Ok.  I've been slacking in writing about this stuff.  We've also been traveling a bit and it's been fantastic.

Full CSA Share Week 8

Full CSA Share Week 9

The last 2 weeks have been populated by peaches, plums, apples, melon, and blueberries.  All of which we ate raw and at once.   I actually supplemented our fruit supply with storebought fruit as well.   Just leave it on the table and it disappears.


We made raw salads out of the lettuce, and cucumbers and green beans during week 8.

The leeks (3) and red potatoes and onion were used in a version of Manhattan Clam Chowder.
I modified the recipe to contain Leeks, canned clams and juice (I KNOW!   it was a weeknight!) and 3 or 4 HUGE heirloom tomatoes (more about those in a moment).
 

I also made another batch of Borscht out of the beets and grilled up the japanese eggplants and broccoli.

So guys.  Here's the thing:  I'm finding that I'm happiest when I supplement my CSA share!  "Using it up" as a family of 4 has never once proven to be the challenge that I was hoping for.   Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE the idea behind a CSA membership and being surprised each week with a variety of produce, but it just isn't enough to keep me inspired.   I'll keep updating with photos of the CSA hauls for the rest of the season, but I'm thinking most of my inspiration will be coming from elsewhere...


And with that:  I was feeling uninspired.  Didn't want to cook the same old stuff.  Didn't want to write about it. 

Then Mom went on vacation and let me loose in her garden...  I came home with this:


HEIRLOOM TOMATO GLUT!!  And fresh herbs and carrots and onions and cucumbers and flowers.

THIS is what I'm talking about.

I immediately responded with a tomato/basil/cucumber salad with a simple balsamic vinaigrette.  It was amazing in a way that only fresh heirloom tomatoes can be:

 To go along with the clam chowder (or so I told myself, Actually this could be a meal unto itself) I made a Crostata out of heirloom tomatoes, fresh sage, parsley and basil, and fresh picked caramalized onions.

These ingredients were actually enough for 2 Crostata!

As the weather heats up, this recipe is fantastic either eaten hot as a light dinner or eaten chilled as a pasta salad.  Either way, it's great to eat out on the porch in the sunshine.

This is a spinoff of my recipe for Pasta Shrimp and Peas that I shared last year around this time.  Both of these recipes have proven to be kid pleasers. 

Lately I've been using dinner salads as a place to finish up all of our leftover side dishes (grain salads etc) along with getting my daily intake of ferments, and foraged goodies.  

Yep, I said FORAGED goodies.  The weather finally broke and the green things are HERE!   It's almost impossible to go outside with my girls lately and NOT pick up a few flowers.  


This absolutely isn't a new topic for me.  Last year I covered the use of foraged wild sweet violets, bittercress flowers, and onion grass in this gorgeous post. 

This time around, I kept it simple and added the flowers to our salad plates along with baby dandelion greens, homemade purple sauerkraut, and a Quinoa salad made with some of this season's first onion grass (which, for all intents and purposes tastes very much like mild chives.  I substituted Onion grass for the green onions called for in the original recipe, and carrots for the daikon radish). There's also a couple dolmades on there.  I cheated and bought those from the Greek bar at the store, BUT here's a recipe for those as well!

And here it is, in all it's HUMONGOUS dinner salad glory.

 

Ingredients for Quinoa Salad

Enjoy!!

OH MY GOODNESS!   The Holidays are OVER!   Time to get back on track.  Lately I've been filling my refrigerator with some gorgeous, vegan, wholegrain and bean salads.  Getting veggies back in our diet was really important after an entire 2 months of fatty, starchy, sugary celebration during the Holidays.

We actually started right after Christmas, by making and serving a bunch of yummy grain and veggie salads for our New Years Eve dinner get-together.  They were a hit with kids and adults alike.

Starting at around the 4th of July, our wild black raspberries were ripening.  The bushes have been yielding a bit more than a quart every-other-day and we've been gorging on them, and filling the freezer with the rest.  I plan on making wine, and jam as I have in the past, and they're also fantastic with
(soy)icecream or used instead/alongside strawberries over shortcake. 


I'll include the wine and jam recipes as I get around to them.

Another garden staple around here has been zucchini!  If you've ever grown this vegetable, or know anyone who does, you know that once they start producing, LOOK OUT because they'll take over your entire kitchen!  There's never a shortage around here despite the fact that I haven't actually grown any for the last few years.  I got a bagful at the farmer's market for .75 each and have been playing happily ever since.

