Less is More -- Blackberry Sauce

I bought blackberries at the Farmers Market last week. My single memory of fresh blackberries is picking one off a bush in my Grandma's yard and popping it in my mouth. It tasted like dirt. So, I didn't really no what to expect.

These blackberries are mouth-pucker tart but wonderful -- more of a candy experience than a fruit one. I've been eating them one berry at a time, but I was worried that I wouldn't get through them fast enough.

So, along comes a blackberry sauce recipe from Alanna at Kitchen Parade. In the picture, I'm adding the second half of the blackberries to the macerated mix. Alanna served it over vanilla frozen yogurt. It's delicious over chocolate frozen yogurt, as well.

This qualifies me for the Less is More challenge issued by Nupur (who makes amazing spring rolls) at One Hot Stove to make a dish from another blog that has five or fewer ingredients. "Less is More" is Nupur's theme for the monthly blog event, Monthly Blog Patrol started by The Spice Cafe blog -- the idea being that there's a new reason every month to go look at food blogs.

I may have to buy some more blackberries to try this blackberry sorbet from another food blogger, Kelly at SOUNDING MY BARBARIC GULP!

OLS: Farmers Market Day lunch

My Saturdays are suddenly packed. I now have an established habit of going to two or more Farmers Markets bright and early on Saturday morning. That's going to be a bit rushed for the next couple of months because I need to shop and get it all home in time to make it to my cartooning class at Meramec Community College at 10 AM. Saturday afternoons and evenings will need to include some produce preparation time.

So, I needed a quick lunch and a local one since I haven't recorded a One Local Summer meal yet this week. I cooked up a pot of black turtle beans from Kimker Hill Farm last night. Then, today, all I had to do was spoon some into the food processor with a little of the cooking liquid and some Kimker Hill "nice and mild" summer salsa. I was a little worried that it would be too runny for a sandwich spread, but it held up just fine. The cilantro on top came from the Three Rivers Community Farm this morning at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. The strawberries are from the Our Garden booth -- they have consistently had the prettiest strawberries I've seen at the markets and they are also available at the Wednesday night Maplewood Farmers Market.

I also had a large salad with this lunch. There's enough local produce in my refrigerator now that I have a selection of salad vegetables. Today I used two different kinds of lettuce, grated kohlrabi, sunflower shoots, asparagus, and feta cheese. The dressing was homemade but leftover from something, so I don't have an exact recipe. I would have used local honey in it and, since it was kind of gloppy from being in the refrigerator, I thinned it with Blue Heron Orchard habanero apple cider vinegar -- you can pick that up at Local Harvest Grocery.

This meal really feels like a transition meal, moving into late spring and full speed ahead into summer.

Edit: oh yeah, and the bread is 97% Local Bread.

Strawberry season starts

Farmers Market logo courtesy of A Veggie Venture.

Strawberries are one of the poster children of eating locally and seasonally. In case you've never had a local in-season strawberry, learn this: strawberries are red and tender all the way through. They don't have a crunchy, flavorless, white core.

As I wrote mid-week, I found my first strawberries of the season at the Maplewood Farmers Market. I was correct that the Our Garden booth had them again at the Tower Grove Market on Saturday. I saw them and a long line so I did my other shopping first. By the time I got around to Our Garden again, both the line and the strawberries were gone.

I thought I had lost my chance at more strawberries, but when I swung by the Kirkwood Farmers Market for my chicken and eggs from Farrar Out Farm, I found that two vendors were selling strawberries by the quart. They weren't nearly as pretty as the ones from Our Garden, but the price was more attractive -- 2 quarts for $9 compared to 1 pint for $3.

Two quarts is enough to experiment with. I'm trying to decide if I want to freeze berry puree to eat later in the year. If I do that, it will be with berries that I pick myself at a very low price. The first experiment is strawberry sorbet, following the recipe that came with the ice cream machine I got for my birthday. Definitely a success.

Post submitted to the Farmers Market Fare carnival at Eat. Drink. Better.

