Entries Tagged 'Recipes' ↓

I promised when I started this blog that I’d include some recipes for what’s currently coming out of the garden, so here’s the first one!

Never quite know what to do with all the chard, kale, and other hardy greens? I didn’t either. But I tonight I had some outer cabbage leaves that had been shading the neighboring plants too much. I had noticed a recipe, Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux from The Splendid Table podcast and knew I had to pick those cabbage leaves. I kept changing my mind as I cooked, though, and the final dish has nothing in common with that recipe – I’ll have to make it sometime when I have orange juice.

What to do with hardy greens
Serves 1-2

4 large outer cabbage leaves or any other hardy green (collards, beet greens, chard, etc.)
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. bacon grease
pinch salt
pinch lemon pepper
pinch red pepper flakes
juice of 1/2 a lime

Cut up your greens as if you were making cole slaw – fine threads 1-2 inches long. Saute onion and garlic in the bacon grease (or other oil) until soft, about 3-5 minutes. Add greens and cook another 5 minutes until soft. Add salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and lime juice and remove from heat.

I had this with some leftover salmon crumbled on top, and liked the greens so much I went back for more without the salmon. I’m usually a one-pot-meal kind of cook, but I might have to start making this as a side dish regularly, since it’s so quick and good (and uses up those greens)! I’ve probably just reinvented the wheel here, but it’s good, and that’s what matters, right?

Tomatoes transplanted along the North fence

• Plant something: transplanted lots of tomatoes into the ground, and planted some scarlet runner beans
• Harvest something: a couple handfuls each of sorrel and spinach
• Preserve something: froze leftovers for lunches
• Waste not: we grilled a couple nights ago, and used some of the last of the quarter cow we bought a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, they were labeled ‘Ribs for Boiling’ for a reason – the guys worked their way (slowly) through their portions, and I threw the others in a stockpot. I’ll be making barbecue-flavored soup at some point – maybe BBQ French Onion Soup?
• Want not: cooked up a ton of chickpeas for making hummuses for a party this weekend – I highly recommend the cilantro jalapeno hummus.
• Community food systems: eating with housemates.
• Eat the food: barbecue beef ribs, pizza with homemade pesto, feta cheese and homegrown and canned banana peppers

• Plant something: We had some nights get just below freezing a couple days ago, so I’ve put off planting the tomatoes just yet.
• Harvest something: chives, basil
• Preserve something: bottled our most recent beer, Oktoberfest Lager
• Waste not: the usual reusing, recycling and composting.
• Want not: I finally got to the asian grocery and got a bunch of stuff for pad thai. I also stocked up on white flour and wheat berries for the pantry, but our fridge is currently quite empty – I need to get to the co-op.
• Community food systems: sent Shaun to work with a bucket of lime cookies – not exactly healthy, but quite a hit.
• Eat the food: roasted asparagus and chickpeas, and the pure pantry dining of pasta puttanesca.

Seedlings hardening off on my front stoop, where they are shaded and relatively protected.

• Plant something: transplanted and started hardening off all my tomato seedlings, using whatever containers I could find.
• Harvest something: a couple handfuls each of sorrel, chives and some spinach that self-sowed from last year
• Preserve something: nope
• Waste not: soup from chicken carcass
• Want not: not in any way food related, but I stocked up on glass for Sundrops – the stained glass store was having a sale
• Community food systems: supported a friend’s unexplored interest in canning by giving them some home-canned jalapeno jelly.
• Eat the food: jalapeno-roasted chicken for the last day of my mother-in-law’s visit (using jalapeno mush leftover from making jalapeno jelly last fall), salad made using the greens harvested (I cut the sorrel into little ribbons, since it has a pretty strong flavor), and Laotian Turkey Soup from the chicken carcass – just the thing for my week of sniffles and coughing.

Pi Day pie 10 years ago Shaun made a pie.

Spring break at Shaun’s and my respective colleges had lined up, and a friend from high school was going stir crazy in Alaska, so we all planned to spend the week together at my aunt and uncle’s house in LA. Our friend bailed at the last minute, so it ended up being just us. For my birthday that week, Shaun baked an apple pie. My aunt took our first picture together (with the pie – I unfortunately no longer have the picture).

And so, in celebration of pi day and our 10th ‘anniversary’, we made pie today.

