Tag Archives: cooking

Hump Day

Posted on July 24, 2013 by AnnieRie

In the Buy Local Challenge.

Four days done. Four days left. Today is Hump Day. Have you eaten a farmer produced local item these first four or five days? We have, but then as a CSA member, it is really simple to use locally sourced items every day. They come in that weekly box of goodies.

Don’t know what we are getting tomorrow, so I will wait and hit the farmer’s market on Friday to round out my menu.

I didn’t report on yesterday’s meal. A crock pot stew, made with CSA kale, fava beans, carrots, and onions, started with frozen chicken stock and finished with a TLV Tree Farm smoked ham steak, cubed. For the last hour, I added some riso.

Enough left to stuff peppers Friday for dinner.

As for today, the better half went off to Annapolis for a radio club dinner meeting. I decided, what the heck, and had one of those awesome tomato sandwiches for dinner.

Along with some greens that I bought last week from Love Dove Farms. Plus, at lunch today we had some of those juicy fresh plums from our visit to Catoctin Mountain Orchards last week.

CSA members have it easy in the Buy Local Challenge. With boxes or baskets full of vegetables and fruit, and maybe some eggs or cheese, you can eat well every single day without hitting a grocery store. Take our box from last week.

Carrots were peeled and showed up at many lunches, plus in yesterday’s dinner. Corn is gone. Two dinners. One pepper eaten. Two for our dinner this Friday. Pattypan half gone, for dinners. Green beans and chard still there. Tomatoes gone, for salads and those sandwiches.

For the next four days, there are local markets every day. Check them out. Support a farmer and buy something to take for lunches. Or, fruit for a snack.

How about dinner at Black Ankle Friday night? A unique opportunity to support a local farm (one that grows grapes), and while there, buy some local cheese for dinner.

All sorts of possibilities. Don’t give up on this challenge. And, think of ways to make it part of your entire summer.

hocofood@@@

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Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Wine and tagged cooking, crock pot cooking, CSA, farmer's markets, farms, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food, tomatoes, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

The First Tomatoes

Posted on July 23, 2013 by AnnieRie

Real tomatoes. Not the little cherry ones. The ones we wait for months to grow, blossom, set and ripen.

The ones on the left are some type of yellow roma. Umm, I didn’t plant yellow roma. Seems my yellow plum seedlings weren’t. No matter. These will get used for some interesting tomato sauces. I have four of these plants growing.

As for the one on the right, another mystery. Out of my ten Amish paste plants, this one came up right in the middle of the row. I don’t know what it is. Still researching. I took it off yesterday before the storm hit as it was starting to split. There is a variety out there called Large Yellow Amish that looks similar to this. I need to get a few more of them ripe to see if this is what came up.

The mortgage lifter and box car willie are about two or three days away from my first harvest. Then, taste testing to decide which variety works best for the county fair.

As for those hillbillies, they really are slow. And the pineapples haven’t given me anything but blossoms. I might have two or three Paul Robesons by the fair, but I am not holding my breath on those. Bad year, with all this rain.

As for the cherry tomatoes, they are coming in strong now.

There are large red cherry tomatoes. Sun sugar and supersweet 100s coming in. Interestingly enough, the supersweet 100s are the ones that have really been low producing. Hoping they get back on track and put out many tomatoes.

There is one lone Amish paste tomato on the tray. A small one. The rest of the Amish paste and Polish Linguisa tomato plants are full of green tomatoes. Nothing else ripening, but they are getting close. Hopefully, I will get enough to do sauces. I did see that the CSA will be offering 25 pound boxes of heirloom paste tomatoes again this year. I will be buying some if my plants continue to droop and turn yellow from all this rain.

Hoping to have lots of tomatoes for the Buy Local Challenge picnic Sunday at the Conservancy. Got a lovely ball of mozzarella at Breezy Willow last week, and my basil plants recovered from the bunny mauling. Sounds like a Caprese to me.

My favorite fresh mozzarella, nest to the feta I used in that watermelon salad.

African blue basil.

Last summer’s caprese. Can’t wait for this year’s, coming soon.

hocofood@@@

Taking It Outdoors

Posted on July 22, 2013 by AnnieRie

The Buy Local Challenge. I keep trying and it keeps storming. The contest this year is “Take It Outdoors”. The facebook page is where the photos will be uploaded.

We are hosting a picnic at the Howard County Conservancy this Sunday. With our own contest. Best picnic spread. And, best baked goods. Using local ingredients. Not everything has to be local but the pledge to use at least one local ingredient a day applies.

Here is one of my “outdoor” dishes. I had to bring it in and broil it but you get the idea.

Those fava beans we shelled. In a classic dish with grilled (broiled) Halloumi. Beans, peas, mint, olive oil, salt, pepper and grilled Halloumi. You can find Halloumi at Roots.