A Good Wednesday

We had a perfect weather day in the St. Louis area yesterday--the first time in awhile that the weather story was how gorgeous the day was.




Our nephew, P, came to help with yard work. Now that we've decided that the yellowwood tree is rather special, we wanted to clean up the trees around it to give it some room. The evergreen that was planted too close to that ash is now gone, made into a separate pile of chips to provide an acidic mulch for the azaleas. One of the ashes was trimmed up and the next will be soon. We're going to put a bed around the two ashes and yellowwood -- probably just pansies for the fall and spring, but eventually a variety of shade perennials. We're concerned about the long term health of these two ashes and several more on our property because of the imminent threat of the emerald ash borer, but for now we're going to assume that they will be in the landscape for some time to come. R was thrilled with how much work he got done with a helper.




I discovered our first local strawberries of the season last night at the Maplewood Farmers Market. They were from Our Garden -- I assume she'll have them at the Tower Grove Market on Saturday, too. Biver Farms also had strawberries and will likely have them at one or more of their Saturday market locations, Tower Grove, Clayton, and Goshen Market in Edwardsville. I've been collecting strawberry recipes, but it looks like these won't last long enough to go in a recipe! The first strawberries are such a treat all on their own.

Lucy at the Claverach booth was selling small white Japanese turnips with the advice to try them in salads because they're so tender in the spring. I did and they add a nice mild bite, much less harsh than the flavor I normally associate with turnips. The turnips were also good at breakfast this morning, sauteed with some potato and fresh rosemary and topped with finely grated Parmesan.

Three Market Day

Farmers Market logo courtesy of A Veggie Venture.

1. Clayton Farmers Market. This was opening day -- a good enough excuse in itself to make the trip in spite of the inconvenient lack of Highway 40 to get there. Clayton Road was a breeze early on Saturday morning so that didn't pose a big problem. But, I had another reason to go -- I wanted to sample the cheeses of Baetje Farms since Chris Freeland of Countrypolitan Cooking has written about them twice in recent weeks: Baetje Farms' "Coeur de la Creme" Tart with Kimker Hill Farm flour crust and Fresh Radish Sandwiches with Sunflower Sprouts and Goat Cheese. Baetje Farms sells at the Soulard Farmers Market, but I rarely make it that far into the city. Their presence at the Clayton Farmers Market was a definite enticement.


The parking lot west of Straub's was hopping with activity. Besides cheese, I bought salad and cooking greens, radishes, a big bunch of chives, peanut butter from Mound City, and a tub of shea butter for my skin. It looked like L'Ecole Culinaire was setting up to serve something but they weren't yet when I left. So, I decided to head over to the Tower Grove Market where I knew I could get a crepe for breakfast.


2. Tower Grove Farmers Market. This really has the nicest energy of any farmers market I've been to with a dozen people doing yoga in the grass and a band playing on the pavilion. Pretty much everyone will catch your eye and smile on the path to and from the market stalls. I filled out my needs for greens, got some flour from Kimker Hill Farm, and had a crepe with asparagus, spinach, sour cream and maybe some other things. One booth was promising "Strawberries Soon."


3. Kirkwood Farmers Market. Last stop was my home market for chicken and eggs. Farrar Out Farm did have radishes and some greens this week. CJ's has a few more items to go with the local asparagus, now, and Summit Produce had local spinach. Next week, I may try Kirkwood first.



With the Claverach sunflower shoots I bought at the Maplewood Farmers Market on Wednesday (where I had a nice chat with Alanna Kellogg, of A Veggie Venture, recognizing her from her blog and newspaper picture), I was able to re-create Chris Freeland's radish sandwich. The only differences in my version were that I used my own bread and I sliced my long radishes the long-ways. A wonderful post-market snack, locally-grown and locally-inspired! Now, I have the energy to go wash and spin all of those greens.

Post submitted to the Farmers Market Fare carnival at Eat. Drink. Better.

Community-building at farmers markets

Farmers Market logo courtesy of A Veggie Venture.

