This was, quite surprisingly, a hit in our house. With one of us (me) picky about meat, and another one low-carb, and another one with food "texture" issues, and another who would prefer to eat nothing but vanilla yogurt and icecream...  everyone ate this meal and liked it!  The trick was to season each element well and separately.  That way the kids could skip the "spicy" (by kid standards) gingery brown sauce and eat separately the noodles that could've stood on their own flavored with oil, garlic, and basil.

I've always had a soup fascination, and so I guess this is just the next logical permutation of that, but I was thinking:  I pretty much am permanently craving takeout chinese soup.  It's something I've never been able to replicate at home... so they must be using a stock base that I haven't tried out yet.  Lo and Behold:  The answer is pork.  PORK! 

I've started looking in a few new directions for inspiration. Admittedly, I know very little  about authentic Greek cooking but I'm glad I finally cracked open the book that's been sitting on my shelf, staring at me, for the last 10 years!  I'm learning plenty as I'm going though The Complete Book of Greek Cooking: The recipe club of saint paul's greek orthodox cathedral , but I think the biggest take away has been the joy of cooking for a crowd.  Filling a grocery cart with a TON of produce and using entire "family sized" packages of meat and fish has been fun and the leftovers have been amazing.

As with everything, I've modified certain parts of each original recipe to suit everyone's dietary needs and I'm beginning to see that it's  not only very easy to do this with Greek dishes, it's almost assumed that you're going to switch up ingredients to use what's on hand.  My kind of cooking! So, without further ado, here's my take on Greek Fish Plaki.

"Plaki" is a method of cooking that includes the use of onions, tomatoes, parsley, and olive oil and it usually uses fish or seafood as a protein. It is noted, however, that Plaki can also be made of beans or vegetables.

This was a perfect addition along side grilled anything (burgers, hot dogs, ribs... anything picnic really) or it can go over a green salad.

This week we got 2 pints of blueberries, 2 quarts of plums (purple and yellow), 1 quart of peaches, 3 cucumbers, 1 small head of lettuce, 1 bunch of beets, 1 large basil plant, and 1 bunch of radishes. 

We also got about 3 quarts of green beans and 3 LARGE cucumbers from our neighbor!  And even more cukes from my Mom's garden.

I'll start by saying that ALL of these cukes  have disappeared. Mark eats them whole as snacks and the kids like them sliced up. 

I also made a shredded radish/cucumber salad  (sub 2 cukes for 1 bunch radishes) with cucumber and the bunch of radishes.

The blueberries and ALL of the fruit were just set out on the table and have since disappeared.  The lettuce was quickly eaten as dinner salads.

The green beans were eaten raw (by the kids), and a bunch were stirfried with Tamari, Garlic, and a little sesame oil and served with baked tofu and brown rice.

The beet greens were made into a delicious Greens and Beans with Smoked Pork.  

I will be making the beet roots into this AMAZING recipe for pickled beets.  Alton Brown is one of my favorites and always knows what he's talking about!!

And the basil I pinched back some leaves and planted the rest of the plant in the garden next to our renegade tomatoes.  With any luck, by the time the tomatoes ripen, we'll have some extra basil to go with them. 

This week we actually went on a short (MUCH NEEDED) trip out of town.  We still didn't have any problem finishing up all of our fruit/veggie share for the week.  We'll be leaving for a long weekend at Grandma's house again in a couple of days, but I feel confident that next week will be equally easy for us to keep up with. 

I've been processing away all day today.    

I pitted the sour cherries and had about 4 gallons of frozen blackcaps in the freezer.  It is OFFICIALLY time to make Blackcap Jam and Wine!

Here's this years first small batch of Blackcap Jam!

Follow the link above to find my original recipes for these. 

This year I'm doing a variation on the Blackcap wine recipe that includes 2 lbs of pitted sour cherries.  For the fruit, you just add 2 lbs Blackcaps and 2 lbs Sour cherries.  Mash, add dried cranberries (or golden raisins) as suggested let set 24 hours, and carry on from there just as the instructions from the original post tell you!

