Potato Soup - With sweet potatoes now a winter memory, I've moved on to red potatoes which are abundant at the farmers market. I won't go into all the details of this recipe since you can find it at the guest post I wrote for McDougalling with Chile and Friends, but it was a real winner in my book. The potatoes and carrots came from the farmers' market, the onions and herbs from my own personal garden. The only thing not local was the salt and pepper, which I buy organic and in bulk. One saucepan makes about 3 Heather-sized dinners and let's just say I'll be making this soup again. Mmmm, good!
Cabbage Soup - I pulled the third of my original 5 cabbages out of the garden this week. These cabbage are so large, I couldn't possibly eat it all while it was still fresh. So with each one, I've made a large pot of cabbage soup and can it for future lunches and dinners. Everything (except the salt and pepper) is local from either the farmers' market or my personal garden. So let's see...
Soup is about as easy as you can get, at least if you do it my way. I use a very technical method that I call the "chop, dump, and simmer." Here's how it goes: Pull whatever you happen to have in the fridge that sounds good (in this case - cabbage, green onion, carrots, mushrooms, and red potatoes), chop it up into bite sized pieces, and dump it in a soup pot with some salt, pepper, olive oil, and lots of water. Then simmer it on the stove for a couple hours. Allow to cool and store in fridge for immediate use or freeze/can for the future. Not so complicated. Just remember to chop, dump, and simmer. That's all there is to good homemade soup! Trust me - you don't need a recipe and you'll never have better tasting soup. Just remember to use fresh ingredients (preferably from your local farmers' market).
Cabbage Stir-fry - Ok, so that humongous cabbage that I picked this week made about 10 quarts of soup, but that also left me plenty to use in my all-local cabbage stir fry for the entire week. Similar to last week, I sauteed chopped cabbage, carrots, green onions, mushrooms and some broccoli shoots in olive oil and seasoned it with a little salt. Then I mixed it in with a some local brown rice and voila! Three cabbage down and two to go and I'm enjoying every single last bite. The cabbage was a real winner this year!
Veggie Medley - Steaming the head of broccoli and a few of the carrots from the farmers' market made a wonderful veggie medley that went well with just about anything we ate this week. Low in calories and high in nutrients, these veggies are always a great combo. and it only takes about 20 minutes to steam up them up. Veggies, anyone? There's plenty to share!
Pizza - Friends Harvey and Helen joined us for dinner on Monday night to work on a craft project (details coming soon), but because it involved a recent birthday (Helen's), we decided to make it a birthday dinner. I made my homemade pizza crust for dinner, and topped it with local mozzarella, onions, mushrooms and olive oil (alas, the sauce was canned - and not mine, but it was good). I made chocolate cake with chocolate icing (from scratch) for dessert (only the eggs were local, but they came from Harvey and Helen's farm). Both the pizza and cake were a huge hit (and that pizza makes for a nice photo, no?). Happy Birthday, Helen!
Well, that about wraps it up for this week's "Market to Table." I hope I've inspired you to try a little something new with your farmers' market finds. Have a great Thursday, everyone. And as always, Happy (and mindful) eating!
3 comments:
question: how do you keep the slugs away from your cabbage? i picked the first one from our yard last night and wanted to cry when i found the slug nursery!
The only bug I've had a problem with is rolly-pollys. The key is to keep standing water and the leaves off the ground. If it's still a problem, I've read you can place cat hair around the base of the plant and it keeps them away.
we've been lucky with the rolly-pollys... my daughter loves to collect them and the chickens love to eat them. i'll try the cat hair, thanks :)
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