The Good Food Muse

1.13.2008

Happy Humboldt Cows in their pasture. They were grazing so picturesquely when I drove up, but as soon as I started taking pictures they proved what camera hogs they really are!

Here's a few meals we've had in the past weeks.....

First, our favorite "quick and easy" meal - baked Winter Squash and salad with Feta Cheese and Annie's Goddess Dressing.

The only work in preparing this is cutting the squash and putting it in the oven an hour or so before dinner. They we just use Goddess and Feta directly from the fridge.

The salad mix is local - it is simply amazing right now! The cool weather makes it heartier and more vibrant. Salad like this in January just seems too good to be true!

Beef Stroganoff was actually much easier than I had anticipated. First I browned the beef and set it aside, then added:

Garlic and local Shallots. I cooked these in the beef drippings for a while and then added:

Local Wild Hedgehog Mushrooms. Beef Stroganoff is traditionally made with wild mushrooms.

Apparently many parts of Russia have a lot of them, much like we do here in the Pacific Northwest. When all that was pretty well cooked, I added the beef back in and cooked it for a while more. then I added:

Lots of organic Sour Cream, and salt and pepper.

Here's the completed dish. Traditionally, beef Stroganoff is served with Kashi, a Buckwheat dish, but I didn't have the time to figure that out, so I just used noodles. That's how I've always had Beef Stroganoff anyway. It was delicious!

For another relatively easy weekend meal, we roasted chicken pieces with olive oil and....

Local Brussels Sprouts....

Meyer Lemon....

Fresh Turmeric. This is kind of an odd item that we sell at the Co-op. It's a relative of ginger, but it doesn't have the same bite. It has a mild yet noticeable flavor, and an incredible yellow color.

Local Yellow Finn Potatoes.

and here it is! The turmeric is shredded, but you can tell it's there by how yellow everything is.

We made apple butter again this week. We had way too many apples to start with (they were seconds from wor,) so we made the biggest batch we had ever attempted. Both of our biggest stock pots were jammed full.....

We cooked it on low for 4 days. We usually process it sooner than that, but we were just too busy to deal with it. By the time we got around to it, it was thicker and richer than ever before....