thoughtful consumption

We finally turned our heat on yesterday. It looks like it might stay cold for a while now, and one can only so many sweaters and hats without feeling silly. Thankfully, farmers are smarter than Chris and I, and they’ve kept things warm on their farms with greenhouses and hoop-houses.

First, here’s what came with this week’s dinner for two package from Farmers’ Fresh.

Asian roots and greens

baby pac choi, daikon radish, and Asian turnips

Komatsuna greens

I’ve been cooking greens in our standard manner of sautéing with raisins and walnuts. Then the stems end up in either a stir-fry or a casserole along with the roots. They also might be nice in a chicken soup. Or even diced fine and added to a bowl of ramen.

These greens and roots may have come from a number of farms: Burge Organic Farm, Mica and Red Root Farms, Owl’s Hollow Farm, Beech Creek Farms, Turtle Bend Farm,  or Crager-Hager Farm.

More fall goodness

Mondo butternut squash and apples

We’ll cook this butternut squash in separate events. (Because it’s winter, I’m intentionally less efficient using the oven than in other seasons. Crank that puppy up, I say. It’s cold in my kitchen.)

I’ll separate the neck from the bulbous bottom. I’ll peel and cube the neck. Then the cubes get tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted at 350 for about an hour. There’s easily enough for four servings in this neck. For pics and more ideas, see the bottom of this post.

All our squashes and apples have lasted nicely on our kitchen table, but that may be because we’ve kept the heat off. The apples may store well at this temperature, but Chris and I start to wither after too long. These apples are from Beech Creek Farms in Tallapoosa.

It’s a tomato!

This slicer tomato is a greenhouse/hoop-house-grown tomato either from Rise ‘N Shine Organic Farm in Calhoun or Owl’s Hollow Farm in Gasden, AL. The lettuce is also from Owl’s Hollow Farm. We’ll have plenty of salad once we’ve eaten the baby spinach from Rise ‘N Shine (see below). I’m also thinking of doing the taco thing: I’ve got local ground beef, taco mix, and now lettuce and tomato.

Eggs!

I have a half-dozen egg upgrade with my weekly delivery. Local eggs are a completely different animal from the ones you buy in the grocery store. And it’s just an easy way to get some protein in with all the veggies, like with stir-fries, scrambled eggs, or egg custard. Mmmm… egg custard. These beautiful and nice-sized eggs are from One Willow Farm in Bowdon.

Gourmet upgrade

This week’s gourmet upgrade…

Shiitakes, honey, three-grain pancake mix, and baby spinach

The pancake mix from Logan Turnpike Mill in Blairsville is much appreciated because I have an absurd amount of blueberries in the freezer. This summer was a bumper, delicious blueberry season, and my freezer shows it. So we’ll have to gird up our loins and eat lots of blueberry pancakes this winter. The three grains, by the way, are rye, wheat, and corn, and they make for a tasty, nutty, filling pancake.

I love honey and go through it way too fast. I use it in tea every day. It’s also my favorite oatmeal and porridge addition. It’s really good on local, whole-grain bread, too. I do prefer maple syrup on my pancakes, though. This is wildflower honey from Wally Bee’s Honey in Newnan.

As of lunch today, we’ve finished up all the baby spinach. It was delicious. Wednesday night, we ate some with a pasta dish I’d made and frozen this summer. (Chicken and eggplant and not nearly enough salt. No wonder it got frozen.)

Last night, we had a nice meal with the Shiitakes, spinach, Carolina Gold rice, and Fran’s herbs.

Shiitakes with thyme and parsley on Carolina Gold rice, sliced tomatoes, baby spinach with local bacon topped with warmed muscadine jelly vinaigrette

The Carolina Gold rice is really yummy. It has a wonderful texture and butteriness.

First I chopped the mushrooms and tossed in some thyme. (The mushroom stems I diced finely and added to a bag with some Komatsuna stems. I figure whatever is going to benefit from Komatsuna stems will also benefit from a little Shiitake flavor.)

Then I cooked some local, sodium nitrite-free bacon from Thompson Farms in Dixie, GA.

As you can see, there was a lot a fat on this bacon. I’ve reserved it in the hopes that I can use it with some vegetables soon. At first, I was going to saute the mushrooms in some of the bacon fat, but I wimped out after it had smoked so much and went with butter instead.

I didn’t do a great job at frying this bacon, but it was still delicious crumbled up on salad.

Finally, for lunch today we had sort of a Cobb salad with bacon bits, cheese, tuna, radishes, carrots, Asian turnips, and strawberry jam vinaigrette. (Alas, my muscadine jelly is all gone.)

I did a better job with the bacon today. Medium heat instead of medium high makes for less smoke and less burning.

At the last minute, I remembered the tomato and whole-grain sourdough from Magnolia Bread Company.