Whoa, and we're back

Next time we have out of town guests in, remind me that I DO NOT cook for them. No matter what I think/want/wish I will do, I just don't. Unless it's breakfast and/or sandwiches. Geez. My Father-in-law doesn't eat any non-breakfast meal without a beef product of some kind, so that was out when they were visiting. I don't care if you make your own beef product at my house, but I'm not cooking it for you, dig? Then there were just so many places we wanted to take my parents, that I barely cooked at all. Plus, I didn't want to "stick" anyone with the baby while I cooked. I felt odd about that, but there it is.

So after three weeks of mostly eating out, we were only too happy to get back to local food and cooking for ourselves!

Some recipes I've tried lately...

Creamy Broccoli Tahini Pasta Bake from Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. It was pretty good the first night all by itself, but it improved a lot when we had it as leftovers and added homemade marinara! It was kind of like super-protein baked ziti. With broccoli. Not particularly local, except for the broccoli and breadcrumbs. But it made a ton and was good for lunch the whole week.

Another night I made sauteed veggies in TJ's spinach simmer sauce over jasmine rice. I used local red pepper, red onion, broccoli, parsnip. I also made asian baked tofu (local tofu!), using a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. And let me just say that marinating tofu is for suckers. I didn't marinate it at all, just tossed the marinating ingredients into the pan with the tofu, covered with foil and baked it for 15 minutes. Then I removed the foil, baked for another 10 minutes, then broiled it for 3 minutes. The marinade totally bakes into the tofu. No need to press or waste your time marinating.

Another day I made Pasta with Arugula Pesto. It was good! I was surprised. I've made it in the past and thought it was pretty "eh." But this recipe I found substituted garbanzo beans for nuts, which made it really creamy and bonus, the baby could it eat. I also used TJ's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend instead of straight parmesan, which couldn't have hurt. We had it tossed with red pepper, mushrooms, garlic and onion (all local, plus the arugula was local). The recipe made a ton of pesto, so I think I'll have it on pizza this weekend.

We also have a bumper crop of apples, so I made an apple crisp the other day, which is SO good. We had it with local vanilla ice cream. yum!

And of course we've been enjoying green salads with fresh local lettuces and tomatoes from our garden.

I can't believe how much of the frozen marinara we've blasted through already! Two quarts and one pint, so far. Holy crap.

Food related stuff we need to do:

Dry our italian plums in the dehydrator.
Make applesauce with the apples.
Bake bread (check! Rye Caraway bread is in the breadmaker as we speak!)
Harvest all the backyard basil; make pesto or dry it
Harvest/transplant the thyme
Harvest/transplant the oregano
Harvest the mint
Use up our:

• eggplant
• beet greens
• arugula
• peppers
• mushrooms
• broccoli

If anyone has any great recipes they'd recommend that utilize any/all of the above (especially the greens!!!), puh-leeze pass them on.

Why I need a chest freezer

Attack of the Killer Red Rounds
Hmmm...well, we got an email late last week from our CSA that extra tomatoes would be available for (discounted) purchase at the farmer's market on Saturday. So we planned to get a few.

We ended up with 1/2 a bushel of red round tomatoes (for $13.50).

This may not sound like a lot of tomatoes, but believe me, it really is.

I spent most of Saturday processing tomatoes for freezing. I've never frozen tomatoes before (except as sauce), so it was a learning experience. I followed the directions from Pick Your Own (with illustrations!), so I hope they turn out okay. I kind of liked the process of boiling, ice bathing and then peeling the tomatoes - kind of like peeling a sunburn, but way less gross (but equally satisfying). Then I cored them, quartered 'em, squished all the seeds and liquid into a bowl (which I strained for the juice at the end), and then packed them into bags. I think we got 2 gallons and 2 quarts out of it - not packed full, but kind of flat in the bags so they don't take up lot of room in the freezer.

That only used about half the tomatoes.

Then I made another batch of tomato sauce. This time I used half dried herbs and half fresh. We cooked it all night long, and got it in the freezer today - 2 quarts, 2 pints frozen and 1 quart in the fridge.

We still have 16 tomatoes to deal with. AAAGGHH!

