Photos to make you salivate
Homemade CSA spaghetti sauce with a side of steamed veggies (also from the CSA).
The first round of canning: purple and traditional kraut, kim chee, and salsa made by natural fermentation. I used the Nourishing Traditions cookbook for all of these. We like the purple kraut best. This is the only kraut I will eat. I can't stand the stuff in a can or bag at the store.
Spinach lasagna (used up the CSA loose spinach in this one)
Two cheese grilled cheese on some homemade bread (with the obligatory tomato soup).
Italian pickled garlic and green tomato antipasto. It was inspired by a trip to a local Italian restaurant with a salad bar that had this mixture on it. Matt was hooked, so I figured out how to make it since we had CSA garlic filling our crisper for months and a bunch of tomatoes green on the vine on our little late-fruiting plants.
Second round of canning. This time, only purple kraut, and I cured this batch on the ledge in our basement instead of the counter for only three days and then into the fridge.
Venison Fajitas. We butchered the deer ourselves.
Tomatoes and a jalapeno pepper picked on the second day of December. We had the plants in a greenhouse while we moved and then in the shed with a space heater due to a very late fruiting.
Giant meatloaf (combined ground venison and leftover pork from our wedding), apple tart (apples from a local orchard courtesy of grandma), sweet potatoes with butter and brown sugar and homemade gravy.
My first attempt at a 2 crust pie. The crust made with the lard rendered from the hog from our wedding and the apples from that same local orchard mentioned above.
Another crop of late veggies, this one on December 8.
Into December, we still had a bunch of squash from our CSA (still have a couple actually). Matt fried them up in a pan with some sunflower oil (also from the CSA), butter, garlic and onion.
We learned this one from America's Test Kitchen (on PBS). A diner style omelet. I'll have to spell out how to get this light a fluffy breakfast for everyone sometime. It was huge and amazing, we split it and were still stuffed.
Buckwheat pancakes with pure maple syrup (got the syrup from Matt's uncle who "made" it)
The last of the tomatoes and some more jalapenos. These ones picked 6 days before Christmas! We still have the pepper plants (and our chard) in the basement. Matt picked some more peppers today to use in his homemade venison jerky marinade.Swiss Chard
Even though October is right upon us, we are still growing our garden strong outside. The advantage of our contianers will be when the weather gets too cold and we would loose our remaining harvest, we can simply bring the whole darn thing inside. We're hoping we'll have enough nice days left to get much of our veggies ripened outdoors however.
Last week, I picked the first bundle of swiss chard from our plot. We needed an additional vegetable for our dinner (there was only one serving of beans left) and I was yearning to nibble on our tender-shooted greens. Because we grew them in a planter, they never got big and woody like the chard I was used to as a child in late season. Instead, every shoot was tender and young tasting. I steamed them and topped with butter and salt. (that's really all they ever need) Very delicious. I hope we can move this plant indoors and continue to grow it into the winter a bit.
Fried Eggplant on Pesto Angel Hair Pasta with side salad
We received a nice slender violet eggplant in our most recent CSA box. I didn't really know what to do with eggplant and the only thing that came to mind was eggplant parmigiana. I also had a bumper crop of giant basil leaves in our rooftop garden which was just waiting to be made into some of the freshest pesto in town. So I got creative.
First the eggplant. I have no idea how to cook with such an ingredient, so I just made it up. Thickly sliced and salted each piece. Mixed up an egg, with some flour and some water to a pancake like consistency. After dipping the eggplant I fried it up in some saved bacon grease until each was a crispy golden brown.
Meanwhile I had cleaned and trimmed the basil and some flat leaf parsley (both from our roof-top garden). Toasted some pine nuts and crushed a couple cloves of garlic (from our CSA). Put everything in the food processor with some olive oil and some Parmesan cheese. Blended it up until it was a nice pasty green. Also had some angel hair pasta cooking in my big dutch oven next to the frying eggplant.
When the pasta was done, I stirred the raw pesto (I don't usually cook mine cause I like flavors to be extremely bold) into the noodles. We topped the pasta with a couple pieces of eggplant (which was like candy, so smooth and sweet inside with a crunchy fried coating) and some more parm. cheese.
For a side salad, we chopped some red leaf lettuce, an heirloom tomato (we get so many tomatoes from the CSA this time of year we try to incorporate therm everywhere we can so they don't go bad before we can finish them), some small cucumbers (the first from our garden), some finely chopped onion and dressed it up with some Tarragon Dijon dressing.
Ingredients in this meal which came from our CSA share:
-eggplant
-heirloom tomato
-garlic
-onion
Ingredients in this meal which came from our roof-top garden:
-giant leaves of basil
-flat leaf parsley
-cucumbers
Pork Tacos
M. and I had one portion of shredded roast pork left from our wedding in the freezer and when I suggested tacos last night, he suggested using the pork. Add some onions, jalapenos, one spicy pepper which we don't know the name(a brown we one thought was sweet, but was obviously not), water and some spicy taco seasoning and let it simmer for an hour or so and we had a luscious pork feast which tasted a little like "carnitas" from Chipotle.
We put the meat in a crunchy taco shell with freshly shredded romaine lettuce, a chopped heirloom tomato, cheddar cheese, and a dollop of sour cream. I also made some spicy rice. Just regular rice with a good glop of salsa, some habenero sauce and Mexican blend corn (corn with peppers) all mixed up. Topped the whole shebang off with a glass of Sangria. Delicious.
Sometimes I wish we either followed a recipe or wrote down more detailed measurements of what we put into our cooking so we could replicate it at another time. This is one of those moments. This was so good I'd eat it every week if we could.
Ingredients in this meal which came from our CSA share:
-jalapeno pepper
-spicy brown pepper of unknown lineage
-red onion
-heirloom tomato
Ingredients in this meal which came from our roof-top garden:
-jalapeno pepper