Farm Share & Meal Planning III {desserts, etc.}

October 6, 2016July 26, 2017 by Katie | Leave a comment

This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here. You can find our second month of meals here.

This was such a packed month of cooking that I broke the post up into two parts. This is part two and covers the desserts, canned goods, and fermented projects for the month. If you are interested in what came in our share this month and the main-course dishes we made, check out this post.

Picking up where we lift off in the last post, here are the sweet and unique ways that I used the fruits and vegetables in our farm share.

Desserts/Breakfasts

If you want to eat dessert for breakfast, you’ve come to the right place. I’m nothing but an enabler on this front, BUT only if the dessert is fruit-based. No, wait, I also eat cake with my coffee.

This was a good month for feeding my dessert-for-breakfast habit. With weekly peach deliveries, and a few weeks with plums, there was plenty of fruit for the baking.

Stone fruit tea cake (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : peaches and plums

We made this cake twice during the month, the first time with just peaches, the second time with peaches and plums. Even though it’s called a cake, Calder and I both thought that it was the best cobbler we’ve ever tasted. It’s delicious straight from the oven with vanilla ice cream.

Peach crisp (a simplification of the apple crisp recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookbook) : peaches

I have to confess that I made this for our camping trip with the full intention to only eat it for breakfast. I packed a few small cups of Greek yogurt, and the combination was perfect.

NYTimes {famous} Plum Torte : plums, eggs

I came across this recipe after reading the NYTimes article about it being the paper’s most requested recipe.

I don’t know why my plums sunk. Is it the altitude? No matter, the torte was still amazingly delicious. I think the boys and I ate half of it for our afternoon snack before Calder even got home from work! We have a few plums left, and I’m thinking of making this one more time for the season.

Fermentation Experiments

I have to admit that for all of my interest in learning new things and experimenting, I’ve shied away from home fermentation projects. I always thought of it as such a risky venture with the chance for contamination, but after being gifted a few fermentation-related tools (this mason jar fermenting set and a couple of ceramic fermenting weights), I thought it was time to give it a try.

I’m working on both a jar of giardiniera and another of sauerkraut. Neither batch is done yet, but this is the week I get to test both, and when they’re done, whether good or bad, I’m excited to do a follow-up post to share my results along with a deeper discussion about why fermented foods are good for your gut.

*This isn’t my first foray into fermenting. It all started with kombucha! This is just my first time throwing vegetables into the mix.

Giardiniera : basil, onion, carrots, broccoli, green bell pepper

Sauerkraut (from Preserving by the Pint) : cabbage

Canned Goods

I’m hoping to do some more canning this fall, but keeping my expectations in check, I’m focusing on small-batch canning. A couple of great resources that I heavily rely on for small-scale canning are the books Food in Jars and Preserving by the Pint. Both are written by Marissa McClellan, who writes a canning-focused blog called Food in Jars (another great resource for canning recipes, tips, and tricks).

If you’re nervous about canning, then doing a small batch is a great way to start. You can do it with the pots already in your kitchen, so you aren’t investing in new equipment. You can also do it with a smaller quantity of produce, so the prep-time is less, as is the clean-up, and it’s not a big loss if the batch fails (it won’t).

This month, I focused my canning efforts on that big box of peaches we received, making both a peach salsa and a peach bbq sauce.

Peach BBQ Sauce (from Preserving by the Pint) : peaches, onion

The BBQ sauce recipe makes about two half-pint jars. We’ve been using it on grilled skinless and boneless chicken thighs this month, and it’s so good that I ended up making three batches of the sauce so that I’d have enough to pass around to my family!

Peach Salsa (from Food in Jars) : peaches, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno

Needless to say it was an exciting month in the kitchen. We tried so many new-to-us dishes, and all were delicious! I can’t wait to see what the month ahead brings, and I’m really excited to push myself to try even more canning and fermentation recipes.

Farm Share & Meal Planning III {the main course}

October 5, 2016March 8, 2018 by Katie | 1 Comment

This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here. And you can find our second month of meals here.

Officially, the boys and I were on the east coast for month 3, and the food I’m sharing below is from month 4, so we may have missed some late summer veggies, but we’re jumping feet first into fall and calling this month 3 of recipes. While we were away, it was Calder’s job to eat all of the food and blog about it…

This month seems to have been more plentiful than previous months. We’re seeing a natural change in what’s being harvested from crops with shorter growing seasons, like radishes and turnips, to some of the slower-growing crops, like corn and carrots. We’ve also been the lucky recipients of a full case of Colorado peaches. With all of this food, I realized that I have a lot more to share this month and am breaking the post up into two parts. Today I’m sharing most of the main course recipes and in the second post I’ll follow-up with desserts, canned goods, and fermented foods.