No, really, it's ok. A few will become salsa, because we have cilantro to use up from the CSA. I'm thinking of trying this weird tomato pudding recipe out of Passionate Vegetarian, but we'll see if I get around to that tomorrow. The rest? I don't know. Maybe we'll have a lot of caprese salads this week. Maybe we'll be passing them along to friends. Or I might be able to bring myself to freeze another batch on Tuesday. That is, if the fruitflies don't fly away with them first...

Colder Than a Witches What Now?
So as I was checking my email last night, I noticed that my desktop weather channel icon was blinking red in my taskbar, which usually means a thunderstorm watch or some such thing. I clicked on it, but instead of a thunderstorm watch I see that there is a FROST advisory. Yep. I snark about it to Chad, and then promptly pass out in bed with the baby before 8 p.m.

I woke up this morning to find all of the herbs in our basement, and our four tomato plants draped in lots of towels in the backyard.

Everything survived. Best. Husband. Ever. :)

Coming Soon:
Apples. We also bought a big bag of apples this weekend. So I'll be dealing with those soon, too. A few will surely end up as a crisp, and maybe we'll try to dehydrate a few, too. But the rest I think we'll par-blanch and then freeze.

We're seriously running short on freezer space.

ELC Days 10 & 11

I was feeling under the weather yesterday, so no post. I'm going to keep this quick!

Menu, Monday 9/10

Breakfast:
Homemade granola
yogurt
kefir
Pero (strange toasted grain beverage, sort of like coffee)

Lunch:
Tofu "egg" salad sandwich
Popcorn
Backyard tomatoes

Dinner:
Gnocchi (from Roma)
Homemade tomato sauce
garlic rye toast
slow roasted roma tomatoes

a couple pieces of hazelnut chocolate...mmmargh...

Menu Tuesday, 9/11
Breakfast:
Kefir
scrambled local eggs
Gatorade (to combat my dehydration/stomach cramp problem)

Lunch:
Disappearing pasta shells and zucchini
1 slow roasted tomato half (hurt my tummy)

Snack:
Key lime pie bar from Pinwheel Bakery

Dinner:
Grilled cheese on rye (local bread, local cheese)
Tomato soup w/ chickpeas and fresh basil (just our tomato sauce thinned down; almost totally local!!!)

In other news....
We picked up the food dehydrator yesterday! It's a Ronco!!!! Haven't tried it ouy yet, but soon...very soon. As an aside, it appears everything we buy off of craigslist in detroit is available for pick-up on Prentis street. We bought a car from a guy on Prentis like 3 years ago, and yesterday, like 4 buildings down, a dehydrator. Strange, no?

Oh and we also picked up our CSA share yesterday (on foot! Go us.) Here's what's in store this week:

Butternut Squash

Acorn Squash

Green & Red Peppers (sweet)

Beans

Eggplant

cherry tomatoes

Macintosh apples (from Brozowski Farms)

Tomatoes-6 romas per share

More soon.

ELC Day 9

Sunday we did a bit of cooking. First thing, for breakfast I searched out a recipe for peach coffeecake, since we had quite a few tasty peaches begging to be transformed into something breakfast-y. The results were a little disappointing; I guess it just wasn't sweet enough, or maybe it was lacking in spices. I rated it a 3 out of 5 on allrecipes.com anyway. Not great, not terrible.

Then a good bit of the morning was spent getting the next batch of tomato sauce in the crockpot - it takes a bit of time to chop all those cute little heirlooms up! But it is always, always, always worth it. I don't think Chad will let me cook a dinner this week that doesn't involve tomato sauce. We froze three quarts and have 1 fresh jar in the fridge. It's sooo good! I used about half as many onions this time and fresh herbs instead of dried (from the backyard! I love growing stuff to use in cooking). And it was interesting, the last batch of sauce used a lot of different colored tomatoes, and the sauce had a more orange-y hue. This batch was RED RED RED. Kind of neat how non-uniform cooking can be when the ingredients are just a little varied. ;) So we now have 5 quarts of sauce in the freezer. I know this won't get us that far, but it still makes me so excited! I hope we can get some more tomatoes this weekend at the farmer's market...

