Porterhouse

Dear guy from Fertile Plains:

This is what we did with your porterhouse:

This is what we did TO your porterhouse:

Thank you. That is all.

Sausage and Peppers Revisited, with Calzone leftovers!

Last summer, I made a delicious meal of Sausage and Peppers from ingredients from our farm share and farmer's market. This year, I did the same, with a few changes, and had left overs, since it was just my kids and me having the food.

I may even call this version better.

For Sausage and Peppers:
1 package of good sweet Italian sausage (we got this from the Pork Guy (Fertile Plains))
2 thin skinned sweet green peppers, sliced thinly
1 bulb of a spring red onion, sliced
1 bulb of a spring garlic (this looks like a garlic with a scallion-like top on it, but when you cut into the head, it has no "skins" separating the cloves), chopped
leaves from 2 stems of fresh oregano
salt/pepper
scant cup of water

Brown sausages on all sides, remove from pan, slice into bite-sized pieces, and return to pan. Add pepper, onions, garlic, salt & pepper (to taste) and oregano, and mix. Add a scant cup of water to the pan and scrape anything there is from the bottom of the pan. Cover tightly with a lid and continue cooking about 10 minutes more. Serve with pasta, or rice, or not :)

We had about half of the dish left over, and I was not sure what to do with it. Then I remembered something from my childhood: Sausage rolls! Of course, I had no idea how to make them. Mine came out more like a calzone but who cares? They were fantastic.

If you have one, go to Trader Joe's and get a pizza crust dough. It's in the refrigerated section near the cheese, and it costs .99. If you don't have a TJ's you'll have to make your own, or find another brand, but I have not had any as good as the TJ's ones. Also pick up a jar of TJ's marinara sauce (if you don't have any at home) and a bag of shredded mozzerella cheese (we used the lower fat version)

Let the dough sit at room temperature for 20 minutes. Break into 2 pieces and work each piece into a round. Place rounds on a pizza stone. working on a 1/2 round, layer sauce, sausage and peppers, more sauce, and cheese. Fold over and crimp the edge, and pierce with a knife or fork to make vents. Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.

My son had no idea that this was essentially the same dish that we had for dinner last night so YAY for hiding the leftovers!

Farmer's Market Eats

This morning, my husband made breakfast--a fruit salad of cherries, black raspberries, and strawberries, followed by eggs, bacon, and scrapple (scrapple for him, bacon for me). The best part about the whole thing is that every single ingredient with the exception of salt & pepper came from either our farm share or the Reston Farmer's Market. It was a great morning.

For dinner tonight, we had a freezer meal (Pork Chops with good stuff) but on the side, we had a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and red spring onions, with dill. Again, all of the fresh/raw ingredients in the salad were from the farmer's market.

I absolutely love summer! This Saturday at the Reston Market, we picked up the aforementioned bacon and scrapple, and black raspberries and cherries, plus goat cheese, the red spring onions, tomatoes, garlic curls, and a whole mess of baby zucchini. We're redoing our kitchen this summer, and I am not at all worried because I can honestly live on raw foods and cheese. As long as I have a fridge, I'm good to go.


It's interesting that the newsletter that we get from our farm share encourages you to go to local farmer's markets in addition to eating what we get from the farm. Although Potomac Vegetable Farms is amazing for their veggies, we don't get a whole lot of fruit at all, until much later in the summer when blackberries and watermelons appear. I don't generally mind, though, because the Reston Farmer's Market is amazing. It's so much more than a bunch of veggie and fruit stands. There are representatives from farms that are much further south and west, so while farms that are right in the area might not yet have, say, tomatoes, some others already do. It also allows you to have a nice fruit overlap when the fruit really gets going. Some stands still had strawberries this week, while others had moved on to cherries and raspberries. Meanwhile, there's one stand that specializes in baby salad greens, while another specializes, later in the summer, in 20 varieties of tomato. There's the Wacky Herb Guy. There's the Honey people. Two or three stands have eggs. There's the two different dairies, and bakers, and the kettle corn people, and let's not, oh please don't forget, the Pork Guy. Plus, there is always some kind of musical entertainment, and just this past week, all of the restaurants from the plaza were out sampling their foods. On the Plaza is the craft market, too. This week, I bought a dress I just couldn't pass up (for Lillian), and if I had had any money left over I would have been buying t-shirts for myself. Walk through the craft fair and you'll hear even more music.

But really, the market is where everyone comes out on a Saturday morning to meet with friends and see their favorite vendors and just be out and about on a summer morning. My son loves going to the market, and loves running into friends and relations, and especially loves the music. We let him help pick out fruits, and he is in charge of our market bags and making sure I don't forget to bring one with me. I bring friends from out of town when they come visit. It's that much of a thing in our area. And it's one of the reasons I love where I live.

Summertime Eating

It's been a while since I posted here. For one, very soon after reaching Lifetime on Weight Watchers I started feeling nauseated all the time. It's not really conducive to posting in a food blog. Since that has passed (for the most part; I think it's dairy that causes it), I am back to cooking, mostly.

But the fun and wonderful thing is that we have the Farmer's Market, and starting on Wednesday, our CSA!!

