Cranberry Love

Let's call cranberries the bookend fruit of 2013. I started the year with a cranberry buckle, and I think I'm going to end it perfecting the bars below.

On Thanksgiving day, along with the perfectly jelled cranberry sauce from a can, we had some homemade sauce. Some years I dress it up with citrus and rosemary, but this year I kept it simple : cranberries, sugar and water. Either way, I love it!

With our small gathering {and their even smaller appetite for cranberry sauce}, we had plenty of extra for playing with. I added a layer to our cheese plate's bucheron ::

And a cup of the leftover sauce was used to make these Cranberry-Nut Streusel Bars ::

They were delicious, but just like my photographs, with a little experimenting, we can do better! The recipe asks you to use the same crumbly streusel topping for the top and bottom of the bars. It made them very crumbly and almost impossible to pick up {but delicious}. I was excited to make them because they reminded me of a raspberry bar in our local coffee shop, but that bar as a more substantial cookie/shortbread type bottom, which should be easy to make with a bit of experimenting. I'll let you know how it goes, but in the meantime, we figured out that these are just perfect crumbled over a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Friday Links

Finally, the switch was flipped, and we're excited to start cooking up some fall dishes.

Sarah baked a wheat-free sweet potato pie {link soon to be added!}.

Guests were coming for breakfast on Tuesday, so we baked this almond poppy seed bread {the recipe makes two, so you can give away or freeze one!}, and this apple buckle. Have you ever baked a buckle? They are like a fruit-filled coffee cake. Perfectly moist with a crumbly, nutty topping. So easy to bake the night before and have ready for guests. They recommended serving that one with sweetened sour cream, but a dollop of plain yogurt works well too.

Working our way through the sweet potatoes, I made some curried lentils and sweet potatoes on Wednesday. This we have been eating with a dollop of sour cream.

Next week? We're thinking about apple crisp, some pumpkin {squash} risotto, and the swiss chard and sweet potato gratin {we have a lot of sweet potatoes!}.

The photo at the top of this list? It's the most delicious quiche we've cooked up in a while :: mushroom, leek, and arugula! I sautéd the leeks and mushrooms in some butter until the leeks were translucent and the mushrooms cooked down to my liking. The arugula was chopped up and added it to my milk, egg, and cheese mixture {I use about four eggs, 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese and about two cups of milk?}. The mushrooms and leeks were added to the pie crust first, then I poured the milk mixture over it and topped it with another 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar. And yes, I cheated with the store-bought crust. That's what happens when you have a last-minute idea that's too good to ignore on your way home from work.

Are you filling up on sweet potatoes and apples too?

If you have a few hours to spare this weekend {all you need are two!}, grab yourself five pounds of fresh from the farmer's field tomatoes and make some jam. You won't regret it.

This is another recipe from the Food in Jars blog, and it can be found in the recently released Food in Jars cookbook. As I've mentioned before, I love the Food in Jars recipes precisely because they are written for small-scale projects. Working through one recipe won't take your whole day, and it's great for testing out new recipes like this jam because if you don't like it, you aren't left with quarts of jam to give away. But you're going to like the jam, so if you want to give some away, follow our lead and make a second batch.

This is one of those absurdly simple recipes, you don't have to peel or seed the tomatoes, just throw them in the pot with the rest of the ingredients and let it simmer.

In about two hours you go from the pot above to the one below::

Then it's just a matter of putting it in jars and processing {the processing directions are presented clearly at the beginning of the cookbook, making it your one-stop-shop}.

And as for serving, we've come up with a few options. Sarah likes hers spread over toast. I like mine spread over cream cheese on a toasted bagel. Calder likes his with cheddar cheese and some crackers.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's definitely a rich jammy, jam. It's sweet, tomato-y, warm from the cloves and cinnamon, and spicy from the pepper flakes.

