Our first batch of asparagus from the garden this year. Asparagus is one of my absolute favorite vegetables and I look forward every year to spring, when we get to enjoy them fresh out of the garden once again! My favorite way to eat them is simply, often roasted or steamed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Growing up, I always dipped them in mayonnaise (which I don’t hesitate to admit, I still enjoy!) but now that I’m older I tend to like to try new ways to enjoy them. This year, I discovered Mollie Katzen’s book The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without, and immediately fell in love. I’m constantly on the look out for new ways to cook vegetables and this cookbook is a stunner and [... To read more, click here ...]
Apr 162012
Mar 122012
Love at First Sight I picked up Salad as a Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season on a whim at the library recently. It looked like my kind of book. Along with Dorie Greenspan and Georgeanne Brennan, Patricia Wells is one of my favorite modern French cookbook authors. I either own, or habitually borrow from the library my favorite books of theirs over and over and re-read them like I re-read my favorite novels; every few years or so I have to revisit them for renewed inspiration. So I brought it home and began to browse through it after the kids were in bed. Within a few minutes I had to set the book down and rummage through the junk drawer. I was in search of my stash of [... To read more, click here ...]
May 042011
Another one of our new favorite juices. I call it Spicy V-12 Juice. I’ve always been a fan of V-8 juice, but, you know, they’re trademarked. And my recipe calls for 12 ingredients plus makes your body feel like a luxury sports car . . . enriching your cells with plenty of garlic and sweet and hot peppers that not only add vitamins but also internal “heat,” carrots for beta carotene and beets for encouraging de-toxification and lowering blood pressure.
Super healthy, yes, but it also tastes amazing!
Mar 042011
So it’s been my plan for the last few months to make roasted vegetable stock this spring to fill up our pantries for Lent and meatless Friday meals. One of my favorite books for simple, Lenten meals, Twelve Months of Monastery Soups, uses vegetable stock often for added flavor and now that I know how to can stock, I thought, why not?
Until I opened my pantry and saw row after row and jar after jar of turkey and poultry stock, produced over the last few months, just looking at me. Pregnancy fatigue was getting me down and it just seemed like too much to have to consider making and storing more stock, sanitizing jars, buying another box of lids, and hauling out the canner from the basement. Don’t get me wrong, for meat-based stocks, the canning process is fantastic, my new favorite thing, and I use it all the time. But for vegetables? Sigh, I was getting tired just thinking about it.
And then I remembered those lovely little jars of bouillon I used to buy and keep stocked in my fridge before I realized they were all full of MSG. It was so simple to just heat up some water in our electric kettle, add a spoonful or two of bouillon and voila! Instant soup, or flavor to any dish, from jambalaya to minestrone to risotto.
So I decided to make some. Bouillon that is. One extra ingredient on the list, five minutes of chopping and two minutes of processing and I was done. With a full quart of bouillon in my fridge, just waiting for our next meatless meal. . .
Is there anything more lovely and wintry than a juicy, sweet, Ruby Red Grapefruit?
I just love them. The scent, the flavor, the feeling of wellness that you get when you’ve eaten one.
As you can get avocados almost anytime year round these days, I wanted to wait to make my Avocado and Grapefruit Salad with Toasted Walnuts until the best grapefruits are in the market (and the walnuts are falling from the trees) . . . which is right about . . . NOW! Toss them with a lovely vinaigrette, some toasted walnuts and served up in some gorgeous, soft butter lettuce leaves (ours is blossoming right now in our winter garden) and you have a special salad suitable for a date-night-in or an intimate dinner party.
I honestly can’t decide if I’d want to eat it before, during or after the main entree as a palate cleanser.
Add some finely diced sushi-grade Ahi tuna, or some grilled shrimp and you have a light winter supper that will beat the doldrums of heavy winter foods.
Aug 092010
I’m not one to gild the lily on most things. I like simple, pure flavors of whatever is freshest and in season. Especially when it comes to fruit. It is my personal opinion that there is nothing better on a hot summer day than a nice wedge of cold watermelon. Sure, every summer I make some jams, enjoy a few strawberry shortcakes, peach tarts and blackberry cobblers in the summer (my personal favorite, by the way) but when it comes to summer fruit, more often than not, I eat it fresh, unadorned and straight out of hand. I’ve seen those recipes for melon salads before. The one that tries to take the melon’s innate sweetness and turn it savory by adding pungent, crumbly cheese, or thrown in with something like [... To read more, click here ...]
Jul 192010
Having a garden has changed the way I cook. Before I had a garden I had a tendency to cook one vegetable at a time. Sure, I’d throw in some onion and garlic, maybe a little tomato, like my green beans with balsamic tomatoes, bacon and basil but my summer side dishes tended to feature primarily one summer vegetable at a time. Because I was buying my vegetables at the store or farmer’s market, I tended to buy a lot of one favorite at the time, cook them, then go back and cook something else. Now that I have a garden, my whole mentality has changed. I have a handful of green beans that are six inches long, while the rest are days away from being ready. My zucchini is [... To read more, click here ...]
Jun 162010
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but included in our small family farm is a small, established vineyard. We have six rows of grapes, a different cultivar each, and are excited to both enjoy them on the table, as well as making our own wine . . . Yes, wine. T. just attended his first Amateur Winemaker’s Club of Nebraska class this past weekend and came back, ready to take on our vines. He went out the next day and bought a spring-loaded set of pruning shears, and a holster. He’s cool like that. I veto him wearing a cellphone on his hip, but pruning shears? Sure, honey. First task? To lighten up some of our vines, cleaning up extra, new vines of leaves to allow more sun [... To read more, click here ...]
Welcome to the Heartland! Reformed Urbanites, we are enjoying new life on a small family farm/homestead in the Midwest. Join us as we garden, cook, read and enjoy our boys; becoming better stewards of the Earth while raising our family.
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