So of course after receiving all those wonderful products from FromTheFarm.com I was inspired to start experimenting with them right away.

Santa Sweet Grape and Ugly Ripe Heirloom Tomatoes

Santa Sweet, the name of the company is also the name of the seed variety of this original grape tomato. The company owns the particular seed variety along with the Ugly Ripe heirloom variety seeds. Therefore they are the first company to bring the grape tomato to the United States. Any other company who sells “grape tomatoes” and are not Santa Sweet- their seeds are a cousin of the original. These grape tomatoes are super sweet and very pop-able. Children love their shape and taste. The Ugly Ripe tomatoes are reminiscent of a delicious tomato fresh from my grandfather’s backyard garden. They may be ribbed and bumpy, but their flavor is delicious and full of pure tomato flavor. Perfect to eat like an apple, or chopped in salads.

I live with a “tomato connoisseur” who just fell in love with both of these varieties of tomatoes. So much so, that all we really did with them was make wonderfully simple salads dressed with balsamic vinegar and and extra virgin olive oil.

My favorite salad was these dressed tomatoes over a bed of spicy organic arugala, mixed with a nice ripe avocado and some smoked cheddar cheese. It was like summer in a bowl. We ate these kinds of salads for 3 days straight!

FromTheFarm.com offers a Tomato Variety Pack that includes 6 Ugly Ripe tomatoes and 2 pints of Santa Sweet Grape tomatoes!

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Sierra Olive Oils and Spice Packets

So everyone has been asking to see how I roast a chicken in my tagine. I love my tagine and I try to come up with as many uses for it as possible. I am a huge fan of roasted chickens, and I usually roast one or two a month and I always make soup from the carcass. So when I got my tagine as a present, I did an experiment and roasted a chicken in it. As with anything you put in a tagine, the chicken came out super tender and falling off the bone – with no basting or liquid necessary. You literally throw it in the tagine, and throw the tagine in a 350 F oven and cook for about 1 1/2 hours. That is it!

This time, I decided to rub my delicious organic roaster with Sundried Tomato and Basil Olive Oil from Sierra Olive Oils. The company had also sent me a variety of spice packets used for dips (which are not available yet, but will soon be), but I thought it would be fun to try one as a rub for the chicken, so I chose the garlic variety.

I had some leftover fresh fennel that I stuffed the bird with. It came out perfectly delicious. Served with peas, it was a delicious and homey dinner, and almost too easy to make!

I am really excited to present to Foodie Blogroll members this awesome giveaway we are doing with in conjunction with FromTheFarm.com in March and April. The giveaway winners will be able to choose any ONE product from their website (www.fromthefarm.com) at a cap of $50!!!!! How cool is that?

Also, as an incentive for others, you can get 10% off your order cost, just by filling out a simple survey at checkout!

FromTheFarm.com is an amazing company that I can really get behind.
Here is their philosophy:

Two generations ago, milk and eggs were delivered to the home.
Our grandparents either grew their own produce, or knew the
farmer who did. FromTheFarm.com™ is bringing home delivery
back, full circle. We work with the same family farms on which
the very foundation of this country was built. We believe in
knowing the people behind the products. And supporting the
people who produce the very best.
Each and every commodity in our store has a family story behind it,
stories that our generation has either forgotten, or never known.
We believe it is time to rekindle that relationship with the families
who are feeding our world.
It is time, once again, to do business together.

The beauty of the FromTheFarm.com philosophy is that if you want to purchase products that are more local to you, you can. If you want to expand your search, and explore a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, organics and gourmet foods, even meats and cheeses, that is open to you as well. But in any case, you know the products you are getting are top quality and from American farmers. I can attest to this because they sent me boxes and boxes of products all week so that I could get an idea of what they have available. I was really impressed with the quality, the information and the company. And receiving all these goodies, I was very inspired to cook! Which is wonderful!

From their website:

“One of the joys of shopping at farmers markets is getting to know the grower who carefully nurtures, then hand-picks and packs those luscious peaches, tree-ripened pears and colorful heirloom tomatoes. These growers sell their products with pride and most often include a few tips about how to store and prepare their beloved items. You leave satisfied knowing you’ve purchased fresh, nutritious products picked at their peak of flavor and ripeness, and that you’ve helped support your community farmers – all at the convenience of being in your own home.
FromTheFarm.com was designed to mirror the flavor, quality, service and grower commitment found at traditional farmers markets. We at FromTheFarm.com both come from several generations of family farmers, so we know what freshness and quality tastes and looks like. What’s more, we use our decades of experience in produce buying, shipping and inspecting to search out top growers who can provide the finest items available throughout the country.”

