Recent Food Stuff Ending in Crock-Pot Potato Soup

This is the last really big haul I did from the garden at the end of August.  I've since brought in even more tomatoes and quite a few carrots.  The carrots are still going strong, so we bring some into the house every few days.  The Lipstick peppers were super-flavourful, and I'm sad I couldn't encourage the plant to put out any more of them before the weather turned.

This is the result of our most recent visit to the local farmer's market.  Clockwise, from left to right we have eggplants, cheese & herb sourdough bread, nectarines, eggs, sweet long peppers, artisan pork sausages, wild blueberries and strawberries.

In addition to this, we are still receiving our local produce delivery basket.  In short, we are still drowning in produce, even though it is now fall.   Root veggies are starting to appear as well, and we have had a surplus of potatoes.  I haven't even bothered to dig any of the potatoes I planted earlier this year, since we've been getting so many in our deliveries, although I'm going to have to do it soon.

Combine the abundance of potatoes in our life with the fact that both partner & I have managed to get ourselves the first colds of the season at the same time, and the end result is crock-pot potato soup.  I did not take any photos, because I didn't think to do so before dinner, and there was none left afterward.

To make some yourself, you will need:
3-4 large potatoes, washed & cubed
1 large carrot, diced
1 medium handful of chives, finely chopped
1 vegetable bouillion cube
1/2 tsp ground rosemary
salt & pepper to taste
milk (approximately 1-2 cups)
sour cream & more chives to garnish, should you so desire

Put everything in the crock-pot except for the milk.  Add enough water to cover the vegetables, turn the crock-pot to low, and walk away.
When you return home from work/errands/lounging on the couch/etc, 6-8 hours later, blend the soup up (I have an immersion blender.  If you are using a regular blender, be sure to do it in batches and keep an eye & a hand on the lid).  Add milk until you get the consistency you like.  If necessary, warm gently until heated back to your desired temperature.
Serve with the garnishes of your choice.

I know it is similar to the potato & leek soup I've posted previously, but this version requires so much less effort.  I hope you enjoy!

Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto

Our produce delivery has been really lovely the last while.  Part of that, I'm sure, is that things are coming into season here, so we're getting lots of super-fresh, local items!

Not too many baskets ago, we received a pile of garlic scapes.  For a long time, people thought of them as compost, since you need to snip them if you want nice, fat garlic bulbs.  However, in the last few years, they've come back into fashion, which means that they are often quite expensive at the farmer's markets!  It was lovely to get some in our basket at no extra charge.

We weren't quite sure what to do with the scapes, and since we were planning on barbecuing the following day, we decided to toss them on the grill too.  We tossed them in a tiny amount of olive oil, with just a light sprinkling of salt & pepper to season and grilled them for 2-3 minutes.
They were not too shabby prepared that way, but we could only eat about one each with all the other items we had grilled.  So I made them into pesto!  (I love pesto, if you had not yet guessed from all the other pesto recipes in this blog)
I think grilling them gave them a softer flavour than if I had just made the pesto straight.

Here is what you need:

A blender
About a dozen grilled garlic scapes
parmesan cheese
olive oil
hulled pistachios (I got mine at the bulk food store)
salt & pepper to taste
maybe some water, depending

Roughly chop your garlic scapes and toss them in the blender (I did not do this, and it took forever to blend everything down.  Don't be like me, and chop your's first!).  Add in 1/4-1/2 cup pistachios (I didn't measure, I just tossed in 4-5 handfuls).  Give a good solid few shakes of parmesan, a little salt & pepper, and pour in 1/2 cup of oil to start.
Pulse away, and add more oil as needed.  I think I ended up using about 1 cup of olive oil, but I also added about a cup of water to mine, to make it more sauce-like.

If you are not using it right away, you can pour it into an ice cube tray to freeze, or stick it in the fridge for a bit.  I had so much, I managed to have a full ice cube tray and a 250ml jar full!

I used some of the jar in tonight's lasagna, and it was quite tasty.
If you find some garlic scapes for a good price and decide to try this recipe, I hope you enjoy it!

The Garden 2014: A Start

The raised planter and some of the pots.  There are so many seedlings in this photo!

Gardening - it is a thing that I do sometimes.  I'm pretty lazy, so I don't always weed when I should, or remember to water consistently, and I have a toddler 'helper', so it is generally not worthy of a magazine photoshoot.  However, it is something that brings me pleasure, especially the bit where the food parts ripen and I get to eat them.  Plus, the toddler seems to enjoy being outside with her little gardening tools, digging holes and yelling "I help! I do it!"

