Recipes

So I'm struggling with the idea of a Paleo diet. A lot of my friends do it. They seem real happy with it. I have mixed feelings about it. There are some things I am very unanxious to give up.

Challah
The occasional homemade cookies with my husband
Ice Cream
Rice with asian food.

But on the other hand, when I think about it. I never really have found local sources for grains. Sugar is obviously not available. So maybe Paleo is a good way to continue my quest for local food.

I love reading cooking blogs, and on the one hand, that is definitely part of the problem. On the other, I think I'll start using this blog to collect Paleo recipes, and let's see how I do.

There are some items that I am not sure are paleo or not, and I'm still struggling with the idea of milk not being paleo, b/c I really, really like dairy. But, ... we'll see.

The first find:

Straccetti con Rucola e Funghi
serves two

1 pound steak, cut crosswise into thin slices (I used New York strip, but you could use skirt or sirloin as well. Ask your butcher to slice it crosswise as thinly as he can.)
2 cloves of garlic
4 rosemary leaves
1 shallot
2 tablespoons olive oil, or more as needed
1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms, preferably porcini, trumpet, or chantarelles
1 tablespoon good balsamic vinegar, plus more for garnish
2 ounces baby arugula, washed well

Garnish: shaved parmesan (optional)
salt and pepper

Trim steak slices and pound until very thin. Cut into "tatters", about 1 inch by 2 inches. Salt well.

Smash and slice garlic. Slice shallot into thin ribbons and mince rosemary. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large cast iron skillet. Add garlic, rosemary, and shallot and cook over low heat until transparent. Add mushrooms and saute until cooked through, about five minutes, then remove to a bowl and set aside.

Turn heat up to medium and add additional tablespoon olive oil if needed. Add steak, spreading out the pieces so there's no overlap. Cook on medium heat, turning once, just until there's no visible red, about 3 minutes total. Return mushroom mixture to the pan, add balsamic vinegar, and toss to coat. Remove pan from heat. Add arugula, tossing to wilt slightly. Serve immediately, garnishing with salt, pepper, shaved parmesan, and additional balsamic vinegar if desired.

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So, what about balsamic vinegar. Not sure if it's paleo, or if I could make it...

Jamberry!

It was a long cold winter.

I was thrilled to celebrate the beginning of summer this weekend with my family and SIL at Butlers Orchard! We picked 20lbs of strawberries! It was fun and perfect weather and we ran into some friends and it only took a couple of hours at the most.

Sunday evening my SIL and I made Jam. Serious Jam.

When I was little, every few years, my mom's best friend would visit with her family. And we would go strawberry picking. And make Jam. (and daiquiris, and strawberries with cream, and chocolate dipped strawberries). One year the eight of us picked 63 lbs of strawberries. IT was a little ridiculous. But so much fun! And such fabulous memories.

So we started with a box of 12, 4oz jars, and then decided that we needed some 8 oz jars when I bought the pectin and sugar, and then decided that for 10lbs of jam, we should probably have one more box, so my husband went out and bought us a box of 16 oz jars, and then we decided to add in some rhubarb that I just bought from the farmers market, and it would be nice to give that away so we went to target after two batches and bought some more 8 oz jars. And as we were finishing up last night, my SIL suggested, 'why don't we make two more batches before I leave tomorrow. You have a LOT of berries still in the fridge'. So we did. In total we made 2.5 gallons of jam.

Things we learned:
Follow the directions on the box of Pectin.
Powdered Pectin seems better then the gel kind.

What happens if you do it wrong:
Not enough sugar, it doesn't set. (we weren't trying to save sugar, I just left the last cup on the counter)
If you put the sugar in before the powdered pectin, it doesn't set.
If you don't cook it with the pectin and sugar together for a full minute, it doesn't set.
If you cook it for too long, it gets very, very thick.

No matter what, it still tastes fabulous!

Guest Post

I had my first guest post here! I guess I should have posted this when it was published last week. I'm sort of slow. About a lot of things I guess. Having been snowed in for the last week, one would imagine I might have gotten around to the couple of posts I've been thinking of. But no. Maybe next week.

Chipotle

So when we lived in CA, my husband and I eschewed Chipotle for two reasons. 1) There were so many better burrito shops. 2) It was owned by McDonald's.

