Since then, I have expanded the database to add more farms. But, I still love picking up very fresh items from these farms.

I have also learned to use those lesser used items. Ham Hocks. Bacon ends. Lamb shanks. Turkey drumsticks. Pork lard. Heck, I even ventured into the world of making my own scrapple.

I could do better the next time I do scrapple. I need to increase the pork part of it, and decrease the cornmeal.

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It was a wee bit pale. Not as dark and crispy as the scrapple of my youth.

As for those other goodies. I have made countless soups using the ham hocks, smoked mostly. That pork lard from Carroll Farm. It’s been used instead of butter in cooking. Most of it was put in small containers and frozen for later use. I will be trying a Pennsylvania Dutch biscuit recipe this week with it.

Bacon ends. The most economical way to have bacon around for flavoring.

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I have found bacon ends many places. Ask at any of the local farms if they have them. A good bargain. Freeze them. Take out as much as you might need to make excellent greens, soups, frittatas, spinach salads. Lots of possibilities.

Moving 100% away from grocery stores. Using less per meal. Using locally produced items. It can be done, and it really isn’t difficult at all in Howard County.

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But, I admit, I’m not quite ready to do Pig’s Feet – Toe On, or Pig’s Tail. Wayne Nell. You do have some interesting items there.

The “New” Farm in Town

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Or, at least the newest farmstand. Opened in October. Providing beef, pork and poultry. In small and large quantities.

Carroll Farm to Table. Off Frederick Rd. past Kiwanis-Wallas park. Owned by descendants of Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

We first heard about them being there in our fall Friends and Farms newsletter. You could purchase whole or half Berkshire heritage pork. Also in the works was a potential for chicken to come to us sometime in 2015.

We finally got to the farmstand when they were open a few Saturdays ago. At least my husband got there. The stand is open Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays. He asked for a price sheet, and as he was really interested in some of the cuts of Angus beef, they talked a bit and gave him a free sample of their pork lard.

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Which found its way into tonight’s dinner.

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A wee bit of lard mixed with the cider and chicken stock to flavor the cabbage and kale and apples under the kielbasa links.

I am fascinated with trying some traditional recipes from a Christmas present from my mom.

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She gave me a couple of Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks that she’s had for decades. I am interested in trying the pastry recipes that call for lard.

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Now that we all know lard is better for us than vegetable oils, it should be fun to test the taste difference.

I am also interested in trying the brisket, and the filets, from their stand. It is hard to find brisket from the local farms. Not that many of them around, when you are only processing a small number of cattle at a time. I always had to cross my fingers and hope to find one from the local farmers.

Happy to see a “new” farm in our vicinity. Particularly one that specializes in meats that we usually have to go much farther to find.

Baby It’s Cold

Outside definitely. Inside, sometimes as well. Heat pumps can’t handle extended temps near zero degrees. We hit zero again on Tuesday morning. The heat pumps couldn’t hack that, so we had the resistive heat running continuously trying to keep it warm around here.

I decided, OK, I need to find something to do to keep us warmer, so I decided to bake and cook. All day. It kept the kitchen warm and made it easier for us to have quick meals the rest of this week.

At one point, I had both ovens going, and the large burner on the stove. Oh, and the dishwasher and the clothes dryer out in the mud room. All together, productive, while making it more comfortable in the house.

I hate heat pumps. Our house, like thousands like it in this area, was built during the moratorium on building using natural gas. Oil burners were also not used, as the price made them prohibitive. Heat pumps cannot take prolonged temperatures below twenty degrees, and we are suffering through the coldest February I can ever remember.

Two more days of this month. Today, even more snow came down. At least we got above freezing yesterday.

As for the cooking, what did I make?

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Apple cake. Adapted from the Not Without Salt recipe. I substituted my crock pot spiced apples for the two cups of apples.

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I like this recipe so much that I made a recipe card in Pages on my iPad. Since I like the extra spice, I used a pint jar from the freezer since I didn’t have any baking apples around. I also did decrease the sugar from the published recipe, to 1/2 a cup.

I had one oven making this cake, while the other made three things. At the same time. Beets. Chicken. Roasted root vegetables.

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I was cleaning out the produce drawer before the CSA came on Wednesday. There are parsnips, celeriac, sunchokes, carrots, sweet potato, turnips, white radish, scallions, yellow onion and a jalapeno in there.

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Heavily spiced.

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No measuring. More of what I like. Less of the stronger stuff. Olive oil. Mustard. White balsamic. All mixed up in a bowl and dumped on the foil. Roasted at 350 degrees for an hour.

Add to all of this, I was making chicken stock with the bones and skin from the whole chicken. I got a quart of stock, that simmered most of the afternoon.

After all was said and done, we had chicken and root vegetables for dinner Tuesday. The leftovers.

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Enough for a few days as a side dish.

Chicken leftovers for me yesterday while my better half went to an amateur radio club dinner. The last piece of chicken breast. Lunch today. The beets will be tomorrow’s salad. The apple cake. Dessert when we are in the mood for dessert. The chicken stock is in the freezer.

Not a bad way to spend a frigid Tuesday.