Culinary Adventures

The cool fall weather has inspired me to a new round of baking and cooking this week. Having essentially three days off in a row helps too. Sunday evening I decided to make a nice dinner for Brandon and I to celebrate having a day home alone to ourselves after a busy week. I decided on a recipe for smothered pork chops with cider and apples that I found on America's Test Kitchen website. Actually I ended up making everything on the webpage for a whole meal, (minus the cookies) because I also had brussels sprouts in the fridge for the first time in my life. I figured I wouldn't like them, but I was convicted that I needed to at least try and I have to say they were amazing! And all that was added was pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, and a little salt. I think I actually liked them better than the pork chops which were wonderful too. We ate way too much.

But I didn't stop there because I had Monday afternoon off too. So I tried a casserole recipe called "King Ranch Chicken" that I had been saving. It was wonderful but guilt inducing. Basically it's chicken, tomatoes with chiles, a cup of cheese, cream and broth cooked to thicken and then poured in a casserole layered with tortillas. Oh yeah, and Monday afternoon was spent making pumpkin bread and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (using the same batter and a CSA pumpkin I roasted and pureed myself). P.S. if you like pumpkin stuff try this pumpkin cake rolled up with cream cheese frosting which I made for our halloween get together.

Today is day off #3 and I currently have dinner for Brandon and a friend of ours in the works. We're having burgers and chips, but they're my special (vegetarian) experimental version (I hope they turn out like the dream in my mind!) The cream, cheese, and chicken guilt from last night got me thinking. I don't have a hard time eating vegetarian in the summer, but my winter recipes are a whole 'nother story. I love eating with the seasons and am so ready for the warm casseroles and skillet dishes of winter, but almost all my staples include meat and plenty of it. So tonight's burgers will be my first ever attempt at veggie burgers. Thanks again to Mark Bittman's' book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian which offers endless ideas and variations! Mine consist of black beans, onion, garlic, spices, some cooked oatmeal to bind it, and a little leftover (CSA) butternut squash (I was thinking of the black bean and sweet potato burgers I saw listed on a local restaurant's menu a few days ago). And the rest of the squash went into an Autumn variation on a recipe for zucchini yeast rolls I made this summer which will serve as our burger buns. Finally, the chips are a CSA/Mark Bittman experiment as well as I try to figure out how in the world to use all the beets I have been accumulating this summer. I very carefully thinly sliced a beet, a rutabaga and a couple small sweet potatoes and will be tossing them in oil and baking them to make veggie chips! I'm trusting the sweet potatoes will at least be good, but the beets and rutabaga are a gamble.

The reality is that I simply love reading new recipes and trying new ideas. Sorry Brandon, besides our few absolute favorites that we have again and again, I see most nights as a culinary adventure for me to explore. Thanks for being such a willing participant!

Squash Enchiladas with Roasted Tomatillo Sauce

A friend of mine mentioned squash enchiladas the other day. The plus the large amount of winter squash that I don't really have any recipes for inspire me, so I started looking through Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Sure enough I found one of his suggestions to use winter squash as a filling for enchiladas. If you don't know Mark Bittman, his books and NY Times writing are great- he can teach you how to cook. What he does is gives a basic recipe and then he'll give you a list of ideas to tinker with it or substitute in it. Another suggestion he added to his enchilada recipe was to make a green enchilada sauce, which is basically salsa verde run through a blender. It's a great pairing with the squash! Here's what you do. Get a winter squash, 10-12 tomatillo (husked and rinsed) a couple poblano peppers and one or two little hot peppers. Roast all of those in the oven at around 375-400 degrees. (Squash can be roasted whole with a couple stabs of a knife and will take anywhere from 45 min. to 1.5 hours. Tomatillos and peppers should be in about 20 minutes). In a large skillet heat oil on med. and cook 1-2 onions (chopped) and 5 cloves garlic (minced) until very soft and then add the tomatillos and peppers roughly chopped along with 1 cup of veggie stock or water 1 tsp. oregano (mexican, if you have it) and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook that all for 10-15 minutes until some liquid evaporates and it thickens. When its done you can add a little lime juice (1/4 cup) and some cilantro. After it has cooled blend it up in a blender or food processor - this is your sauce.

