One Local Summer :: Week #6

Whoops! I missed last week due to the holiday. Fear not, Week #5 was full delicious local burgers and buns, Appledore Cove country ketchup and salad. Alas, no pictures, I gobbled it all up too quickly!

This weeks local fare was a Roasted Beet and Chevre Grilled Cheese Sandwich, recipe via CHOW:



Local ingredients:

Goat Cheese
Beets
Bakery Bread
Butter

Non-local ingredients:

Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil

This recipe was easy, delicious and utilized simple, local ingredients. I would make it again in a heartbeat!

P.S. I'll also be able to use the leftover greens later to make one of my favorites: Beet Greens Over Polenta

One Local Summer :: Week #3

Something local...and something not quite local



My 100% local entry is simple this week, folks, sausage and eggs.

Local Ingredients:

Sausage - Kellie Brook Farm
Eggs - Lasting Legacy Farm

However, I did make another dish, that was not quite challenge worthy, but might be of interest to my fellow New England locavores.

Fusilli with Pak Choi and Sausage - my take on a recipe from Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food, (I don't work for Chez Panisse, I swear)!

Local ingredients:

A large bunch of pak choi aka bok choy, rinsed and chopped
1/2 lb of Italian sausage, casings removed
1 large onion, chopped

Non-local ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
Pinch of chile flakes
1 lb of fusilli

Add olive oil to pan. Form the sausage into small patties and cook over medium heat, until cooked through. Remove sausage and cook onion and pak choi. Add about 3/4 cup of water to cook greens. Season with salt, pepper, chile flakes. Cook until greens are tender. Add sausage back into pan and break up into small pieces, if you wish.

Cook pasta according to instructions and serve with greens/sausage over the top.

This was so delicious that my husband cleared about 3/4 lb of pasta in one day. I *think* he liked it!

Happy cookin'!

In Ze Kitchen du Cost - Local-Ish Recipes

I've been cooking up a few new local-ish recipes that I thought I would share with you here.

beet greens, shallots, sun dried tomatoes and garlic waiting to go in the pan...


The first has become a delicious new favorite in our kitchen Beet Greens over Polenta by Matt Armendariz via Design Sponge. I substituted the pancetta with bacon, which I could probably seek out locally, but I didn't in this case. I bought the beet greens, garlic and shallots at my farmer's market from Wake Robin Farm. I highly recommend this recipe if you're looking to add a little more leafy greens to your diet. It is simple and tasty.

sip this with a straw and it will be gone, lickety split!


This recipe for Rhubarb Citrus Soda is from my newly acquired copy of Cooking with Shelburne Farms. (If you click on that link, it's currently available new and used from $2.95 - I got my copy a few weeks ago for .99 cents!) This is definitely one of my new favorite cookbooks. Not only does it contain recipes, but it's interspersed with stories of local people who work in and around the Vermont farm. The format of the book is interesting as well. It's broken up into sections by nine ingredients that are indigenous to Vermont; milk and cheese, maple, greens, lamb, mushrooms, game and fish, pork, root-cellar vegetables and apples. These sections make the recipes very applicable here in New Hampshire, as our local food economy depends on many of the same products. The tasty looking recipes combined with the insightful stories really make me want to go visit Shelburne Farms! I don't want to infringe on any copyrights by posting the full recipe here, but if you've made natural sodas before, you could the ingredients are rhubarb, water, orange juice, lemon juice, honey and seltzer, plus I garnished the finished tonic with my orange mint and the first strawberries of the season!

Tonight is Stitch n' Bitch and tomorrow I'm going rock climbing at Pawtuckaway with the hubby and best bud, Allison. Cheers everyone!

Bits and Bobs of Random Goodness

Let's catch up, shall we...

:: Knitting ::

Knitting is definitely my gateway drug *cough* craft addiction which has opened my world to all of the crafty goodness that currently occupies my life...and the majority of my apartment! I have recently re-fallen in love with knitting because of the amazingly awesome, though slightly sinister time-killing, Ravelry. I'm a little obsessed...

I finished the Broadripple Socks,



And last night I started the Umbilical Cord Hat from the first SnB book at 11:00pm...and finished in a crazed knitting stupor roughly around 3:00am!



The hat is one of a few I'll be making for the upcoming baby showers in my life. I'm might do a little embroidery embellishment on them, we'll see.

:: Christmas Gifts ::

Speaking of baby gifts, I finished another teddy bear! Two down, one to go! This one is wonky and a little asymmetrical. I like him - Matt thinks he's ungiftable. I think Matt's silly! What do you think?



:: Shopping ::

I've made some fun Etsy purchases in the last few days. First off, I bought a golfer window decal for my dad for Father's Day. Secondly, and not to be missed, my sensational artist blog friend, Flossy-P, has made some of her works available in form of a super affordable post card! I was able to purchase two of my all time favorites, String Theory and the set Looking for Love/Sometime Soon. Very exciting, indeed.

:: Cooking ::

Still with me? I made the Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding sans the morels from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Very tasty, and it made a TON! Oh my, has it been more than a week since I've sung the praises of this book?! If you haven't read it, please do. It will likely change your life, give the warm fuzzies, make you feel like you can change the fate of the planet by doing your little bit.

Made the Rhubarb Crisp from Slow Food by Alice Waters again. Came out scrumptious, again. **EDIT** I just popped over to my mum's blog and she's posted a delicious looking recipe for Rhubarb Bread. I'll have to give that one a go!

So that's what I've been up to - how about all of you? Having a productive week?

Until next time, cheers!

Cooking Notes on Rhubarb Crisp

I bought some rhubarb at the farmer's market last weekend. I had never cooked with it before, so I went to one of my new favorite cookbooks, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, for some inspiration.

I only bought three stalks of rhubarb, so my recipe was considerably smaller than the crisp recipe in the book (it asked for 4lbs of fruit). I made about three cups of the crisp topping, used it as needed and froze the rest for later. Waters doesn't give specific measurements for adding sugar to your crisp fruit, although she states that rhubarb needs "a lot." I added a tablespoon at a time until the tartness didn't quite turn my face inside out, and ended up added a little less than 3/4 of a cup for 3ish cups of fruit. Not for the faint of heart when it comes to sugar!

I baked this at 375F for about 45 minutes, and it's absolutely delicious. After it settled in the refrigerator for awhile, and I reheated it, it almost tastes like peaches! So tasty! Now that I'm not scared of cooking rhubarb anymore, I'm hoping that there will still be some at the market this week, so that I can buy bunches and can it for later.

Cheers, S