… and it’s so frustrating that the days are getting shorter as the veggie boxes are getting heavier!

Early in the month, I leaned on a couple of my favorite cookbooks, Jerusalem and Plenty, for new vegetable recipes. If you like to experiment in the kitchen and are open to trying new spices and food combinations, I recommend both books. Jerusalem includes meat and vegetable dishes, but Plenty is all vegetable.

I haven’t discussed it much on the blog, but I’m part of a cookbook club, and I’m excited to host our October meeting where we’ll be cooking from Jerusalem. I can’t wait to taste all of the dishes and document our meeting for a future post!

Meal Planning – Month 3

The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20+ lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During the month of September, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit and some variety of fresh herbs.

veggies	proteins	dairy & misc.	fruit & herbs
cucumbers	stewing chickens	herbed goat cheese	peaches!
green lettuce	hot German sausage	camembert	plums
carrots	italian sausage	yogurt	basil
cabbage	bacon	coffee	parsley
eggplant	ground beef	fruit jam	dill
onions	tofu	pickles	sage
zucchini	tempeh		edible flowers
summer squash	eggs
mushrooms
beets
chard
kale
kohlrabi
peppers
broccoli
leeks
radishes

Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.

Cucumber salad with smashed garlic and ginger (from Plenty) : cucumbers, onion, herbs

This was a delicious and refreshing side dish for a summer meal. It was a bit spicy for the boys, so we had plenty of leftovers, and I loved eating it on rye bread with humus (it was good that just typing that makes me was to make more right now).

Teryaki tempeh : tempeh

We liked this DIY teryaki sauce enough that it’s worth keeping for future recipes.

Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts (from Jerusalem) : chard

Roasted eggplant with buttermilk sauce (from Jerusalem) : eggplant, peaches

This ingredient combination may seem odd, but it was amazing! So good, in fact, that we ate this dish at least three different times over the month. The original recipe called for pomegranate seeds, but since we had an abundance of peaches, I decided to experiment. Luckily, the odds were in our favor and this turned out so delicious that now we’re excited to experiment with other fruits. Pears? slightly cooked apples? definitely pomegranates.

Squash casserole : zucchini & yellow squash, goat cheese, eggs

I added fresh dill and dill goat cheese to the casserole, and I subbed panko bread crumbs for the crushed crackers that were called for in the recipe. I served this casserole with round two of the roasted eggplant and some sauteed paneer with Indian spices.

Scotch eggs! : Italian sausage, eggs

I only had a Scotch egg once in my life, but loved it enough that I was craving one three years later. If you’ve never had one a Scotch egg is a hardboiled egg wrapped in sausage, coated in bread crumbs, and deep fried. I barely had enough bread crumbs and vegetable oil to make this batch, but they turned out delicious and have me excited to make another batch!

Chard with tofu and black bean sauce, stir-fried rice : chard, tofu, onion, corn, bell pepper, carrots, eggs

For a while we were ordering Chinese about once a week from a local restaurant. That habit has transferred to our favorite pizza

veggie burritos with homemade peach salsa (more on that tomorrow!) : onions, green peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, sauteed greens, peaches, chicken, green chili goat cheese

The next day, I used the leftover burrito ingredients to make an amazing burrito bowl for lunch : just pile everything into a bowl over the rice and enjoy!

Savory vegetable pie : collard greens, caramelized onions, parsley, mint, potatoes

I baked this pie on a Friday and we took it with us the next day on a weekend camping trip. It served as the perfect, portable lunch on both Saturday and Sunday, with many small slices eaten as between-meal snacks.

I didn’t follow a specific recipe, just looked at a few things and came up with this formula: place the bottom crust inside a pie dish, add the sauteed greens and mushrooms mixed with the caramelized onions and fresh herbs, add a layer of grated cheddar cheese, top with a layer of cooked diced potatoes that are lighted mashed/blended with some buttermilk (could sub regular milk for less tang), add the top crust, and bake in a 350F oven until done.

While I’m comfortable making quiches, this was my first savory pie. It came out so delicious (and easy to serve) that I’m excited to make a few more this fall and winter. I think they’ll be perfect for dinner-time picnics in the park or packed lunches on ski days.

