creamy parsnip soup

Local food in the middle of winter while traveling for the holidays?! That's crazy!  That said, while we were in Chicago, we managed to find a few fairly local ingredients at Whole Foods without exerting too much effort. And that my friends is huge because when I attempted a local diet just four years ago while living in Chicago, I could not find any local produce at Whole Foods even during the middle of summer!  So yes, we celebrated by making a rich parsnip soup.

Ingredients:
parsnips (from Wisconsin)
onions (from Wisconsin)
mushrooms (from Illinois)
butter (arguably from Wisconsin)
heavy cream (arguably from Wisconsin)
white wine
lemon juice
water
thyme
garlic
ginger
nutmeg
salt
pepper
radish sprouts for garnish (from Illinois)

Cook the parsnips, onions, etc and blend. Add the cooked mushrooms after everything is blended.  Garnish with radish sprouts.

homemade lip balm

I made these lip balms with a friend. It's super easy! We heated up apricot oil, beeswax, honey, alkanet root for color, mica for sparkle, and rosewater for fragrance. Then we poured the mixture into tins. I am giving them as x-mas/solstice presents! Happy holidays!

HaHo

Eric and I went to the Denver Handmade Homemade Holiday Market back on December 10th.  We saw it advertised through the Denver Urban Homesteading group which is a group I keep meaning to check out...

The HaHo Market is really interesting because it seems to successfully subvert legal blocks on cottage industries.  It does this by requiring that anyone who attends the market be a member. Conveniently, membership is free and registration laptops are set up at the entrance. There is a little check box at the end of registration that says "By signing up for this free membership you acknowledge that nothing at this market has been approved by the health department or regulated in anyway and that you assume all inherent risks."  Not sure how people might be able to apply this tactic in other states (maybe consult a lawyer), but its something to look into if you really want to sell your jam that was cooked in a regular kitchen rather than a commercial kitchen!

sweet potato patties

The last batch of farmers market sweet potatoes I bought spoiled pretty quickly.  This batch stored just fine.  Strange...  Anyways, I was compelled to use these sweet potatoes in a comforting, colorful meal.  Why?  To somewhat compensate for the week I spent sitting through non-stop meetings and to slightly make up for the darkness I encountered every time I set foot outside.  So, there you have it!  Orange, yellow, green, and purple! And vegan!  And mostly local!  (thanks Self for freezing spinach and corn this summer)


Sweet Potato Patty Ingredients:
1 1/4 lb. sweet potato, pealed, cubed, boiled, mashed
1 T. honey
1 T. margarine (not local)
1 t. salt (not local)
1 t. cumin (not local)
1/2 t. corriander
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 c. frozen spinach, thawed
1 c. frozen corn, thawed
1/2 a small red onion, diced, caramelized
2 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer (not local)

Mix it up, refrigerate, shape patties, and pan fry in oil.


Sweet and Sour Cabbage Ingredients:
1 small purple cabbage, sliced thin
honey
apple cider vinegar (not local)
salt (not local)

Basically just steam the cabbage in honey, vinegar, and salt.

local cheese and homemade crackers

 We picked up 10 lbs of local wheat flour (Farmer John/Butte Mill) and some cheese (Windsor) at the winter farmers' market last weekend, so I've been working on perfecting cracker making with local ingredients. I've been using a recipe from the New York Times, minus the sesame seeds, as a base recipe:

Ingredients
1 1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
1/2 t. salt (not local)
5 T. olive oil (not local)
4 to 5 T. water, as needed

Directions
Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, mixer, or food processor. Add olive oil and mix. Add water and mix. You should be able to form the dough into a ball. Roll out the dough as thin as you can (I roll out on a flexible cutting board and then transfer to a baking sheet, then I roll out more with a small, maneuverable rolling device). Then perforate the dough into cracker size pieces with a pizza cutter--don't worry about actually separating them, that will happen on its own when baked! Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 F or until crispy.