Shaun’s Apple Pie

• Crust (adapted from 1st edition Betty Crocker Cookbook)
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2/3 cup + 2 Tbsp. butter (0.8 cups or 1.3 sticks)
• 3 to 4 Tbsp. cold water
• Filling
• 6 granny smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
• 2 Tbsp. (or generous splashing) lemon juice
• 1/3 cup small pearl tapioca or flour
• grated orange peel
• splash Grand Marnier or other orange-flavored liquor

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Crust: Mix flour and salt in a medium bowl. Add cold butter and cut into tiny flour-covered bits with table knives or a pastry cutter. Sprinkle in cold water and mix until it is just combined. Divide dough in half and roll out half the dough. I like to roll the crusts out on a new garbage bag, because you don’t have to worry about the dough sticking to the counter top. If using garbage bag method, flip dough over a pie plate and gently detach from bag. Put pie pan and other half of dough in refrigerator if there is any delay.

Filling: Peel, core and slice apples. We use our Cuisinart to do the slicing. Put apple slices in a bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix well, and scoop into bottom pie crust.

Roll out the second half of the dough and lay it over the top of the pie. Crimp the edges of the pie together, and wash with a mixture of milk, sugar and water (we didn’t have any milk and skipped the wash this time – it’s fine, but the crust won’t brown as well). Cut some steam slits in the top crust, and put the pie in the oven on a cookie sheet. Don’t skip the cookie sheet, otherwise the pie will drip and you’ll have apple pie drippings burned to the bottom of your oven and it will take days to clean. Believe me.

Bake for 45-60 minutes, then remove from oven and let cool. Turn pie-dough-covered garbage bag inside out and use as originally intended.

Celebrate 10 years of making and eating pie together.

Sharon over at The Chatelaine’s Keys is kicking off year three of the Independence Days Challenge, and this year I’m joining in. The inspiration for the Challenge came from the late Carla Emery, author of “The Encyclopedia of Country Living”

“All spring I try to plant something every day – from late February, when the early peas and spinach and garlic can go in, on up to midsummer, when the main potato crop and the late beans and lettuce go in. Then I switch over and make it my rule to try and get something put away for the winter every single day. That lasts until the pumpkins and sunflowers and late squash and green tomatoes are in. Then comes the struggle to get the most out of the stored food – all winter long.”

The idea behind Independence Days is to try to do a little something every day, and report on your progress once a week – and no reporting failures! No saying, “I didn’t pick the beans in time and they all got tough,” or “I left the tomatoes on the counter a couple days too long, and, well, compost time.” Only success may be reported.

Independence Days Challenge categories

• Plant something – this can be as small as starting some bean sprouts for your salad, or sowing your 10 acres of wheat
• Harvest something – foraged wild greens, herbs from your kitchen window, or a 10 pound pumpkin
• Preserve something – stick a few baby cucumbers in vinegar for refrigerator pickles, dry what’s left of the fresh sage you bought to try in that new recipe, throw your extra tomatoes in the freezer whole or (if you really want) slave over a hot canning pot making tomato sauce in August
• Waste not – keep track of what you have so it doesn’t go bad before you eat it. Check the fridge before you go shopping and freeze leftovers for future lunches before they mold. Reduce packaging and trash, plan errands ahead to save time and gas so you don’t need to run out for just that one thing.
• Want not – things you’ve done to be prepared that aren’t growing/storing/preserving food – the 50 lb sack of flour in 5 gallon buckets, the big package of toilet paper so you don’t run out in a week, stocking up on your family’s medicines, that kind of thing.
• Build community food systems – Spread the message, share your knowledge, help your community to be more resilient and food secure. Frankly, I see this as being my Achilles heel.
• Eat the food – having 50 lbs of dried beans (or tomatoes) does you no good if you never eat beans (or tomatoes). Explore new recipes or tweak some old ones. Try some new foods that store well, but also don’t bother to go to all the trouble of growing and trying to store brussel sprouts if you loathe them – grow broccoli or kale instead.

I’m going to try to give my weekly reports on Monday, so here’s the first one:

• Plant something: winter sowed chevril, borage, anise hyssop, and about a million tomato varieties (what’s winter sowing?), planted indoors various varieties of broccoli, cabbage and kale.
• Harvest something:… I’ve got three feet of snow, ok?
• Preserve something: I’m slowly learning that nuts really do go rancid eventually, so peanuts go in the fridge
• Waste not: leftovers packaged in the freezer for Shaun’s work lunches, and made my winter sowing containers out of old plastic jugs. (It’s not food related, but I cut up some glass bottles for making Sundrops )
• Want not: bought a new brand of 100% recycled toilet paper and a package of paper towels (used only for oil and cat barf)
• Community: does sharing dinner with our housemates count?
• Eat the food: French onion soup with frozen homemade stock, and Garlic Potato Soup with more stock, potatoes that were starting to sprout and whey from a cheese-making attempt, no-knead bread (I need to refill my flour bucket), naan (made with homemade yogurt) and hummus(es).