One of my favorite activities in the whole world is cooking with the people I love. For me there is no greater way to share the bounty we enjoy here in this part of the world. It is not just a way to share what is offered here, but  to also get creative with my favorite people. People hear me preach the act of eating locally, and cooking from scratch on my blog and in person, and when they come to visit us, we all have a great time together living out that vision. Mostly it is for fun, but it also shows people in a personal way why we decided to make our lives here, and how easy it can be to eat locally and healthfully in a place that really strives to make that ideal a reality.

I have had the best summer because we have had quite a few guests visiting the homestead, and since all of them love food in one way or another, we always, without fail end up spending time in the kitchen or out on the deck at the grill and then of course EATING what we have created together. Such a simple yet magical act that really brings people together in a fundamental way.

Here is our summer of eating so far – in mostly visual terms.

My mom was here earlier in the season, and we celebrated her visit with lots of al fresco dining. One evening we enjoyed mead sprizters – local mead, with a splash of Italian prosecco, garnished with muddled mint and currants from our garden. Sadly at the time of her visit we weren’t harvesting many veggies yet. But we still enjoyed many local meals out on the deck!

When my dad and stepmom came to visit, they both ended up cooking for us. My stepmom Kayzie made her mom’s famous crabcakes – and brought fresh blue crab with them all the way from Maryland! On another night my dad grilled some beautiful local steaks that we enjoyed with local sweet corn.

Roberto and I also got a duck as part of our meat CSA share from Applecheek Farm . I cooked duck once before with my friend Amber (who also came to visit us!!! ) but wanted to try a different method this time. So with the help of my dad, we grilled it on our rotisserie. It was lightly seasoned with herbs de provence and stuffed with orange wedges. I made a cherry sauce with red wine and oranges to accompany it. We also grilled some potato wedges under the duck letting the drippings season them.

Most recently my stepdaughter Gwen is visiting. She loves to cook, and whenever she comes to visit we end up making something yummy! This time we made the ultimate nachos – Tortilla chips covered in 3 kinds of cheese (cabot cheddar, maple smoked cheddar chunks and parmesan), homemade beef and bean chili, tomatoes and cilantro from the garden and green chilies.

Tonight she and her dad made me dinner – their specialty, spaghetti with tomato-cream sauce and garden fresh herbs with a delicious side salad – all veggies from the garden.

Thanks to everyone for your visits – and we look forward to many more wonderful meals with family and friends here on the homestead!

Life has been a bit hectic lately, which means that many nights, after coming in from the garden at about 7:30 PM, I need to get dinner on the table – we are hungry and don’t want to wait too long. These are the moments where sometimes I want to just crawl into bed, and forego dinner all together. Sometimes we say to hell with it, and go to one of our great local eateries. But you can’t and really don’t want to do that every night, and we find ourselves in this situation at least 5 nights a week.

This is when my kitchen forethought and planning really pay off. I like to make sure that I have beans and usually grains in the freezer that have been pre-soaked and partially cooked. Things I can just pull out and throw in a pan in a pinch. I also have a variety of fresh veggies always on hand – whatever looked good at the farmers market, or local market that week. Plus, some kind of animal protein that is quick to cook like sausages, or skirt steak, or doesn’t need to be, like good quality non-nitrate cold cuts or canned fish.

In this case, I had some Christmas Lima Beans from Rancho Gordo ready, some huge and meaty portabellas, and some nice British style Bangers we got from the local butcher. So I decided to make a nice adult version of Beans and Franks.

I sauteed the beans in some olive oil and then added some diced fresh portabella mushrooms, onions and garlic. I de-glazed the pan with a little red wine and seasoned everything with some thyme, salt and pepper. Then I added some nice fresh, local spinach and stirred until it wilted. I served it with half a link of British Banger and some nice goat cheese crumbles. It was quick, satisfying and really delicious.

HELLO COMPOST!