This is a great base recipe for cracker experimentation. As is, the crackers are great for eating in soup or with cheese, dips, jam, or local mushroom pate. And if you add flavors like dried basil and fresh garlic, the crackers are great on their own too. If you add sesame seeds and sesame oil as in the original recipe, they taste like those sesame sticks found in bulk bins. I'm planning on trying a nut yeast version sometime as well.

And yes, this counts as a meal; we ate cheese and crackers for dinner!

sourdough baguettes

My sourdough baguette recipe is still a work in progress. Last time my dough was too wet causing an unshapely loaf, this time it was too dry causing a dense crumb...

I should clarify that we are not doing the Dark Days Challenge full-time, just a minimum of once per week, and that these are not local flour baguettes.  Though we do have access to local whole wheat flour so I am sure at some point I will post a picture of a local loaf!

honey glazed carrots and a november salad

We're starting things off easy peasy for the Dark Days Challenge. Though to be honest, my original plan was spoiled - literally. I had planned on making matang, a Korean candied sweet potato, but the sweet potatoes that Eric picked up last weekend from the farmers market did not survive the week. I was pretty bummed so I took myself on a walk.  During said walk I realized that I could just make honey glazed carrots instead.  When I got home I cut up the carrots, steamed them for about 5 minutes, then coated them in honey and cooked for a minute.  Since I steamed instead of fried, I didn't get the crispy matang effect but, hey, it was good anyway.

And as planned, we threw together a simple local salad of tender mixed greens, goat cheese, and homegrown counter-ripened tomatoes.  The only thing not local about this meal was homemade vinaigrette!

boulder, colorado - 150 mile local food radius

For each person "local" can mean a different thing.  For you it could mean a region, a state, a set number of miles from your home, a town, or even your own backyard.  I personally think that it's a worthwhile lifestyle experiment to set a limit and test if you can live within it for a little while (a few years ago we did a month long experiment of local eating with only a few exceptions).  It reveals where your food supply systems might be broken.  Like maybe there are laws getting in the way of local, small dairy farmers.  Maybe you live in a grain growing state but you can't buy any local grain because it makes more sense for agribusinesses to ship everything across the country to be processed, over processed and shipped back to you.  It's interesting to see how the invisible web around you is working.  And on a more positive note, a local eating challenge helps one truly appreciate an occasional orange that's been flown across the country.

Anyway, for the sake of the Dark Days Challenge, the winter time rule-of-thumb definition of local is a 150 mile radius. The image above is what that looks like for us here in Boulder.

dark days challenge!

We signed up for the Dark Days Challenge!  For the next four months, we will be posting once a week about our locally sourced, home cooked meals.  It should be a wintery adventure!

potato leek soup

I was excited to find leeks at the last farmers market. I usually think of them as a springtime plant, but there they were. And the weather is perfect for soups like this!

eric's super vegan stuffing

Stuffing is one of my faves. I think this stuffing came out really good. The secret? frying the bread cubes in margarine. Also, I used two types of bread--one a cranberry walnut bread--for added interest and texture.

Ingredients:
10 c. bread cubes (4 c. cranberry walnut, 6 c. sourdough/white)
at least a cup of margarine
a few stalks celery
1 carrot
1 small onion
1 apple (granny smith) (diced into small pieces)
1/2 c. dried cranberries
1 c. walnuts
2 t. sage
2 t. thyme
1 t. salt
black pepper
2 T. apple cider vinegar
2 c. veg. broth
1 T. vegetarian mushroom oyster sauce
sugar (for candying walnuts)

First, make your bread cubes. Then melt 1/2 c. or so of the margarine and fry the bread cubes until they are crispy and golden (you may have to do this in two batches).

Second, cook the celery, onion, and carrot in margarine until soft. Add the sage, thyme, salt, and pepper, followed by the fried bread cubes, cranberries, and apple (diced into small pieces). Mix well.

Break the walnuts into pieces and toast them in a little bit of oil, adding sugar so they get caramelized. Add half of them to the bread cube mixture, and save the other half to sprinkle on top.

Heat up the vegetable broth and add the apple cider vinegar and mushroom sauce, mixing until dissolves. Pour this over the bread cube mixture and mix until the broth has been soaked up by the bread cubes. Transfer to a baking container. I used two loaf pans, which kept the whole thing from drying out too much, yet allowed the top to get nice and crispy. A casserole dish would work fine also.