I've planted stuff out back in the last few weekends, laughing (carefully, while knocking on wood, just in case) at the prospect of a late frost.  As gardens are always a work in progress, especially when you inherit a space, we're still working out some placement issues.  This means that there are still seed packets on my kitchen table, and empty pots in the shed.

Here is a little list of what is already in the ground (most seeds and seedlings I purchased from Urban Harvest, although a few seedlings came from one of the convenience stores near my home).

• Broccoli
• Celery
• Mountain Princess Tomato (it is a determinate, so it is in a pot.  We'll see how it goes)
• Isis Candy Cherry Tomato (isn't that a great name?  Apparently, the individual tomatoes ripen in all different colours. Whee!)
• a rainbow pack of carrot seeds (including: Atomic Red, Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, Scarlet Nantes and Solar Yellow)
• Six Week Bush Beans
• Sugar Daddy Sugar Snap Peas
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Watermelon Radishes (not yet planted, but these are neat.  They are green inside instead of white, so they look like little watermelons)
• Lipstick Sweet Red Pepper
• Onions - I planted Evergreen Bunching Onion seeds, but something dug up that patch, so I planted yellow onion seedlings in the same area.  Hopefully, I'll get both!
• A 'Lucious Lettuce' variety seed pack of lettuces
• Dwarf Nasturtium
• potatoes, that I took from our produce delivery box
• French fingerling potatoes 
• A new second blueberry plant (one of the two I planted last year got attacked by local wildlife and did not survive)
• Two new strawberry plants (about half the existing strawberry patch did not survive the winter)
• A sunflower mix (not yet planted)

I also added to the herbs.  The chives, oregano, thyme and lavender all survived the winter.  New is:

• garden sage
• spicy globe basil
• dark opal basil
• cinnamon basil (what can I say? I'm apparently a sucker for basil) 
• and an additional bit of lavender.

Are you planting anything this season?

Garlic-Spinach-Tomato-Mushroom Spaghetti Delicious

If you have small children, you'll understand the needing to get food into tiny faces before a certain time, else you face the wrath of a major toddler HANGRY meltdown.
So, yesterday, by the time we got home, we were seriously behind schedule.  I did not have a lot of time to throw something together for dinner, and judging from the behaviour I was facing, we were close to witching hour. Fortunately for me, yesterday was also the day we receive our weekly produce bin, so food was at hand!

I threw this together quickly, while distracting a toddler with crackers, and preventing her from breaking herself or the kitchen.  It turned out to be pretty gosh darned delicious, so I'm sharing my dinner win with you.

To make my tasty, last minute, Garlic-Spinach-Tomato-Mushroom Spaghetti, you will need:

spaghetti or other long noodles
3-4 large white mushrooms, washed & sliced (I only used 2 yesterday, but more would have been better)
1/3 lb spinach, washed and roughly chopped (ie. a big bunch of spinach)
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pint cherry tomatoes
salt & pepper to taste
olive oil
grated parmesan cheese

Get the noodles started as per package directions.  Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat.  When the oil is warm, add your garlic & mushrooms.  Stir occasionally so the garlic doesn't burn.  Let the toddler have a turn with the salad spinner full of just washed spinach while you do this so they let go of your knee.

When the mushrooms start to look a little bit cooked, throw in the spinach.  It will wilt down by a lot, so don't worry if the pan looks ridiculously full. When the spinach has all wilted down, so that there is space in your pan again, add the pint of cherry tomatoes, and then salt & pepper to taste.  Give everything another stir.

At about this point, your spaghetti will likely be done.  Drain your noodles, reserving 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the pasta water and toss the lot into your frying pan.  Toss everything together until it is all well mixed.

Serve with lots of grated parmesan.

I hope you enjoy!

I Love You, Crock-Pot

Image from Crock-Pot's official Canadian website

Dear Crock-Pot,

I'm sorry that I go through periods where I neglect our relationship.  It isn't very nice of me to leave you sitting in the pantry, getting dusty, for weeks at a time.  It is especially not nice when the weather is cold and damp and miserable, since that is usually when your talents truly shine.

I know that today was sunny, and nice, with a crisp spring breeze, but I thought it was time we got caught up.  Plus, I had a turnip, some cauliflower and a lot of sweet potatoes that wanted to meet you.