For dinner tonight we also had corn and tomatoes, both from the CSA. Corn on the cob, grilled. Tomatoes in any salad. Easy dishes to eat outdoors.

Besides the picnic prize, the Conservancy is giving a baking prize. Here is your chance to rock that zucchini bread recipe.

This is “my” zucchini cornbread, using this recipe.

Lots of possibilities to eat locally. And, to meet a few new friends at the picnic.

hocofood@@@

A Trip Down Memory Lane … On White Bread

Posted on July 21, 2013 by AnnieRie

Combining two goals. The Buy Local Challenge and my Sixty@Sixty goal.

Yes, I know white bread is highly processed. Tell that to my mom who fed us Hauswald’s bread every day. Toast. PB&Js and those lovely tomato sandwiches aka “mater sammiches” (when you were four years old).

When in Royal Farms the other day to get ice for the trip to the Amish farm and money from the ATM, I saw that loaf of Hauswald’s and also thought of a blog post somewhere about simple tomato sandwiches, like we ate as children.

Hauswald’s was a staple in our house growing up. 75% of my heritage is German. We lived in a mostly German American community in west Baltimore. And, tomatoes? We loved tomatoes all summer. In everything we could make.

Heck, yesterday for breakfast I made toast and spread this on it.

Another local company, based in Frederick, with all sorts of old recipes recreated. Do you like pickled beets? Apple butter? All memories of my growing up.

As for the Buy Local Challenge, today, like most days included large amounts of locally sourced items. Like the milk for my husband’s cereal.

Bought at the Hospital Farmer’s Market Friday.

And, the wine at dinner tonight.

The new winery outside of Frederick. They only sell whites at the moment. Reds will be coming soon, and the winery will open next year. We bought this bottle in Frederick last week. Grape growers are farmers, too!

We had local foods at breakfast, lunch and dinner today. I didn’t cook much either. Simple local foods, as I said, it isn’t hard to support local farms.

Today we ate:
Milk, at breakfast.
Tomatoes, yogurt, beets, cucumbers and greens at lunch. The cucumber became that dill pickle in my crock.

Sheep’s milk cheese on the flatbread at dinner. The sheep’s milk cheese was from Breezy Willow. Pesto from CSA veggies (carrot tops, radish greens, arugula and scallion tops). The last container from the freezer from last year.

The rest of dinner was chicken/feta/spinach sausage bought at The Common Market in Frederick, which was baked on top of CSA onions, peppers and pattypan squash. They were drizzled with olive oil, and had nothing but salt and pepper on them.

Simple. Delicious.

Eating locally is easy around here.

hocofood@@@

Kicking Off the Buy Local Challenge

Posted on July 19, 2013 by AnnieRie

The challenge begins tomorrow, but for whatever reason, I kicked it off tonight with dinner.

Lots of local goodies on this plate. Local lamb, zucchini, onions, cucumbers, and potatoes.

Paired with a Maryland wine.

And, if you don’t cook much. Hit the local restaurants participating in the Farm 2 Table restaurant weeks.

If you want to support local farms, take the pledge. Join thousands of us eating at least one local item every day for nine days.

Heck, just go visit Maryland wineries, and hit a few farmer’s markets to support the local farmers. Like Love Dove.

I found their new bags today at the market at the hospital. Tomorrow they are in Silver Spring, and next Wednesday at Miller Library. For me, I love getting fresh greens from their high tunnel. Today I bought arugula and spring mix. Oh, and some sun gold tomatoes since mine aren’t ripe yet. Gotta love those high tunnels.

You could eat at locally owned restaurants during the week, hit a few wineries on the weekends, come to our picnic at the Conservancy next Sunday bringing local goodies.

Or, you can get really into it, like me, the foodie/locavore/locapour and dine with locally sourced items for most meals.

We have a picnic tomorrow to attend. I will be taking watermelon, feta and mint salad. Feta picked up at Breezy Willow. Mint from my garden. The plants were bought from local farmers.

Check my blog daily for suggestions of easy ways to eat local foods, even if you don’t cook.

As for those gorgeous kebabs.

The recipe. Take one pound of ground lamb (I buy mine from England Acres). Generously spice it with garam masala, cinnamon and pepper. Add a teaspoon of salt if your garam masala doesn’t contain salt (Spice Island is very salty; McCormick isn’t). Add about a 1/4 cup chopped sweet onion. Mix it all together by hand and form around skewers. Grill until it reaches the level of doneness you prefer. I like ours medium rare to medium. Still juicy. Serve with a tzatziki. I made this cucumber yogurt dip with dill instead of mint. It works, even though it isn’t a traditional tzatziki.

hocofood@@@

4 Comments

Posted in Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Restaurants and tagged cooking, farmer's markets, farms, Food, foodie, Howard County, local businesses, Locavore, MD Wine, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Summer CSA Week Nine — A Good Mix

Posted on July 18, 2013 by AnnieRie

A mix of what I would call late spring and early summer veggies this week. The weather has influenced what we get.