Oh, and speaking of tomatoes (god, do I talk about anything else?!?), I also slow roasted the romas we got from our CSA share last week. Cut in half, brushed with EVOO, sprinkled with chopped garlic and fresh backyard oregano, s&p and baked for 2 hours. O. Mi. Gawd. They are so good, like tomato candy. Rich and tangy and luscious.

AND, inspired by The Green Mommy I hit craigslist in search of a food dehydrator. And I found one! We pick it up tomorrow morning in Det-wa. Right before storytime at the lie-berry. I'm psyched, I've never dehydrated anything before. But I've got big dreams. Big dreams.

Day 9 Menu
Breakfast:
Fresh Peach Coffeecake
Pero (weird toasted grain coffee-like beverage)

Lunch:
Tofu "egg" salad sandwich on local rye bread
Grassfield's local cheeses
Caramel Corn (from Lansing farmer's market)

Snack:
Coffeecake

Dinner:
Gnocchi from Roma Grocery
Fresh out of the crockpot tomato sauce (Lansing heirloom tomatoes, local onions, peppers, garlic, backyard basil and oregano. Non local tomato paste, salt, EVOO and sugar).
Garlic rye toast

The baby enjoyed some jarred baby food and cottage cheese that he fed himself. Weird.

ELC, Day 7 Menu

Breakfast:
Scrambled local eggs
non-local Yves veggie sausage patties
Rye toast (from local bakery, Strawberry Moon)

Lunch:
Me:
Tofu "egg" salad sandwich (local tofu, celery, onion, garlic and dill; non-local mayo, mustard, relish, turmeric) on local rye bread

Husband: Leftover swiss chard lasagna

Both: Disappearing zucchini orzo (made with veggie pasta shells instead of orzo). A tasty way to use up 2 zucchini and 1 summer squash!

Dinner

Chicken fried tofu steak (local tofu)
Good gravy
Blanched green beans (local) with local butter and garlic
Tomato (backyard), mozzarella (address is local), and (backyard) basil salad, drizzled with non-local EVOO and balsamic reduction. Oh god.
Homemade rosemary butter biscuits (rosemary from the backyard, local butter, all other flours, leavenings and salt non local).

As an aside, this is what happens when you let a 14 month old loose while you and your significant other are too tied up in a discussion of the ethics of carnivory (inspired by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) to notice what he's up to:

Luckily, he didn't eat any part of it, just piled it all neatly on the floor. Blargh.

ELC 9/07, Day 5

We're figuring this stuff out, I swear.

Breakfast:
Homemade granola (about 60% local by volume; local oats, butter and sunflower seeds; unlocal: coconut, wheat germ, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, cinnamon, canola oil and maple syrup)
Yogurt (nonlocal; can't find any local! help?)
Eden soymilk (local company)
Strawberry kefir (unlocal. Anyone have a local source?)

Lunch:
Hubby was sent to work with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on local bread, an heirloom tomato salad with local mozzarella cheese (non local EVOO, balsamic and salt), and a local Molly apple.

I munched on leftover tofu "egg" salad sandwiches (local tofu, celery, onion; nonlocal soy mayo, mustard, relish, turmeric, s&p) on fresh rye bread from one of our local bakeries, Strawberry Moon (they use organic flour, too, yay!; the ambrosial tomato salad from vintage cooking (so good!) with local cherry & pear tomatoes and oregano from the backyard (nonlocal EVOO, honey and s&p). Oh, and alert the media! I, Chessa, former hater of all things related to raw celery, at several skinny stalks of fresh CSA celery! Dipped in nonlocal peanut butter. But seriously, I don't think I've intentionally eaten raw celery since I was in 3rd grade. Always hated the stuff. I feel a little silly now, because mostly it just tastes like crunchy nothing. But it was my one holdout, immature "I hate you just because" vegetable, and I'm feeling pretty awesome about overcoming that issue. Could it have something to do with it being local, and not grown for the supermarket showcase? It makes me wonder.