Life has been extremely busy here on the homestead. If you are following my facebook updates, you know I have been up to my ears (almost) in dirt. I have learned in these few short weeks, that spring is the busiest time of the year in the country. If you are in the North Country, you are trying to get your gardens, fruit/nut tree groves and berry patches started for the summer, while dodging rain storms, and on occasion even snow storms! Here at Thistlemoon Meadows, it is no exception. All of this while trying to settle into a new place. We have been spending as many sunny days as we can outdoors, and if there isn’t enough of those to do what we need to accomplish, we go out in the rain – and if you can believe it, the snow storm is actually a blessing from Mother Nature, as it allows us time to go indoors and take care of household needs. It has been several years since I have really enjoyed the dichotomies that make up spring and it has been amazing – when you are working with things that grow, it kind of all makes sense. Nature is amazing that way.

(The Culture Club (this is not how I normally have my “lab” set up. If you are culturing more than one kind of culture they need to sit a few feet apart from each other, but I asked them all to gather together for  photo).

Our house is not a home unless I have set up my cultures, lovingly termed my “science lab” in the kitchen. On any given day I have sourdough starter, kefir, some kind of sour milk either viili or buttermilk, yogurt and sometimes cheese culturing. Plus I usually have various kinds of grains and legumes soaking and fermenting. It is this life sustaining and nourishing foods that get our bodies through all the hard work that comes with setting up and maintaining a homestead. And our chickens haven’t even arrived yet!

FIDDLEHEADS!

So to celebrate spring in all her glory, on one warm and beautiful day, we decided to have our first barbecue of the season. We had been to the local market earlier in the day and picked up a prized local wildfood – fiddlehead ferns. These ferns can only be harvested for about 2 weeks in the early spring, in Northern climes, like New England, and Canada. Fiddleheads are harvested early in the season before the frond has opened and reached its full height – they are named fiddleheads as they bear resemblance to the curled ornamentation on the end of a stringed instrument, such as a fiddle. Since I am a fiddlehead, it seemed like a food I should try. It is not suggested that you eat fiddleheads raw, as they have a bitterness to them before cooked, that can lead to stomach upset. I was told they taste a bit like asparagus, so I decided to just toss them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and cook them on the grill, on top of foil – kind of like broiled asparagus, which is my favorite way to prepare it. Although truth be told, if asparagus ceased to exist, I wouldn’t miss it.

For this meal I wanted to cook everything on the grill. Steak is best when grilled, and we had also gotten a beautiful skirt steak from a local farm. I lightly drizzled olive oil on it, and then dressed it up with fresh herbs – cilantro, thyme and basil.

To accompany this meal, I decided to make poutine on the grill, sans gravy, which I guess really makes this potatoes and cheese curds – but it was light and perfect with this menu. I cooked both white potatoes and sweet potatoes on the grill in foil packets for about 40 minutes. For the last 15 minutes,I opened the packets so the potatoes could brown, and then put the cheese curds on top, turned off the grill and closed the grill lid for about 5 minutes.

(Spring Foods Dinner)

It was a wonderful evening outside listening to the night sounds – frogs, birds and eventually even a guitar and…you guessed it, a fiddle.

I love Dark Mole – it is one of those sauces that captures the imagination and has an almost mystical quality to it– chock full of colorful, luxurious and delicious spices, chilies and chocolate. Whenever I see it on a menu, I can’t resist ordering it. I have never made it before, and it has been on my kitchen “to do” list for a long while. A series of events happened that made this the perfect time to make Mole, my way. This is not a traditional Mole, made by a Mexican Matriarch, but I do feel it encompasses the flavors and spirit of the dish.

As I said, this dish was inspired by several things – a recent shipment of samples from my foodie friend Justin, at Marx Foods (these guys are awesome!) of various dried chilies that we will be giving away on The Foodie Blogroll soon. I used two mild varieties – Mulato and Pasilla Negro. The Mulato is described as having a chocolate and licorice flavor, which I thought would go well in the Mole. The Pasilla Negro said it was “good in moles” on the package, so I trusted the Marx Foodies on that one.

This dish was also inspired by a chocolate bar I bought for the trip from Florida to Vermont. On road trips, we always like to treat ourselves to some dark chocolate. This time I chose Dagoba’s Xocolatl bar – dark chocolate with cocoa nibs, chilies and cinnamon. It was wonderful on its own, a perfect pick me up during a long day of driving. As I was eating the chocolate, I knew it was destined to be cooked with – as it was not very sweet (which is the way I like my chocolate) and full of the flavors described on the package.