Sprinkle the rest of the candied walnuts on top and bake for 15-30 min at 425°F.

kolaches

Haha, they look like eggs.

This was my first time trying to make kolaches, a Czech pastry. I have fond memories going to a Czech bakery with my parents to get kolache. They didn't quite come out like I remember them... These have apricot filling. Julie had made the Polish version before, which is called "kołacz", and is basically the same thing, just a different shape maybe; it seems ka-lotch-key is just a generic Slavic word for cake.

winter white sangria

We cooked up this winter white sangria from "Some Like it Hot: 50 Drinks to Warm Your Spirits" by Holly Burrows and Katie Walter.  It involves white wine, sugar, orange slices, lemon slices, and thyme heated for half an hour.  I look forward to trying other recipes from this book.  Yay for chilly weather and warm mugs!

celeriac

Pretty ugly tuber, eh?  We made soup with it following this food network recipe.  It was decent.  Don't know that I will rush out to buy another celery root...

kofta balls

One of the things I miss about living in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois is Monday night all-you-can-eat Krishna dinners at the Channing-Murray Foundation/Red Herring. I recently made vegetable kofta balls, which were frequently served at the dinners. Here is the recipe I used: Baked Kofta Balls. Basically it is grated vegetables, flour, and spices. I was really surprised at how well the balls held together without any eggs or egg substitute. Along with grated cauliflower, I chopped up some sauerkraut that Julie made recently, since we didn't have any cabbage. I'm sure any vegetable will work—I plan on trying it with winter squash.

perennial gifts

A fellow community gardener gave us some of her perennials—a gift that keeps on giving! As part of our end-of-season tasks, we cut them back and are drying them:

Chocolate Mint


Hyssop


And we're also drying coriander:

fried green tomatoes with red beans and rice

As predicted, we made fried green tomatoes.  They were good, but you know what's better? Fried red tomatoes...  I don't know why Southerners pick premature tomatoes in the middle of the growing season just to fry them up. I am most certainly one who eats this dish exclusively as an end of season novelty.  Next time we make these, I plan on improving the flavor of our corn flour batter by sweetening it, making it extra spicy, and perhaps adding curry.

To round out this fried green tomato meal, we made none other than - - - red beans and rice!

Red Beans and Rice Ingredients:
1 c. brown rice cooked in 2 c. vegetable broth and a splash of olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 green pepper, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 t. Creole seasoning
1 t. parsley
1 t. thyme 
1/2 t. sage
2 (15 oz.) cans kidney beans, drained
dash of liquid smoke
salt and black pepper to taste

Saute the onion, celery and green pepper until the onion is translucent.  Add the spices and cook a little longer.  Mix the veggies with the rice, beans, and liquid smoke.

unripe tomatoes

We picked 10 pounds of lingering green tomatoes off our plants (4 heavy producers, 4 light producers, 2 non producers). Just in time--there's now 6" of snow on the ground!

Now begins the quest to find uses for these 10 pounds of unripe tomatoes. We will definitely bread and fry some of them. Leave a comment if you have a favorite way to eat unripe tomatoes!

Here's round one: Green Tomato Cake!

third time's a charm: sauerkraut

Hopefully.  And I am hopeful.

The first time Eric and I attempted to make sauerkraut was about 4 years ago in the basement of our college rental house.  We were super psyched about the endeavor.  We were just getting into local food and making things from scratch.  We attended a workshop about fermentation that demonstrated making sauerkraut, soy sauce, hard cider and miscellaneous other things like horseradish.  Confident in our abilities to follow the simple recipe, we headed home to slice cabbage thin, coat in salt, pack tight in a container, cover with a weight, and let the fermentation happen.  I don't remember exactly what went wrong.  We may have waited too long or the basement might have fluctuated too much in temperature, but a very terrible smell emerged from the basement.  We told our roommates that it must just be a stage in the process of sauerkraut making...  Eric's grandfather, after all, complained about growing up with the smell of fermenting sauerkraut in his bedroom because there was no other space for it in their small flat.  So we kept waiting and waiting but no edible magic came of the situation.  Clearly we just messed up.

