kitchen adventures
CSA week 22 2020: it’s definitely autumn now. We’re getting the very last of the tomatoes, some cool-weather radishes and greens, and some lovely apples. Not to mention last week’s box, about which I mysteriously failed to post! Taken together, these boxes are a picture of autumn on the farm. This
CSA week 20 2020 brings more big green tomatoes to be ripened on the counter, plus at least a quart of cherry tomatoes. This year has not been good for tomatoes. We started with a long cold spring and are ending with early frosts. There are a lot of ways
CSA week 19 2020: big green tomatoes this week, due to be ripened on the counter. Our farmer tells us that this year, they’re just not ripening quickly: they’re starting to show cracks, so they’re being harvested now. The weather isn’t on our side, either; we’ve been flirting with freezes
CSA week 18 2020: larger tomatoes this week, though we’ll need to ripen them on the windowsill. The weather’s turned cooler, so I guess that tomatoes suffer a bit. It has not been a good year for tomatoes around here. We also have a big bunch of chard and lots
There’s a phrase used in the food press recently: aspirational cooking. This is what we wish our kitchens would produce, or what we might accomplish if we really try, or food that we only wish we could manage. Let’s get something straight here – I don’t aspire to cook the good stuff, I
CSA week 17 2020: a big basket this week, and full of great stuff. We have our first chard, little baby leaves. There are more tomatoes (yay) but the rest of the basket is green, green, glorious green. Some of these vegetables are destined to become snack material for the long
Why make homemade tomato paste when it’s always available at the grocery store? I use tomato paste all the time. Sometimes I need up to half a cup, and sometimes just a little bit. When I make my own, I can store it in the sizes I tend to need most, so I have
Tomato paste is, in principle, an easy thing: squish the tomatoes, separate the skins and the seeds, and reduce the resulting pulp until it’s very thick. I have already posted a Roasted Tomato Paste recipe – here’s a version using a slow cooker or two, for when you can’t stand
I use tomato paste all the time. Sometimes I need up to half a cup, sometimes just a little bit. When I make my own, I can store it in the sizes I tend to need most, so I have no more partly used cans in the fridge. Sometimes I have a huge batch
Grandma’s cucumber & tomato salad is a good old stand-by for a reason: it’s a fantastic use for summer produce at its peak of flavor. Think about how people lived through hot summers before air conditioning was common! Cold suppers, cooling salads, and lots of lemonade and iced tea …
Why shouldn’t a raspberry smoothie have chocolate in it? Who says chocolate isn’t healthful, or shouldn’t be eaten at breakfast? Change your patterns. This smoothie is actually full of healthful ingredients, with very little sweetener – and it tastes great!
CSA week 15 2020: We have corn! 4 beautiful ears, which we’re going to devour tonight. In fact, we have all of the traditional “3 sisters”: corn, beans, and squash. This week we have 2 pattypan squashes. They look a bit like flying saucers but taste delicious. I’m going 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.