We're still feasting on farm-fresh summer veggies! Here's what we did with our share the week before everyone scattered for work & vacay::

I posted about the birthday carrot cake here. If you have some extra carrots and a can of coconut milk, get to it.

With the rest of our carrots, we whipped up a supper easy carrot salad.

It was three weeks ago and I can't exactly remember the ingredients, but it was some combination of carrots, raisins, roasted walnuts, and parsley. The dressing was a simple combo of lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and ... ?

So many of our vegetables are roasted each week {on Tuesday night I immediately made a pan of roasted veg from that day's box}. Since we were flush with three medium sized zucchinis, I did a lot of roasting. I like to keep the zucchini pieces relatively large when roasting, it creates juicy delicious pieces of zuke for eating. One night I did a pan of just zucchini with some olive oil and salt, then before we were leaving I did another pan of zucchini and eggplant.

Between the carrot salad and the roasted zucchini and eggplant, it was easy to throw together delicious salads for lunch as we were busy packing for our trips.

On the menu this week? Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

Yes, more food. It's the summer of good eats. Yesterday was Sarah's birthday, and I was armed with fresh carrots from Tuesday's farm share pick-up. So a carrot cake was born.


I used my mom's recipe, that was someone else's before hers and someone else's before that. It's a great cake. It's really easy to make, particularly if you have all of the ingredients {I had to run out and pick up some walnuts, because we weren't going to have a carrot cake without nuts ~ what's a healthy cake without nuts?}.

Ingredients ::

~ 2 cups sugar {I used 1 cup sugar and a 1/2 cup brown sugar}
~ 3 eggs
~ 1 cup oil {I was being tricky and used 1/2 cup oil and a 1/2 cup buttermilk}
~ 2 cups flour {I used the full flour amount but also threw in a 1/4 cup of ground flax seeds}
~ 1.5 tsp salt
~ 2 tsp baking soda
~ 1 tsp cinnamon
~ 3 cups grated carrots
~ 1/2 cup chopped pecans {I used a little bit over a 1/2 cup of a walnuts}

Directions :: Mix sugar, eggs and oil together. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until moistened. Pour into a greased bundt pan or 9x13 inch baking pan. Bake at 350F for 45 minutes.

I wanted a layer cake, so I baked it in two 9? inch pans ~ it made for skinnier cakes, but they were just perfect for layering. Of course, I kept my eye on it and reduced the baking time accordingly.

But wait, there's more! I asked Sarah if she wanted frosting, because I know there are some family members that don't want frosting near their carrot cake. She did, but she didn't say explicitly that she wanted cream cheese frosting. So I went out on a limb and whipped up some coconut milk frosting for the first time. It was fantastic!

Ingredients ::

~ 1 can light coconut milk
~ 7.5 tsp flour
~ 1.5 cups butter
~ 1.5 cups powered sugar
~ 1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk the coconut milk and flour in a saucepan. Bring it to a low simmer and continue whisking and simmering for about five minutes. Take it off the heat and let it cool completely {great time to go fiddle in the garden}.

In a mixer, whisk together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the coconut mixture and extract and continue to mix until your frosting is light and fluffy. It looks like the frosting may separate, but if you stick with it, everything will be fine. I put my mixer on a high speed and let it go for a minute or so. I don't really taste the coconut, but you could remedy that by adding coconut extract. This is similar in design to the cloudburst frosting. I like both because they are nice solid frostings that really hold their shape when spread on a cake.



Happy Birthday Sarah*

Today's the day to pick up our next box of vegetables from the farm! By Saturday night we had completely exhausted the last box of veggies, and since then we've been eating cereal and reminding each other that the good eating starts again on Tuesday. Here's what we did with the last delivery ::

The salmon seaweed salad and slaw were the dishes that really stood out for me this week.

Unfortunately both were gobbled up during late night dinners, so I have no pictures to share, but I don't want to forget the recipes, there are no measurements, just a list of ingredients & descriptions.

