Food

I have decided that kale is one of my new favorite veggies and definitely my favorite green.  Kale is hearty and strong.  It stays good for a long time and it doesn’t wilt easily.  I like it, I like it a lot.

Related, I had a ton of random veggies leftover that I didn’t know what to do with until I found this absolutely fool-proof recipe for a Panade.  The steps are easy and it came out perfect and tasty.  Into mine went beet greens, bok choy, kale, dandelion greens, carrots, corn, yellow squash, kohlrabi, sausage, onion, garlic, and parmesan cheese.  We had a ton of old leftover bread.  I didn’t even have to use fancy bakery bread, just a bunch of old regular sliced Mrs. Bairds bread.

Give it a try.  It’s a great way to get rid of leftovers.

Some friends of ours have recently started baking bread and have been kind enough to give us their extra loaves when they got ’em.  This bread is absolutely deeeelicious and inspired me to want to make bread.  I think I would have stayed wanting to do this and not actually doing it if it weren’t for a wonderful couple that Kraft knows that has 5 kids.  One of the kids is having surgery this week (say a little prayer).  The mom told me that the hardest meal that they have to get together is breakfast.  So I am trying my hand at baking bread so maybe it will give them a hand come breakfast time.

This morning I started by making scones since they are pretty easy and require no yeast.  They turned out good.  This upped my confidence for actual yeast bread.  Just 5 minutes ago I pulled my first batch of bread out of the oven.  Two huge and weirdly shaped but pretty nonetheless honey wheat loaves.  It is amazing to see dough rise. 

I’m just really excited.  We just tasted it and it wasn’t knock your socks off bread but it wasn’t bad like I was expecting it to be.  Baking bread is kinda like making tamales, it’s pretty time intensive because of all the steps but it’s not hard and is pretty fun.  I can’t wait to make a couple other kinds of bread tomorrow.

Makes you not ever want grocery store bread again.

It’s been a while since I’ve spotlighted a weird veggie.  We
got one in our CSA box last week and finally cooked it up yesterday. 
It was tasty but I’m still not sure what kohlrabi tastes like since the
flavor got buried in egg and onion and ham (Kohlrabi Ham Bake). 

One thing’s for sure, the recipe said to peel it before dicing
and cooking.  I usually don’t peel my veggies and have found that it
works pretty well for me.  Potatoes have much more nutrient value if
you eat the skins, if beets are small enough they are tender even with
the skins on, I just scrub carrots really well.  It’s easier to wash
them well than to peel a bunch of them. 

That being said, kohlrabi does
not fall into this category.  I half-heartedly peeled it before cutting
it up and throwing it in the saute pan.  Yuck.  There were more than a
few bites that I got peel and it was fibrous and tough.  Kinda like
chewing on burlap.  Kraft said he didn’t get any of that but I suspect
he just didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Interesting vegetable, though, be sure to peel it.

When we were planning our trip to NY Kraft asked me what I wanted to do in the city.  The only thing I for sure wanted to do was eat pancakes at the Clinton Street Baking Co.  We learned about this restaurant on “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”.

First off, let me say that restaurants in NYC are tiny and crammed with tables.  These places are very efficient with their space.  So we walk into this place that has no more than 12 tables and bump into the owner.  I recognized him from the TV show.  He stopped and looked at Olivia and said, “Ah, well, aren’t you guys brave to be out there with her?”  And smiled and walked out.  Super nice guy.  We got a table immediately.  Kraft ordered the blueberry pancakes (their famous for these) and I ordered their banana and chocolate pancakes.

It was a really hard hike to this place.  It was really snowing a lot.  The ground was slushy.  I was slipping all over the place.  Man, these pancakes better be worth all this trouble.  They totally were.  Oh my goodness, these pancakes were delicious.  Mine had fried bananas on top with a drizzle of chocolate sauce.  They are served with warm maple butter.  That’s right, m-a-p-l-e b-u-t-t-e-r.  I’m so sad that they don’t have this in Austin.  I’ve never eaten such good pancakes.  I don’t know what their recipe is for them but I will definitely be trying Bobby Flay’s recipe and see if they’re anywhere near as good.

If you are in NY, go to this place.  Really, you’ll love it.

I’m sure I’ll talk about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs a lot so might as well bring it up now 🙂

Around October we decided to join a CSA with some friends and split a share.  How this works is you pay up front to a small, locally owned, organic farm and every week you get a box full of veggies of whatever they harvested.  We split a share with some friends because a share can feed a family of four and it halves the price.  We began with Hands of the Earth Farm which has now given their farm to the Urban Roots.  A fantastic non-profit.  Urban Roots is having a CSA but it’s a little more expensive than we can afford right now since part of the money goes to pay for the veggies and another part is a kind-of donation to the program.  Maybe one day we will have enough extra income to join this CSA but for now we had to find a different one.  We ended up going with Johnson’s Backyard Garden.  (Which, by the way, has a fantastic blog if you’re interested in this kind of thing).

Because of this, we have eaten way more veggies than we ever would have otherwise.  Not to mention it has expanded our culinary world to veggies I’m pretty sure I would never have given the time of day.  Consequently, I have really developed a love of cooking.  This is hindered by the Squeaker’s constant need to be in my arms but we do the best we can.

This brings me to my point.  In this week’s box we got a batch of beets.  Before joining the CSA I had only eaten canned beets when my mom was on this weird diet.  They were plain gross.  After getting them several times in our boxes I figured I should give them another try.  I roasted them several times which turned out good.  But tonight I found a recipe that was dee-licious.  Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens.  So if you hate beets, give this one a try.  It’s very refreshing and not overly beety.  I also love that you can use the whole veggie and not just throw out the leafy part.

If it makes it more palatable you can picture Dwight and Mose picking the beets.  Hmm, maybe that’s less palatable.

Turnips would probably not appear on the all-time favorite veggie list but for some reason I love them.  I’m not sure why I like them.  They’re kinda bitter and aren’t the prettiest girl at the party but I love to use them in anything I can.  I have slipped them into soups, chili, quiche, and casseroles.  I think I like them because they are the underdog of the root family.  Knowing this, I have decided to make sure Olivia likes them, too.  So far the foods that she has eaten have been rice cereal, carrots, and peas.  Today I gave her pureed turnips.  I was super surprised how good turnips taste pureed.  The bitterness is gone and they taste very fresh and light.  The texture is interesting too because it feels like you’re eating pureed pears but there is no sweetness at all.  So, if you’re hesitant to try turnips, perhaps you should start like O and try them first pureed.  I bet if you add a little butter and salt and pepper they are closer to tasting like mashed potatoes than mashed cauliflower which seems to be a popular substitute.  Oh, and by the way, O really liked them.  Thank God because I went a bit overboard and made a ton.