So, we moved to the East Coast in 2004, and we quickly found that 1) There are very few burrito shops, and 2) Everyone went to Chipotle (see 1). So we got out of the burrito habit. I won't say we never go, but we've tended to avoid it over other options.

About a month ago my SIL suggested we go for lunch when we were at the local mall, and given the other options, I said sure. I was surprised at how good it was, better than I remembered.

Yesterday my mom tells me that Michale Pollan was on Oprah. And so was the guy who owns Chipotle and he was talking about how they use as much local ingredients as they can and all organic meats. And I said, they are owned by McDonald's. And she was like, 'no, I don't think so, the owner was on the show'.

So, I went to Wikipedia, and low and behold, " In 1998, McDonald's made an initial minority investment in the company. By 2001, the company had grown to be Chipotle's largest investor" and in addition "In October 2006, McDonald's fully divested from Chipotle.^[16] This was part of a larger initiative for McDonald's to divest all of its non-core business restaurants".

SO. I'm very excited. Happy Eating!

A Year Later

OK, really, it's more than a year, but close enough. I really enjoyed this experience and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. The challenge of choosing local has reaped some wonderful experiences, conversations, and food.

Here are my successes:
South Mountain Creamery
Salt River Lobster
Garrett Park Farmers Market

Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other
Grosvenor Market
MOMS Organic Market
Polyface Farm


The past week or two I gave up on choosing local products as a lifestyle choice over convenience. I will still choose local sources as a first option, but sometimes it's just too much of a pain in the ass to shop, prepare and cook, a healthy, variety of foods year round.

I am so thrilled to find a fish and seafood source. They are lovely. Their prices can be slightly high as there are no discounted sale prices ever, but they are reasonably competitive, and you can't beat their quality or service.

Really, I could probably keep scouting for local veggies, but, particularly as my red meat consumption has decreased, my need for iron has gone up. And broccoli is all well and good, but I like spinach too. And it is easier to send my daughter to lunch at school with peppers, and cucumbers and hummos than most anything else. And she likes it. And eats it, and for a toddler, that is important. And since I've been working out, I have been trying to eat more protein and what they call good fats in every meal. which often means almonds, which are not local, or olives, which are also not local.

But I am much more aware of where my food comes from, how I can get it, and concessions I make regarding ideal and reality.

I'll keep writing as I find other options, try new things, etc. I would like to review certain things I tried last year, (comparison between two local egg nogs) and maybe some restaurants that have expressed that they try to source their food locally.

Eating local wherever you are

So the last three weeks, the girls and I have been staying on the Delmarva Peninsula, just outside of Fenwick Island. We've had a lot of fun and we've eaten pretty well. Here is a quick review of some of things we've learned and enjoyed while we're here.

First of all, all those fields that are not corn fields, what are they? I told PJ that they were broccoli plants b/c I didn't know what they were, but it turns out, they are GMO soybeans. Who knew? Not me, They are modified to be Roundup resistant, also known as Roundup Ready Crops. So I was sort of upset to learn that, but knowledge is power right?

On to happier things.

So what is a summer vacation without ice cream? I made a lot of it the past few weeks. My cream of choice? Lewes Dairy. I typically look for dairy that is growth hormone free, but I also like to balance that with choosing a local product, since the total amount of cream one person consumes is small, it's not as important to be rBGH as our drinking milk is. So, since the grocery store we use does not have rBGH free cream anyway, I was thrilled when I started to learn more about Lewes Dairy Cream. First of all, Lewes dairy has been a family run company since the early 1920s. Second, most of the milk they bottle comes from Sussex county DE, and distribute locally in DE and MD. And most importantly, the cream is FABULOUS! Really, it tastes great. I have no idea what they do differently than other dairys, but I fell in love. Apparently that is common as their website proclaims "Restaurants from the shore to our nation’s capital often proudly proclaim “We use only Lewes Dairy Cream!”". I can understand why.
So the last three weeks, the girls and I have been staying on the Delmarva Peninsula, just outside of Fenwick Island. We've had a lot of fun and we've eaten pretty well. Here is a quick review of some of things we've learned and enjoyed while we're here.

First of all, all those fields that are not corn fields, what are they? I told PJ that they were broccoli plants b/c I didn't know what they were, but it turns out, they are GMO soybeans. Who knew? Not me, They are modified to be Roundup resistant, also known as Roundup Ready Crops. So I was sort of upset to learn that, but knowledge is power right?

On to happier things.