For the slaw I wanted to recreate a delicious and surprisingly light slaw that I had at Route 6. The first thing I noticed about their slaw was how tender the cabbage was. I had been slicing my cabbage {with a knife} when making salads and slaws. This time I decided to grate the cabbage, and I think the smaller pieces made a huge difference. To the cabbage I added grated carrot and very thinly sliced white onion.

For the dressing, I mixed together mayo, dijon mustard, celery seeds, and fresh lemon juice ~ I think the celery seed and lemon juice were the two flavors I tasted at Route 6 that really made their version taste light, and it worked at home too. Of course, the longer this sits, the better it gets, but ours only lasted about 24 hours and by the end we were racing each other to the last bite.

The salmon seaweed salad is a variation on the Kyoto salad from Sprout Cafe. I was at Sprout in May when I was in CA for work, and I've been thinking about recreating that salad ever since.

The original salad calls for tuna, wakame seaweed, somen noodles, firm tofu, nori, edamame, kaiware sprout, carrots, sesame seeds, miso sesame dressing.

Our salad included :: mixed greens, grilled salmon, wakame seaweed, avocado, black beans, cucumbers, corn, grated carrots, nori, and sesame seeds.

Wakame seaweed is the deep green seaweed found in the salads in Japanese or sushi restaurants. I love those salads, and really wanted to be able to make them at home, but I didn't have a clue where to find the seaweed {I was expecting to see it fresh, not dried in stores}. It wasn't until I heard an interview with David Tanis on The Splendid Table, that I realized I should be looking for dried wakame and rehydrating it.

After rehydrating the seaweed, I added a dressing of rice wine vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce and lemon juice. Back to the large salad ~ rather than making one big salad these were made in separate bowls for each individual. We piled the greens and veggies in the bowls. Added a nice serving of the dressed seaweed salad {about a 1/3 of a cup}, and then topped it with the grilled salmon. I didn't added anymore dressing than what was on the seaweed and this worked perfectly for a light, summer salad.

That's a wrap.

Oh man, we're having a lazy blogging/email week around these parts. That's what happens during a busy work week ~ so much time spent looking at the screen that I can't bear an extra minute.

Anywho, in the evenings we've been cooking up a storm : salmon salads, slaws, and seaweed salads {our most exciting find of the week}. But this post is all about fungi for the fun guys. yep

When we were in Philly a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a delicious mushroom tart I had at Parc. It's on their appetizer menu, but I ordered it as my main course for brunch, and it knocked my socks off. The crust was flaky pastry dough, on it was a layer of cooked mushrooms that were chopped so fine it could have been a paste. The mushrooms were topped by a layer of gruyere cheese then a layer of sliced mushrooms. The finishing touch was a drizzle of truffle oil.

I thought about that tart every day for about a week after eating it {not even joking}. This is my lazy man's rustic mushroom tart.

I began by making a basic pie crust. I make mine in the food processor, and recently read a tip that makes remembering the ingredient ratios so easy : 3, 2, 1. Three parts flour, two parts butter, one part water. I didn't even roll out the pie crust, I just pressed it into my 8 inch cast iron skillet.

I then chopped up some mushrooms, sautéd then in butter, and at the very end added just a dash of water so that I could deglaze the pan and keep all the good flavors. That process was repeated with the sliced mushrooms for the top layer. Fresh thyme and rosemary were added to the chopped mushrooms. I then layered everything into the pan: chopped mushrooms, grated gruyere, sliced mushrooms. Here's what it looked like before baking ::

It was baked at 350F until the cheese was bubbling and the crust was nicely browned. When it came out of the oven, I topped it with some fried sage leaves {We were having fun picking and using fresh herbs for this recipe. Mint went into our mojitos and basil in our salad.} and a few nasturtiums.

My mom asked if I added any eggs for binding. I didn't, but I might add one next time, especially if I make the chopped mushroom layer finer. This particular version turned out perfect without anything binding it together. We were even able to pick it up and eat pieces from our hand without it falling all over the place. You may have noticed that I forgot the truffle oil. It was delicious without, but I can guarantee that there will be another mushroom tart in the oven this weekend with truffle oil.