Thank you, my slow-cooker friend, for being understanding and not holding a grudge.  The sweet potato-cauliflower-turnip soup we made together today was delicious.  It made the bellies of my child, my partner and myself very happy.  Although, I think the munchkin may have eaten more bun than anything else, she did seem to like the bites of soup that actually made it into her mouth.

Yours in deliciousness,
Me

If you want to make your own crock-pot improv soup for dinner, peel (if appropriate) and roughly dice whatever veggies you happen to have on hand (I especially like root veggies, and adding some onion, celery or carrots rarely goes awry).  Dump them in your slow cooker with 4-6 cups of water or broth, whatever spices you think will taste good, turn the cooker to low, and walk away for several hours.  If you want smooth soup, immersion blender it up if you have one!  If you want to make it more a meal, get some buns or bread and a salad to serve on the side.  

Happy Belated Pi Day!

Yesterday was Pi Day (March 14 aka 3/14 which, of course is the first three digits of the mathematical Pi 3.14159 . . . ).  I did not have time to do any baking yesterday, so I did my Pi day baking earlier today. 

As our produce delivery box recently came with a beautiful looking lemon, it was easy to decide on baking a lemon meringue pie.

I used this recipe from Canadian Living as my basis - I did not alter it too much.  I used a premade Tenderflake pie crust instead of making my own, I zested one entire lemon instead of only zesting a tablespoon of rind, icing sugar in the meringue instead of fruit sugar, and I added a splash of vanilla to the meringue.  I think it came out pretty well.

All the ingredients, ready to go

 The yellow bowl contains the lemon zest & cubed butter, the measuring cup is the fresh squeezed lemon juice, and the black bowl contains the egg yolks.

Here is my prepared pie crust, ready & waiting for the lemon curd.

This part of the process is a little tiring.  The below is the water, cornstarch, salt & sugar mixture.  You need to bring it to a boil, while continuously whisking.  If you stop whisking, you end up with a blob of burnt cornstarch & sugar at the bottom of your saucepan, instead of a thickened gel-like substance.  Then you temper the eggs by pouring a little bit of this into the yolks (while whisking, of course) and then pouring the whole kit-and-caboodle back into the saucepan for a little more cooking.  If you don't temper the eggs, you end up with scrambled egg yolks instead of curd.  It isn't as hard as it sounds, but your arms sure get tired!

Ah, here is my completed lemon curd, cooling down on the kitchen table.  I put plastic wrap over it so that it wouldn't form a skin while it cooled.

Here is my beautiful curd, resting in the pie shell.

Meringue time!  I like making meringue - for some reason, watching the booger-y egg whites turn into delicious sugary topping is weirdly appealing to me.

Here we have finished meringue, with lovely stiff peaks.

So much meringue on top of this pie!  I admit, I got lazy and didn't feel like busting out the piping bags, and just blobbed it on with a spoon, but I don't think it is a terrible aesthetic.

Finished pie!  At this point, I had just taken it out of the oven, and partner was desperate to cut into it.  I'm mean and made him wait until after supper.

So, partner cut the pie, and butchered it a little bit (he insisted that he could do it neatly with just the pie lifter and no knife.  I think we can all see how that turned out).  However, I think this clearly shows the lovely, yellow lemon curd layer beneath the giant heaping layer of meringue.  

Please ignore the fact that we are weak in the face of pie and ate half of it in the first go.

Have you made a pie in celebration of Pi Day? 

Note to Self: Next Summer, Make More Pesto!

My belly will be very sad when it realizes that the last of the pesto I made from my basil harvest in the garden this summer was part of tonight's (delicious) dinner.  The pesto was really tasty, and I am very sad there will be no more until the next harvest of basil comes in.  I am especially sad because the current weather reminds me that this is going to be months & months away!

Tonight's dinner was inspired by receiving this week's produce delivery box, and realizing that we had to use up some of last week's delivery so we could fit everything in the fridge!  I ended up making a quick & easy pasta with the pesto, tomatoes, mushrooms & spinach, and then a quick little salad.