After you let the squash cool enough to handle split it in half, set aside the seeds (you can roast them if you later if you like) and dig all the squash flesh out of the skin and mash it in a bowl. You can add some mexican spices or cheese if you like, but this is what you put in the corn tortillas 1-2 Tbs. at a time. Put a little sauce in the bottom of 9x13 pan (or two 8x8s) and place the rolled tortillas in the pan. Cover with sauce and bake at 350 for 25 minutes. I'm going to try freezing 1/2 a batch for later since there's just the two of us. Enjoy!

Fresh Veggie Nachos!

We're well into tomato and bell pepper season here in Michigan which means salsa and mexican inspired dishes abound at my house. Maybe that seems crazy after all the salsa making, but I love that kind of food! Today we had a fun day out and about with friends so when I got home the zucchini pie with homemade crust I'd had in mind sounded like way to much work.

I was craving nachos after seeing someone else's at a restaurant today, but also feeling the weight of 4 unused zucchini/squash on my counter. So I naturally started to wonder why no one puts zucchini on nachos.

I love nachos, but am usually disappointed with the vegetarian versions that simply pile on more refried beans which I'm not a fan of. What I do love are black beans and cheese! I now had a mission: Fresh Veggie Nachos

I anticipated one potential problem with the addition of squash and other fresh veggies could be the water they exude with the cook, resulting in soggy nachos. So I began by chopping 1 sm. summer squash and some cherry tomatoes and tossing them in a colander with salt before prepping anything else. The salt helps pull moisture out of water-dense veggies. Then I rinsed and drained a can of black beans, chopped a couple slices of onion, half a bell pepper and part of an unknown type of hot pepper from the CSA.

I debated about whether to saute the ingredients ahead of time, but was afraid of adding oil and the possibility of more water exuding from the squash and tomatoes as the cooked, so I decided just to go for it. I tossed all the veggies and some beans in a bowl mixed in a little minced garlic and a shake or two each of cumin and chili powder. I made a plate for each of us covered with a single layer of chips topped with veggies and crumbled Monterey Jack cheese, and put them in the oven at 450 until the cheese melted and the chips on the edges were turning a little brown and crispy.

Brandon and I agreed they were awesome with a little salsa and plain yogurt/sour cream! Yum!

canada peaches

While we were vacationing up near Traverse City, MI this past weekend, Brandon and I stopped at a little roadside farm market to get firewood and hopefully some local cherries. There were no cherries to be found, but Brandon did find the largest peaches I've ever seen and excitedly chose a bag. He was already walking up to check out when I noticed the sign that said "Canada Peaches." We went ahead and got them anyway trying to calculate how far from the Canada boarder we were and hoping they were from somewhere as close as possible. Afterward I wished we'd at least have said something, asked why they had Canadian peaches instead of Michigan ones.
I'm trying to work up the nerve to be a pest when I go out to eat, especially at the local places here in Holland. There's no reason the "Leed Certified" "green" hotel in town shouldn't serve local sustainable food in its "bistro." I often think of my choices to purchase local food as my way of using my voice in the market economy, but now I think it's time to start using my actual voice.

Heirloom Veggies

A few days ago as we were out picking beans and cherry tomatoes at our CSA farm one of my friends asked me about the orange cherry tomatoes we were picking. In fact almost all of the tomatoes we get are funny colors and shapes. And the watermelon we received the last couple weeks are yellow and orange inside. ("We don't grow seedless" I heard one of the farmers explain to a young mom). Those veggies are funny colors and shapes likely because they are heirloom varieties. Conventional tomatoes for example are bred to be a particular size and shape and to travel well whereas heirloom seeds have been passed down generations. They are the family and neighborhood favorites because of their great taste or their particular adapatability to a place. Unfortunately taste is not high on the priority list for tomatoes grown for the grocery store and yet I've heard it said (in books, on NPR, and on seed savers exchange website) that we are in danger of loosing a lot of biodiversity in our world because of loss of regional varieties of veggies, fruits, and even livestock(!) due to the industrialization of our agricultural system which demands uniformity among other qualities.
This year I am growing Brandywine (an enormous pink heirloom tomato that tastes amazing!) and Mr. Stripey (yellow with red stripes, even on the inside) as well as a cherry tomato plant given to us by our CSA called Lemon Drop, which is slowly beginning to yeild the brightest yellow tomatoes I've ever seen. I also ordered the seeds for many of my other plants (peas, beans, zucchini, melon, carrots, and sunflowers) from Seed Saver Exchange whose catalogue is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen-fully of beautiful pictures of gloriously colored veggies, fruits, and flowers. If you're a gardener I urge you to check it out and if you're not the next time you're at the farmers market and see purple tomatoes, ask the farmer about them. They may have a name and a story as unusual as their appearance.