The list:

6 ears sweet corn – Chiques Roc Organics
1 bag red tomatoes – Riverview Organics
1 bunch orange carrots – Tasty Harvest Organics
2 slicing cucumbers – Tasty Harvest Organics
1 bag pattypan squash – Twin Pines Organics
3 green zucchini – Coyote Run Organics
1 bunch yellow chard – Eagle View Organics
1 bag green bell peppers – Eagle View Organics
1 bunch green kale hearts – Peaceful Valley Organics
1 bag green beans – Healthy Harvest Organics
1 bag garlic – Eagle View Organics

No heirloom tomatoes yet. No hot peppers. Still getting kale and chard in mid July. Interesting how the rain and the lack of really hot weather has slowed down our transition.

I never really got into the pattypan squash before but this week I think I will be roasting them using olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme. Simple, but supposedly really tasty.

With seven of them, though, I may be grating and freezing some of them for future use.

As for those carrot tops, there are varying opinions about whether you should be eating them. Breezy Willow shared a link about them recently. I use them in a pesto recipe. Since ours are organic, and not sprayed, I think that health risk is negligible, and we don’t seem to be allergic to any veggies in this house.

hocofood@@@

7 Comments

Posted in CSA, Food, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Five O’Clock Somewhere

Posted on July 17, 2013 by AnnieRie

Thanks to Jimmy Buffett again for a post title.

A refreshing use of local watermelon, frozen watermelon margarita.

It was definitely too hot to cook much, if at all, today. I actually had to water the tomatoes this morning. First time since early last month.

We blended up a nice, frosty couple of glasses of somewhat weak margaritas. I wanted the refreshing aspect and not a ton of alcohol, so this worked out nicely.

Another one of those Buy Local easy recipes. I filled the blender about halfway with watermelon. Added about three ounces of tequila, and an ounce of Cointreau Noir (all I had in the orange liqueur department). Squeezed the juice of two limes, and added a cup of crushed ice before blending.

Nothing like something fun to sip while getting dinner ready. I made a very easy dinner tonight. A cup of the potato salad I made yesterday morning. A cup of the gazpacho from the other day. A simple flatbread, made with pita bread. I did turn the oven on for ten minutes to make this.

First I oiled the pan and placed them on it. Added a covering of fresh sheep’s milk cheese from Breezy Willow, a coating of my carrot top & arugula pesto, and sprinkled some shredded zucchini on it. A little fresh thyme, salt, pepper and a drizzle of good Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Baked at 350 degrees for about 7-8 minutes until the cheese was bubbling.

Served with the soup and the potato salad.

hocofood@@@

3 Comments

Posted in Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Weather and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Some FAQs

Posted on July 16, 2013 by AnnieRie

Questions I get asked often about my blogging.

The big three –
1. What do you do with all that food?
2. Have you always cooked like this?
3. How do you find topics to write about every day?

What do we do with all the food? The simple answer, of course, is cook it and eat it. I have to admit it looks like huge amounts of food come in here every week, but really it’s just the fact that most of our food now consists of raw ingredients, which we process.

I did lots of processing today. It was too hot to go anywhere, so I got up early and processed food before it got warm in the kitchen.

Potato salad. Cucumber dip. Roasted beets. Zucchini grated and frozen for bread. Carrots blanched to freeze.

When the CSA arrives Thursday, all that will be left from last week will be a few potatoes.

The chard will be used tomorrow with the lone remaining tomato in a frittata. As for the rest, the corn went the first night at dinner. All the beans were cooked, chopped and added to some defrosted Trader Joe’s edamame, with a quinoa/brown rice mix, to make a three bean salad. It is being eaten most days for lunch.

Potato salad I made also today to use most of the potatoes left in the bin. All those pickling cukes were added to the dill pickle crock. One of the two slicing cucumbers was used in the gazpacho with the rest of the tomatoes, and the last one became the base for that dip (tzatziki) today. The carrots, I blanched and froze, while waiting for my paste tomatoes to ripen in the garden. They will be used in tomato sauce. Like this one I made last August.

When you eat 15-20 meals a week at home, and don’t buy frozen dinners, it is amazing how quickly you go through the raw ingredients.

We do salads for lunches most days.

Not going to work, and having the luxury of time to cook, I have radically changed what comes into this house, and how it is cooked. No, I did not always cook like this. When commuting, I did not make things from scratch. We did too many restaurant meals, lots of take out, and frozen dinners left and right. Lots of those Lean Cuisines for lunches, too.