I also wanted to use some Calabrian pepper powder, I received as a recent sample from Scott at The Sausage Debauchery for a giveaway on The Foodie Blogroll last month, that I hadn’t had a chance to cook with yet. This hot pepper powder is very reminiscent of hot smoked paprika. It is a gorgeous bright deep orange, and smells wonderful. A little goes a long way though, and I didn’t need much to add a kick to the dish. I also used some Mexican Mole Seasoning that I got at the Saint Augustine Spice and Tea Exchange. A store I frequented in Saint Augustine when we lived there, and that I am very thankful has a website, so I can continue to order their amazing, top quality spices.

I was very pleased with the result of my first attempt at Mole. The sauce had a lot of depth, and all the flavors really complemented each other in a cohesive unit. Not bad for the first time!

The leftovers make amazing quesadillas with some cheddar cheese and plain yogurt on top, or you could put some of the sauce over your morning eggs (fried or poached) for some Mole Eggs.

This is definitely a diverse sauce that can be used to turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. I love that this recipe makes enough for either 4 people, or several meals for 2, making this not only tasty, but cost effective, which is always a bonus. Especially because sauces like this taste doubly better the next day and your efforts in the kitchen can be extended to several meals.

INGREDIENTS:

4 chicken drumsticks
olive oil
salt & pepper
1 1/2 TBS Mexican mole seasoning – fresh pepper, chocolate, cumin, coriander, chili pepper, garlic, onion, salt, etc. From The Spice and Tea Exchange
½ tsp Calabrian Hot pepper
1 tsp cinnamon
6 sticks Dagoba Xocolatl bar, melted
1 dried mulato chili (chocolate/licorice, mild)– reconstituted and scraped – reserve about 1 cup of water used to reconstitute.
1 dried pasilla negro chili (Good in moles) – reconstituted and scraped
juice of one lemon
1 cup strained tomatoes
5 carrots, chopped
4 small onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced

METHOD:

Wash the drumsticks while the chilies are reconstituting in hot water (this takes about 10-15 minutes for them to soften). In a bowl drizzle olive oil over the chicken and sprinkle spices over top. Add the chili flesh and massage everything into the chicken. Then add the lemon juice and stir all together. Let marinate in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 300F. In a dutch oven, drizzle olive oil and brown chicken on all sides. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a double boiler, and pour over chicken. Add the reserved chili water, and strained tomatoes to the bowl the chicken was marinading in. Whisk together and pour over the chicken, de-glazing the pan. Add the potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic, then stir the whole pot. Place the lid on the pot, and cook in the oven for 3 hours. After the 2nd hour, reduce heat to 200 F. Check for liquid every 45 minutes, and add water if necessary.

Serve on top of sprouted tortillas. Serves 2 – with leftovers for 4 small sprouted corn tortilla Quesadillas and 2 servings of Mole Eggs.

It is no secret that I love to eat seasonally and that I am a big fan and customer of my local farmer’s market. Last spring I showed you how to make this really nice dinner that showcases the bounty of spring. When you eat more seasonally it is fun to see now how much you really look forward to certain foods during the year. For example fresh English peas in the pod. These little beauties are like the heralds of spring. Just their very color is indicative of the season – beautiful spring green. I felt this meal was so invoking of Spring, that it was worth posting again, now that spring is in full flourish – and also because I really want to win some grassfed steaks!

So this is my entry for the Clean Your Plate Challenge over on Nourished Kitchen . This month’s addition is Grassfed Steaks !

We have been trying to eat as seasonally as possible for the past two years, which can be a challenge depending on where you live. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like we have been doing it for this long, because I am still learning more traditional cooking techniques and adding more and more real food to my kitchen repertoire. This past month for example, I have been eliminating processed sugar and white flour from our diet. When we move to Vermont in 2 weeks, these things will no longer have a place in my kitchen. This way of eating will always be a work in progress, but I feel the pluses completely outweigh the minuses, both in health and taste. That is one other thing I am looking forward to with our upcoming move – even more access to local and pasture raised meat and dairy foods!

As I have mentioned before, Roberto and I are very active people. We enjoy activities like archery, martial arts and weight lifting, among other things. With an increased activity lifestyle over the past year, it has come an increased need for good quality protein and food. I feel like this way of eating has given me not only increased physical energy, but also mental energy, and more balanced emotions.

