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.....

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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....


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Christmas 2007

The holidays have been a blur! I barely had time to make everything I did - finding time to blog about it was truly impossible. I didn't want to give all my Christmas gifts away beforehand anyway. Now all the gifts have been given and I'm free to blog about them!

Along with the Lemon Curd, I gave Lavender Oat Cakes and jars of the tea pictured above. Sort of a tea party in a box...the tea is a mixture of Jasmine Tea, Lemon Verbena, Rose Petals, and Lavender Flowers. It was extremely fragrant and flowery - definitely a feminine blend, but delicious just the same!

Here it is all mixed together

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The oat cakes are a Scottish recipe, I think. I remember them from when I was a kid.

The main ingredient is blended oats (pictured above.) Here's the entire recipe:

3 Cups Blended Oats
1 1/2 Cups Flour
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 Cup Butter
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1/3 Cup Scalded Milk or Table Cream

Mix Oatmeal, Flour, and Salt. Cut in Butter with hands. Dissolve Soda in Hot Milk (I used half and half,) and add to dry mixture. Roll to 1/8-1/4 inch thick. I used a glass to get the round shape. Bake in moderate oven (325-250) for 10 minutes. The hardest part about the recipe is rolling out the dough. It's pretty dry and cracky, but I had it down by the last batch!

I added some lavender to the dough make them a little fancier. They were really good - crispy and not too sweet. The went perfectly with the Lemon Curd!

I packed them in cellophane, tissue paper, and in tins. Very pretty!

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I also made Chocolate Covered Brandied Cherries.

These Cherries had been soaking in Brandy since July of 2006! We had an amazing glut of Cherries that summer, and I wanted to preserve some. Brandied Cherries seemed like a good idea, but we never used them. Their alcohol content was a little scary by this point! The dark ones are Bings and the light ones are Raniers.

After draining the Cherries, the first step was to coat them with this mixture of powdered sugar, water, and Cherry Brandy. It makes a Play-Dough like substance. You make a ball out of the sugar mixture......
....flatten it into a thin disc.....
and wrap it around the Cherry.

Then you let them cool for a half hour or so in the fridge. Then I double dipped them in chocolate, but that was just too messy to take pictures of! They were a little overwhelming in your mouth, but delicious none the less!

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Last, but not least, I made this trail mix - mostly for my brother, who is a student and sometimes forgets to eat. Chocolate Chips, Almonds, Pistachios, Salted Cashews, Pumpkin Seeds, Banana Chips, Raisins, and tiny little pieces of Crystallized Ginger. Not exactly healthy, but it's all organic and not too unhealthy....

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Before I left to go home for Christmas, we ate the last of the local broccoli. It was really dark green, and really good. It's frosted a few times here this fall, but nothing too heavy. We rarely get a hard frost, even in the winter. The hardest part about growing things in the winter here is that there's just not enough daylight hours for things to put on much growth. Plants tend to survive, but just sit there without growing. Anyway, this broccoli was delicious! It was the last available from the local farm who supplies the Co-op, but I'm sure there's home gardeners out there who will be eating it year round.

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OK, now just a few pictures from Christmas in Wisconsin. I was home for about a week visiting family. Madison is drowning in snow!


I forgot to bring my camera, but my brother was good enough to take a few....

These are the last tomatoes my Mom had picked before the frost killed the plants in November. They were mostly rotten, but I managed to salvage a a little for our salad. She had been keeping them in the basement.....

This is the Coffee Cake she made for Christmas brunch. I should have watched more carefully how she shaped it.... It's filled with a raisin/brown sugar mixture. Mmmmm....reminds me of childhood....

Here's the Brunch spread: Coffee Cake, Roasted Potatoes, (with rosemary, garlic, and capers!) 3 kinds of quiche, a citrus-y fruit salad, a green salad, and don't forget the catchup! The whole thing was truly delicious - a good variety of flavor and texture, but somehow it all complemented itself really well.

Christmas dinner was Guinness Beef Stew made chiefly by my brother and I. My mom made Irish Brown Bread and Salad to go with it, and my Step-dad made Cheese Cake for dessert. It was quite a scene as we all tried to cook in the same smallish kitchen!

We dredged the beef in a little flower and browned it. We set that aside and cooked onions, carrots, and potatoes in the meat drippings. We poured 2 cans of Guinness in and let it cook for a while. We asked Mom what spices she thought would be Irish, and surprisingly, she said she remembered Curry in the food when she visited Ireland. We decided to give it a try and added just a smidgen of Curry Powder, Salt, Pepper, and Bay Leaves, added the Beef again and some Beef Stock and let the whole thing cook down.

