Tag Archives: real food

A Visit to an Amish Farm

Posted on July 20, 2013 by AnnieRie

My second pot luck luncheon at the farms. My husband’s first. Today we drove to Christiana PA to attend one of the pot luck picnics at a member farm of Lancaster Farm Fresh Coop. This non profit cooperative supplies our CSA.

Most of us arrived by car to picnic in the barn. The barn was being used, just in case of rain. Some of us arrived by buggy.

There were quite a few cooperative member families who came to have lunch, talk to us, share their passion for locally grown food, and just create that bond. They had cloth bags for sale at the coop store today.

My favorite line on the bag — Don’t buy food from strangers.

We shared wonderful homemade goodies, brought by over 100 CSA members, and also provided by the Amish families in attendance. Today’s picnic was at the farm of one of the founding members of the coop. Followed by a Q&A with the managers and the farmers, then a walking tour of the farm.

After the tour, the opportunity to pick tomatoes and corn from the farm.

My husband picked a bag of tomatoes in one of the high tunnels while I talked with the wife of one of the farmers.

Heirloom cherries, yum!

We were also invited to come to another farm to pick up some “seconds”. Produce not good enough to put in a CSA box, but still quite wonderful. At lunch, my husband struck up a conversation with one of the farmers. He grows radicchio, Napa cabbage, purple viking potatoes, green romaine, something I can’t remember now, and Fava Beans for the coop.

Why the emphasis on fava beans. Because they gave us a box full of them from their cooler.

These were pods with maybe one bean in them, or pods that had a cut on them. They can’t use them in the CSA, so they were at the farm. He had ten boxes left of these, and they were going to the hogs this week for food. He has given them away in the past to CSA members, but they weren’t here this year. He asked us if we wanted some. Little did we know he meant about 25-30 pounds of pods, which netted us about eight pounds of beans.

We sat out on the patio tonight drinking a glass of local wine and shelling favas. Tomorrow I will blanch them and freeze most of them. We will use a couple of batches of them in recipes this week though.

Today was an overdose of local eating. Some people may say, “They aren’t Maryland farms” but the challenge doesn’t require the farms to be in Maryland. And, I took watermelon, feta and mint salad to the picnic. The feta was Breezy Willow feta, so I definitely had very local ingredients in my salad.

Besides, we have lovely VA and PA farms in our Howard County markets. Those of us who buy from the markets are supporting farmers from within a 100 mile radius of our homes. Even if we cross a state line here or there.

The Amish farmland is amazingly beautiful to visit. The people are wonderful. The food is awesome. When we went to pick up the fava beans, we turned down a ride in the family’s buggy. I wish we had the time to have taken it but we wanted to get home and shell all those beans before it stormed.

A perfect day to kick off the first day of Buy Local. Visiting a farm and supporting them.

hocofood@@@

2 Comments

Posted in Adventures, CSA, Farms, Food, Locavore and tagged CSA, farms, Food, foodie, heirloom tomatoes, Locavore, real food. 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@@@

1 Comment

Posted in Commentary, Food, Hobbies, Locavore and tagged commentary, cooking, crock pot cooking, Food, foodie, hobbies, hoco loco, hocoblogging, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

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.

Veggie Mama

Posted on July 8, 2013 by AnnieRie

Some days it is how I feel. The veggie pusher, so to speak.

Today I gave my mom some of my CSA veggies and some farmer’s market finds. She doesn’t always have access to fresh fruits and veggies. When I have the opportunity, I give her real treats.

Like some of these beauties. Yellow wax beans. I also found some awesome huge Brussels sprouts at Jenny’s market the other day. I made the rounds Saturday, for a few items. Like meat from TLV, and peaches from Lewis Orchards, followed by a stop at Breezy Willow for yogurt to make peach pops, and butter for cooking. Then, because I really wanted tomatoes and don’t have any, I stopped at Jenny’s.