Dinner
For dinner, I was planning eggplant parmigiana, because we received two white eggplants in our CSA share. My recipe called for me to peel them and bake the slices for 15 minutes. I realized as soon as they were sliced and on the baking sheet that this was probably going to be far too little eggplant to make it. Hmmm. So I thought, maybe lasagna! I got out my no-cook lasagna noodles, the homemade sauce and the TJs cheese. But what about ricotta? We didn't have any, so I thought maybe seasoned tofu, but that would be a lot of work (what with needing to food processor and then having wash it). Then I realized that on a whim earlier this week I purchased some local-ish cottage cheese (funny story: I bought it because the brand was "Michigan." When I got home I checked the location on the packaging out of curiosity and found that in this case Michigan was in Ohio. Lame.) I checked in with the internet and found that yes, cottage cheese can sub for ricotta with no known issues. So in it went. About an hour later, I dug into our tiny 8x8 eggplant lasagna, and all I can say is, it was worth it. So good! The sauce was amazing, the eggplant tender and smoky, and the cottage cheese did just fine, thank you.

Oh and we also had some cherry/pear tomatoes that I intended to make into salad, but when the time came around to do it, I was too hungry so we just ate them plain. Still delicious. :)

And there may have been an ice cream run later in the evening, to a locally owned joint just a few miles up the road.

ELC 9/07, Day 4

Breakfast
Ok, not so local, but we're using stuff up!
Organic Yogurt (from TJ's - package says MA)
Organic Banana
Local blueberries (purchased at RO Farmer's Market)
Homemade granola (local sunflower seeds; everything else non-local that we know of)

BUT! I now have oats, sunflower seeds and honey to make more granola, now that we used up that last batch. I think I'll still add the non-local pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, although I'm not 100% on this yet; it would be really cool to have 100% local granola....except for the cinnamon anyway.

Lunch
I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now (so good!) and I was reading the tomato chapter while nursing the baby down for his nap and starting to think about lunch. We had 3 plum tomatoes left from our Farmer's Market bargain box purchase, so I made the same marinated deal as the pizza last night (local garlic and basil, non local EVOO, S&P). We cut a baguette in half (from 11 miles away) and spooned this over the baguette and topped it with the TJ's cheese again. AAAGH! It was the most delicious thing ever. And even though my husband did set off the smoke alarm while broiling (something to do with a bamboo skewer being used to prop the bread up), it didn't wake the sleeping child, so all was right with the world.

Dinner
I braved a new recipe from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, Chicken Fried Tofu. It was a big hit! We served with "Good Gravy" from the same book, and it was delicious. Super simple ingredients (local tofu, plus a little flour, baking powder, oil, and s&p), the trick was freezing the tofu, thawing it, and then refreezing the whole mixture for another 1/2 hour before you can fry it. So just a little planning.

We also had some garlic toast with local sundried tomato bread, and a simple tomato salad that I read about at cooking vintage. Delicious!

Silas stuck with dried apricots, local apple, local cheese and some tomatoes. He's a good eater, that kid.

Preserving the Harvest
So we finished up the homemade tomato sauce yesterday, and it is sooooo good! After letting the sauce simmer for most of the day, I added 3 6-oz cans of tomato paste to thicken it up and blended it alllll together with my handy dandy immersion blender (how I love that thing!!!!). Oh, wow. The sauce is a light orange-y color, almost like vodka sauce, creamy and beautiful. After letting it cool down for several more hours, I bagged 2 quarts for the freezer, jarred another quart for the fridge and jarred another 3 or so cups to send home with Magnifico. Yay!

I can't tell you how wonderful it was to look lovingly on my beautiful crockpot of tomato sauce last night. My husband and I were positively mooning over it. We did some rough calculations and figured that although the tomatoes themselves were a deal, with all the other ingredients and electricity that went into it, it wasn't "cheap" sauce. But hey, that fancy Rao tomato sauce is like $10 per jar, so I think the effort, time and money are worth it. To see gorgeous heirloom tomatoes that are about to be chucked into the compost bin magically transform into a ton of delicious sauce that will feed my family (and our friends) for several meals? Priceless.

Random Musings
I'm on the desperate hunt for local dairy items. I have a source for (non-organic) butter, milk (which we don't drink), and ice cream, but not so much for cheese, yogurt and kefir. After having read A, V, M and about how easy it is to make homemade mozzerella and other soft cheeses, we defnintely want to give this a try. I know one can make their own yogurt and kefir, but I have no idea how complicated this is, and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. But it would be pretty cool to make all this stuff myself. After the high of making tomato sauce, I'm anxious to find my next fix...