Do you have farm shares or community supported agriculture (CSA) programs where you live? Living in Philadelphia and Boston for 10+ years, we had some CSA opportunities, but now many. So we were blown away when there were over a dozen local farms offering farm shares in our current town. In early spring, we went to a CSA "open house" where we got to meet the many farmers, learn about their programs, the vegetables {and in some cases, meats, eggs, and dairy items} they offered. We decided to go with one of the smaller, newer farms. Our choice was partly based upon convenience {their pick-up times and locations fit our schedule}, but also because we were excited to support people our age that were taking the big leap into farming.

This afternoon we'll pick up our 4th box of veggies from a local farm. Since we're a small household, we signed up for a 1/2 share of vegetables from the farm, which means that we pick up a box of vegetables every other week from May through October. And of course I can't help but photograph them. Here's our share from June 26th and what became of everything::

For tonight's box, we have to choose between kale or beets. While I love some hearty greens, there was a resounded shout out for more beets from Sarah and Calder. And who can argue when the beets are looking so beautiful this year?

We supplemented those veggies with store-bought asparagus, potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions, along with more bell peppers, because one doesn't cut it when there's hummus to eat.

Couscous and quinoa salads are staples around here; I like to have one in the fridge at all times because they make quick & healthy lunches. I just cook the grain or pasta with some vegetable bouillon and then add whatever chopped vegetables I have on hand. Lately I've like the carrots and turnips grated. And if I'm adding kale, beets, or beet greens, I cook those first. I used to add a simple vinaigrette, but have skipped it and no one has complained.

The evening before the next pick-up, I clear our vegetable drawers of any last vegetables from the previous share. Depending upon what's left, we might throw together a stir fry or salad, but last night, we had the perfect combination for a pan of roasted veggies. From the far we had : beets, turnips, the broccoli, and some carrots remaining. So I chopped them up and added an onion, some potatoes, and asparagus. I drizzled it with olive oil and added some fresh rosemary and thyme.

Everything goes in the oven at about 350F. I stir it a few times while it's in the oven, and keep my eye on it until it's done. Broccoli may seem like the odd veggie in this combo, but it's so delicious roasted! When the pan came out of the oven, C and I ate almost all of the broccoli before we sat down.

I paired the veggies with our go-to simple poached fish. For this we combine equal parts soy and fish sauce. Add a tablespoon or so of brown sugar and a couple cloves of crushed garlic. I wrap 1 fish fillet in foil with a few pats of butter and some sliced shiitakes and the poaching liquid. It goes in the oven for about 10 minutes and it's done!

Last night's fish was topped with some fresh mango ~ paired with the poaching sauce it's a perfect combination of sweet and salty.

What are you eating lately? On the menu this week is a mushroom tart and a lot of veggies.

And while I was taking that first picture of our veg box, the Cash and Charlie were being curious/causing trouble ::

Berry Crumbled. berry, berry crumbled...

It started with this box of fresh currants. My mom picked them up at a friend's farm and then passed them off to me for experimenting.

This was my first box of fresh currants, and I wasn't sure what to do with them. Add them to a salad? Bake them into some scones? Turn them into a tiny batch of jam? But then Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for a Triple Berry Summer Buttermilk Bundt {say that three times fast}. Her recipe used blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. I used the fresh currents, some sweet cherries and blueberries for mine. And then, in a feat of baking magic, I turned that bundt cake into a berry, berry crumbled cake.

The cake was baked on Thursday and traveled with us to Philly for the weekend where it was reduced to a smidgen of its former self. I guess we can all conclude that what it lacked in form it made up for in taste! It really was delicious. I think the lemon's worth of tart zest mixing with the sweet berries is what really made the cake. And the colors were perfect for our little pre-forth jaunt.