The Gratitude post on the Locavore Nation - Central blog prompted me to write about an experience I had at Kirkwood Farmers Market this week. I ran out of asparagus so I went on Thursday to see if one of the two places open mostly to sell plants happened to have local asparagus. It was raining, so I ran to CJ's in the front of the market where there was Wood River, Illinois asparagus standing upright in a tub of water.

The woman behind the counter asked me how I was going to cook the asparagus and I said that I was going to try it on a salad because I'd heard you could eat it raw (from Alanna Kellogg's A Veggie Venture). She said "Sure you can!" and handed me a spear. She took one herself and we stood there chatting in the rain and eating asparagus Bugs Bunny style. That's just not an experience you can get at the supermarket!

Tower Grove Market Pasta Primavera

Farmers Market logo courtesy of A Veggie Venture.

Today was opening day of the Tower Grove Farmers' Market. And, my first time visit to that market. I went for the flour from Kimker Hill Farm and any greens I could find. I came away with all that and more, including eucalyptus scented soap. There was asparagus, fresh pasta, spinach, and goat cheese feta.

In honor of the first market day, I made a pasta primavera for lunch. While the fettucini was cooking (fresh pasta cooks fast!), I sauteed the sliced stems of asparagus. At the last moment, I added the asparagus tops and a few leaves of sliced spinach to the asparagus stems. No sauce -- just the feta plus salt and pepper and the olive oil on the vegetables. A spring treat!



Post submitted to the Farmers Market Fare carnival at Eat. Drink. Better.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Whole Chickens

Farmers Market logo courtesy of A Veggie Venture.

All the things I've read encouraging me to eat local, pastured chickens, make it sound like an easy no-brainer thing to do. Factory-produced chickens are fed cheap food in unnatural conditions and thus are missing nutrients and flavor. Farm-raised chickens lead happier, healthier lives resulting in flavorful meat with more nutrients, including those important omega-3 fatty acids. But, if you're like me and used to buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts for stir-fries and leg quarters for grilling, the fact that local chickens are sold whole is more than a little intimidating.

When the Kirkwood Farmers Market opened at the beginning of April, I decided that now was the time to make the switch. It's the end of April and I can proudly say that I'm no longer intimidated by the whole chickens I buy from Farrar Out Farm.

Here's how the transformation happened.

Chicken 1. I thought maybe the fact that I have carved lots of whole roasted birds might mean that I could just wing it. But things are different when the bird isn't cooked and when you're looking for pieces more than slices, so it all got rather mangled around the ribs and back bone. I wanted instructions for next time.

Chicken 2. The Cooking for Engineers website has a very helpful, illustrated method for Cutting Up Chicken. I did much better getting my second chicken into parts with those instructions although I needed some practice finding the leg and wing joints -- they are much closer to the main body than I seem to think they are. Cutting up the whole chicken into parts was proving to be fairly easy, but it was about this time that I realized the real challenge -- deboning the chicken breast to make those skinless, boneless chicken breasts that we're using in stir-fries 2 or 3 times a week right now.

Chicken 3. Cooking for Engineers had a page on Boning Chicken Breast, but when I finished those instructions, there were still bones in my chicken! Next time, I'll try a different set of instructions.

Chicken 4. R cut up this chicken and deboned the breast while I read the instructions from the new (2006) Joy of Cooking. It went better--this time we ran out of bones before we ran out of instructions. But I still felt like I didn't have a real understanding, a method that I could use over and over again to quickly prepare whole chickens.

Chicken 5. The break-through came, for me, with a video on You Tube: No Feathers "How to Debone a Chicken". He's working with a cooked chicken, but the process for getting the bones out of the breast worked just the same on my raw chicken. I wasn't as fast or as smooth, but I got it done and, even more, feel like I could do it again. He uses shears for all the cutting, I used a knife for parts of it, but the shears really made the difference in the deboning.

So, it took 5 chickens for me to get comfortable. But, even the first four chickens tasted good! The flavor and texture is definitely an improvement over supermarket chicken.