So what is a summer vacation without ice cream? I made a lot of it the past few weeks. My cream of choice? Lewes Dairy. I typically look for dairy that is growth hormone free, but I also like to balance that with choosing a local product, since the total amount of cream one person consumes is small, it's not as important to be rBGH as our drinking milk is. So, since the grocery store we use does not have rBGH free cream anyway, I was thrilled when I started to learn more about Lewes Dairy Cream. First of all, Lewes dairy has been a family run company since the early 1920s. Second, most of the milk they bottle comes from Sussex county DE, and distribute locally in DE and MD. And most importantly, the cream is FABULOUS! Really, it tastes great. I have no idea what they do differently than other dairys, but I fell in love. Apparently that is common as their website proclaims "Restaurants from the shore to our nation’s capital often proudly proclaim “We use only Lewes Dairy Cream!”". I can understand why.

So I love the beach because there are so many farmers markets. This year I found a favorite farm.
It's called Parsons Farms Produce. It is run by Paul Parsons As far as I know, he has two markets, one every day on Rt 20 Roxana and Dagsboro, and one market in Fenwick Island on Mondays and Wednesdays. We only stopped at the Rt 20 market stand. We had a fabulous time there. We found their produce superior to that of other local farm markets, both in quality and selection.

In addition they had two bonus features. The first is Poodle. Poodle is an Angora Goat. Paul Parsons has other animals too - three goats, two cows. When you walk into his market with a toddler, he asks you if you would like to feed them. He has a laundry basket of extra corn and corn silks, and can feed the animals. This was a highlight of three weeks at the beach. We went twice. The animals are very gentle and happy to have the attention.

The second bonus feature was a program called Epicurean Kids. It's run independently by Chef Maria, and she has a number of different programs, but we participated in the last day of her summer drop in program. We took a tractor hay ride to the field, picked a spaghetti squash, and came back and since it was the last day of the program, we made fruit tarts to celebrate the rainbow of summer produce they had picked. Paul Parsons drove the tractor and spoke to the kids (ages 2-7) about the fields and different fruit and vegetables. I highly recommend this program if you pass this way next summer. Chef Maria had safe knifes for the kids to use, and aprons, and a hand cleaning station. We had a lot of fun and it was well run.

Local Dinner

This past winter we made some new friends in a far away place, who happen to live nearby and we now get together every 4-6 weeks for dinner. These are amazing dinners. They also love to cook, and enjoy the cooking and kitchen time as much we do and we have had some wonderful evenings with good food and good times.

Last night we had a yummy summer dinner, that while not close to 100% local meal showcased some delicious local food.

It started with a wonderful surprise on the part of our guests. A few months back our guests spent a day on the Frederick Wine Trail. They had two bottles left and brought them to share with us! We immediately opened the Syrah 2006 from Black Ankle vineyards. It was a lovely wine to start with. Very smooth, not to bold. While prepping the salad, soothing a fussy baby (not with the wine!) and getting the grill and main course ready, we decided a taste would go well with the wine. We opened up a cheese I had just bought for the first time from SMC, a goat bleu cheese from Firefly Farms. We had no idea what to expect and laughed out loud when it was gooey in the middle. We all agreed that it was wonderful to have the bleu cheese flavor but in the milder goat cheese.

We started the meal with a salad of spinach, nuts and scallions. Although the spinach and scallions could have been local, the showcase of the dish was the vinaigrette! Inspired by this post at The Kitchn we used this recipe. It was so amazing, that after making it in about five minutes, and eating spoonfuls of it, we decided to triple the recipe! It was fabulous. The pepper actually made the recipe. We ended up having enough extra for both of us to use it again this week which I am looking forward to - my husband just bought some local spinach at the farmers market this morning!

Next up was the main course which we grilled on charcoal. Our guests made corn, zucchini, and salmon. The corn and zucchini were local and fresh! The salmon was prepared and cooked beautifully. The salmon and then dessert were enhanced by the second bottle of wine from Elk Run Winery. The Riesling was sweet but not heavy and sticky.

This paired nicely with our slightly sticky dessert - roasted peaches with bourbon whipped cream!

Oh right, so the peaches. Last night we only used RedHaven peaches. They were local. I can't find a link to the orchard right now, and the story of getting them is a post in and of itself, but as a teaser, I bought over a half bushel of peaches last tuesday. Three different varieties.