Happy Forth of July! I hope you find a pool to swim in and a watermelon to spoon.

We've been eating our way through the strawberries from this post. It's been a funny year for strawberries in Central PA, the early hot spell, following by days of rain and cooler weather have caused some farms in our area to not even open for a you-pick seasons, others have opened with a short couple of weeks of picking. We were lucky to get in early, pick our share, and feast on them ever since.

Many berries were sliced and frozen ~ those we're nibbling straight from the freezer and blending in smoothies.

A few handfuls were sprinkled with sugar and frozen with their sweet juice ~ those will be thawed in the heat of summer for strawberry shortcakes.

Then there were the strawberries that were mixed with rhubarb for pie::

Weeks later and I'm still thinking about that pie. It was enjoyed as a dessert on the first evening, and then eaten with yogurt for breakfast the rest of the week! I followed this recipe, but added a bit of flax seed to the crumb crust ~ they add a bit of nutty flavor and a good dose of omega-3s. A healthy breakfast, no?

A whole pile of berries went into Nigella Lawson's strawberry ice cream. You can find the recipe by clicking on that link, and it's published in Forever Summer. I highly recommend the cookbook ~ it's couldn't be more perfect, being full of all sorts of dishes and drinks to inspire your summer eating.





But back to the ice cream, it's make using a custard base that's cooked on the stove top. It takes a bit more time and energy than some of the quicker, more basic ice cream recipes, but when you have strawberries this sweet and fresh, I think they are worthy of your effort!

And finally, we made some mighty fine strawberry sauce. Our intention was to make a small batch of this strawberry vanilla jam, but we didn't cook quite it long enough to reach the jell stage.

Unfortunate? Just for our hips, because we've been eating this sauce at a faster rate than we would have any jar of jam. The sauce has gone into morning cups of yogurt {as pictured}, it's gone on the strawberry ice cream {with some fluff and nutella if you're C}, and it's been added to seltzer water and Rhuby for a fine summer drink.

As strawberry season comes to an end, we're dreaming up recipes for the green huckleberries along our hiking route as we wait for them to ripen.

How do you eat your watermelon? I take mine with a spoon.

Food! What do you think of the little post header? I've been playing around, and wanted to find a fun way to highlight a post's topic. This post? It's about food.

We signed up for a half share of produce from a local farm, and let me tell you, picking the farm was hard in a fun way. We're lucky enough to have about a dozen different local farms the offer CSA programs. We ended up going with a young couple with a farm that's only a few years old, not because old farmers aren't really awesome, but because it's also fun to support people our age following their dreams ~ I'm sure jumping into this was scary and exciting for them. Anyhoo, they lease the some their land from a sheep farmer, so we'll also be able to buy lambs and other meats from them too. And they partner with a chicken farmer who supplies us with a dozen eggs in our box.


This week we received a whole pile of greens {kale, lettuce, bok choy}, some radishes, turnips, dill, and kohlrabi. Using the eggs, radishes and dill, I put together a great egg salad. I just mix those ingredients with some mayo, salt, and Dijon mustard.

We use a few more eggs to whip up a quiche. This was an experiment for us, in that we used grated potatoes for the crust. The end result was delicious, and I have a feeling this will become the standard since C's a wheat-free eater. The quiche's filling was a combination of mushrooms and onions sauteed in butter, steamed asparagus {from another local farm}, and cheddar cheese.

And last, but not least, we used the rest of the dill to make this fresh beet salad. We picked up the beets when we went strawberry picking, but hopefully we'll get some in our box next week! The beets were grated and mixed with the chopped dill. We drizzled it with the juice of one lemon, a few tablespoons of olive oil, and then tossed in some toasted mustard seeds.

After this first veggie-filled week, we're excited for a whole season of fresh foods! Along with the eating, I'm hoping to improve my food-photography skills...

Coffee!