Burgers, grilled corn, and kohlrabi salad (salad recipe from Jerusalem, but we didn’t love it) : ground beef, corn, kohlrabi

soba noodles with mushrooms : mushrooms, leeks

We had such a great combination of mushrooms this month! I don’t know the names of all of them pictured below, but as soon as we saw them, we were excited to do something special with them.

This dish is super simple, just sauteed leeks and mushrooms added to soba noodles in a miso broth. Its simplicity really lets the flavor of the mushrooms stand out, and their meatiness adds a nice hearty texture to the dish.

Salads : lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, peppercorn goat cheese

Nothing special here, just delicious simple salads. I really loved adding the peppercorn goat cheese to the salads (and the carrot soup), and am thinking that I may be hooked on this as a new garnish.

Light vegetable soup : onion, carrots, broccoli, green pepper, yellow squash

Carrot soup : onion, potato, carrots, collard greens, leeks, chicken broth (from the stewing chickens), peppercorn goat cheese

There’s nothing I love more than adding some good garnishes to a blended root vegetable soup. For this one, I sauteed the greens with leeks and garlic. After placing the greens on the soup, I sprinkled it with some of the peppercorn goat cheese.

Beet tart : sauteed greens, caramelized onions, roasted beets, goat cheese.

After seeing an apple tart where the apple slices were arranged in a rosette on top of the tart, I wanted to try to make a savory version using beets. This was my first go at it, and while it tasted good (we ate it all!), I think there’s room for improvement in both the presentation and the taste… I’m sure I’ll have an update with a recipe in a future post!

Pesto : basil

I don’t use a particular recipe for making pesto, although it would be handy since there are times where I forget key ingredients (cheese! garlic!). Calder doesn’t like pine nuts, so I made this batch with walnuts, and think it’s just as delicious.

And that’s it for the main courses. Looking back, we ate so well this past month! Tomorrow I’ll post the desserts, canned goods, and fermentation projects from the month.

Farm Share & Summer Meals II

August 10, 2016July 26, 2017 by Katie | Leave a comment

This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here.

Month two with the farm share and we’re still going strong! We’ve repeated some meals and gotten creative with others, spicing up our routine with dishes that are becoming fast favorites!

In the first post I explained what a farm share, or CSA, is and gave an overview of our particular share. This month, I’ll continue to list the variety of foods we’ve received over the past month and will post photos and recipe links to meals.

I was going to discuss our fruit and produce storage system, but this post on Design Mom does a great job of that, discussing many of the methods I use plus more! Instead, I thought it might be fun to start a discussion or just document how we approach eating with our two kiddos (ages 3 and almost 1.5).

Eating with Kids

Let me start by saying that we are lucky because both boys are generally adventurous and willing to try new things, both at the dinner table and in their day-to-day life. Also, they are great eaters (more on why this may be below), they come to the table hungry and willing to eat.

It wasn’t intentional, but over time, I’ve realized that I/we have some standard practices when it comes to dinner time.

I only make one dinner, never something special for the boys.
BUT if I know that something would be hard for them to eat (for example if it’s too spicy or hard for them to chew), then I do offer them an alternative form of what we’re eating. For example, we served them the shrimp tostadas below, but as separate ingredients on their plates (refried beans, shrimp, avocado, cheese), this also allowed us to keep the chorizo out if it was too spicy (Alex ended up loving it!).
AND I do allow for alternate meal requests if they’re asking for something that was leftover from the day before. For example, Alex loves the coconut curry and will sometimes ask for that for a few days.
Similarly, I’ve noticed that my boys are both starving by 5pm or even 4:30pm. Rather than give them snacks or try to make them wait for dinner to be ready, on some days I’ll serve them leftovers from the previous day as their dinner while I’m making that night’s dinner for Calder and I. Then they’ll still join us and sample that night’s dinner when it’s ready around 6:30, but they aren’t going crazy from being overly hungry or tired.
And of course, we love to have them involved with our food and food prep as much as possible. Alex cut all of the zucchini for the pasta dish below! And you can see some of my cooking-with-kids tips in this series of posts.

And on them being good eaters, we have a few theories.