Jenny’s is back at their original site off Rte. 32. They had to relocate last year after the derecho, but have their place fixed up. Not all their stuff is local, but they will tell you what is and what isn’t. Besides the tomatoes, I found huge Brussels sprouts, and tonight for dinner some got sauteed. My mom got a handful too. I also gave her some red potatoes and some of my peaches.

It saves her driving quite a distance to their nearest farm stand. I know we are lucky up here in Howard County. Lots of stands, markets and CSA options.

These days I do pretty well at using almost all my CSA items quickly. This week for example, I have plowed through quite a bit of it, because of all the picnics and parties.

We got this from Sandy Spring last Thursday. Already I have made dill pickles from the pickling cukes. Roasted the beets for salads. Blanched the carrots to freeze (they will be used once I get canning tomatoes to make sauce for freezing). Made pesto using the carrot tops. Shared the beans and used the rest for a dinner. Used some of the potatoes for a salad. Leaf lettuce went on the sliders with those tomatoes from Jenny’s.

I need to get a few oranges to make orange fennel red onion salad. I will be making zucchini fritters tomorrow night for dinner, and am making tzatziki with cucumber and some of the plain yogurt I have.

Amazing to me is how I have changed my cooking and our eating style to use up this bounty most weeks. With a few extras to make my mom smile.

hocofood@@@

2 Comments

Posted in CSA, Family, Farmer's Markets, Farms, Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food and tagged cooking, CSA, family, farmer's markets, farms, Food, foodie, Locavore, real food. Bookmark the permalink.

Killer Baked Beans

Posted on July 6, 2013 by AnnieRie

It’s all Facebook’s fault. Or, it’s Nicole’s aka HoCo LoCo, since her liking 100 Days of Real Food was the reason I “liked” them and got this recipe.

I have never made baked beans from scratch before seeing this. All this partying is inspiring me to make picnic foods.

We have been out quite a bit lately, what with cooking and creating salads and sauces for Field Day, going to a Fourth of July crab feast taking potato salad with CSA veggies, and now, tomorrow, a housewarming. The beans are perfect to take there, for the grilling. We did try them out tonight with sliders for dinner.

My Adaption of 100 Days of Real Food’s Slow Cooker Baked Beans

INGREDIENTS
2 cups dried navy beans (optional, but recommended: soak beans in water for 6 to 8 hours and then drain)
4 oz bacon, cooked and diced
1 smoked shank
1 onion, diced
1 – 16 oz container of my homemade tomato sauce (you can use canned)
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
3 tablespoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
black or red pepper, to taste

INSTRUCTIONS
Place the beans, bacon, pork shank and onion in the bottom of a slow cooker. Set aside.
In a small bowl whisk together the tomato sauce, syrup, mustard, vinegar, chili powder, salt and pepper. Pour over top of bean mixture and then add 3 cups of water. Turn the slow cooker onto high and cook for 10 to 12 hours. Serve warm.

hocofood@@@

1 Comment

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

Fair Weather

Posted on July 5, 2013 by AnnieRie

As in the Howard County Fair. I know it is four weeks from now,

but planning for Home Arts entries starts when the fair books arrive in the mail. We got ours last week.

Unfortunately, the weather isn’t cooperating. My tomatoes this year are far behind schedule. The herbs were also decimated by the bunnies, so I am doing triage on the remaining stumps, and coaxing them to recover.

So far, only the Box Car Willie plants have the potential to give me ripe heirloom tomatoes in time for the fair. Mortgage Lifter and Paul Robeson are lagging in their production. Pineapple tomatoes are late bloomers anyway, and this year they are far behind. And, the hillbillies are downright disappointing.

Want to know about heirlooms? This is a good site to learn about the varieties.

Want to know about the fair? Check out their web site.

This year my husband gets the senior discount. I still buy the season pass for $20, as we go to the fair at least four or five days. Can’t miss the fun events, like tractor pull. Skid loader competition. Iron chef. The 4H auction. And, so much more.

This year, too, being the beginning of the election season, candidates will be out in force.