A few years ago, C and I really got into thinking about and coming up with new year's resolutions. I may have even mentioned a few here and there on the blog. Nothing big, just fun hobbies or skills would would like to learn or improve upon {becoming a better violin & ukulele player, perfecting new dishes in the kitchen, etc}. It's silly but nice to set these fun goals and see our life become a little bit richer. Well, funny thing is two weeks ago Calder pulled up the "2012 resolutions" document on his phone and we noticed that we've made very little progress this year. Of course, traveling to Thailand for a cooking class is a serious commitment towards improving my Thai cooking abilities, but I have yet to put together a curry since I've been back. So, after laughing at our lack of commitment to this year's resolutions, we added a new section to the document where we would list our unexpected new skills; the things we happened to learn or spend some time exploring that we didn't even think about on January 1st. So far we've added one item to the list :: coffee roasting. Flossie gave us a primer on Easter Sunday and since then we've been going at it like gang busters.

It's surprisingly simple to roast your own coffee, but the fun begins when you start to think about the wide variety of bean and roast combinations. Flossie gave us a "starter set" of beans to get us going, some from Indonesia, India, and Costa Rica, and both caffeinated and decaf. Her favorite {and ours as it turns out} was the Costa Rican Tarrazu. Once you have your beans, you can start to think about how roasted you want them to be. The beans will have their own distinct flavors depending upon where and how they were grown. By roasting the beans, you begin to override those flavors with the flavor of the bean's sugars that begin to caramelize and the "roast" flavor. Depending upon your bean and the level of roasting, in some cases you can produce chocolaty or nutty flavors, other times it can just taste burned. With very light roasts, a lot of the bean's natural flavor remains, but by the time you get to a French or Double Roast, you loose all of the bean's natural flavor.

The photos below provide a snapshot of our first big roast. Begin by gathering your supplies :: the green beans, a popcorn maker, a large bowl, and a trusty assistant {Ca$h is standing in for Calder at the moment}.

A few supply notes :: You can order your beans online, which is what we planned on doing, but then we stopped by our local roaster and found that he would sell us beans at wholesale price {about $6/lb!}. Having this local source is great while we're still experimenting ~ we can stop by and pick up a few pounds of a few different varieties, and then do some taste tests.

As for the equipment, you read that correctly ~ we're using your basic popcorn popper. BUT as our wise teacher explained, you have to get a popper that has a solid metal cup for the popping, as opposed to one with a screen in the bottom. The beans produce a lot of dried chaff as they're roasting, which could get caught in the screens and catch fire. With the solid bottom, the chaff just flies up and out of the popper. Between the chaff flying around, the smoke, and the carbon dioxide that's released while roasting, this is an activity that should only be done outdoors.

To begin roasting, you just have to add your green beans to the popper and turn it on.

As the beans begin to roast, you'll notice a few things. First, and most obvious, they will begin to darken. Second, they will expand in size, for this reason you don't want to fill your popper to the top {this would also cause problems with even roasting}. Third, you'll eventually begin to hear a popping sound. This is called the "crack", beans have two cracking stages, and these are temperature dependent. With our beans and popper, we found that the first crack occurred somewhere around the 3-4 minute mark, and the second crack occurred around 8 minutes.The timing of the crack is temperature dependent, so your roasting times will vary depending upon the outside temperature, how windy it is, and whether or not you keep the lid on your popper.

C and I tend to favor a darker roast, so we began to experiment with longer roast times. This first batch we roasted beyond the second crack {about 10 minutes}. It would be considered a double or French roast. It was our darkest roast yet, and after a taste test, we realized that this was too dark for our liking. We prefer the full {also called Viennese} roast that occurs towards the end of the second crack.

Green coffee beans can be stored for years and still maintain a high level of quality, roasted beans, on the other hand are at their highest quality for just a few days to weeks after they've been roasted. So we'll be out on the deck again this weekend roasting the beans for next week! And thanks again for the lesson, Flossie ~ you created a couple of roasting monsters.