thoughtful consumption

Here three things I learned this week

Mustard greens with raisins and walnuts is as good as kale with raisins and pine nuts.

One of my favorite recipes is kale with raisins and pine nuts. I’m thrilled to report that this recipe works just as well with mustard greens, raisins, and walnuts.

I had planned just to sub in mustard greens for kale but then found I didn’t have any pine nuts. Bunch of walnuts, though. At first I was nervous about using walnuts, but then I remembered that sometimes people make pesto with walnuts and that baklava comes in pine nut and walnut varieties. Worth a try!

So far, so good.

We were very pleased with the results and are still in shock that we actually enjoy greens now. (Collards don’t count.)

baked butternut squash, ciabatta, feta cheese, and mustard greens with raisins and walnuts

Frozen vegetables aren’t as tasty as fresh ones.

I freeze vegetables from my CSA portion when I don’t get a chance to use them fresh or sometimes when I’m just worn out on a certain veggie after a long, productive season. One nice thing about the this hot summer slow-down in vegetable production is that I’ve been turning more to my freezer and using up more frozen stuff. Usually, I make vegetable soup with frozen vegetables. This time, however, I pulled out some frozen green beans and corn and tried to cook them as if they were fresh.

The fish was excellent, and the store frozen limas were fine. However, the green beans and corn were just okay – mere shadows of their former selves.

This could be because

• I didn’t freeze them right,
• I didn’t defrost or cook them right,
• I left them in the freezer too long, or
• frozen vegetables are not as good as fresh ones.

Most likely, it’s a combination of all four. Any tips on the first two? I should probably improve my technique there.

But I’m thinking it’ll be easier to just eat veggies fresh or make soup.

Mediocre stock + fine(mushrooms + meat) = darn good soup

Speaking of soup, I found a box of barley in my pantry with a recipe for a mushroom barley soup. It sounded simple and nourishing and a way to use some of the vegetable stock I made last week.

No mushrooms were available from the CSA’s online store, so I bought some baby Portobellos at Kroger along with some carrots. I figured a simple mushroom soup called for better than plain old button mushrooms.

The plan was

1. sauté the mushrooms and carrots along with CSA onion, garlic, and frozen chopped celery,
2. add six cups of defrosted vegetable stock, salt, pepper, herbes de Provence, bay leaf, some frozen limas, and half a cup of quick-cooking barley,
3. bring to a boil and simmer until delicious.

But while I was in the freezer, I ran across what I thought was a pound of stew beef. After it defrosted, however, it revealed itself to be half of a very fine piece of beef I had purchased from the online store a while back. After aging far too long in the freezer, it really had become stew beef. But what lucky stew!

I browned the beef, sliced it, and tossed it in the soup. Then I deglazed the pan with some red wine and added that, too.

My simple soup had become incredibly decadent with Portobellos, a pound of gorgeous beef, and red wine.  What’s a girl to do but add some sour cream and live happily ever after?

limas, baked butternut squash, ciabatta, and mushroom-beef-barley soup