First, you pit the Sour Cherries!

Put all of your frozen fruit (cherries and blackcaps) into a large pot, add raisins (or dried/sweetened cranberries), and top off with 4 quarts of water.

Cover with a hand towel and set sit 24 hours.  This is actually 2 different batches of wine. One plain Blackcap, and one Sour cherry/blackcap

See the original recipe here!
Have Fun, and Happy Fermenting!!!

Spring is here in full force and the weather is starting to hint toward Summer.  We've been grilling and having campfires  and LOVING being outside in the warm weather.  Well, the other day it was 90 f. and humid outside.  I looooved it, but my family was complaining "IT'S SOOOOO HOT!!!"... I blame their Scandinavian bloodlines for their inability to take the heat!


We didn't want to turn on the stove, or the grill, and all the kids wanted to do was play outside in the sprinkler.  It was dinner salad night.  We ate our salads outside just before a thunderstorm rolled through and ate almost an entire watermelon for dessert.




Pictured here is a green salad with fresh veggies cut into it. Leftover sliced roasted summer squash, marinated artichoke hearts, pickled beans and asparagus, red sauerkraut, melon, and a couple dolmades for good measure.  The Wild Rice Lentil Salad topped everything off and rounded it out so that it was a super-filling dinner salad.  I topped mine with Mustard Balsamic Vinaigrette (1 tbsp brown mustard to 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar and 1/4 cup olive oil).

Lately Dandelions have been getting some attention because they are among the 1st food sources for honeybees at the beginning of Spring. So, this year I waited a bit until the trees and other flowers started blossoming before I harvested ONLY the wide open flowering tops of dandelions to make Dandelion Wine! I've done this every year for the last 3 years and am in LOVE with both the process of picking and preparing and with the beautiful golden wine that results. My girls love to help pick flowers too!
I blogged about the recipe and process last Spring and am currently at the point in the process where I'm waiting for the must to activate with the yeast. In another day or so I'll bottle it up in a 1 gallon carboy.

Here's our haul

Quinn helped me "Pick and Pluck" this year!

Ani helped me stir the ingredients together for wine!

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. 

Last year was a scouting year in the woods by my house.  I kept my eyes open while walking the dog (and the kids) and located an area near the creek that was heavily populated with nettle and ferns.  On the Summer Solstice last year I harvested a whole bunch of nettle and used it to make various things, but the ferns, while beautiful to look at, were well past the edible "fiddlehead" phase for the season. 

I noted where those gorgeous ferns lived, and headed back to their patch last week.

Our dog, Oscar, helped me that day!

 I was rewarded with fresh fiddleheads (harvested sustainably, only 1 or 2 from each fern plant) that I sauteed up with some tamari and olive oil and ate as part of a side salad served alongside some "Ramped-up" blackbean burgers.





So, why do I keep on referring to my blackbean burgers as being "ramped-up"?  Well, it's because on this particular fiddlehead-gathering trip to the woods, I happened to realize that there were colonies of ramps EVERYWHERE.  Super abundant this year (and about 14.99/lb at the local grocery store).  So I gathered some of these beauties as well.





You use ramps just like you would use green onions. 

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!!

During the holidays my youngest got hooked on "bubble juice" (Sparkling Grape juice that we got to celebrate birthdays and the new year).  And I thought "Hey!  I know how to make this healthier... and how to give us a late winter project to keep us busy!"...

I sent away for some water kefir grains on Amazon and they arrived... a little underwhelming.  They were dehydrated and took a good 3 weeks to get going well enough to make "bubble juice".  BUT we did it and it came out great!  Think fruity, lightly sweet seltzer water.


When the grains arrived, we immediately put them in a quart jar with water, 1/4 cup of cane sugar (nothing fancy, just the table variety), a couple drops of molasses for mineral content, and a small handful of raisins.

Quinny helped.