To learn more about FromTheFarm.com’s Growers, click here

Bloggers are urged to sign up for their newsletter (on the home page) to be included in their monthly e-newsletter and e-mails for specials (ie: flowers for Valentine’s Day, Avocados for Super Bowl, etc…)

Here is how the contest works. To be eligible, you must reside within the continental USA and you must be an active member of The Foodie Blogroll. All current active Foodie Blogroll members are automatically enrolled in the contest. A random winner will be chosen every other week, for a total of 8 weeks (meaning 4 prizes will be given out). That’s it, nice and simple.

Here is some additional incentives for Food Bloggers:
* There is a 5 question survey offered at checkout which entitles the user to a 10% discount upon completion
* FromTheFarm.com is also looking to get the word out about their unique site and product – anyone who is interested in advertising revenue is welcome to contact Christy Farris cfarris@FromTheFarm.com

Please look forward to the following recipes in the next week featuring these fabulous products:

* Simple Tomato Salad featuring Santa Sweet Grape tomatoes and Ugly Ripe Heirloom variety tomatoes

* Washington Pears from EW Brandt & Sons – Wine Poached Pears using Blackberry Cream Honey from Honey Ridge Farms

* Balsamic Strawberries over ice cream using Balsamic Honey Vinegar and Clover Honey Creme from Honey Ridge Farms

* Roasted Chicken (in a Tagine) with Fennel rubbed with Sun-dried Tomato and Basil Olive oil from Sierra Olive Oils and Garlic Dip Seasoning Blend

I love my new Le Creuset Tagine (in lime green). Roberto got it for me over the Winter Holidays, and I have found many uses for it beyond just making Tagine. For example, I roast all my chickens in it. They come out perfect, with the meat falling right off the bone. But I will save that for another post…

I had several steaks in the freezer and some fresh Brussels sprouts and root veggies from the farmers market. I was going to cook the steaks up in my cast iron skillet, but decided instead to see what would happen in the tagine. Now most of you will want to kill me when I tell you that the cut of meat that I threw in the tagine was filet mignon. But in my defense, I really prefer a flank or skirt steak to filet. So sue me…

So here’s what I did, I took all my veggies that I had cut into nice chunks (left the sprouts whole), and threw them in the tagine. I liberally drizzled extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar on top, then added some sun dried tomatoes and some salt and pepper. I mixed it around. The steaks I rubbed with sea salt, pepper and coriander and placed them on top of the massive pile of veggies. Then I poured just a quick line each of Worcestershire sauce and dijon mustard on top of each steak, put the lid on and threw it in a 400 F oven. After half and hour, I took the lid off and stirred everything around. Moving the steaks towards the bottom of the pan. Then I cooked it for another hour. When it came out of the oven, the meat was so tender I could break it apart with a fork – and don’t tell me that’s because it is filet. I have had many a tough filet. So I broke it apart with the fork and stirred it all together and topped it with some Greek yogurt. It was pure bliss.

Read the rest of this entry »

As always here is what the FFF is all about. Finest Foodies Friday! FFF is a weekly Friday post featuring favorites from The Foodie Blogroll! We do this so we can share in the rich diversity of what The Foodie Blogroll has to offer by featuring some of our favorites and yours!
What is the Foodie Blogroll? It is the first and fastest growing free membership blogroll for food bloggers and has become a wonderful community to share ideas about all things food related. With a membership of over 3000 food blogs, I am sure you can find much inspiration and new friends!

The only requirement to be featured here on FFF is to be a member of The Foodie Blogroll and be displaying The Foodie Blogroll widget on your blog. If you are not yet a member, but you have a food blog and would like to join us, please click here!

If you have a favorite foodblog on The Foodie Blogroll, that you would like to be featured here on FFF, please join us over on The Leftover Queen/Foodie Blogroll Forum, and post your favorite Foodie Blogroll foodblogs here.

Adventures in Food
Now this is my kind of blog! It started out as a blog focusing on locavore cuisine to the extreme – eating within a 100- mile radius. It has now grown into greater focus on local, native and wild foods. This wonderful blog is full of great tips for more natural eating and how to navigate that world a bit better. Very cool stuff.

ArtEpicure
This blog is written by the owner of a small cooking school who grew up in the kitchen, since their parents owned a restaurant. The blog is full of wonderful pictures and delicious food. The focus is on classical, modern and post modern cooking – history, science and philosophy. There are recipes, but also discussions and musings on all sorts of food related topics.