So far I have made zucchini soup, zucchini bread, sliced zucchini on the grill, zucchini in kabobs, and sausage/zucchini pizza on the grill.  The recipes for soup and bread are designed specifically to use up zucchini.  Like, those HUGE ones you can't figure out what else to do with!

                                                   Seasalt to taste

This has become a fast favorite in my family and it is modified from a recipe for apple cake that we got from a multi-generational farm family who live upstate.

A perfect dessert on a warm Spring evening.

Simply put:  These are the best. Ever.  They're more like  breadsticks, hot out of the oven and crisp on the outside with a soft center... with TONS of colorful seasoning.
They're perfect for a snack, or for entertaining... liiike with wine out on the deck.  And that is exactly what we did with this batch when our neighbors invited us over for an impromptu glass (or 2 or 3) of wine on their deck.  They timed it perfectly for when the crackers came out of the oven, and everyone (including the kids) loved them.

My husband got the idea from the book The Bread Bakers Apprentice recipe for "Lavash Crackers" and we modified it according to our own preferences.

Baking has taken a hiatus in our house ever since my husband was diagnosed with Diabetes.  He is the baker, and he's really good at it but it took us a little while to figure out what a good balance was to keep his bloodsugar levels in check.  Turns out that moderation works just fine for him, and so he's back to baking and consuming all those delicious carbs in moderation (usually no more than 2 "carbs" per snack/meal). 

So, we needed some snack ideas and were sick of buying everything premade at the grocery store.  We found a recipe for Whole Wheat Soft Pretzles and modified it to fit our needs and the type of flour we had on hand.  They were really, REALLY good hot from the oven.

SPRING'S HERE!    Or, at least, it's above freezing and the ice is out of the pond. While it isn't quite grilling weather yet (BARELY above freezing), I'm still wanting dinners to be a little lighter.  Less sauce, less fat, more flavor and color and texture.

One of my family's favorites is pasta with peas.  We usually make it with a lot of garlic and shrimp and the kids love the little pieces that they can pick out one at a time to eat.

I went off to the woods yesterday, looking for Spring. The wind was icy and my face was freezing and stiff as I slogged through the icy snow stopping every once in a while to listen.  I listened hard for migratory birds and I looked under every bush for chipmunks.   I sniffed the wind for the smell of a thaw.  I got nothing. Nothing at all. I kept walking into the old part of the woods where the creek flows and sat on a fallen tree near the water.  Still looking and waiting and anticipating.  I watched the water ooze by underneath the ice, like a lava lamp.  I sat until my fingers hurt inside my gloves and there was nothing.  No animals, no stray green.... just ice and snow and suddenly * CRACK*   *POP* *SWOOOOSH*  an ice-dam gave way and water came tumbling over the top of the ice.  I grinned. NOT what I had expected, but Spring had began with a *Bang*...  not a chirp, or a scent, or a color... but a Bang.  How appropriate for this year. And then, of course, I wanted to go poke the ice with a stick to get it to move along... but decided against it as I knew the water was super-deep in that particular section.

Today the snow is continuing to melt and the temperatures are finally above freezing.  The Robins are singing and we smelled the tell-tale scent of a skunk coming out of hibernation.


There isn't much local and fresh right now, but we ARE blessed with a beautiful fresh produce section at our local supermarket.  I guess the marginally warmer temperatures were making me giddy  last week as I filled my cart with veggies.  It's been very culinarily rich around here the last couple of weeks, so I'll share some of that with everyone this week on the blog.

I think that every household with little kids should have a go-to pizza recipe.  We make ours 2 different ways:  traditional crust, and yeast-free "crispy" crust.   Today I'm going to share my crispy do-it-yourself  in under 30 minutes recipe.  It's whole grain, dairy-free, corn-free, and ends up being about 2 Carbs per slice.

I like to serve this with a nice big salad.

Yesterday, when I was outside with the girls, we saw bunny tracks.  We also saw a mole/vole tunnel under the snow.  Soon, the sap will start to flow in our old Sugar Maples and the Earth will indeed begin waking up beneath its blanket of ice and snow.

I make soda bread every year around this time.  It's round like the sun, a little sweet, full of yummy chopped fruit and loaded with caraway seeds... in hope of Spring.



Kid Approved!