I did not think again about attempting to make sauerkraut until 2 years later when we met a stranger from CouchSurfing who was bike touring across the country. He was an anarchist, activist guy who was super into fermenting and was convinced that we needed to give sauerkraut another chance.  So we did.  It went well I think.  But for some reason I thought that I should can it since I was just getting into canning at the time.  The canning process dried out the sauerkraut a bunch and, duh, it killed all of the healthy, living enzymes. Never again!

Here's hoping for a delightful third batch of sauerkraut!
(we used the Wild Fermentation recipe)

community supported agriculture: season summary 2011

Another CSA season draws to a close... It certainly was a good one!  Thank you Isabelle farmers!

chili that is green

The definition of "chili" is kind of weird, right?  First, there are chili peppers. Then there is the chili (con carne) that I grew up with (with beans and tomatos). And then there is green chili (chili verde), common to New Mexico and Colorado (at least), which seems to be a sauce more often than a standalone meal.

Anyway, my intent when creating this recipe was to make something like the chili I grew up with, but make it from green things instead of red things. Hence "chili that is green." And also of course, to make it sin carne. The result is something that actually more closely resembles a split-pea soup or gumbo than a chili, but it has some heat to it, and tastes pretty good.

Hominy is really good. Really good at creating islands of interesting texture. Also, liquid smoke is so key.

Ingredients:
Margarine or oil
2 medium onions
2 1/2 c. dry split peas
3 c. okra
2 c. roasted green chiles, peeled and chopped; to taste
1 1/2 c. hominy
1 1/2 c. edamame
1 bulb garlic
1 tomato, green or yellow
1/2 c. celery (optional)
water

3 bay leaves
1 1/2 T. oregano
1 1/2 T. cumin
2 t. coriander, ground
2 t. coriander, whole
3 t. liquid smoke
½ t. filé powder (optional)
1 T. salt
black pepper to taste

chocobean chili

Like Eric said in the previous post, we had a vegetarian chili cook-off for my birthday.  It was by far my best birthday ever!  Why?  Because my friends are awesome!  We had 10 delicious entries with a whole lot of variety in style.  This chocobean chili was my contribution. 

inspired by this recipe
Serves: 15

Ingredients:
6 c. cooked black beans (2 3/4 c. dry)
---
3 red onions, diced
2 large yams, cubed
4 red bell peppers, diced
1 head of garlic, minced
olive oil
2 T. salt
---
2 (28 oz.) cans of crushed or diced tomatoes
2 c. red wine
3/4 c. chili powder
1/2 c. sugar
1 (7 oz.) can chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced
2 T. ground cumin
2 T. oregano
1 T. paprika
3 oz. bakers chocolate, shaved

Cook the beans.  Toss the second batch of ingredients (red onion - salt) into a large pot.  Cook over medium heat with a cover on for about 15 minutes.  Add the beans and the third batch of ingredients.  Reduce to a simmer for a minimum of 45 minutes.

happy birthday julie!

I made Julie this vegan rainbow cake for her birthday, using a vegan cake recipe from our friend Susan and batter coloring instructions from Omnomicon.

Here it is in all of its frosted cloudy glory:

Sorry no slice shots--it got eaten too fast!

Also, we had a veggie chili cook-off, so chili recipes are forthcoming!

herbed dumpling soup

We made this soup. Our noses ran in a good way while we ate it. Though I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed by the dumplings, but that's probably because I'm holding a grudge against them since I am now missing a bit too much of my pinky nail. Remember kids, knives are dangerous. But really, next time I am going to make garlic time bomb dumplings!

pumpkin molasses chocolate chip cookies

And then the temperature dropped and I realized that summer is on its way out. I had sensed it was coming. The trees have been dropping crunchy leaves on the sidewalks for a week or more. Then yesterday it rained a cold drizzle most of the day with snow falling up on the mountain peaks while everyone in the grocery store crowded in the baking aisle. Hence the cookie post.