I paired this beautiful grassfed skirt steak with local fingerling potatoes – another spring veggie.  I really loved the combination of these three components – steak, potatoes and fresh English peas.

I also got some inspiration from my fresh herbs out on the porch. I have always wanted to make a chimmichuri sauce – its vibrant green color and fresh taste is very attractive to me on so many levels, and it just felt like it would go great with this meal.

Chimmichuri is typically made with fresh cilantro or parsley as the main herb, but I don’t have either of them growing. So I used what I did have – basil and oregano. I threw these herbs together with extra virgin olive oil, citrus champagne vinegar and a few other spices to make a fabulous tangy and herbal sauce for the steak.

I pan roasted the fingerling potatoes by throwing them in a large pan with olive oil, salt and pepper and cooking until they were browned on all sides. I then thew them in the oven at 425 F for 20 minutes, and tossed them with fresh chives when they came out of the oven. I sautéed the peas with olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic.

It was a wonderful meal full of the fresh flavors of spring!

Chimmichuri

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup fresh basil leaves
¼ cup fresh oregano leaves
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup citrus champagne vinegar
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 TBS sumac
salt to taste

METHOD:

Throw it all in a food processor or blender and blend until it becomes a sauce and serve it with the steak and potatoes.

This is a dish I had several years ago, and have always wanted to replicate it. Unfortunately it took YEARS to find a good source for humanely raised, antibiotic free short ribs. But when I saw them, I bought them, and I should have bought more for the freezer!

Anyway, the dish I had so enjoyed was served over creamy polenta. There were carrots, onions, and other vegetables that had been slow cooked with the ribs in a thick velvety tomato sauce that was laid on top of the polenta, and the sauce made thick tomato-y rivets in the polenta. I remember thinking to myself that those were some of the best carrots and veggies I had ever eaten! So I did my best to do justice to this dish that stayed with me for so long.

I started by searing the ribs on all sides in olive oil in a dutch oven. Then I added nice rustic chunks of carrots, onion, garlic and a few fingerling potatoes that were lying around. Once everything was browned, and seasoned with salt and pepper and fresh thyme, I added a glass of red wine to de-glaze the pan. Then added a can of organic tomato paste, and a handful of dried morel mushrooms, and seasoned again. I threw the pan in the oven at 350F for about 2 hours. Every 30 minutes or so, I checked for liquid, and stirred everything around. If it was too dry, I added more wine. Before the final 30 minutes, I gave the whole thing a nice hearty drizzle of olive oil. At the same time, I started the polenta, and prepared it according to the package directions, but added a bit more water to make sure it retained that ultra creamy quality.

This really is a hearty, wintery meal if there ever was one. So this being the tail end of cooler weather for most of us – make it while you can! The best part about preparing this dish was the realization that making it was quite easy, and the slow cooking was what really gave the veggies such an amazing depth of flavor. This amazing dish is easily replicated and tastes like you were slaving all day in the kitchen! Enjoy!

United Irishmen Flag

Well it’s better late than never, I say. Just think of this post as a jump start to next year’s celebration!

These last few months have been very exciting for me. I recently discovered that along with my new found English ancestry (and a few other Northern European ancestries) and in the company of millions of other Americans, I may have some ancestral roots in Ireland. I am still learning about where it comes from, which has been a very fun process for me and has revived in me my love of anthropology and population migrations. I am not sure how much I will ever really know about my heritage, being adopted with no ancestry history, but it looks like there is a strong Northern Irish connection from all my research so far. So this year, I decided that I want to explore these cultures in my ancestral line through the foods of these lands, and St. Patrick’s day seemed like a good place to start, in good company.

I am not Christian, so for me, my St. Patrick’s celebration is not religious or political, but more of a general Celtic heritage and cultural celebration. It should be no surprise that I have Celtic ancestry, as I have always loved Celtic music (even teaching myself to play the fiddle) and culture, and Scottish and Irish desserts have been among my favorites for years. So I felt like even with its religious roots, this would be a good a time as any to celebrate the rich culture and heritage of Ireland with so many others!

