Tag Archives: crockpot soups

Winter CSA Week Eleven, and Dinner from the Box

Posted on March 9, 2012 by AnnieRie

An accidental Eat Local Dinner was made today because the freezer was too full.

Today is CSA delivery day, so this morning my husband went to grab an ice pack to put in the cooler for the CSA delivered meat and eggs. The freezer is pretty full, between sorbets for me while recovering and the accumulation of meat and frozen veggies delivered the past few weeks.

So, I said, take out the chicken and put it in the crockpot. Frozen? Yes, frozen. Frozen chicken in the crockpot is an easy way to make soup. If you try to put a fresh chicken in the pot, it will totally disintegrate before dinner. Chicken mush isn’t appetizing. The beauty of crockpot cooking is the ability to use frozen items like we did.

The makings for dinner. All dumped in the pot, including the butter used later to spread on the chicken, and the turkey stock left in the freezer since Thanksgiving. It is the start of three or four meals, which included chicken tonight with potatoes from the CSA box last week and greens delivered today. The rest will be shredded then the broth pulled out of the pot. Broth will go back in Sunday with a soffrito and the chicken to make the basis for chicken noodle soup. Leftover big pieces of chicken will be used for chicken salad, and there will be enough soup for two dinners. The only safety tip about cooking frozen meat is to let it cook on high, not low, for at least 6 hours, then switch to low if you don’t want it to fall apart.

This is the platter ready to serve. All of this chicken won’t be used for the dinner, but put aside for the salad. All of the rest of the carcass and dark meats are still in the crockpot waiting to be pulled apart and deboned.

As for what came today in the CSA box, there were:

Salad Greens – used for dinner
Collard Greens
Oranges from Florida
Mixed Onions
Carrots
Turnips

The meat this week was JW Treuth’s center cut pork chops.

Also included were my biweekly eggs, all shapes sizes and colors, even a long pointy one.

So, dinner tonight was almost 100% from my winter CSA. The only non-CSA items were the butter from South Mountain, the turkey stock from my Maple Lawn turkey, and the dressing for the greens from Catoctin Mountain. Oh, and salt, pepper and herbs de Provence.

4 Comments

Posted in CSA, Dark Days, Food, Locavore, Real Food and tagged crockpot soups, CSA, Dark Days Challenge, Food, Locavore. Bookmark the permalink.

Finishing Out a Dark Days Week with Sweets

Posted on February 5, 2012 by AnnieRie

This week I attempted to reduce the clutter in my fridge by cooking as many local dinners as possible, and using small business or organic items if I didn’t have local ones. For the most part, I made it.

My first report

Sunday Dinner

Followed by:

Three days including a grilling day

I am happy to say I made it through the rest of the week as well. Thursday night we finished up the leftovers from the Sunday night pasta meal, augmented with an organic roasted red pepper sauce made from Pacific soup, thickened with a touch of local flour and some red wine. Forgot to take pics.

Friday and Saturday the weather changed and I fell back on using the crockpot.

Friday I made greens with chorizo bought at Dupont Circle Market in December from Cedarbrook Farm in WV, and a huge sweet potato from Baugher’s farm stand. The collard greens were from the CSA, and the carrots and chard from the Silver Spring market. My teeny little dried peppers. Onion – CSA

The chorizo was browned on the stove before placing it on top the veggies in the crockpot. It came out really nice, spicy but not overwhelming.

Finally, Dark Days Dinner with Sweet Ending — a mini-challenge to make something sweet for Valentine’s Day, even though we aren’t there yet. Not a huge sweets fan, me, but my husband is. I decided to make a sort of peanut “brittle” using Virginia peanuts bought at the Common Market. I roasted them with a coating of walnut oil and salt, then added them to a pan of local honey with pepper. Poured them out on a plate and put them in the freezer. Enjoyed them last night while watching a movie.

As for the dinner, it was homemade chicken soup in the crockpot. All local except for the egg noodles. They are from the Amish Market in Shrewsbury, bulk, made in PA but not guaranteeing the source of the flour. Chicken from South Mountain Creamery. Turkey stock from my freezer, made with my Thanksgiving turkey. Carrots, onion, celery all from Zahradka Farm CSA.

