thoughtful consumption

• cucumber
• Pac Choi
• blueberries
• oyster mushrooms (more…)

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Pistachio-encrusted catfish, steamed peas and broccoli

The steamed peas and broccoli/broccolini were terrific. Nothing fancy – I just steamed them in a basket for a few minutes until they looked really green and were tender. A little butter, salt, and pepper were all they needed.

The catfish fillets from Maple Leaf Farm via Farmers’ Fresh online store were really good. (more…)

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The Blogger’s Brunch at Park 75 at Four Seasons in midtown was thrown by Executive Chef Robert Gerstenecker and his staff and Marsha Middleton and Abby Moreland of MSquared Public Relations.  The pictures are courtesy of Foodie Atlanta.

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How many wonderful things can you find in the following sentence?

At Park 75, Chef Gerstenecker and his crew make their own chocolate and use the resulting cocoa bean hulls as mulch for heirloom vegetables that grow in their roof-top garden that is also home to two beehives.

Now that’s a commitment to local food. And the resulting chocolate is risky to eat while standing up. It’s knee-bucklingly good.

The Garden

Two floors up from the Park 75 kitchen is a roof-top garden and apiary, which is clearly not only close to the kitchen but also to the hearts of Chef Gerstenecker and Sous Chef Bryan Beneke. (more…)

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Pad thai – now with catfish!

So I wanted to try pad thai again but was out of shrimp. So I defrosted some catfish I bought from the Farmers’ Fresh online store and chopped up about a third of a pound in place of shrimp.

All of the produce that went into the pad thai was from Farmers’ Fresh…

* cilantro flowers * Chinese cabbage * beet stems * green onions * eggs * snow peas

The peanuts I threw in at the last minute, however, were from a Hilton Garden Inn.

I tell you that fish sauce smells terrrrrible when you add it to the pan. But it turns out pretty darn good.

Red Russian kale with raisins and pine nuts

Chris and I have been totally digging Tuscan kale with raisins and pine nuts. My mom gave me this recipe years ago to try, and last year it finally took. (more…)

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Hey, look – I cleaned off my kitchen table…

• strawberries
• baby spinach
• yogurt
• greens?
• granola
• arugula
• eggs
• baby red potatoes
• oyster mushrooms
• sweet onion
• broccoli

And here’s what I got from the store…

• whole wheat sourdough bread
• shrimp (just to have for fried rice, pad thai, and other stuff)
• strawberries

(more…)

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The beets, berries, and blossoms made for an especially beautiful box of food this week. I wanted to spread it all out and take one picture of everything, but one look at my kitchen table covered in daily dross stomped all over that idea.

So here’s the food once again in shifts.

• Red Russian kale
• blueberries!
• snow peas

• baby beets
• lettuce
• onions (more…)

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Got some great use out of my CSA food this week…

Wednesday night supper

Tuscan kale with raisins and pine nuts and half a sweet potato and half an English muffin - very quick and easy

Thursday breakfast

Pioneer porridge with local wildflower honey

Thursday lunch

Big ol’ salad with frisee, peapods, sprouts, and celery from Farmers’ Fresh and some romaine and red onion from Kroger

Friday lunch

smaller salad with Tom Yum soup with oyster mushrooms and Carolina Gold rice

Saturday night bliss

egg custard, frozen strawberries, and warmed brandy

Monday supper

salad with delicious leftover flank steak that my mom made for Sunday dinner

Monday dessert

frozen strawberries and some of Mom’s yummy pound cake

Tuesday lunch

Pad Thai ingredients: celery and red onion, pea pods, chili sauce, bean sprouts, fish sauce, 2 beaten eggs, half a dozen shrimp, minced garlic, chopped celery leaves

not pad for a first thai!

And tomorrow’s Wednesday – hooray!

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Lots of food yesterday in my CSA box!

• sweet potatoes
• eggs
• lettuce (frisee?)

• celery
• butter!
• spinach (slightly slimy)
• oyster mushrooms

• pea pods
• bean sprouts
• kale

• Pioneer porridge! I ran out of porridge last month and have been forced to eat oatmeal since. Hooray for yummy porridge!

• invisible strawberries! Well, not really…

I just froze them right away along with the extra pint I ordered from the online store. I also ordered Fran’s new herbal tea mix – spearmint, lemon thyme, and thyme flowers.

The herbs were a lot perkier yesterday, but they’ve already made two lovely pots of afternoon tea. That’s a great thing about herb tea as opposed to herb garnish: wilty herbs are not a problem.

Sorting peas

Sorting is one of those prepping steps that you kind of lose track of when you get produce from the grocery store. Most everything’s already packaged in like sizes for like uses.

Sometimes you sort to get rid of icky things – like with this week’s spinach. It may not have been ridden hard, but I think it was put away wet. Wet is the main enemy of produce. I’ve gotten in the habit of turning my plastic bags of produce inside-out every day or so. (Unless it’s cabbage or turnips or something else crazy-hardy.) The bags are always wet on the inside, so it seems like a good practice.

More happily, you can also sort for different sizes and uses. That’s what I did today with my peas.

Clockwise from the top right: tiny pods for salad, bigger pods for stir-fry, biggest pods for shelling peas.

Turns out all of these peas should have stayed pea pods. The peas weren’t really peas yet. Chris loves peas, so I wanted to try to get him some. However, I spent way too long trying to shell very green peas for this.

I ended up just adding these pealets to the tiny pods for salads. They’re crunchy and sweet, so I think they’ll be great.

Plans

Tonight’s supper will probably be kale with raisins and pine nuts plus sweet potatoes. It’s kind of silly because there are things in my fridge that won’t last nearly as long as the kale and sweet potatoes. But this menu requires very little thinking and prepping.

Sometime soon, we’ll have some sort of Asian stir-fry dish. I’d like to try a pad thai kind of thing after reading Mark Bittman’s article about it last month . I’ll use the bean sprouts, pea pods, mushrooms, and maybe some celery. Have to get somewhere to find the other ingredients like tamarind paste and fish sauce. Otherwise it’ll be plain old stir-fry. But not fried rice. I’m tired of fried rice.

Tomorrow for lunch, we’ll have a nice salad with the lettuce, celery, sprouts, and peapods plus some romaine and red onion from Kroger. I’ll probably add some tuna and romano cheese, too.

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