This is just the vegetables in beer. I don't have a picture of the finished stew, but I have to say, I was pretty proud of it. It was thick and rich and meaty - very hearty, and perfect for a cold Christmas night with my family of Irish descendants. The Potatoes, Carrots, Onions, and Beef were all local, I believe. Thank goodness for root crops, meat, and dairy! Without them life in the upper Mid-West would have been impossible a hundred years ago.

That's it - Happy New Year!
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Pomegranates and Lemon Curd

It's been a while since I've posted anything. The Holidays are closing in, and like a lot of other people, for me that means not only holiday cheer, but a whole lot of extra stress too!

This year, I'm making quite a few food gifts which I'm sure I'll document on this blog. The only thing I've done thus far is make lemon curd. I cooked it this weekend and canned it so it'll last till Christmas. Lemons are in season now, although I've heard that the supply this year from Southern California (where most lemons grow) is very short. The hard frosts that hit the state last year have a lot to do with it I guess.

I used fresh lemon juice (and some organic bottled juice when I ran out of fresh lemons,) sugar, butter, and eggs (more yolks than whites.) Here a link to the recipe I used. Basically, you cook all of those things in a double boiler till they reach 170 degrees F. The recipe says to then filter out the zest, but I left it in since I kind of like the texture and the bitter contrast to the sweet lemon curd. I poured the hot mixture into half pint jars and "processed" them in boiling water for about 15 minutes. That really amounted to about 45 minutes in the hot water bath since it took the water so long to boil after I put the jars in. Here it is in the hot water. I don't have a whole lot of experience canning - I'm a little intimidated by the idea, but this seemed easy enough. Here's the finished jars - I got a total of 9 half-pint jars. This weekend, I'll make a bunch of other stuff to go with it.

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Pomegranates were on sale at the co-op last week, so I decided to try something creative with them over the weekend. They were small - not the best quality, but organic and super cheap. I'm not exactly sure where these particular pomegranates are from, but mostly they grow in The Central Valley in Southern California. Not local, but not too far.

Pomegranates are an incredibly ancient fruit. They originally came from Persia (Iran.) Since they have the most experience, I figured the Persians would have some of the best recipes, so I decided lookes for Persian pomegranate recipes for a small dinner party I had on Sunday night.

Unfortunately I didn't get too many pictures of the main dish: Ash-e-anar, a Persian pomegranate soup. Here's a link to the recipe I loosely followed. I didn't have a few of the ingredients, and I added some others. This picture is pretty early on in the process:
The final soup consisted of onions, green onions, a beet, garlic, yellow lentils, rice, parsley, cilantro, pomegranate juice, and beef meat-balls. I would have loved to use lamb, but unfortunately there was none to be had at the co-op this weekend. I also really wish I had had the turmeric that the recipe called for. I didn't realize until too late that I needed it. The recipe also calls for Angelica Powder, which I couldn't find anywhere. I guess it's a spice used in Persian cooking. There are definite drawbacks to living in such a small town!

The soup reminded me a lot of Russian Borscht. It was rich and very warming. It gave me a good idea of how versatile Pomegranate juice can be.

We sprinkled fresh pomegranate seeds in the soup, and I also used some on the salad. They provided a great color contrast. This is our super awesome locally grown organic spring mix from Little River Farm- truly one of the joys of living in Arcata - especially this time of year when the local scene consists mainly of root crops.

For dessert I went with the Middle Eastern theme and made stuffed dates. I used to do this when I was a waitress at a Middle Eastern restaurant. These are organic Medjool dates. It's quite easy to do, and really good. You just make an incision in each date, pull out the pit, and put a few almonds in its place. I sprinkled pistachios on it just for fun. Dates are delicious, but they're almost too sweet. I can't eat too many of them in one sitting - but I guess that's not really a bad thing!

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Just a few more quick pictures that I've taken recently:

This is the very last of the local lettuce. It's been frosty this week and it finally did in the last of the G Farms lettuce. In some ways it's sad to see the season ending. It feels like a final passage into winter. Even if the frost hadn't killed it, the lettuce was practically done anyway: The lack of daylight this time of year practically stops its growth.

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This was dinner last night. It just looked so good, I had to take a picture. It's a hamburger, but instead of a bun, I chose to have extra cheese, grilled onion, and greens. Mmmmm....delicious, especially with the oven fries. I like finding ways to eliminate wheat from my diet without missing it too much - this was even better than a hamburger with bun! I regret buying the Mexican tomato - it tasted like mushy cardboard. It's just not worth buying tomatoes this time of year - they get more expensive and less tasty - why do we buy them?

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Speaking of non-local food, this is the asparagus that Johnny brought home a week ago. It's from Argentina - flown up to the US in a cargo plane. This really is some of the most environmentally unsustainable food on the planet - it's organic, but that doesn't make up for all the diesel fuel and jet fuel it used to get here. It tasted good, but not good enough to take away the guilt I felt eating it....
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Meditations on a Squash

This is what the rodents who live close by are eating! They've been gnawing on the last few apples in our tree and knocking them down one by one. Every morning when I leave for work there's one or two more on the sidewalk. At least we can be sure that none of the apples are going to waste, and no rodents are going hungry!

