Tag Archives: cooking

Spring Cleaning

Posted on May 15, 2016 by AnnieRie

In the herb and spice world. Do you clean out your spice jars? Buy new herbs to plant in your garden? Or put out a few pots on the balcony?

For me, spring is when I do my clean out of my spice jars. Creating mixes to use up the old stuff. Planting some standbys, and trying a few new items.

You can get many potted herbs at our farmer’s markets and at the local spots, like River Hill. Which is where I usually get my African blue basil.

This year I found the basil at Sharp’s Farm.

Still, I use enough of the dried stuff in the winter to keep most of my supply fresh and the older spices and herbs, I have a perfect use for them. Sprinkle them on the grill, or dump a tiny amount of them onto your mosquito chasing candles. Either way, the scent makes any outdoor gathering so much better.

Try something new and different. Grow a new herb. I am really liking the bay leaf plant that I keep outdoors all summer and baby all winter in a sunny window.

If only the weather around here would cooperate so I can get my kitchen stools back under the counter.

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Posted in Farms, Food, Gardening, Real Food and tagged cooking, Food, gardening, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Healthier Options

Posted on May 3, 2016 by AnnieRie

I found a new recipe today, to use my spinner full of spinach.

Spinach and cannellini bean dip. No cheese. No cream. Really great tasting. The perfect dip to serve at a Mother’s Day picnic. You should be able to find baby spinach at one of the farmer’s markets. If not, I think this recipe could be easily adapted to use arugula, or baby turnip greens, or garlic greens.

The greens are wilted in a pan that contains two minced cloves of garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil. I used a locally sold one. From the Breadery. An arbequina. The recipe calls for twelve ounces of baby spinach.

I just used fresh spinach from my Friends and Farms basket. The garlic came from there also.

Wilt it down. Meanwhile, rinse and drain a can of cannellini beans. Dump the beans, a tablespoon of balsamic, a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, some salt and pepper and another tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil into a food processor.

Add the wilted spinach, watch the processor steam up from the heat (they do say to let the spinach cool a bit), and pulse it until it is smooth and creamy. Serve it with bread, with vegetables, with crackers. Or, like I may do tomorrow night, serve it on chicken.

I found the recipe on my Food Network App. It’s from Everyday Italian. This one is a keeper.

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Posted in Farmer's Markets, Food, Friends and Farms, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, farmer's markets, Food, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

The King’s Vegetable

Posted on April 27, 2016 by AnnieRie

Asparagus. Heralding springtime. One of the many names in Germany for asparagus is Königsgemüse, or King’s Vegetable. It used to be quite expensive and only the wealthy could afford it. This web page has some of the history, as well as many very nice recipes.

My new garden plot is giving me a prolific harvest of asparagus. I may be overwhelmed if the weather continues to be favorable.

Less than a week from my first spears cut, and we are getting a good amount almost every other day. Yesterday my husband counted at least two dozen more that should be ready tomorrow or Friday.

Asparagus is a perennial. It needs at least three years from initial planting to produce. These plants are at least five years old, from my understanding when I consulted with the previous garden plot “owner”.

Nothing like asparagus just a few hours out of the ground. Just a simple steaming and a pat or two of butter.

Last night’s dinner. Rice with mushroom gravy. Asparagus, and a couple drumsticks from my Friends and Farms basket.

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Posted in Food, Gardening, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, Food, gardening, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

And The Winner Is …

Posted on April 13, 2016 by AnnieRie

… carrots. Yep, carrots. Well, tied with mushrooms, but they needed three varieties to match the two varieties of carrots in eight weeks. Out of the thirteen week Community Supported Agricultural winter share.

We got orange carrots six weeks. Yellow carrots, two. We got mushrooms eight weeks. A combination of shiitake, cremini, and portabella.

All together, our 13 week CSA gave us 45 varieties of vegetables. Doing some math to compare the $330 price against buying in Wegmans (the best prices for organic), we would have spent at least $380 there. We did have to fudge a bit as Wegmans does not sell strawberry popcorn or garlic greens. I had to use farmers’ market pricing for those items.

My favorite this winter.

Watermelon radishes. Sweet. With a slight hint of sea salt. A perfect appetizer.

We have a couple of weeks off before our spring/summer CSA starts. I will have to hit the local farm stands for vegetables.

No matter what. We will still support our Amish organic CSA, because they bring us awesome vegetables at less than store pricing, and only one or two days out of the fields.

Want to join us? 40-50 people hang out in a garage in Braeburn, picking up fresh foods. Check out the sign up page.