Now, there are no store bought frozen dinners in our freezers. Everything has been processed by me, so I can control the amount of sodium, sugar and the fats used in our foods. Big change from what we did when working in DC.

Back then, I didn’t even use my crockpot much. When you are gone for twelve hours a day, things tended to turn to mush by the time we got home. Now, dinner goes in the crockpot around 9 am, to be ready by 5 or 6 pm.

The crockpot gives us meals large enough to eat twice, and sometimes to freeze the extra. Whole chickens in the pot. Large vats of soup, or chili. These were things I did not do while working. Cooking large casseroles and freezing parts of them is another change to how I cook.

Comparing this to those Stouffer’s meals we used to eat, I can’t believe how different our food habits are. This pan of lasagna, which I made last January, fed us for at least four dinners, and a couple of lunches on Sundays.

That last question? Blogging daily. It takes some planning to have topics. Thankfully, CSA, the garden, the cooking, the markets, the farms, the birds, our road trips, volunteering, give me lots of inspiration. Sometimes I have to go to a list I keep of potential topics.

The discipline to come down to the computer and write each evening is something I set as a goal this year. Make it be a part of each day to record some tidbit, or talk about events happening in the community. A hobby that I enjoy and that is important enough to make a priority.

Well, enough sitting here at the computer. I have to clean up quite a few pans from all that cooking this morning. And, figure out what I want to take to the CSA pot luck picnic in Amish country this weekend. Depending on what is in our basket, I may be processing something large to take to share.

hocofood@@@

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Watermelon. Feta. Mint. Heavenly!

Posted on July 14, 2013 by AnnieRie

Finally, summertime! Don’t know what is better, the salad or the gazpacho.

I suppose you could call this my “Buy Local Challenge” practice meal. There are at least ten locally sourced items in the dinner. For the challenge, you need to eat at least one a day for nine days. No requirement that the nine be different, but in the spirit of the challenge, finding nine locally sourced items and using them during the nine days would certainly be successful as a participant.

The watermelon, feta, mint salad is a summertime staple in our house. Simple. The watermelon is from a farm stand on the way home from our visit to Linden Vineyards. Feta is Bowling Green Farms from right up the road here in Howard County. Mint from my garden, bought years ago from Greenway Farms. Add some olive oil, salt, pepper and at the last minute squeeze the lime over it. An amazingly flavorful salad that just screams Summertime!

The gazpacho. My first of the season. CSA tomatoes, onion, and cucumber. Basil from my garden. A green pepper from that farm stand. A cup of Bloody Mary mix bought in St. Michael’s and sourced from Virginia. Some red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a couple of garlic cloves left over from my Breezy Willow CSA in May. Blended together. No measuring. Just four tomatoes, one red onion, one green pepper, half a huge cucumber, and all the seasonings to taste. We like our gazpacho garlicky so I did toss in a teaspoon of garlic powder since I am waiting for my garlic to cure and I have none left otherwise.

The rest of the dinner?

A small filet of ahi, sesame crusted. A CSA potato, baked in the microwave and served with Trickling Springs butter. The little vat of garam masala spiced butter is for the corn on the cob that finished the meal.

Oh, and the wine?

Summertime in a glass. Linden Rosé.

And to round out a lovely Sunday dinner, my table arrangement from the garden. I can’t believe how the gladiolus are going absolutely nuts from the rain.

Oh, I almost forgot. We harvested our first six sun sugar tomatoes this morning. Whoo Hoo! Summer really is here.

Here’s to many more lazy flavorful local dinners!

hocofood@@@

2 Comments

Posted in CSA, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Gardening, Hobbies, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Weather, Wine and tagged cooking, CSA, farmer's markets, Food, gardening, heirloom tomatoes, Linden Vineyards, Locavore, real food, tomatoes, weather, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Tomatoes! Tomatoes!

Posted on July 11, 2013 by AnnieRie

CSA Week Seven. The tomatoes finally arrived. It is officially summer.

We got a bag of red tomatoes. OK, I got two bags because I swapped cabbage. Here is the list.

6 ears sweet corn – Farmdale Organics
1 bag yellow wax beans – Sunny Slope Organics
1 bag pickling cucumbers – Outback Farm
1 bunch yellow chard – Eagle View Organics
2 slicing cucumbers – Elm Tree Organics
1 bag red tomatoes – Riverview Organics
1 bunch red cylindra beets – Rolling Ridge Organics
1 bag green beans – Healthy Harvest Organics
1 bag new Yukon gold potatoes – Hillside Organics
1 head cabbage – Twin Pines Organics
1 bunch orange carrots – Sunny Slope Organics

I swapped to get the tomatoes so I could make gazpacho. Tomorrow at the Hospital market, I am hoping to find bell peppers. The only missing ingredient to make my gazpacho recipe.

Check out these cylindra beets. They created a bunch of comments at the pick up site today.