apple crumble

I listened to mark bittman and also to my instincts.

We had 2 and a half bags of apples, 3 cartons of pears, and ripening was happening fast. (apple picking is tempting but dangerous). So I made apple desserts all weekend: two apple crumbles and an apple pie. I wasn't in love with this apple pie, so I'll post about it when I am ready to try again. Hopefully you will hear about gina marie's peach pie soon! (mouth wateringly delicious. peaches are truly a gift, and so is gina...)

but the apple crumble - you can't really do wrong... I followed mark bittman's recipe for streusel topping in "How to Cook Everything" - I don't have it in front of me - but something like this: put a stick of butter and 1 cup of brown sugar in the mixer. cream together. add a little cinnamon, a pinch of salt. add half a cup of chopped nuts (I did this in one and skipped them in the other - I sorta liked it better without, but it depends on whether you like nuts.) finally, slowly mix in a cup of flour. it will get crumbly. leave it in the bowl (I refrigerated one bowl of topping over night before using to no ill effect.)


the apples - I made them like I make apple pie: cut the apples up (about 16 pieces per apple) (7-8 apples for the big pan you see in the picture - I used 6 apples for the smaller pan that I forgot to photograph.) mix with a tablespoon of brown sugar, juice of half a lemon, and 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves (you can add mace or allspice too, if you want. Did you know mace is part of the nutmeg plant? so cool. Ok, moving on.)

Toss the apple mixture. put it in the buttered glass pan, cover with crumble, somewhat evenly. Cook at 400 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes in the oven.

eat with ice cream for dessert or just warmed up for breakfast. it's pretty good.

popcorn: outside edition

So, from our farmshare with stone soup farm, we get popcorn each year.

(picture courtesy of stone soup)

It lasts for years, literally, which is great. I went on a camping trip over 4th of july weekend and tried to recreate the magic of popcorn on the stove with popcorn on the campfire.

it came out deliciously (healthy amounts of salt and butter were included.)

what you do, is you use your thumb to take the kernels off the corncob. you put them in a pot with some oil and a lid, and then let it get hot. then they pop. and it's delicious. also - I have found that the kernels that don't pop the first time around will often pop if you try them again after you have taken out the popped corn.

This is pretty fun.

grilled farmshare of joy.

Over the summer there was a lot of grilling. one of the special things that happened was a lot of grilling packets.


to grill in a packet: chop vegetables, add oil or butter, add spices/salt, wrap in tin foil. Grill until delicious.

so easy, and the things taste amazing.

Good combos include: pretty much any vegetable with garlic and oil, any fresh herbs you have are good.


I did an experiment and did some potatoes with butter and some with olive oil. I expected the buttered ones to be better, but actually they were both really good!







You can even do dessert, you'll see some peaches grilled in a packet with ice cream down here.


We also did some skewering, which is nice if you want the char and grill marks, but the packets really pack a flavor punch!

stone soup breakfast - eggs!

So our farmshare from Stone Soup Farm is gifting us with delicious eggs this year that are from the chickens they have been raising on the farm!

gina marie and roommate emily and I went and saw the chickens earlier this spring.




Here is a gratuitous picture of gina marie and baby cows.

After our first farmshare delivery, I decided to whip up a little sandwich for myself in the morning. fresh spinach, cheddar cheese. A perfect egg. a little pepper and salt.




We are getting delicious bread from El Jardin bakery with the farmshare as well, so I sliced that up. this one is 8 grain.

I spread the spinach and cheese from the pan onto the bread

plus egg, and voila! delicious.



A few days later, I had some of that odd pesto I had made, and so I made another breakfast sandwich. this one was sans spinach, plus tomato and pesto. and on different a country loaf type deal.





I love eggs.

adventures in pesto

we got a lot of garlic scapes a few weeks ago. I had seen a mention of garlic scape pesto, and decided to make it. Without really consulting a lot of recipes. It turns out that it's a little harsh without any basil, but it worked okay.

My pesto was basically the followwing things combined in the magic bullet: olive oil, chopped garlic scapes, slivered almonds, microplaned pecorino romano, salt, pepper. and I just added until it seemed pretty good. It was a little harsh on its on, but really mellowed when cooked with veggies and made into a pasta sauce.

Gina then made delicious pesto. I hope she posts about it. hers was better than mine. I have things to learn!

strawberry jam

The other day, I went strawberry picking with gina marie and chloe elizabeth (of Greetings from the Chaise Lounge) and we got some delicious, although slightly waterlogged, strawberries.