So far at our Farmer's Market, we have picked up strawberries, various kinds of greens, bunches of herbs, sweet Italian sausage, Goat Cheese, more strawberries, spring onions, spring garlic, cauliflower, more strawberries, and some pastries. Oh and more strawberries. We all like strawberries a lot. Adam is making a strawberry beer, so this week we picked up 6 quarts of them, and only 2 of them are available for me to eat. Uh, I mean for us to eat. That's right.

We're splitting our farm share this year, so we are only getting 8 weeks worth of vegetables, so I expect that we will be buying more at the farmer's market this year than last.

And so far, that's where we are. Oh and of course, we will be redoing our kitchen this year, so I anticipate many raw meals while we don't have a working kitchen!

Halloween Market!

Today was the final farmer's market of the season, and although it was overcast, everyone had a really great time. We visited with all of our favorite vendors and friends, made sure we were signed up for winter drop-offs, gave our hugs, and stocked up for the winter. Brought home:

2 butternut squash

1 acorn squash

1 pumpkin (for eating--we had another for carving)

a whole lot of apples

a bunch of turnips

a big bag of potatoes

2 packs of sweet Italian sausage

2 packs of bacon

1 pack of scrapple

2 jars of jam (blueberry and peach)

2 rounds of goat cheese

1 gallon of cider

I probably would have gotten more but (1) we did not have enough money for more, (2) we found out the pork guy would be setting up on the plaza on Saturdays until Thanksgiving, and (2) the Lamb people and the goat cheese people are doing winter shares/drops so we can actually get some of that in the coming months. In fact, the Virginia Lamb stand did not have any ground lamb today, so I skipped them knowing I could get some in the near future.

Overall the market was fun as usual and it was a little sad to say goodbye. It's really our summer social event of the weekend!

Farmer's Market Saturday

I was on my own with the kiddos today at the Farmer's Market--actually my mother in law came along to help wrangle them while I attempted to buy food!

We had a nice haul, and I didn't even spend all the money I had--just most of it :)

red peppers

heirloom mini tomatoes

apples--many many apples

raspberries

spinach

broccoli

carrots

turnips w/ greens

butternut squash

goat cheese

a yummy Indian spice paste

I think that this will be lovely for the week. I find it very hard to figure out what vegetables to buy these days. Having had the CSA for so long, I feel like the choice was made for me and I just worked with what I had. This season we are in this strange place where you see tomatoes and zucchini next to winter squash and root vegetables. What to do? As for us, Micah asked for broccoli, and the spinach looked great, and everything else just called to me to buy it.

I am thinking of making turnip and tomato salad, and using the greens for something else. The carrots will probably be eaten raw. The peppers are intended for stuffed peppers. And the squash will likely become soup. I reserve the right to change my mind of course :)

I'm all Tomatoed Out

The remaining tomatoes have been cooked, with the exception of one box of mini pear tomatoes for salads and one Celebrity that I didn't see so it got to live on as a whole tomato for one more day.

The rest became 2 quarts of Fresh Corn & Tomato Soup and 3+ quarts of Pasta Sauce. This time I made it with meat, mushrooms, garlic & onion, and roasted red peppers. It is quite tasty. I had some Opal Basil to add in and it gave it a certain yummy something. Hooray. It's all chilling in the fridge now and will be frozen once it is cooled.

I mentioned to someone at the farmer's market today that I was all tomatoed out. Seriously? If I don't see another tomato for another month it'll be too soon. It's not that I don't want to eat them. No, actually it is that I don't want to eat them. There is such a thing as too many tomatoes, and I think if I had known how many great tomatoes we would get from our share I would never have even considered getting the extra 25 lbs for sauce. There was plenty for sauce with what we had. At least I'll know for next year.

By the way, the woman to whom I was speaking said she could never have enough tomatoes. I believe that she did not get 10-12 tomatoes per week for the last 5 weeks. I am also peached out but that is my own fault, or rather the fault of the fabulous farm where we get our peaches from. See, they have awesome peaches. And let's say we only want 6. Well, it costs the same to buy 6 as it costs to buy a large basket of them, and well you may as well take the 9 or 10 in the large basket for the same price, right? Fortunately we have had great peach cobbler, peach crisp, peach muffins, and peach pie in the last few weeks. But that's enough. ENOUGH PEACHES. Thank you.

Today at the market, I bought plums, apples, asian pears, zucchini (to augment what I have so that I can make zucchini bread), onions, peppers (for the sauce), grapes, fig jam, lamb stew, and goat cheese. We have no market next week and our farm share is done, but we can go to the farm stand if we need to, and there is another market in Oakton on Saturdays, and another in Herndon on Thursdays. I'm fairly certain we won't be wanting for fruit or veggies before then though.

Farmer's Market!!

The Reston Farmer's Market opened today! YAY! 

We did not buy a ton as it was mostly plants for gardening (which I don't generally speaking do) but we did get most of the ingredients for my salad! 

We got spinach, strawberries, eggs, goat cheese, and, uh, maybe that was it. Like I said, not a lot but definitely a good start, and I'll be having my salad TOMORROW. I can't wait. 

The best part about the market was seeing everyone. My friend Mary, who owns one of the farms, is pregnant too. Her first was born right after my first was born, and her second will be born right before my second. How cool is that? The Jam Lady has some new jams this time around. The Honey, meat, cheese, and bread people are all back too.  And of course everyone was out shopping and socializing and having a great time.

What a great morning. So excited for the rest of the summer!