Salsa Day!

After months of waiting and the battle against blight (a virus tomatoes all over the nation are succumbing to this summer) my tomatoes are finally ripening in full force. After picking a couple times the past few days or so I already had about 30 Romas on the counter, enough to finally justify a batch of salsa. I also had several of the largest jalapenos I've ever seen waiting in the fridge.
As I got the water boiling (you dunk the tomatoes in boiling water to help remove their skin before canning) I decided to just make a quick trip out to the garden to gather any others that might be ready to join this batch and came back with more than my basket could hold! I ended up doing a double batch of salsa plus a few cans of plain tomatoes! It's amazing how tomatoes sometimes seem to ripen overnight.
I know a few folks who can things they buy at the farmers market because they aren't able to garden. It's a great way to preserve the freshest things of the season. (Many of my tomatoes today went from vine to jar with in a couple hours!) Plus there are no added preservatives or even salt in my salsa recipe! I plan to give some to my father-in-law who is cutting salt out of his diet.
In fact many of the recipes I plan to make this fall have particular people in mind. This salsa recipe is a favorite of my sister-in-law. Brandon requested some jalepeno jelly. And I think my dad will love the peach BBQ sauce I made last week. I know I'm walking a thin line between normal and weird aunt status when I start giving salsas and jellys as gifts(between that and my knitting I might just have to deal with the label). But today when I ran into a friend who'd been away all summer one of his first questions was, "how's your garden? I've been thinking about it all summer." Hopefully my friends and family love me in spite of, if not because of it all.

Here's the Salsa recipe I used today, from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving:
Fresh Vegetable Salsa
(makes about ten 8oz. jars or five pint jars)
7 cups chopped cored peeled tomatoes
(to peel tomatoes cut an "x" in the bottom end and submerge in boiling water for about 1 min. immediately place in ice water to stop cooking, peel and chop)
2 cups coarsely chopped onion
1 cup coarsely chopped bell pepper
8 jalapenos, seeded and finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 can(5 oz) tomato paste (or make your own)
3/4 cup white vinegar (I subsituted apple cider vinegar and bottled lime juice, but make sure you add at least this much acid to keep the recipe safe for canning!)
1/2 cup lossely packed finely chopped fresh cilantro (half that if you're using dried herbs)
1/2 tsp. ground cumin

1) In a large stainless steel sauce pan, combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil over med-high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring frequently, until thickened about 30 min.
2) Meanwhile prepare canner, jars, and lids (wash, and place jars and lids in warm water on the stove; no need to boil, but they should be warm. Leave the screw top part of the lid out so you can handle it to tighten)
3) Ladle hot salsa into hot jars, leaving 1/2 in. (1cm) headspace. Remove air bubbles with a knive and adjust headspace if necessary by adding more salsa. Wipe jar rim, center the lid and screw the band to finger-tip tight.
4) Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process jars for 20 min. (You start counting when it finally gets boiling hard). Remove canner lid and allow to cool 5 min. Remove jars carefully and allow to cool. After 4-6 hours or more remove screw top lids, check to make sure they sealed, clean jars with a damp cloth and store.