It has been raining a lot here. The raining means that the strawberries are not as sweet as they could be, and go bad fast. The solution?

Make jam. and spread it on toast. (farmshare bread toast.)

to make the jam: take the tops off the strawberries. but them in a saucepan. add a tiny bit of water from your emptied wineglass and a healthy helping of sugar. turn the heat on low. stir. when they're a little soft, use the handblender to puree - defending yourself from strawberry stains with a pot lid. continue to heat and occasionally add a little sugar until it's a little darker and has a nice consistency. pour into tupperware and refrigerate



Let gina marie lick the pot.


Put on toast for breakfast.

hold me to it!

I am going to start posting again.

I am writing that here so that you will hold me to it.

First off, I will start writing what the contents is of my household's farmshare from Stone Soup Farm is every week. Sarah emily is getting a different farmshare now that she has moved to jp, so hopefully she will post too, and we can compare the bounties of our farmshares!

second, I am going to have to cook the food, so I'll post about it.

So: the first week was last week, and I don't totally remember, but here's my vague understanding (Jarrett & Annie actually brought us our share, and then we made dinner).

bok choi
cilantro
arugula
lettuce
baby greens salad mix
kohlrabi
strawberries
8 grain bread (from ... I can't remember the bakery)
eggs (from stone soup! they are so cute and differently sized and stuff)
spinach
radishes
there was more, but memory is failing me...

anyways, we made a salad and a dinner of black rice, black beans, and sauteed spinach and bok choy and it was delicious!

week 2:
strawberries again!
garlic scapes (a LOT of them. look for a post on garlic scape pesto soon)
zucchini & summer squash
kohlrabi
red lettuce
salad mix
mint (there were other options... sage and parsley, I think)
some kind of delicious white bread
eggs
arugula
kale (we had a chard option too)


I know I am forgetting things but...

it's a start!

word cloud!

Here's a word cloud of this bog. Garlic much? If you click on it it gets bigger and cooler.

cod in packets!

So I was heading off to babysit the other day (lie, I was watching kids by the dozen on my couch, waiting for the kid to call me) the mom calls, and says: "max isn't coming home till later, but you can come make dinner now. I have some cod fillets for Jesse, and some steak for max."

I was like, "sure!" and then immediately sped to the internet. what would I do with cod? Cook's illustrated to the rescue! cod in foil packets with zucchini and tomatoes! I was lucky - this recipe is from the March issue! http://cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=18757

I am not one for quantities, but here's roughly what I did, in pictures and some words.

I sliced one zucchini into half rounds, put it in a salad spinner with salt, and let it sweat.

then I chopped about 12 cherry tomatoes in half, and diced two large cloved of garlic. I tossed those together in a bowl with someolice oil, salt, pepper, dried oregano, and just a few chili pepper flakes. You're supposed to de-seed the tomatoes, and they're supposed to be plum tomatoes, but, who's counting?

I am just making two fish fillets, so, I tear off four approx 12"x12" pieces of tin foil and lay them out.

next I take my "sweaty" zucchini out of the salad spinner and put them flat on a layer of 3 paper towels, and press down on them with a layer of three more paper towels. I probably should have let them sweat longer, because there was definitely still some moisture left in them.

I mounded half the now sorta dry zucchini in the middle of one piece of tin foil (dull side up) and half in the other. then I poured about a tablespoon of white wine on top of each of the zucchini mounds.

Next I cut the fish into two slightly rectangular pieces, (about 4 inches long?) and patted them down with a paper towel, although they weren't that wet to start with, and then put a little salt and pepper on each side. I laid each piece of fish on top of a mound of zucchini.

then I put half of the tomato mixture on top of each piece of fish.

Finally - packet time! I put the second piece of foil on top of the fish, and folded the edges over 3 times on each side.

Jesse wasn't ready to eat yet, so I put the packets in the refrigerator. when she was ready, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit, and I put the fish packets on a baking sheet. When the oven was hot, I popped them in the oven for 17 minutes. (I added two minutes because of the fridge time - usually it's 15 minutes.)

when they came out, I used a knife to open the packets *away from me* and slid everythign inside onto a plate. ta dah! (not so) instant meal!

Jesse ate the whole thing! success! There are several other packet fillet recipes, you could put most veggies in, I think, you just want to make sure there's not too much liquid in there.