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Posted in CSA, Food, LFFC and tagged community, cooking, CSA, farmer's markets, Food, Locavore, value of CSA. Bookmark the permalink.

Garlic Greens

Posted on April 1, 2016 by AnnieRie

What are they? How are they different from scapes? What can you make with them?

A bunch of them in our CSA share on Tuesday. I actually swapped my popcorn for a second bunch of garlic greens. It is sometimes called spring garlic. I intend to fully embrace springtime, even if they are calling for snow flurries this weekend.

I have rockfish sitting on a bed of them, in the oven right now. I added a few of them, chopped, to the basmati rice in my rice cooker. I made a quartet of meatloaves to use one this weekend and freeze the rest. Some of them ended up in there.

As for the rest, there will be pesto. I will use my scape recipe.

I had considered using some of them to sauté the greens we got in our basket, but they just smell so good. They have to become pesto.

Anyone seen ramps in the markets yet? Then, I will know that spring has arrived in central Maryland.

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Posted in CSA, Food, Weather and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, real food, value of CSA, weather. Bookmark the permalink.

Even More Carrots

Posted on March 24, 2016 by AnnieRie

Friends and Farms must have been spying on me. They knew I liked carrots and gave me more of them in these week’s Protein and Dairy bag. Why are there carrots in a protein bag? Because we don’t do milk, and I substituted produce.

For us, this $43 a week food source provides us with almost all the meat, fish, and eggs that we use in our cooking. They have expanded this option, giving us 5-6 pounds of premium fish and meat every week.

I like having local sources. Not getting irradiated or artificially colored beef.

It’s a good deal for the money. Today we got a T-bone steak.

Country spare ribs.

Split chicken breasts.

Bacon.

Eggs.

If you are “less meatarians” like we are, you can feed two people with this option. Easily. I try to make meat be a small portion of the plate.

We do so many things differently these days. We make egg salads, chicken salads, process the bacon to be used on multiple meals.

Consider what we do. Protein, one quarter of the plate. Carb, one quarter. Vegetables, half the plate.

And look into Friends and Farms, if you live around here. They are flexible with lots of options to choose.

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Posted in CSA, Farms, Food, Friends and Farms, Local Businesses, Locavore and tagged cooking, CSA, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

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.

Home Delivery

Posted on January 13, 2016 by AnnieRie

As we muddle along in one of the first single digit wind chill days this winter, I am reminded at just how much I liked the home delivery options for food that are available here. We had our initiation into home delivery with Zahradka Farm. Back in 2011-2012 when I discovered them. At the time, they were somewhat unique in our area. For many reasons.

Like pick a size. Six, ten or fourteen item produce and fruit. Meat option. Egg option. Some pantry items you could order. I’ll never forget that first delivery a week before Christmas. With half a fresh turkey as the meat item.

Plus, the romanescu cauliflower, which became a special treat in our Christmas dinner.

Covered in grated cheese and pepper and spices. That was the beginning of what became a highlight in the dead of winter. Really fresh and varied vegetables through those dark days.

My last post was written about a new option around here. The Hungry Harvest, fruit and/or vegetable deliveries. They are what I believe to be the fourth option that allows you to stay home nice and warm, and receive fresh food delivered right to your door in Howard County.

Pair Hungry Harvest with FarmtoFork, a recently launched venture by Carroll Farm to Table and other local farms. You could order your vegetables and fruit from Hungry Harvest and your meat, eggs and dairy from FarmtoFork. We are lucky. Carroll is not that far from our house, and we have gotten their whole chickens to roast. They have a farm stand open all year. Times of operation are on their web site.

Last but certainly not least, the long standing home delivery service from South Mountain Creamery. They started with dairy products, and slowly expanded to include everything from meat to hummus to vegetable and fruit bags. We used to buy their products at the Glenwood farmer’s market. They stopped attending many of the local markets when they instituted year round deliveries to this area. You can choose weekly, biweekly or monthly recurring deliveries, or just order what you want when you want. Check out where they deliver.

I still head up to the Creamery to pick up items for parties, like the cheese choices. Besides, nothing tastes better than their fresh milk, unless maybe it’s their ice cream.

Now that I think about it, a recurring delivery from these local companies would be a perfect gift to give elderly family members. You could easily put together something that covers the coldest dreariest months. Not a bad thought to keep in mind for next year.

For us, if our favorite Amish CSA ever stops supplying us locally year round, we would be very interested in using any one of the four.

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