Other than a mid-morning fruit and cheese snack, between-meal eating is not a common part of our day. I’m not a big snacker, and so I just never think of offering something to them. And as I said above, during the one time that could be prone to snacking (late afternoon), I just offer them an early dinner.
We don’t give them juice. The only thing we ever use juice for is to make some quick mini popsicles. Otherwise they never drink juice at home. I’m mentioning this because we’ve noticed that when we’re traveling or visiting friends and they have some pre-dinner juice, then they never seem as hungry for dinner. We’re starting to think that the sugar in the juice fills some of their calorie needs and raises their blood sugar, and so then they just don’t feel hungry for their meal…. and it’s not that we don’t give them sweets – you’ll see plenty of dessert ideas below!
We do let them try anything and everything in the kitchen. One of our favorite things to do is make “combo-soups” at the Whole Foods soup counter. Because why have just clam chowder when you could mix it with crab and butternut squash bisque (seriously, try it). This creativity carries over into our home. One night Alex asked to have refried beans (we had tacos for dinner) on his vanilla ice cream. Why not, sweetened beans are a common ingredient in Asian desserts. He loved it, and got an extra dose of fiber with his dessert!

Meal Planning – Month 2

The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20 lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During our second month, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit (so far it’s been a lot of cherries!) and some variety of fresh herbs.

veggies	proteins	dairy & misc.	fruit & herbs
cucumbers	pork chops	herbed goat cheese	sweet cherries
romaine lettuce	chorizo sausage	camembert	tart cherries
carrots	fryer chicken	yogurt	peaches!
cabbage	tofu	coffee	lemongrass
green onions	tempeh	fruit jam	basil
onions		tomato sauce	parsley
zucchini		ketchup	dill
summer squash		pickles
mushrooms
beets
chard
kale
kohlrabi

Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.

Miso-dipped Tempeh Logs + coleslaw wraps (scroll down within those links for each of the recipes): tempeh, cabbage, carrots

This was a meal that we took to the park for a picnic dinner. The wraps, using warmed naan, were the grown-up version. For the boys, I packaged their tempeh, slaw, and some extras (hard boiled eggs, fruit) in bento boxes, adding seaweed smiles to the logs for a bit of fun.

Breaded Pork Chops, Braised Cabbage & Roasted Vegetables : pork chops, zucchini, turnips, carrots, cabbage, onions

BBQ Pork Chops, Sauteed Kale, Beet & Green Bean Salad : pork chops, kale, onions, green beans, beets, cucumbers, parsley, goat cheese

Salad with Sauteed Shrimp & a Cilantro and Lime Dressing : romaine lettuce, cilantro, dill, parsley, basil, (hard-boiled) eggs, cucumbers

Chorizo & Shrimp Tostadas w/ leftover Beet & Green Bean Salad and Grilled Corn : chorizo, onion, cabbage, beets, green beans, cucumbers, parsley, corn

These were so delicious that we made them twice! The first time we used our salt-block on the grill to cook the shrimp (it’s so worth the extra time required to slowly heat the salt!) while the we grilled the corn. The second time we were pressed for time and just sauteed the shrimp in a cast iron pan on the stove.

Tofu Vegetable Curry (two months in a row – it’s a favorite!) : tofu, yellow squash, zucchini, green onions, chard, lemongrass

Pasta with a vegetable marinara sauce : canned tomatoes with garlic and basil, zucchini, mushrooms, onion

Roasted Chicken with Vegetables : chicken, sage, parsley, carrots, onion, turnip, golden beets

I’m a big fan of roasting chickens using this method of first searing the skin in a cast iron pan on the stovetop before placing it in the oven. After the breast side is seared, I remove the chicken from the pan, place all of the chopped vegetables in the pan and then put the chicken back on top. This way everything roasts in one pan and the veggies get to soak up the amazing juices from the chicken.

Chicken with Preserved Lemons & Yellow Squash Casserole : chicken, onions, yellow squash, eggs, goat cheese

This meal, and really, the farm share, taught me something I never saw coming : how to cut apart a whole chicken! We receive a whole chickens in the share, but I only wanted to use the legs to cook this dish. We already had two whole legs in the freezer and I wanted four. Cutting off the legs was easier than I expected! I’m happy to have the new skill, and am happy that I held it together while both popping chicken joints out of their sockets and cutting them (I can barely type that without squirming).

And the squash dish ended up being a bit of a (very delicious) experiment. I mainly followed the recipe above, but didn’t have any crackers in the house. So instead, I used toasted quinoa that I had on hand and some panko bread crumbs. I also added dollops of goat cheese in addition to the cheddar that the recipe called for.

So there you have it, chicken and yellow squash make for a delicious, albeit very beige, meal.

Salads! : hard boiled eggs, leftover roasted vegetables, leftover beet and green bean salad, cucumbers, herbs, lettuce

I know everyone knows how to make a salad, but I thought I would add these in case you’re trying to break out of a rut. I throw anything under the sun in my salads.

Omelette with mushrooms and onions : eggs, mushrooms, onions

Thinking ahead, we saved some of the sautteed mushrooms and onions that were going into the aforementioned pasta sauce and used them the next morning in these omelettes.