Some Irish Feast Ingredients: Fresh Organic Eggs, Organic Cream and Guinness plus Homemade Buttermilk and Whiskey and Aquavit Soaked Raisins

I wanted to celebrate by cooking some semi- “traditional” dishes, and to challenge myself by cooking with Guinness! So the menu is as follows :

*Guinness Stew
*Sautéed Cabbage in a Mustard Glaze
*Brown Soda Bread
*Guinness Ice Cream

Everything is made from scratch, including the buttermilk in the soda bread. The meal turned out great, and I would certainly make any of these dishes again, for St. Pat’s or any other day.

Brown Soda Bread

I was inspired by several different recipes for this meal, and it all started with Jenny’s Brown Soda Bread Recipe .

As many who follow this blog know, I have been tweaking various bread recipes these past many months, so that the flour can be soaked for at least 12 hours before baking ( to find out why click here ). Jenny is a master at this kind of cooking, even recently being featured on CNN for her Real Food Challenge . When I saw her soda bread recipe, I knew I had to make it.

Guinness Stew

From there, the idea for an Irish feast began. I didn’t have a lot of time this year to research “corning” my own beef brisket , so to speak (maybe next year). So I decided to go with something a bit more in my comfort zone – beef stew with a beef and Guinness broth.

I love sautéed cabbage, and since it was on sale at the grocery store, I decided to grab a head and figure out what to do with it later. As I was cooking the stew, an idea for a delicious spicy mustard and honey glaze was concocted in my mind! I will definitely be making cabbage this way again!

Creamy Guinness Ice Cream without white sugar

I had also been wanting to try this recipe for Guinness Ice Cream for about 2 years. However, I did modify it, to make it more healthy by omitting the 2 cups of sugar called for in the original recipe and using date sugar and maple syrup to sweeten it, instead. I also omitted the brown bread, however I may have to add it in the future, because it sounds yummy!

This was a wonderful celebration to begin to connect with some of my ancestral roots and share it with my awesome and supportive family. Thanks Guys! Hope my readers enjoy this menu as much as we did! Recipes under the cut…

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Cooler temperatures really do require comforting and hearty foods. Sometimes the simplest of ingredients can truly make the most satisfying of meals. Plus you don’t have to sacrifice good nutrition or big bucks in the process. Those are all qualities of a winning meal in my book!

I am a big fan of beans. I really could eat them everyday, they are so versatile and packed with nutrients. But, I know not everyone likes beans as much as I do…I had some leftover cooked Borlotti beans from Rancho Gordo that I got in San Francisco during the Foodbuzz Food Blogger’s Festival.  I needed to use them up, so I asked Roberto how he would like them to be prepared. He asked for “Cowboy Beans”. This comes from his growing up in Italy and watching old American Westerns on TV. In many of the movies, there were scenes of cowboys eating baked beans from a can. So as a child he always wanted to know what those cowboy beans tasted like. He tells me that he never imagined them tasting as good as when I make them. What a sweet husband I have.

I love baked beans, and we make them often at home. My grandmother was famous for her beans. I guess it is a family thing!

My most recent rendition of cowboy beans also included carrots, and potatoes, to stretch the recipe and make extra for leftovers. I slow cooked them with smoked polish sausage. A perfect winter time meal!

INGREDIENTS:

1 strip of bacon, chopped
½ a large onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 small potatoes, chopped
4 small carrots, chopped
1 cup of leftover beans
1 can of tomato paste
1 empty tomato paste can full of water
dash of your favorite BBQ sauce
1 TBS maple sugar or syrup
salt & pepper to taste
1 package of smoked Polish sausage (or any kind of sausage), cut into smaller chunks

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a dutch oven, or large oven proof pot add the bacon and brown. Add onion, garlic, potatoes and carrots, and sautee for about 5-7 minutes, stirring regularly. Once the veggies are getting browned, add the beans, tomato paste, water, BBQ sauce, maple and seasoning. Stir until veggies are coated with the sauce. Then add the sausage and put the lid on the pot. Cook at 350 for about an hour. Check to see if more liquid needs to be added. If so, add more water – and then check your seasoning. Cook for another 30 minutes. You can keep the pot simmering at a lower temperature, like 200 F, to keep warm until you are ready to serve. Just keep checking your liquid amounts.

Serves 4 big portions. Less than $3 per serving.