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To make up for my lack of imagination on Thanksgiving, I decided to make an elaborate meal this Sunday. I had a very large Long Island Cheese squash that was beginning to develop spots that would eventually turn soft, so I took the opportunity to to cook it. I wanted three separate courses that all featured the squash, but were different enough to still make an acceptable meal - Kind of like the Iron Chef, except I took my time. I think rushing things the way they do can only lead to compromised results.


Johnny had to cut the squash. It was just too big for me to handle. He cut it into quarters and I baked three of them. I could hardly fit them in the pan! The texture of this squash is nice - It's a tiny bit fibrous, but very creamy at the same time. It's a nice dark orange color, with a relatively mild sweet taste. It's an heirloom from Long Island - named "cheese" because it looks like a cheese wheel. This one was grown on Full Belly Farm in the Capay Valley (about an hour North of Sacramento.) Unfortunately none of our local farmers grow this squash - perhaps next year I'll convince one of them to.

Coordinating the three dishes was a bit of a chore. I basically made all three recipes at once. I'll describe them in the order we ate them.

For the first course I used the quarter of the squash that I hadn't baked. I peeled it and cut it into bite-sized chunks. I tossed them with a little flour and deep fried the squash chunks in batches for about 5 minutes per batch. They cooked up really nicely - there wasn't much breading so they weren't too greasy, but the little bit of flour that stuck to each piece gave it just a touch of deep fried goodness.

Here they are right out of the fry oil. I laid these out in a pie plate and sprinkled sliced garlic, chopped anchovies, chopped sage sage, olive oil, and a tiny bit of apple cider vinegar on top.

I mixed it all together lightly and let it marinate for a few minutes while I quickly browned a few pine nuts in a skillet. Once the pine nuts were added it was done. The whole thing was unbelievably delicious. The recipe I started with called for mint instead of sage, but I decided I'd rather have sage. It was such a great taste combination with the spicy garlic the salty anchovies, and the sweet squash. Mmmmmm......


For the main course I made an Italian potato squash "pie" (I'd call it more of a casserole, but maybe I'm being too picky.) I pureed 1 quarter of the squash (already cooked) in the food processor with about the same amount of boiled potatoes. Into that, I mixed butter, 4 egg yolks, Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper (yes this is a decadent recipe!) I cooked up a little sausage into tiny bits and added that too. Finally, I whipped the egg yolks until they were stiff and folded them in. I spread bread crumbs on the bottom of a pan and added half the squash potato mixture on top. I sprinkled grated mozzarella cheese on that layer and then added the rest of the mixture. I topped it off with more mozzarella and Parmesan and baked the whole thing.

Here it is coming out of the oven. It was like the lightest, most buttery, creamy mashed potatoes you've ever had. The squash is mild, so it didn't overpower, but it did add a nice twist. It was very filling. We only ate about a quarter of it - we'll be eating it all week!

For dessert I made pumpkin flan with the third quarter of squash. I'd never done it before, but it worked amazingly well. The first step was to make the caramel. I didn't have any white sugar, so I used Sucanat, which is unrefined. The recipe said to warm the sugar over a burner till it caramelized. I did, and at first nothing happened. I got nervous when I started to smell burned sugar and it had still not changed texture at all, so I added just a touch of bourbon (which I was planning to use as flavoring anyway.) Immediately the sugar liquefied perfectly. I poured the carmel into the pan I would bake the flan in and set it aside while I mixed up the flan: pureed squash, eggs, brown sugar, and cream. I poured that on top of the carmel in the pan. Finally, I filled a large pan with hot water and baked the flan in its pan within the hot water pan. I have no idea why that's how you do it, but that's what recipe said, so that's what I did.

It's hard to see in this picture, but this is the flan going into the oven.....

And here it is just out of the oven. I put it in the freezer to cool. After we were done with the rest of the meal, I made a simple warm cranberry sauce with just fresh cranberries, bourbon, and brown sugar.

I pulled the flan out of the freezer and flipped it upside down so that the carmel on the bottom (which had liquefied again as it cooled) dripped down over the flan.

The only problem was that I didn't quite get it centered on the plate....ah well, next time.....

Here's my portion with the cranberry sauce on top. I love cranberries with sweet things - they added such a great sour to balance the carmely sweetness.

So this was my 3 course meditation on the Long Island Cheese. It was one of the most satisfying (and time consuming) meals I've had in a while! We still have one quarter baked squash left... we'll probably just eat it plain. What a versatile thing winter squash is!

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