Kale Chips

Tart Cherry Cobbler (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : cherries

Yellow cake with our favorite coconut buttercream and fruit : cherries with raspberries from our yard

Mini Peach and Cherry Crumble : peaches, cherries

This was a super simple treat that I put together for us one night. I didn’t want to make a big crumble, because we’ve been enjoying the fresh peaches, but I knew that we could spare 3 or 4 for a few mini crumbles, so I made three of these.

I added some butter, water, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the sliced fruit. Then I topped it with some of the vanilla crumble from Rustic Fruit Desserts that I mixed with a little bit of quick oats to beef it up. The crumble topping is a stand-alone recipe in the book that gets used on top of some of the desserts (my favorite is the cranberry buckle), and it makes enough that I always seem to have some leftover in my freezer, which is perfect for quick desserts like this!

Jam & Nut Struesel Bars : cherry jam

We get a lot of jam through the share (about a jar or two per week), but we’re still pretty slow jam eaters, especially since the boys are so small and aren’t devouring PB&Js yet.

While we’re happy to stock the jam away, I also wanted to find a way to use up a jar at a time in different desserts. Enter, one of my favorite easy desserts. I first came across this around the holidays when we actually had some leftover cranberry sauce in the fridge (that’s what the original recipe calls for). I now make these bars every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this is the first time that it dawned on me to make them with jam as a summer treat.

I didn’t add the extra sugar to the jam (as called for with the cranberry sauce), and I did substitute some of the white flour for whole wheat to give it a nuttier flavor and some extra good stuff.

Man oh man, month two of the share was so good! The boys and I are heading off to the east coast, which means that Calder’s going to have to try to find a way to eat his way through the share, give away greens to friends, and come up with next month’s blog post! 😉

My mom has a share from a local farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia/Maryland, and I’m excited to see what we come up with while cooking from her share for the next month. It’ll also be interesting to see how the shares differ at this time of year.

What about you? Have you discovered any new recipes, tweaked old favorites, or learned some new skills while cooking from a farm share? We’d love to hear about it! And how do you keep the kids happy while cooking?

A Farm Share & Summer Meal Planning

July 29, 2016April 16, 2019 by Katie | 4 Comments

{I’m always raving about our farm share in real life, so if this is old news to you, I’m sorry that I’m still blabbing – I just really love it!}

This summer we have a farm share, and in many (good) ways, it’s consuming my life. I dream about it. Talk about it to anyone who will listen. Spend a bit of time planning my meals and then even more time chopping ingredients, based on our weekly delivery.

The challenge to signing up for a farm share is being ready to cook with whatever comes in your box that week and not knowing exactly what you’ll be getting next week, so you can’t plan too far in advance. Since we’re about a month into our share, I thought it would be fun to share this experience with you. I’ve been photographing our weekly deliveries as well as the meals that I’ve made with the produce and meat, and I’m going to share my meal plans here throughout the course of our farm share season.

What is a farm share?

If you don’t know about a farm share, also known as community supported agriculture, let me explain. This is a farming business method where consumers are asked to sign-up and pay for their produce (and more) at the beginning of the growing season. The farmers use the investments from their customers to pay for the variety of costs they have to run their farm over the course of the growing season – anything from seeds and fertilizers to irrigation and labor costs. Then, throughout the growing season, everyone who has paid for a share in the farm receives fresh produce as it’s harvested. The share composition will change throughout the growing season as different crops go in and out of season.

By making that investment, the farms’ consumers are taking on some of the risk that goes with farming. If a big storm wipes out a particular crop, that loss doesn’t just fall on the farmer, instead it’s spread across all consumers and they will receive less or none of that crop. If it’s a great year for a particular crop, then all consumers will get more of that crop delivered in their share (two years ago I was overwhelmed by jalepenos and trying to figure out the best ways to preserve them).

This is also a great model if you like to eat seasonally and locally. You’re going to receive crops as they’re harvested, so the produce you receive will be as fresh as possible and it didn’t have to be picked before it was ripe because it doesn’t have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach you. As I mentioned above, the composition of your share will change throughout the growing season, this is exciting but can also take some time to get used to. It can be a bit boring when you’ve received a bunch of radishes each week for a month, (when really you’d only eat one bunch in a whole month!) but it pushes you to be more creative in the kitchen. Roasted radishes anyone?

Our Share

As I had talked about two years ago when moving to Boulder, one of the things we were so excited about was moving to a place with such a strong local-food movement. We are surrounded by farms, farmers’ markets, and enough farm-share options to make your head spin.

