kitchen adventures
Let me talk about what’s in the basket. This week, we have dinosaur kale (cavolo nero), carrots, fennel, 2 adorable little eggplants, garlic, and a basket of ripe tomatoes.
More tomatoes this week! I am definitely happy, because we also have fresh garlic, which means I see various pasta dishes coming soon.
Finally, tomatoes! Hot weather this last week has brought us some of the true summer crops. We’re tomato fiends here, so these are very very welcome, and they won’t last long.
Another week, another wonderful basket! We’ve had hot weather, which has been good for growing – no tomatoes yet, but beans! Zucchini! Today’s harvest brought us fennel, kale, carrots, green and purple beans, zucchini, green onions, and garlic. I’m already thinking what these might turn into: stuffed zucchini with ground
I love berries of all kinds, and am lucky to live where lots of them grow. Recently I bought some freshly picked blueberries at a farm stand: they were delicious! Some went into muffins, some on cereal, some were just eaten as a snack. The rest, about a dry quart,
You don’t have to make a huge batch when you make jam. Take this example: in a small batch, Strawberry-Vanilla Butter uses only 1½ quarts of berries, and yields 3 half-pint jars (plus a bit extra for toast or snacking.) You may double the recipe, if you wish a larger batch: the
Last year, most of the Tuesday CSA pickups were done in the rain. Today was the first rainy Tuesday this year, with scattered showers all afternoon. Clearly, though, the rain has been good for the plants! Today’s box held turnip greens, red leaf lettuce, fennel, beets, eggplant, zucchini, garlic, and
It’s Tuesday, so it’s time to collect the CSA box at the farm! This week my haul is very green: fennel, kale, green cabbage, 2 kinds of lettuce, sage, green tomatoes (swoon) and the first heads of fresh garlic. I’m already thinking of what I might do with this. Hm, so many
What do you do when you want to make apple pie for a big crowd? 2 or 3 round pies are difficult to carry to a gathering, and fussy to serve. Apple slab pie, or apple slice, is an old-fashioned option: a thin but luscious pie baked flat and wide. It
Let’s play catch-up! I had not posted about weeks 1, 2, and 3 of the City Commons CSA distributions, due to the remodeling of this blog. Let’s correct that, shall we? Here are photos of the first three weeks of glorious produce. You can see we have various greens and
When you need to freeze berries, do it quickly! Acting on a hint from Alton Brown on how to freeze strawberries with dry ice, I started with my berries and (of course) dry ice. You’ll need the ice (a local grocery store will often stock this), a big pot or clean
I’ve been asked by my readers to write about something ‘hidden’ in my kitchen: the equipment and tools I use day to day. They’d like to know how I cook, and if I use a fancy piece of equipment, if there’s some low-tech tool they could use instead. So from time to
I’m Maurita Plouff, and I write about cooking and preserving the local harvest in Southeast Michigan. Any recipe you find here is something I have cooked myself, and enjoyed, and think you might like too. I invite you to try the recipes, and leave comments.