preserving the harvest

After three or four weeks of extreme busy-ness I have finally been able to turn my attention back to my garden for more than a brief moment and it seems its just in the nick of time. The zucchini are producing more and more rapidly and my roma tomatoes are turning red in bunches. On top of that the CSA is providing more food than we can eat and it's also the peak of the season for the best of West Michigan produce at the farmers market. While I wasn't looking it seems my kitchen started to overflow with produce. Yesterday, in between steps in canning peach salsa and BBQ sauce, I made a list of the veggies in the fridge because I keep loosing track of what I have.
I feel this compelling urge to can and freeze the abundance it's so beautiful and seems to me so valuable I can't bare to see any of it go to waste. At times even feel guilty for throwing carrot and turnip tops into the compost, but I already have plenty of veggie broth in the freezer. (At least with compost its not a complete waste as it will nourish next year's garden.)
I'm trying to sort out for myself what's behind this urge. I love finding ways to use what I have and create homecooked meals from local ingredients. I enjoy it and I think it's important. I do think choosing to eat seasonally and preserve the abundance is an act of good stewardship. But I also find myself feeling a little obsessed and proud of myself. And I wonder what the right balance is.
I also wonder how much I can urge others to do the same. Canning is a lot of work. I enjoy it, but is everyone called to this lifestyle? I didn't learn this skills from my mom or my grandmother because neither of them enjoy cooking and were happy to give up the more labor intensive aspects. The other day as I mentioned making homemade vinaigrette for our salads my sister-in-law pointed out that I don't have kids so I have time for things like that. I don't know if having children is the difference (I do know others who garden can and bake their own bread while their children learn along side them, and they aren't stay at home mom's either!) But I do wonder if this is for everyone.
All I can say for now is that for me, growing, cooking, and preserving my own food by the seasons is related to a recognition that I and my schedule are not bigger than this world. If God wanted to create tomato plants to produced year round I think God could have, but instead we live in a place of variety and abundance, ebbs and flows and seasons. So when tomatoes and zucchini are plentiful that's what I'm going to eat and in the winter I'm not going to buy the tomato-like-things in the store that where picked green halfway around the world and forced to ripen with chemicals. I also believe the best tasting and most nutritious food is fresh and local and I think that is the food God meant for us to eat and enjoy. So maybe this will never be the accepted norm again, but I am compelled to the kitchen to can my tomatoes.

sharing my joy

Hey friends, just a short note to celebrate the first of my tomatoes to be turning red! Right now it's only a sort of yellowish orange tinted green(bottom photo), but I'm excited. Plus I finally pulled pics of the garden off the camera. Pretty soon I'm going to be busy making salsa!

exception proves the rule

Over the past year or two I've noticed a trend that when Brandon is out of town (which he fairly often is for his business) I halt all cooking and cleaning. I scrounge leftovers or eat out with friends, whatever dishes were left by the sink will stay there for days until perhaps I consider cleaning up before he gets home. I sort of revert into a college dorm mode.
Brandon is out of town for the next two nights plus I have a cold, so when he didn't take his turn with the dishes last night I fully expected them to be there awaiting his return on Thursday. However tonight we recieved a plentiful variety of CSA veggies including a quart sized baggie stuffed with basil which we decided should become a group batch of pesto. It would have been nice to get together and make it, but it didn't look like that was going to work this week so I offered to make it myself since I've done it several times and happened to have pine nuts in the fridge. I also found myself mentioning the fact that the broccoli stems no one wanted along with the carrot tops and any other scraps could be boiled to make veggie stock so I ended up taking those home too.
When I got home I still wasn't sure I had the ambition to clean up the kitchen and tackle these two tasks, but I needed to put the veggies away which meant some reorganization of the fridge and checking over the veggies from last week so I started throwing the wilted leaves, carrot tops, and various stems in a pot, added a couple cloves of garlic and an onion and put my 10 qt. pot on to boil. While that was cooking I made the pesto and started cleaning up the mess I'd already made. But then I remembered a conversation yesterday about granola with dried cherries and chocolate chips so I made that too. Now all is cleaned up, the broth is cooling and the granola is in the oven.
But this unusual night cooking home alone got me thinking about why I cook and clean or don't when no one is around. Cooking in particular is not something I do for myself. About the most I'd do on my own is boil water for macaroni and cheese. Even the things I made tonight I made with the idea of sharing in mind. A lot of the pesto will be brought to my CSA friends and probably the stock as well, and the granola is a new recipie chosen based on Brandon's comments about the one I've been using recently. Sure I'll enjoy some as I enjoy most of the foods I make, but without someone to share it with I don't really see a point in taking all that time. Plus there's somethings it's just impractical to make just for me, or even just me and Brandon. So I'm just waiting for someone to throw a little party so I can bring that broccoli salad with bacon and raisins in it that Megan reminded me of tonight. (What is that called?)
I'm convinced food is for sharing. Despite all the convenience we have today, a meal of quality that takes someone's skill and time is something I think (hope!) we all instinctively appreciate sharing with others. That's why we sit down at restaurants, throw dinner parties, and even invite over those piteous college students who we imagine are usually stuck with cafeteria food or ramen noodles. There is something about food and home and friends and family that makes us feel home. That's why I think Jesus clearly demonstrates his genius understanding of humanity when he shared bread and wine with his friends and asked them to remember him each time they gather. Our celebration of the Lord's Supper should be like coming home to Mom making your favorite meal after a long absence- a celebration of reconnection that you can smell, touch, and taste.

garden under attack?