This year we bought a share from Grant Family Farms. It’s one of the largest CSAs in our area, and we were already familiar with them because they delivered to the office where C worked two years ago, so at that time we had bought a small share. This year we decided to go big, and we bought their “all-in” kitchen share, and admittedly we feel so lucky that we were able to make that investment. For about six months, we’ll receive a weekly share that includes vegetables, herbs, fruit, meat (pork, chicken, beef, lamb), yogurt, cheese, eggs, mushrooms, canned goods. It’s amazing!

Meal Planning – Month 1

This is the share that we’ve signed up for.

The chart below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20 lbs), but it’s definitely enough to feed our family for the week. For the first month, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, and thus far it’s been some combination of the meats on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we recieve fresh fruit (so far it’s been a lot of cherries!), and some variety of fresh herbs.

veggies	proteins	dairy & misc.	fruit & herbs
asparagus	ground pork	herbed goat cheese	cherries
romaine lettuce	smoked pork slice	camembert	mint
bok choy	smoked pork shoulder	yogurt	lemon balm
radishes	bacon	coffee	sage
green onions	fryer chicken	canned tomatoes	thyme
onions	pork sausage	tomato sauce	parsley
spinach	ground beef	pickles	cilantro
summer squash	tempeh	fruit jam	dill
mushrooms	tofu
beets
chard
turnips
tomatoes

When I receive the share each week, I draft a list of menu ideas for the week ahead, trying to use up as much of that week’s share as I can, and planning for how I’ll preserve what we can’t eat (so far it’s just been putting some of the cherries and meat items in the freezer).

Over the past month, I’ve thrown herbs into salads, made my fair share of quiches, and had plenty of yogurt breakfasts, in addition, I’ve photographed some of the dinners we prepared and shared. Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes.

Since I’ve photographed many of these dishes in the crazy moment between pulling them out of the oven and putting them on the table for starving boys, the photo quality isn’t the best, but I’m working on it :-).

Lasagna : pork sausage, spinach, tomato sauce

Vegetable Curry : tofu, carrots, scallions, summer squash, zucchini, cilantro

Salmon with roasted radishes, chard with caramelized onions, and leftover rice from takeout : radishes, chard, onions

Zucchini bread with chocolate chips, walnuts, and black sesame seeds : zucchini

Mushroom tart & roasted vegetables : mushrooms, sage, goat cheese, carrots, zucchini, onions, turnips

Roasted Root Vegetable Soup & Pork-filled Lettuce Wraps : ground pork, scallions, lettuce, beets, carrots, turnips, chard, beet greens, goat cheese

Mushroom & Zucchini Galette : mushrooms, zucchini, onions, goat cheese

Burgers & Salad : ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles

Herb Meatballs & Green Couscous : ground pork, onions, mint, cilantro, parsley, dill. *Both of these recipes come from cookbooks by Yotam Ottolenghi that I love – Plenty & Jerusalem.

Chicken, asparagus, and greens with black bean sauce : asparagus, chard, mizuna greens, onions, bacon

Bacon & Eggs or Smoked Ham & Eggs have become breakfast staples

This is just a snapshot of our first month with the farm share. Right now our fridge is packed with this week’s share, and I’m so excited about the menus I have planned. I’m going to continue to photograph and share. I know meal planning, especially with kids, can be tough, but I hope this will give you some inspiration, and if you really need a kick in the bottom, get yourself a farm share!

Midsummer Magic

July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

It’s the middle of summer, food is at its freshest, and the livin’ is easy, or at least it should be.

There’s nothing we love more at this time of year than the intense flavors and colors of fresh fruits, and there’s no easier way to enjoy them than to just throw them in whatever you’re making. Need some ideas? That’s why we’re here.

Last week I put some fresh raspberries and cherries in my mojito – smashing them up just a bit in the bottom of the glass before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Serve cubed watermelon with mint for a refreshing treat on a hot day. If you like that combo, you’ll love our watermelon mojitos!

And if your garden’s still overflowing with mint, make some aqua frescas.

Add fresh figs and blueberries to your mocktails (or cocktails!).

Throw watermelon and blueberries in your smoothies with a tea-based twist.

What about watermelon in your gazpacho?!

Any ripe berry would go well in these yogurt-based popsicles. These lemon pops are another refreshing option.