Here's what you will need to make it yourself:

Squiggly pasta shapes (I used a combo of fusilli and scooby doo/cavatappi noodles, since they were open)
1/2 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes
2 cremini mushrooms, sliced
a large handful of spinach, washed & sliced thinly
1/2 small zucchini, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 small red onion, diced
olives - the black, wrinkly kind (optional) - as many as you like, because this one is really subjective
olive oil for frying
4 ice cubes worth of pesto (or about 4 tablespoons)

Start cooking your pasta as per package directions.
Heat up the olive oil over medium heat in a frying pan or large saucepan.  When the oil is warm, add your onion, and cook, stirring occasionally until starting to soften.  Add the garlic and spinach and cook another two minutes.  Dump in your cherry tomatoes, zucchini and mushrooms and continue to cook, stirring occasionally until everything is warmed through and the tomatoes start to wrinkle a little.  Then add your pesto and olives (if using).
At this point, your pasta should be cooked.  Drain off most of the water, and then add the pasta & remaining water to to your pan of sauce and stir/toss so the pasta gets completely coated.  Leave on low heat if you think it needs a little more cooking time, or you haven't started the salad yet because there is a toddler demanding your attention by holding onto your knee and yelling.

If you choose not to use olives in the pasta, I would recommend maybe adding some chili flakes, or some parmesan or other stronger, salty cheese, just to give it that little extra kick.

The salad I made was just a quick toss of romaine lettuce, two small, sliced carrots, orange bell pepper and avocado, since those were the quick veggies to hand.

I hope this is something you can use during your hectic days, since it comes together in just over the time it takes for the pasta to cook.

Tonight's Dinner: Potato & Leek Soup, Roasted Broccoli, Rice with Lentils

I'm officially on vacation this week, and so far, things have been pretty tasty.  I've made two kinds of buns and chocolate cookies, in addition to regular meals over the last few days.

Speaking of regular meals, tonight's was pretty delicious!  Here's what I did.

Rice with Lentils:
This bit wasn't from scratch.  I used minute rice and just added a cup or so of dried red lentils to it at the beginning so it all cooked together.

Roasted Garlic Broccoli with Oven Dried Tomatoes:
1-1 1/2lbs broccoli (about 4 small heads, or 1 large bunch) - broken into florets, with stems peeled & diced
1-3 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
oil-packed sun or oven dried tomatoes
salt & pepper to taste

Toss the broccoli with the garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice.  Spread in a single layer in the bottom of a small casserole dish, or on a foil lined baking sheet.  Dot with your dried tomatoes in oil.  Bake, uncovered, in a 425F oven for 16-20 minutes.

Potato & Leek Soup:
1 large leek, washed & chopped (all of the white bit, and as much of the green bit that's good - watch out for the sand in the crevices!)
2 tbsp butter or margarine, or some oil
4 potatoes, diced
4-5 cups broth (I only had 1 bouillon cube left, so I added that, water, and a handful of herbs)
1 cup milk
sour cream
salt & pepper to taste

Heat the butter in a large saucepan.  Add the chopped leek, and stir for about 5 minutes, until it is all well softened.  Add the broth and the diced potatoes, then bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, and cook until the potatoes are cooked through.  Turn off the heat (or remove the pot from the heat), and blend the soup (either with an immersion blender right in the pot, or remove to a blender and puree in batches).
Return the soup to the pot, add the milk and two big blobs of sour cream, and stir until combined.  If the soup is now too cool, heat on low until the soup is heated through.

I hope at least one of these dishes works out for you.  I'm currently really into soup, so if you have a good recipe you'd like to share, feel free!

Produce Delivery Box, Making Us Think Outside The Box!

A few weeks ago we signed up for one of those organic produce delivery services, that recently started delivering in our neighbourhood.
The theory is that it will keep our trips to the grocery store down, and help us to get more local and organic food in our bellies now that the farmers market is closed for the season.
So far, we have had two deliveries, and I think it is going pretty well.  It is certainly forcing us to think outside our usual food box a little bit!

I'm finding that it is stretching my brain to come up with ways to use up all the produce we've been receiving - especially when you remember that you are getting another box in a week's time!

Here's a short list of some of the stuff we have made with the 2 weekly produce boxes we've received so far:
watermelon radish chips
vegetable stew
thai curry veggie stir fry
garlic bok choi with red cabbage
sweet potato fries
sweet & regular potato mash
lots and lots of salad

This doesn't even take into account the apples, oranges, bananas (the bananas & oranges are clearly not local, but they are organic & fair trade) & pears we've received.

So, if anyone has any suggestions on how I can make salad more interesting, or how I should use up the remaining sweet potatoes, before this week's box which includes regular potatoes and yet more lettuce arrives, let me know!