My Italian Grandmother
Many of us have Italian grandmothers, but if you are one who doesn’t, don’t you kinda wish you did? Italian grandmothers are world renowned for cooking up some of the best food. Michele’s blog is a dedication to her Italian grandmother to keep her recipes, memories and stories alive. Michele’s grandmother sure passed on the cooking gene to her grand-daughter! I am sure she would be proud.

Must Love Chutney
This blog is written by a self-confessed condiment lover. I can so relate to that. I have often said that food is just a vehicle for all the delicious sauces, spreads condiments to be lovingly squirted, basted, and poured on top. She also loves Trader Joe’s and I am a big fan of that store, even though I am not able to get there as often as I would like. So check out this blog for some good food (and condiments!)

Spryte’ s Place
This blogger loves to try new things in her kitchen, so she doesn’t limit herself to any one cuisine.  She has step by step pictures which is helpful when making recipes.  Luckily her family and friends enjoy the role of taste testers, so you can bet you’ll find something you like!

That’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed this week’s FFF. Remember, if you would like to see a blog featured here, who is part of the FBR please visit the forum and nominate them.
I NEED NOMINATIONS!!!!!!

Also we all love to know how people came to find our blogs, so please visit all of our featured bloggers today and don’t forget to tell them that you found them via Finest Foodies Friday!

Many of you read my post about the Blogger Aid Cookbook last week, as part of the Foodie Blogroll Community Events. This is a wonderful campaign, and social network that was created by some awesome bloggers: Val from More Than Burnt Toast, Ivy from Kopiaste and Giz from Equal Opportunity Kitchen

It’s goal is to get bloggers together to alleviate world hunger. You can help by contributing to their cookbook! The Deadline has just been extended and it is March 31, 2009!!!!!!

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Chorizo Chili

I wanted to contribute a recipe that would be easy for anyone to throw together – but would also be healthy and filling.

Several weeks ago we went to the new Whole Foods that opened up in Jacksonville, FL. Since I am all about the Happy Meat, that is mainly what filled our grocery cart. Meat and fish and cheese, oh and organic beer made in Vermont. One of the things we got in the meat department were several different links of various sausages. We had eaten most of the links, but the other day when I was cleaning out the freezer, I came upon two links of chorizo. We were having a bit of a cold spell here in Florida, so I decided to make some chili. Normally I make chili with beef or buffalo, beans and tomato sauce base. This time I decided to try something different. Not exactly a “white chili” but certainly one sans tomato paste and including beer. Not the organic one made in Vermont – that was long gone, but a nice Sam Adams. Perfect dish for using up veggies and warming up!

To get the recipe – you’ll have to buy the cookbook when it comes out later this year!

Last weekend Roberto and I had a chance to go and visit our friends, The No Fear Family. Although we initially “met” through the Wonderful World of Food Blogging, Judy from No Fear Entertaining and her husband T (and their girls and pups too!) have become really good friends of ours outside of the blogging world. Even though we both live in Florida (which is close compared to other food blogging friends I have), they still live about 5 hours from us, so we don’t get to hang out as often as we would if we lived closer…that said, we decided we needed some hang time and so they were gracious enough to host us AND Pepino at their beautiful house in Cape Coral. Now that is a good friend!

We got there just in time for Judy to leave and pick the girls up from school. So I made sure to get myself to work while she was out. Judy showed me prior to leaving (why is it that even in a rush, food bloggers find time to give another food blogger a “tour” of their fridge the moment they arrive???LOL!) that there were some eggplants that were on the verge in her fridge, so I decided to make some Baba Ganoush. Now T used to not be a big fan of the stuff, but he has recently been converted, thank goodness, and claimed that he liked mine, so I was feeling pretty good. For dinner that night we had Peter from Kalofagas’ famous Pork Souvlaki which really lived up to all the prior praises. We had it with home made tzatziki and bread, roasted potatoes and a delicious Greek salad – Judy, I really need the recipe for the dressing. It was great! I wish we had more pictures of the food and us preparing it, from that night – but we were too busy gabbing that we forgot to take many!

The next day Roberto and T went to a local Italian market while Judy and I stayed home and…BLOGGED. Yep folks, that is how addicted to blogging we really are! We also worked on the Daring Baker’s challenge for this month. Even though I have officially dropped out of the group, we thought it would be an awesome thing to do together, since we have been talking about doing a DB challenge together forever! But I can’t say any more about it, because it is a SECRET.