I forgot to take pics again, but here are the leftovers ready for the fridge.

It was served with Atwater’s rosemary bread and Blue Ridge Dairy butter, and a Linden Chardonnay.

Now, this week I need to work on getting the fridge under control. No buying of anything but milk and bread.

And, I need to get rid of my husband’s water pitcher. Boy, is that puppy in sad shape with dings and marks. Wonder how old it is?

All in all, a good week of eating locally and cooking from scratch. Of course, being retired helps.

9 Comments

Posted in Dark Days, Farmer's Markets, Food, Locavore, Retirement, Wine and tagged crockpot soups, Dark Days Challenge, farmer's markets, Food, Locavore, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Accidental Crockpot Dinner

Posted on December 22, 2011 by AnnieRie

In my haste to make room in the freezer yesterday, I accidentally left the frozen turkey carcass left over from Thanksgiving out on the side counter opposite the work area in the kitchen. Two hours later I found it, happily defrosting itself and making a puddle on the counter.

So, after dinner, a crockpot soup, I had to adjust my plans for the evening and begin an overnight slow cooking turkey stock. Into the just emptied and cleaned crockpot, I dumped the carcass, partially defrosted. I rummaged around and cut up a few onions, leeks and carrots. Into the pot with assorted dried and fresh herbs from the garden and cupboard. Copious amounts of water, some salt and pepper, and a ten hour low temp setting.

Off to read, then all night long the turkey cooked down to an aromatic rich stock ready for use this morning.

I strained off enough to fill three of my one pint freezer containers for later this winter, put a quart in the little fridge where wine and beer usually co-mingle with whatever doesn’t fit in the kitchen fridge, and added all sorts of veggies to the rich thick soup left in the crockpot. This afternoon I will throw some egg noodles in for the last hour of cooking, and dinner tonight will be turkey noodle soup.

Almost but not quite a Dark Days Dinner for the second time this week. The turkey was local, from Maple Lawn Farm. The carrots, leeks and onions were from the CSA. Herbs from my garden. The egg noodles are from the Shrewsbury Amish market, but aren’t made from local ingredients, so I ended up with a 90% locally sourced meal. If I open a Breaux semillon/chardonnay blend, from Virginia, and defrost some Atwater’s bread, I am pretty much eating a locally produced meal again.

1 Comment

Posted in Dark Days, Food, Locavore, Wine and tagged crockpot soups, Food, Locavore. Bookmark the permalink.

Freezer Foraging

Posted on December 21, 2011 by AnnieRie

I have been meaning to clean out the freezer for some time. With my delivery this week of my first winter CSA, plus the last pick up of the fall CSA, I will be needing the space.

I love crockpot soups and stews so today I took the opportunity to clean out some items. I found tomato basil sausage from the Amish market in Lancaster, plus some chicken stock, and rosemary olive bread slices left from Atwater’s.

I added the last of the mustard greens and bok Choy from the fridge. And, the last of the frozen plum tomatoes from the summer CSA, when I was drowning in tomatoes. I added a can of diced tomatoes, some canned butter beans, some leftover bacon bits from the freezer, some honey, sage from the garden, salt, pepper, onions, garlic, cinnamon, and a dried chile.

Voila! Beans and greens and sausage soup! It smells heavenly in here, not quite as good as yesterday when I finished the Christmas cookies, but still really fragrant aromas are wafting into the family room as I type.

Dinner!

1 Comment

Posted in Food and tagged crockpot soups. Bookmark the permalink.

Autumn cooking

Posted on November 3, 2011 by AnnieRie

I always like fall, and the crockpot used to get lots of use when I worked, not so much now that I have retired.

Tonight I decided to slow cook some of the squashes from the CSA with some andouille sausage and greens. To say it was a hit was an understatement. I love to use spice and flavors in cooking and this time I added cinnamon, cumin, mint, garlic, honey, cayenne and salt,

The acorn and butternut squashes melted down into the sauce and made it rich and comforting. One of my new favorites that will be repeated.