Post submitted to the Farmers Market Fare carnival at Eat. Drink. Better.

Is it spring yet?

Farmers Market logo courtesy of A Veggie Venture.

We had a cloudy, cool day. There's a prediction for flurries in the morning and a hard frost tomorrow night. Fortunately, it's been such a wet spring that no one has been able to get anything into the ground, so the freeze will hopefully not have much effect on gardeners or farmers.

In spite of the gloomy weather, I went to a Farmers Market this morning, the St. Louis Community Farmers' Market. It's a monthly winter market near Tower Grove Park. I didn't know about this one until Denise posted on the Kimker Hill Farm blog that she would be selling her flour there.

Among other things, I bought a cheese-herb focaccia from 4 Seasons Bakery, red lettuce from ShowMe Fresh Farm (a hydroponic farm near Cape Girardeau), and baba ghanoush sold as a fundraiser by the church hosting the market. Putting that all together, I had a fast food lunch -- Farmers Market style.

Post submitted to the Farmers Market Fare carnival at Eat. Drink. Better.

Spring greens with chicken in peanut sauce

A friend and I went to the last Winter Pantry at Schlafly Bottleworks today. It's their continuation of their summer Wednesday night Farmers Market.


As I hoped, I brought home a big bag of spring greens -- chard, baby kale, and beet tops. We've been practicing a dish for a couple of weeks using spinach that we wanted to try with greens.



There were four kinds of leaves, I'm not really sure which is which. Numbering from the left, I think 1 and 2 are the chard because of the deeply colored veins. 3 is the most bitter of the greens. But I don't know whether that's the kale or the beet top. [Edit 7/06/08: now that I've had a whole spring's eating of greens, I'm pretty sure that left to right is chard, beet green, collard green, and kale].

We learned recently that chard and beets are the same species, Beta vulgaris. Varieties cultivated for leaves are called chard, varieties cultivated for roots are called beets.

The recipe originated with the booklet, Stir-Fry Recipes: Light and Easy Recipes, that came with R's new wok. But we've now modified it beyond all recognition and we're still thinking that it could use more greens and fewer peanuts. Here's the version we made tonight.

Spring greens with chicken in peanut sauce
Greens
5 cups baby greens, washed, spun dry, and put in the refrigerator for awhile to dry further, coarsely chopped

Chicken & marinade
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced into thin pieces about 1 inch long
1 Tbl chicken stock
2 tsp hoisin sauce

Peanut Sauce
2 Tbl reduced-sodium soy sauce
2 Tbl chicken broth
2 Tbl peanut butter
1 Tbl hoisin sauce
2 tsp honey

Stir-fry
2 oz dried Asian noodles (broken angel hair pasta works, too)
1/4 large onion, chopped
scant 1/2 cup of unsalted roasted peanuts
sunflower oil as needed for stir-frying (we don't measure this)

Prepare the greens so that they have time to dry in the refrigerator for awhile before cooking (dry ingredients work much better in stir-fries).

Marinate the chicken for 10 minutes to an hour in the broth and hoisin sauce.

Whisk the sauce ingredients together and set aside.

Cook the noodles in boiling water, uncovered, until just tender. Drain, then toss with oil in the cooking pot. Put the lid on to keep them a little warm and set aside.

Stir-fry the chicken for a minute. Add the onions and continue stir-frying until the chicken is opaque. Add the greens and stir-fry until they wilt, about a minute or two more. Stir in the peanuts, noodles, and sauce. Stir until everything is combined and hot.



We used angel hair pasta the first few times we made this until we found Asian noodles at Global Foods Market. We use one and a half of the bird's nests of noodles. They untangle themselves in the boiling water. We found that the Asian noodles have a fuller flavor than the angel hair pasta. We like the Asian noodles better in this dish.


If we're both hungry, this is two servings (yep, that means we eat 2 1/2 cups of greens each!). This time we have a snack-sized portion leftover for tomorrow.