We repeated this process every 48 hours for a COUPLE WEEKS until the grains had doubled in size and started to cause the liquid in the jar to be slightly bubbly and tangy.

If you receive regular Water Kefir grains (that aren't dehydrated) in the mail to start off with, this initial step should only take about 48 hours and shouldn't need to be repeated.

WOOHOO!  Finally bubbly and ready to go!

We put the entire contents of the jar (including the raisins and kefir grains) into a swingtop bottle and also added a handful of crushed strawberries for flavor.

I'll be honest, before we made this persimmon pudding, I had never had a persimmon before.  But there they were, in the same display as the  fresh cranberries at the grocery store. 

And here is what you do with a (actually, 4 small) fresh Persimmons.


Persimmon pudding is similar to traditional Plum of Fig pudding in that it's dense (like pumpkin pie filling) and deliciously spiced for the Holidays. 

I tried this out for the first time a couple weeks ago and HOLY COW! This is basically a recipe for chicken fried rice with the best flavor and texture combination I've ever had. End of story.   And, I'm finding that a lot of the spices that are used in traditional Indian cuisine are very similar to the spice palate we associate with the holiday season here in the U.S.A.  So, basically, this was nothing short of perfect.  AND my kids enjoyed it too!



First, marinade the chicken.  It's very important to have your chicken nice and evenly flavored.  I marinated mine overnight. 

Indian cuisine is something that I have had very little experience with outside of the occasional off-handed addition of curry powder to various things.  The more I look into creating my own favorites from scratch, the more I realize that there is SO much variation it's a little silly to think of any one flavor or texture as being quintessentially "Indian".   And with that said,  an extremely common ingredient used in Indian food is Ghee, or clarified butter. Easily replaceable in the kitchen at home, but hard to avoid when it is being cooked for you by others.  And this, I suppose, is my main excuse for having never gotten familiar with Indian food.

Until now!  I put a shout out on social media and was met with a couple of different favorite dishes:  Khichdi, and Biryani.  There are so many variations out there to choose from, and I went with a highly aromatic vegatarian version of Khichdi, and will be trying out a Coconut milk-based version of Biryani sometime in the very near future.

The Khichdi I made turned out to have a gorgeously balanced flavor combination, with warming green chili and a beautiful rizzoto-like texture.  Perfect for a chilly late-autumn evening.

 

                                               1/2 cup green peas

 Soak lentils and brown rice in a bowl with enough salted water to cover them for 30 minutes.

 Heat olive oil  on medium heat  in a large pot and add spices. 

 

 Stir until fragrant (2 minutes) and then add garlic, onions, and chilli paste. Cook for another 2-3 minutes and then add your veggies.  Stir and cook for another 4-5 minutes.

Drain the lentils and rice and put them in the pot.  Stir everything to combine.  Add salt to taste and 4 cups of water.  Stir, cover and cook on low until most of the water is absorbed (around 30 minutes).  

Serve and enjoy!

Continuing on with the theme of winter squash, I put together a kabocha-kale tart.

First, roast your kabocha squash.  Then, put together a single pie crust.

• 1.5 cups kabocha squash
• 2 cups kale, rinsed and chopped
•   2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tablespoons soymilk
• 1/4 cup firm tofu
• 1tsp lemon juice
• seasalt to taste 
• 1/4 cup pecans, chopped 
• olive oil 
• 3/4c Daiya cheddar (optional) 

Preheat oven to 400f. 

Scoop out squash into a large bowl.  Heat some olive oil in a pan.  Add garlic, salt, and kale to the pan and saute until the kale is wilted.

 

Combine egg, soymilk, lemon juice, and tofu in a bowl.  Salt to taste.

Mix the tofu-mixture in with the squash.  Add the kale to the squash mixture and fold together.  

 

 

Fill the pie crust  and then top with chopped pecans and Daiya cheddar shreds. 
 

Bake the tart in the oven until the crust becomes golden brown and the pecans are toasted (30-45 minutes).

Serve and enjoy!