Yesterday Alex asked to bake a cake (nothing makes my heart melt faster than his request to do something in the kitchen!). He wanted a cake with “a blue middle and red paint on the frosting”. I let him add some food coloring to our batter, but then transformed his idea for red paint into a splattering of berries and their juices across the top. This is a basic yellow cake with our favorite coconut milk buttercream (scroll down).

Summer, and particularly July, is such a special time of year for us, and nothing tastes more like summer than perfectly ripe fruit; it’s pure midsummer magic. If you can get your hands on some, especially if you have the chance to get out there and pick berries, do two things : 1. eat as much as you can while picking, and 2. do something creative and special with the leftovers. You won’t regret it! xo

Dutch Oven Chili

July 20, 2016November 16, 2017 by Sarah | Leave a comment

We’re half way through JULY! I think Kate will agree, this is our favorite time of year. We’re both July babies so this month has always been special for us. Growing up, we would have joint pool parties together even though there’s a nine year gap between us! This year we haven’t managed to get together, but both of our Julys have been packed with outdoor adventure and ample family time.

Last week, I took a family of Brazilians out into the mountains for the first camping trip of their lives. We had a wonderful time hiking, learning new skills, and hanging out at camp. I plan on sharing more aspects of that adventure in future posts, but for now I wanted to share a Dutch Oven Chili recipe that is perfect for a camping crowd. The way I make chili is incredibly simple.. So simple that it’s almost one of those recipes that’s not really a recipe, WTF do I mean? You’ll see..

Even though this post is entitled Dutch Oven Chili, you can also make it on the stovetop by following this recipe. If you’re making it in a dutch oven, you’ll want to get a great layer of hot coals going. Another option, and perhaps a more reliable one, is to light a couple dozen charcoal briquettes. For the first half of the recipe have the dutch oven sitting directly on a bed of hot coals or charcoal briquettes. The lid should be kept off while you brown the meat and cook the fresh veggies that way you can monitor the heat, ensuring you don’t burn your dinner. Once you add all the canned items there will be a good amount of liquid in the pot so you shouldn’t have any trouble with burning or sticking. Place the lid on the dutch oven, cover it with coals or briquettes and wait twenty minutes or so (this really depends on the condition of your coals and briquettes) until the contents of the pot comes to a bubble.

Dutch Oven Chili

Ingredients

Onion
Bell Pepper
Jalapeño (or a small can of Jalapeños)
3-5 cloves Garlic
1 lb Ground Beef
1 15oz can Kidney Beans
1 28oz Diced Tomatoes
1 jar of Salsa
Ann Schu's homemade Chili Sauce*
Chili Seasoning Packet

Instructions

Start by cooking the ground beef over medium heat. Break up the beef into smaller pieces with a fork while it's still raw.
Once the beef is cooking, begin chopping your onion, bell pepper, jalapeño and cloves of garlic.
Add the vegetables to the meat as you chop.
By the time the beef is completely cooked, the onions should be clear and the peppers a little soft.
Drain off the grease if necessary - this is totally your call. When I make it in the kitchen, I drain the grease, when I make it in the Dutch oven I keep it because more liquid and flavor is better than less (usually it's a small amount anyway).
Now it's time to work those arms - open all the cans: beans (drain off the liquid), tomatoes, jalapeño, salsa, and add them to the cooked beef and fresh veggies. Splash a bit of water in each can too, swirl it around, and add it to the chili mixture.
Add your chili seasoning (or your own special spice mix) and mix well.
If it's looking dry, you could add a splash of water or tomato paste and water to add a little liquid.
Turn the heat down to a simmer, cover with a lid and allow the mixture to bubble before enjoying.
If the mixture looks extra juicy, allow it to bubble a bit with the lid off, this should take care of some of the extra liquid.
Serve over couscous or rice and top with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.
*Ann Schu's homemade chili sauce is obviously optional and most times I don't have it, but when I do, I receive five times the compliments!

https://liveseasoned.com/dutch-oven-chili/

There you have it. Super simple. How do you make chili? Do you serve it over rice or couscous? Are we the only ones?!

Arugula Walnut Pesto

June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

Nuts are our ingredient of the season. We’ve been using them for sweets, drinks, and snack bars. Today we’re finally using them for a savory condiment!

Sarah here: Comin’ at ya with a republished post today – I’m making this tonight and I’m papapumped about it. Pasta and pesto all day please. Carry on.

I didn’t even know I was looking for it, but I found my new favorite condiment in this arugula walnut pesto! I think I overdid the traditional basil and pine nut pesto, because the past few times I’ve had it, I just wasn’t excited by the flavor, but the peppery-ness of the arugula and parmesan combined with the savory walnuts and olive oil and the zing of fresh garlic allows this pesto to brighten any dish, creating the perfect cure for grey days when you’re faced with another late spring snow!