For the record, I initially intended to make plain old molasses chocolate chip cookies based on Joy the Baker's recipe, but you know tis the season for adding pumpkin to things.


Yield: 3 dozen cookies!

Ingredients:
3 c. all purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. kosher salt
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ginger

1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/4 c. blackstrap molasses
1 c. melted butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 c. pumpkin puree (from a pumpkin)
2 c. chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine the dry ingredients (flour through ginger). In a separate bowl, mix together the granulated sugar and molasses. Then cream the sugar and butter for 3 minutes. Mix in egg, vanilla extract and pumpkin puree. Slowly add the flour mixture. Fold in the chocolate chips. Chill the dough for at least 20 minutes. Shape rough balls and drop onto a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with a little bit of coarse salt. Bake for about 8 minutes or until golden.

Next time I make these I will try using chocolate chunks instead of chips and leaving out the baking powder so that the cookies are a little less puffy and a little more photogenic.

chiles rellenos (beer battered collard fusion) with salsa fresca

 
Oh hello, here are some stuffed poblano peppers aka chiles rellenos. I followed the nice instructions at Macheesmo. I filled them with soft white cheese and (liquid) smoky collard greens, battered them with an Oktoberfest beer, egg and flour batter, and topped them with a tomato, avocado, and cilantro salsa fresca. What a great time of year!

If the skins on the peppers are thin enough, don't worry about getting them all off. Also don't worry about the peppers breaking while stuffing; they are pretty forgiving once you batter them. Seam side down!

crabapple liqueur

A year and a half ago I wrote about how I had made several pints of (no-pectin-added) crabapple jelly that didn't gel. I tried adding more sugar and, frankly, that just made them into a thick candy syrup. This was fine for oatmeal and pancakes, but not so good for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Now, inspired by the liqueurs class, I decided to add some vodka and water to what is essentially a thick simple syrup with crabapple flavor to make crabapple liqueurs. I added star anise to one jar and rosemary and sage to the other. Now maybe this everlasting crabapple sugar stuff will finally get used up.

coffee liqueur

We were actually planning on starting a coffee liqueur before the liqueur class that Eric mentioned in the previous post, but the class motivated us to do it asap. We changed the proportions of the recipe a bit compared to the class example. In particular we went with whole coffee beans rather than ground and increased the amount since the have less surface area. Hopefully straining will be easier at the end. We used 1/2 c. whole coffee beans bloomed in 1 c. hot water and then mixed with 2 c. sugar and 2 1/2 c. vodka. We will let the coffee beans soak for a month or longer if it needs it and shake it up once a day if we can. Then when a month is up, we'll filter the liqueur and optionally let it sit another month for more flavor development. We'll see about that last optional step...

rowanberry bitters

 
I recently participated in a class put on by Sophia Rose on making mulled and infused wines, cordials, and liqueurs. We tasted many delicious concoctions, but one of the most interesting things we did was make bitters. Commercially available bitters often contains gentian, but we used rowan, or mountain ash berries since they grow around here and are sometimes used for bitters. The trees are very common--I've often wondered if the berries were edible.

To make the bitters, just infuse gin or vodka with macerated berries. We used vodka, but will probably add in some juniper berries to make it more gin-like.

Here's a great booklet with many other uses for rowanberries.

2011 great american beer festival

Craft beers are AWESOME! We had the pleasure of sampling many such beers last night at the Great American Beer Festival. Apparently there were more than 450 brewers with over 2200 beers to choose from!?  Yikes.  We hardly made a dent in that spread.

My most memorable beer was the Bloody Beer from Shorts Brewing Company which is brewed with tomatoes, dill, horseradish, peppercorns, and celery seed!  I also enjoyed a very bubbly champagne-like Saison by Pelican.  Eric reports that his most memorable beers were Port Townshend's Yoda's Green Tea Gold (tasted like genmaicha), a Chai Stout, Elysian's Avatar Ale (a jasmine IPA), and MateVeza's Morpho (hibiscus, bay leaf, mate, and no hops).

utah vacation

We just got back from vacationing in Utah!  The scenery is so different and dramatic there... Our primary destinations were to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.  Along the way, we also stopped at Hanging Lake, Colorado National Monument, Fisherlake National Forest, Capitol Reef National Park, Boulder UT, and Goblin Valley State Park. 