Put the fair on your calendar. It truly is a community event, and for 68 years it has been going strong.

Me, I just want one of these for tomatoes. The blue ribbon. I got one last year for my herbs. I keep trying to grow great heirlooms, or cherry tomatoes, or this year, my foray into massive amounts of canning tomatoes.

I also had success with the gladiolus. Crossing my fingers that they flower in time.

This one got a second place ribbon last year.

I am thinking about photographs to enter. And, maybe some of my crape myrtle. And, my zucchini bread. It’s fun. Easy to do. Download the fair book and think of the possibilities. You still have four weeks to go.

hocoblogs@@@

My New Farm Page

Posted on July 2, 2013 by AnnieRie

I added a page to the blog. My links to the farms where most of my food is purchased. I will be adding more and more to this page before the Buy Local Challenge begins, but right now it is just a series of links to the home pages.

We are blessed with a variety of farms in this region. Farms with CSAs. Farms with farmstands. Farms that come to the local markets.

There are abundant sources of eggs, cheese, produce, fruit, and plants, right here within a 100 mile radius of Ellicott City. Taking the pledge to Buy Locally for the Maryland Challenge is really a cinch.

Even if you don’t cook much. How hard is it to use fresh fruit? Jams, honey, eggs, meat, tomatoes, corn. Not much skill necessary to use these items.

Every time we replace corporate sources with local sources, we are helping our local economy.

Something as simple as eating local fruit every day. Or, making a salad using local greens and tomatoes. Or, buying three local cheeses and using them on salads, breads, or as appetizers.

Between the spreads and the feta and gouda, I can easily go through Bowling Green’s cheeses as part of our everyday dining.

How about yogurt and ice cream? Breezy Willow sells both, at their farm store open Saturdays year round.

Meats! We are so fortunate to have local farms offering chickens, turkeys, pork, lamb, and beef, all year round. If you want to eliminate pink slime, antibiotics and growth hormones, you don’t have to travel far to get fresh meat from the farms surrounding Columbia and Ellicott City.

CSAs! There are over a half dozen available. Many using local farms.

If you haven’t signed up to take the Buy Local Pledge, think about it. Even if you only transition a few things to being locally sourced, it is a step in the right direction.

Look appetizing?

hocofood@@@

4 Comments

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

The Buy Local Challenge

Posted on June 30, 2013 by AnnieRie

Coming up on 20-28 July. Maryland has a Buy Local Challenge the last full week of July every year. What do you have to do to participate?

It’s easy. Go to the web site and register. Pledge to eat one local item every day during the challenge. These days, eating locally is pretty simple.

Some ready made ideas. Like honey, coffee, biscotti, bread, milk, ice cream, eggs, cheeses, jams and jellies, tomatoes, fruit.

Some that require a little cooking, like corn, meat, squash, potatoes.

Yesterday, my lunch plate was full of locally grown ideas.

The blueberries from Larriland. Arugula and salad mix from Love Dove Farms, bought at the farmer’s market. The onion in the tuna salad. The potatoes, scallions and chives in my potato salad. The goat cheese.

This year’s theme for the challenge is to Enjoy Local Foods Outdoors. Picnic items like potato salad, deviled eggs, cole slaw, sliced tomatoes and onions on burgers made with local beef.

Bread and rolls from Stone House, or The Breadery, or Great Harvest, or Atwater’s. Bowls full of fresh berries with ice cream from Misty Meadows, bought at the Friday market.

Grilled corn on the cob, with fresh butter and spice.

Caprese style salad, with goat cheese from Firefly Farms, or fresh mozzarella bought at Breezy Willow. They also have ice cream, fresh Trickling Springs butter, honey, yogurt that is awesome.

If you are a CSA member, it is really a snap to beat this challenge.

Or, check out the local farmstands, like Clark’s or Baugher’s or Breezy Willow.

Buy some mint. Put it in a pot. Make mojitos.

The possibilities are endless. How about peach pops made with fresh local peaches, local yogurt blended and frozen?