When the guys got back they came with provisions for sausage lasagna and sausage for lunch (I hate to tell you we ALSO had sausage the next morning for breakfast – Judy’s homemade that is!). Actually I was kinda sad I didn’t see this awesome market – that Roberto claims is “just like being in Vegas at the Venetian” (not that I have been there either…), because it sounded incredible. So maybe next time they will let a girl come!

T grilled up some pinwheel sausages for lunch and then the rest went into the 25 LB LASAGNA that he made for an impromptu NO FEAR dinner party they had that night. It was a wonderful time meeting some other friends of theirs (and a friend of their friend!!!). The lasagna was some of the best I have ever had, and we all had a blast – especially the dogs, and the kids!

I don’t think Pepino will ever forget this weekend. He had a BLAST and has pretty much been sleeping ever since we got home!!! (Actually when we got home he hid under the bed for an hour, pouting because he missed his new friends!!!).

The next day before heading back we had a great morning exploring Sanibel Island and Captiva. These are world famous beaches that I have never been to before. The water was beautiful and both beaches are great for shelling – we also saw jellyfish, sponges, horseshoe crabs and various other cool sea life.

We had a wonderful weekend and you can be sure there will be many others to follow! If you want to read Judy’s account - check it out here!

This is a fun and sweet contest that we are running with The Ginger People right in time for Valentine’s Day called Hearts of Fire!

All you have to do is post here on The Foodie Blogroll/ Leftover Queen Forum what you think is the best use of the Crystallized Ginger Sweeties with a Valentine’s Day Theme

Aren’t they so cute? And delicious too! The perfect way to spice up your Valentine’s day!

Your idea could be a cocktail garnished with the sweeties, cookies, dipped chocolate covered hearts, whatever you can come up with. We will then chose a random winner on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, from the pool of posters!!!

The winner will receive a Ginger Sweet Treat Gift Basket including The Ginger People’s :

Ginger Sweeties
Ginger Chews (all 6 flavors)
Ginger Delight

All you have to do to be eligible is post your idea on this forum thread, be an active member of The Foodie Blogroll and have a valid US address to send the prize to.

UPDATE: I received an extra jar of Ginger Sweeties that I will be sending out to another random winner – who can be from any country!!!

Have a great time everybody and Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Royal Foodie Joust is an awesome monthly peer voted competition that is hosted on
The LeftoverQueen/FoodieBlogroll Forum! It gets better each and every month as the competition gets stiffer as Jousters try to outdo each other each month! It is also one of the friendliest competitions I have ever seen. So please don’t be intimidated to come and join us this month! We don’t bite, unless of course there is real food in our faces.

The only rules for the competition is that each Jouster create one dish and each entry must feature 3 ingredients in common. This competition has been referred to many times as the “Iron Chef” of the Food Blogosphere. Each month’s ingredients are chosen by the previous month’s winner. The winner of each Joust not only wins the Queen’s favor, bragging rights and a cool icon to put on their blog, but is also awarded with a super awesome Royal Foodie Joust apron!

So what are you waiting for? Come over and join us this month!

We decided to change things up a little bit in the new year, based on feedback we have gotten over the past few months on how the Royal Foodie Joust is run. People were having trouble picking just ONE favorite and wished for various categories to vote on.

So we decided to have a vote for 3 different categories: Best Overall, Best Photo and Most Unique Interpretation of the ingredients. The winner for best overall will win a Royal Foodie Joust Apron, and chose the next month’s ingredients. The winners for the Best Photo and Most Unique Interpretation will receive a Royal Foodie Joust Mug!

The ingredients for this month were chosen by Billy from A Table For Two who won the December Joust and chose for his ingredients: Mushrooms, Cauliflower and Noodles!

The Winner for the Best Overall Entry goes to Angela of Spinach Tiger with Cauliflower Ravioli with Baby Portobello Mushroom Ragu!!

She also won in the category Best Photo!

So Spinach Tiger gets to chose the three ingredients for next month and the apron (and a mug for Best Photo!!!).

The winner of this month’s “Most Unique Interpretation of the ingredients” goes to Dharm of Dad~Baker&Chef with Fusion Vol au Vents !!!

He will be receiving a Royal Food Joust Mug! Congrats Dharm!

Thanks to all the participants!

This Month’s Ingredients are inspired by the coming of Spring and are as follows:
Satsuma (or any other orange citrus) – zest, fruit or juice
Shallots
Edible Flowers

So please join us!!!!