Hiking Angels Landing at Zion was definitely a highlight for me.  So was eating blueberry pie in Boulder, UT.  And of course, so was spending quality time with Eric Wilson and Francois Fransqueezedoodle.

garlic rose relish

 
Whenever talk turns to garlic, as it often does, the Stinking Rose garlic-focused restaurant in San Francisco inevitably gets mentioned. When it does I tell the story of how my table finished off a whole jar of the "Garlic Rose Relish" that sits on every table, got it refilled and had some more. It is delicious. But then we all felt sick and had to go track down some ginger ale to soothe our aching stomachs.

I remember talking to the owner about the recipe. He said they use parsley (as opposed to basil) because it is cheap. It's all about the garlic anyway.

You can add some purslane for a boost of omega-3's if you're into that sort of thing. As I said, it's all about the garlic anyway.

Ingredients:

1 bunch	Chopped Parsley
1/4 c.	Chopped Garlic
2 T.	Vinegar
1 t.	Salt
	Olive oil to cover

plus basil, purslane, etc.

1.   Mix parsley, garlic, vinegar and salt.
2.   Add oil to cover ingredients, stir.
3.   Cover and store in refrigerator.

Recipe from The Stinking Rose.

This stuff is good on anything.

zen and the art of wheelbarrow maintenance

The two communal wheelbarrows at our community garden plot were in need of repair: flat tires, loose and rusty hardware, and wood handles that gave me splinters just looking at them. So I took some time to fix them up today. I stained the wood to protect it, greased all the hardware and axles, and inflated the flat tires. So gratifying to get things working again!

One of the tires was tubeless, which seems to trouble many wheelbarrow enthusiasts, including me. I tried applying dish soap to the bead and a compression strap (belt, bungee cord, or rope would work too) around the circumference to press the bead to the rim, but it still didn't hold air. I ended up using some silicone adhesive sealant leftover from another project around the rim (rubber cement may work also). In conjunction with the compression strap, this worked!
 
Installing a tube would have been a last resort solution.

roasted red pepper spread

I don't exactly know what to call this besides "roasted red pepper spread." But it is really good:

paprika peppers from our CSA, roasted on a grill or in an oven
garlic
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
honey
salt

Just like the Baba Ghanoush, I just chopped everything up by hand and mixed with a fork.

rack that wine

We racked our Malbec the other night (gently siphoned wine out leaving sediment behind). We don't have two carboys so we have to do carboy to bucket and back to carboy. And our carboy is 5 gallons instead of 6 so we put 1 gallon in a separate jug. Not ideal, but Julie's making it look easy with the Auto-Siphon (thanks Jen and Stacey!).

let the canning begin!

I am determined to fill all of our canning jars in the next month. It is easy to let the peak of the growing season slip by since it doesn't last all that long here. On top of that, I am trying to make this happen while holding down a 40 hour a week job, hosting visitors, hanging out with friends, taking the dog on walks, and enjoying the great outdoors.  Hence the reason I am the crazy lady who husks a whole lot of corn in the dark.

baba ghanoush by hand

 
I'm loving all the eggplant we're getting in our CSA. I've always made baba ghanoush in a food processor, but I just came across this method of making baba ghanoush just with a knife, and it's the best I've ever had!

Ingredients:
1 large eggplant
1/3 c. tahini
1 T. lemon juice
handful of fresh chopped parsley 
salt and pepper
2-5 garlic cloves
olive oil
dash of cayenne

I roasted the eggplant (cut in halves) in the oven (450F) until soft. After it cooled for a bit, I chopped it up and mixed in the rest of the ingredients.

P.S. I think using coarse kosher salt really adds to things like this or on tomato slices; as long as it can dissolve and not be crunchy, it makes the saltiness come in bursts.