Driftless Appetite

I bought this eggplant at the market because it looked like a person’s head.  I named it Jimmy.  Well, I think you can see where this is “headed”.  It’s been getting a little colder the past few days so I wanted to make a dish with a lot of spices and some heat.  I decided to make baigan bharta, a dish from the Punjab region (northwest) of India.  The word baigan means eggplant and the bharta means coal roasted.  I didn’t want to have to grill outside so I chose the next best thing, our gas stove.  An added bonus, grilling or roasting intensifies the taste of the eggplant.  I think Jimmy enjoyed being roasted. 

Jimmy gets a tan.

Continue reading Baigan Bharta

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the nationwide recall of more than half a billion eggs.  Buying locally produced eggs does not mean that one is absolutely safe from salmonella infection but the risk is greatly reduced.  Compared to eggs from a small local farm, the chickens from these giant “egg factories” do not live outdoors in small flocks and feed on grass.  They are confined with barely enough space.  A battery cage can contain up to 100,000 chickens all in a tight space which is very unsanitary and is the perfect breeding ground for spreading salmonella infection.  I highly recommend the documentary Food Inc. if you’d like to know more about eggs and other food sold in standard supermarkets.

This is what a healthy and happy chicken looks like.

Continue reading “Burpy Eggs”

Hello everyone, this is what we had for dinner yesterday.  What could be better than a BLT sandwich on a hot summer night?  Whenever we’ve bought a package of bacon from Lois of Marr’s Valley View Farms this season, we’ve cooked all of it so that we have ready to eat bacon to use anytime.  The best way to cook bacon is by baking it in the oven (tip from Alton Brown).  Place bacon pieces on a rack with a drip pan underneath, set the oven at 400 degrees F.  The pan should start in the oven cold.  Once, it reaches 400 degrees F, turn the oven off and let bacon cook a few more minutes until brown and crispy.  Marr’s bacon are thick sliced.  You might have to take the pan out as soon as it reaches temperature for the thinner sliced bacon.

Continue reading BLT Sandwich

This has got to be my favorite time for local food.  Farm stands are everywhere.  Right now there’s a lot of sweet corn, eggplant, zucchinis (what to do?), and tomatoes.  I have been eating tomatoes everyday for the past two weeks.  I’ve made tomato omelettes, tomato and cheddar cheese sandwiches, tomato sauce on pasta, tomato salad, BLT’s, fried tomatoes and salsa so far.  Do you have any suggestions on how else I could possibly enjoy them?   The giant heirloom tomato (on the next page) was the size of three fists.  I used it to make a huge batch of salsa. Continue reading Heirloom Tomato Salsa

Have you ever had seen or heard about this warty looking vegetable?  The ampalaya belongs to the same family as pumpkins and watermelons.  Unlike pumpkins and watermelons, ampalaya is extremely bitter.  Recently, I brought a couple of pieces home from my grandparents’ garden in Illinois.  When I was young it was “Leslie finish your ampalaya before you can leave the dinner table.”  Believe me, it was a lot worst than what some American kids have to go through with brocolli.  After many years, I finally grew to love the last of the basic tastes, bitterness.

Continue reading Itlog at Ampalaya (Eggs & Bitter Melon)

I was not much of a tea drinker before I met Keith.  His family is English so he grew up drinking it every morning and afternoon.  Keith prefers his tea with milk and sugar but I like mine plain.  Last Saturday, I made some cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches.  The raspberry pie was from a different weekend but I wanted to share it since it looks so lovely with the flower cutouts.  The cucumbers came from my grandmother’s garden and the raspberries were from Bures.  We sipped Twinings Ceylon tea.

Cucumber Sandwiches, ButtonHill, Raspberry pie, Ceylon tea

Continue reading An Afternoon Tea

It’s raspberry season so naturally I had to make a special trip to my favorite berry farm, Bures Berry Patch.  I called Cathy Bures a few days before going to the farm wanting 10 lbs.  She was surprised that I wanted that much so I reduced my order to 5 lbs. so as not to appear too nutty.  If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, I have a penchant for buying ridiculous amounts of berries for a two person household.  See what I mean here for strawberries and here for blueberries.  The best way to freeze berries is to spread them evenly on a sheet pan and freeze.  After that, you can transfer them into freezer bags.  That way you end up with individual berries not a huge block.

Continue reading Whole Wheat Raspberry Pancakes

Last Saturday at the market, we saw these lovely shelling peas at Mary Buckhaus’ stand and I thought rice and peas for one of our weeknight meals would be perfect.  It was also a steal at $3.00 a pound. 

Not to be confused with the classic Venetian dish, risi e bisi, which is more of a soup/stew, our version has a thicker and creamier consistency. 

Continue reading Risotto con Zafferano e Piselli

Sweet Ruby Baby when is this madness gonna end!?!  For the past few weeks and continuing, I’ve been collecting gallons of those little yellow flowers WHICH-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED and their fluffy kind.  In addition, my inner “Martha” finally kicked in and went through the first dreaded visit  to the garden.  I plucked away 2 feet tall of those aforementioned flowers and had a tug of war game with two trees.  Tree number two won but later lost when Keith cut it down with an axe. 

Continue reading Sweet Ruby Baby

Hi, remember me?   I used to have something to do with this blog too…

I’ve been traveling quite a bit for work and just been so busy that I haven’t been pulling my weight around here.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been eating though.  A few weeks ago, Leslie wrote about a trip to the Mineral Point Farmers Market.  We bought an exquisite pork shoulder roast from Marr’s Valley View Farm and the next night we slow cooked it and served it with asparagus (from Bures Berry Patch). 

Doesn’t that pork look good enough to eat raw?  The asparagus too! (I actually did eat some of that raw.)  By the way, how great is Leslie’s new Sigma 50mm macro lens? 

  Continue reading Oven BBQ Pork