Garden Notes
We're growing 4 different types of tomatoes this year (Yellow Pear, one called Sunbeam, a Beefsteak variety, and a patio variety). They are all doing really well. The Yellow Pear is absolutely crazy! We're growing everything in containers, because we weren't sure about the trustworthiness of our soil (we rent, and we heard that it has a high mercury content). The pear is in a small garbage can, like the kind you'd use in the bathroom (with holes cut in the bottom for drainage). The sunbeam and beefsteak are in half of a barrel, and the patio is in a 12 " planter. There are 10 or so tomatoes on the patio plant, one is just starting to get ripe. There is one red tomato on the beefsteak plant, with about 3 green ones still growing. Nothing's turning on the sunbeam plant, but there must be 6 or 7 good sized green tomatoes ready to ripen. And I can't even tell you how many cute little pear tomatoes there are! About 4-5 that are just about ready to pick, and about a gazillion green ones (ok, maybe like 30?)

We've also got 5 basil plants (2 genovese, 1 opal, 1 ruffly opal, and 1 pesto - little green leaves with white edges). The ruffly opal almost died earlier in the season because it was too shaded by the tomato plant, but I transplanted it and now it's trying its darndest to make a comeback. The other varieties are all delicious and doing well, as long as I remember to water enough. ;)

We are also growing thyme, oregano and rosemary successfully. Cilantro was not such a success. That thing bolted straightaway and then just stopped. Lame!

We're also growing 4 types of mint: Peppermint and chocolate mint are growing well in a bucket together, 2 pineapple mint plants are growing successfully in another bucket, and the orange mint is in a cheap plastic planter off in the shade by itself (it's the only variety that wants more shade than sun).

It has been so fun to have a garden this summer. We also had several sugar snap pea plants that we grew from seed, and they produced really well for the first half of the summer. We planted them in a half barrel with petunias, and holy moly, the petunias were out of control crazy about them! I think they add nitrogen back to the soil and the flowers were diggin' it.

Other than the peas, nothing else was grown from seed, but next year, that's going to change! Watch out, seed catalogs. I'm comin' for ya.

ELC 9/07, Day 3

I really love this challenge so far. I know, I know, this is probably what Sharon Salzberg describes as "bright faith": falling in love with something in the very beginning. But I love learning about where my food comes from and thinking all of my food choices through a little more fully. Do we eat 100% locally? Hell no! Not yet anyway. But every time I make food now, I'm thinking about the origin of eat ingredient, which, in a way, makes me appreciate each one so much more.

Day 3 Eats

Breakfast:
Berry Smoothie Pancakes with local eggs, raspberries, blueberries and butter (non-local flours, baking soda, salt, yogurt and banana).

These pancakes were delicious! Super fluffy and subtle. We had them with honey but maple syrup would be good, too. Silas pretty much stuck strictly to berries and a few pieces of tomato.

Lunch:
Scrambled local eggs (non-local s&p) - OMG Silas was in love with these today!
Rotini pasta with partially cooked slow-cooker tomato sauce with local heirloom tomatoes, onions, green peppers and garlic (non-local pasta, EVOO, sugar, salt and spices and parmesan)

The pasta sauce is cooking up nicely. I think the tomato paste is really going to thicken it up a bit, which is good, because right now it's pretty watery. But tasty!

Dinner
We had a friend over for dinner (Magnifico!) so we made homemade pizza, yum! I made whole wheat pizza crust (with the help of my trusty bread machine), and marinated sliced local tomato wedges in olive oil, garlic (CSA), 3 kinds of chopped basil (backyard) and s&p. Then we spooned this over the partially cooked crust and topped it with TJ's Quattro Formaggio cheese blend (the BEST cheese blend in the world for pizza, I swear!).

We also had fresh watermelon slices from our CSA, and some local bread for an appetizer, dipped in the remaining tomato marinade. YUM!

Oh, and locally made Peppermint Ice Cream for dessert. OMG.