I have to admit, I didn’t go to the grocery store with arugula on my list and the intention of making this pesto, but when a super-sized container of arugula landed in our fridge, I was looking for a way to use it up!

DIY Vanilla Extract

May 12, 2016 by Katie | 2 Comments

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean, and some homemade perfumes with vanilla essential oils.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but today we’re finally hitting on the key ingredient in every kitchen – vanilla extract! Who doesn’t have a bottle of vanilla extract in their kitchen? It gets used in everything. In fact, yesterday the boys and I baked our favorite chocolate cake, and even that called for two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

My fist exposure with homemade vanilla extract was a few years ago when I received a bottle from my BFF for Christmas. It was amazing, and I cherished that bottle, wanting to use it but also keep it for ever because it was just so good. As you’ll see, DIYing your own extract is so easy that I probably should have reigned in my emotions a bit…

The key to make a quality vanilla extract comes down to two things : 1. quality beans and 2. time.

How-to

For this bottle of extract I used 8 Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans and 1 cup of vodka. Split each bean by slicing through it lengthwise, then place the beans in a jar, add the vodka (making sure that it covers the beans), and let sit for at least two months.

After that time, you don’t have to remove the beans. In fact, you can let the extract sit longer to get a richer flavor. And as you use the extract, you can top it off with more vodka to keep your batch going.

That’s it!

For how simple this recipe is, there are many ways to personalize it. Try different vanilla beans for different flavors (for example, Ugandan beans are supposed to have a more smokey flavor). You can also use different alcohols. I used vodka because it’s flavorless, so I would really only taste the vanilla from my beans, but you can substitute rum or bourbon. Personally, now that I have this bottle, I’m excited to experiment with a few more bean/alcohol combinations.

And if you just happen to have a big bottle of vodka sitting around, don’t forget that with a single vanilla bean and a few days, you can turn it into a smooth vanilla vodka! If you’ll remember, Calder made fun of my idea to make vanilla vodka, but the joke’s on him because that stuff was so good that it’s already gone and I’m thinking about making another batch (maybe with lime this time!).

Thirsty Thursday!

March 31, 2016 by Katie | 1 Comment

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a double vanilla cake, and a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean.

Hey there, it’s almost the weekend!… and maybe you live somewhere that will actually feel spring-like on this last weekend in March? Our forecast was looking good, but now it’s taken a turn towards cold. So I’ll likely make one (or two) of these, curl up by the fire, and pretend that the snow has melted away.

Both of the ideas are variations on traditional drinks. We just substituted plain vodka for our (super-simple) homemade vanilla vodka and made another tweak here or there.

This recipe for vanilla-infused vodka includes lime zest. I knew that I didn’t want to limit my bottle of vodka to recipes where I wanted both the vanilla and lime flavors, so I skipped the lime, but both of today’s drinks include lime, and it really is a great pairing. So much so that it’s worth considering keeping a bottle of vanilla-lime vodka on the shelf.

Vanilla Mule

Just a simple twist on the traditional Moscow Mule. Mix together ginger beer, vanilla vodka, and a splash of lime juice. So simple and so delicious!

Vodka Tonic

This second drink is just a touch more exotic than your typical vodka tonic in that we add a splash of lime shrub. We make a vodka tonic with the vanilla vodka, add about a tablespoon of lime shrub, and then a spray of fresh lime juice if you have it.

yum & yum

Banana Cream Pie!

March 30, 2016April 6, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a double vanilla cake, and a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean.

Oh my goodness. We can’t stop with the banana cream pies! If you’re following our Instagram feed, you have all the proof you need (not one, but two pies in one week!)… and no joke, there are perfect bananas on the counter and plans for another pie (fortunately we have guests ready to dig in – we’re not that crazy).

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Category Archives: recipes

Midsummer Magic

Dutch Oven Chili

Arugula Walnut Pesto

Nuts are our ingredient of the season. We’ve been using them for sweets, drinks, and snack bars. Today we’re finally using them for a savory condiment!

DIY Vanilla Extract

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean, and some homemade perfumes with vanilla essential oils.

How-to

Thirsty Thursday!

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a double vanilla cake, and a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean.

Vanilla Mule

Vodka Tonic

Banana Cream Pie!

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. So far we’ve made some vanilla-infused vodka (great for milkshakes!), a double vanilla cake, and a savory roasted chicken with vanilla bean.