For a couple weeks now I have been battling some sort of bug on my bell pepper plants. The first time I looked I was able to find some yucky little slug things, got Brandon to help me pick them off and sprayed the plants with (organic friendly) insecticidal soap. Since then have have continued to grow, but have also continued to develop holes on each new leaf with no sign of the culprits (at least that's evident to me). None-the-less the had begun to develop some little peppers, until this weekend when two of the three peppers were stolen by the squirrels. I know it was them because I found one of the chewed peppers laying on the ground next to the plants.
But that's not all! Today, horror of horrors I found a huge ugly moth on my tomato plants which I learned lays eggs that grow into tomato hornworm caterpillars which apparently can devastate a tomato plant in a night or two!
This means war! or does it. One of the tenets of organic gardening is supposed to be to cultivate the "good bugs" and deter the bad ones, my insecticidal soap being the last resort because it doesn't discriminate. So there's part of me that is a little hesitant to just got nuts with the stuff. But according to all the organic gardening websites I keep an eye on the first line of defense is bug hunting by hand. The idea of picking them off individually grosses me out, but spraying indiscriminately doesn't seem right either. For now I'm considering a concoction of 3 parts water to 1 part hot pepper sauce which should deter bug and squirrel munching, but it's going to require some diligence as a caterpiller scout. If you have any advice let me know - I'm a gardening novice.

a walk in the garden

Today I picked my first zucchini and jalepeno from my own garden which got me thinking about why I love walking through it everyday, sometimes several times a day. The main part of my veggie garden is set up with a small pathway between two giant heirloom tomato plants through which I can enter and stand in the middle of my garden. I can never resist climbing in there and peeking beneath the leaves of the plants. You can actually see the plants, and especially their fruits grow! The peas appear like magic -yesterday I couldn't see any, today there are a handful ready to pick- the tomatoes and zucchini grow steadily each day, the onions and carrots are like a present wrapped in the dirt at which you can only guess. Everytime I investigate the little plot of dirt there is something new (today it was a flower on my melon vines) and I am amazed. I know I'm not the one causing the growth, all I do is watch it! Maybe I add water after a couple of days without rain or pull a couple weeds, but mulching with grass clippings has made that a minor duty. The only difference between these plants and the random assortment of junk along the back fence is my relationship to them and mindfulness of them. It is because I watch them everyday that I discover each new fruit as a blessing. I wonder what would happen if I were this mindful of other parts of my life...

CSA abundance

This week two of the three people we share our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share with are out of town, so we have an extra abundance of veggies in our fridge- spilling out into the counter in fact because I couldn't resist still going to the farmers market for eggs, cherries, blueberries, peppers (which we haven't started getting from our share yet), and strawberry tomatoes (sort of like cherry ones, but they are actually strawberry shaped!). Here's a peek at our middle of July share: beets, turnips, purple carrots(!), kale and rainbow chard, greenonions, thyme, basil, a huge head of chinese cabbage, lettuce, arugula, purslane, our first cucumber, and we get to go pick a 1/2 lb. of peas at the farm. Plus my garden is ready to give up its first zucchini!!

All this food has me excited (excited enough to finally start this blog!). Last night I used the beets turnips and thyme, roasting them in the oven with 1 baking potato and 1 sweet potato and a little olive oil. We ate them with some pork chops from Creswick Farms, a local grassfed farm whose meat I buy through westmichigancoop.com. (So far Brandon and I have agreed grass fed pork and chicken are amazing!) Today I made pesto and I am in the midst of some foccacia bread and I'm thinking zucchini, tomato, and pesto pizza with a salad for dinner tonight.

Perhaps this is enough babbling about my beautiful food for this post, but just a warning: I expect this blog to contain lots of reports on dinner making and bread baking so if you don't care what we're eating, sorry. This is really a place for me to collect my thoughts, ideas, recipies, and work out some of my theology of food.

I believe my passion about food is not just about eating what tastes good (though it is that), but I believe there is a deep connection between us and the dirt from which our food grows - a connection that is lost when we grow up thinking food comes from the grocery store. My adventures in buying local, gardening and cooking have begun to point me back to the fact that it is God who provides for us all we need and as I enjoy gathering, preparing, and sharing food with friends I rejoice in the one who created both me and these strawberry tomatoes from the dust of the earth.