It's Fermenting Season!

Some of my favorite fermenting options are in season right now, and that means it's time to ferment!

We were in upstate NY this weekend for my father's celebration of life service, and I popped into a little unmanned farmstand to see what was available.

Cukes were 4/$1 and blueberries were $3/pint. I also snagged a bag of dragon beans for $3 and a bunch of large patty pan squash for 2/$1. I did not buy any summer squash because I didn't know if it was GMO (it's a common GMO item).

Using a combination of items from my CSA, from a little farmstand in upstate NY, our garden, and a couple of items from the store, I came up with this:

Store items:

Organic carrots: $.65

Organic dill: $2.99 (I used all of it, but I went a bit overboard!)

CSA items:

2 heads garlic

Garden items:

2 red peppers

Farmstand:

Cucumbers: $2

Beans: $3 (didn't use them all)

Miscellaneous items:

Sea salt

Peppercorns

Not too bad for under $10! 

We didn't try to grow much in our garden this season, but I'll be doing a jar of pickles from our garden as well soon! That's if Chuckie the pilferer doesn't get them first! He seems more interested in tomatoes. 

Have you been fermenting this season?

Garlic Scape Pesto, Dairy-free

Today, I modified this recipe to make a new & improved garlic scape pesto.

Garlic Scape Pesto
3/4 cup water
15-20 garlic scapes
1/4 cup raw pine nuts
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 large kale leaves
Juice of one lemon

Soak the pine nuts in water for about an hour or more. Drain the water and rinse. Trim the garlic scapes of the stringy end (but leave the flower/bud thing) and the hard end on the other side.

Throw all ingredients into the blender. Blend it really well. This makes 2 cups of pesto, and is only 12 points plus for the whole recipe in the Weight Watchers system. That means you can add just over 2 tablespoons to your pasta and it's only 1 point.

I boiled brown rice fusilli and steamed some chicken breast, green beans & summer squash with a side of corn. All veggies were from our farmshare!

Acorn Squash Potato Pancakes

I had some leftovers boiled potatoes from the CSA (I think they were russet), half a roasted acorn squash (roasting instructions here) and only a small appetite for dinner. So I decided these sounded good :)

Acorn Squash Potato Pancakes
1/2 a roasted acorn squash
about 1 cup boiled potatoes
2 eggs
Salt, pepper and onion flakes to taste
Olive oil for frying

Mix squash and potatoes, mashed them well, then mix in eggs and spices. Fry on a flat skillet in a little bit of olive oil, cooking both sides. Serve plain or with honey (above picture), maple syrup or ketchup (below!). Yum :)

Wheat-free Acorn Squash Sourdough Pancakes

It's a beautiful morning, 52 degrees, and fall is in the air.

This week, I received an acorn squash with my CSA, so I decided to roast it for dinner last night - not realized it would take an hour and a half to cook! I also had a sourdough starter discard (or whatever you call it) that I needed to use. So I decided to make these pancakes. The starter was originally just dark rye flour and water. It was given to me by a friend. After a week in the fridge, I split the starter into 2 containers, continuing to add dark rye flour to one and buckwheat to the other.

Wheat-free Acorn Squash Sourdough Pancakes
1/2 an acorn squash, roasted and peeled
1/2 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup water
2 eggs or egg replacer
1/2 tablespoon oil (I used coconut) plus oil for frying)
1/8 teaspoon salt
Liquid for thinning (water or milk)
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

The night before you want to make these, mix 1/2 cup sourdough starter with 1/2 cup buckwheat flour and 1/2 cup water. Cover with a towel (my mom always did this, so I did too) and leave on the counter overnight.

Also, cut an acorn squash in half, scooping out the seeds, and put it in a roasting pan. Roast it at 400 degrees for an hour to hour & a half; then put it in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, peel half a squash. Mix the peeled squash & the sourdough starter, mashing the squash as you mix. Add 2 eggs, 1/2 tablespoon oil, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, plus any liquid for thinning, depending on the consistency of your sourdough and how thick or thin you like your pancakes. My sourdough was pretty thick, so I added a tiny bit of water. Mix lightly, and spoon onto on oiled frying pan. I covered them while they cooked for more thorough cooking. Flip to cook over side, and voila! Sourdough pancakes. Serve with maple syrup.

I had absolutely no idea how these would come out, but they were good! The fermented flavor was not strong, and the spice was light. I am not a fan of winter squash, but the flavor was not strong, which for me is good :)

Gluten Free Chocolate Beet Cake

I had some beets from the CSA that I desperately needed to use up, so I decided to modify Green Smoothie Girl's recipe for a Chocolate Beet Cake.

Gluten Free Chocolate Beet Cake
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla liquid stevia (or another 1/2 cup sugar plus 1 teaspoon vanilla)
1/4 cup coconut oil
about 1 1/2 large ripe bananas
1 3/4 cups steamed beets (about 2 large beets, chopped - she says to peel them, I did not)
4 Tbsp. raw cacao (best) or nonalkalized baking cocoa
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups buckwheat flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 sorghum flour

Mix all the ingredients in your blender except for the flours. Dump the blended purple mess into a bowl and take a picture. Really, it is such a beautiful, rich color! Then mix in the flours and take another picture.



Bake in 9”x13” oiled pan at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. It's a lot less purple once it's cooked.



So good. I didn't frost it. It was good as is. It probably would have been fine with all buckwheat flour, so I'll likely do that next time.

A Farmshare Update

I wanted to bring you an update on our CSA. We just finished week #11, which means we are more than halfway through our 20 week farmshare. That makes me kind of sad!

You may ask: what is a Farmshare, also called Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)?

From the Local Harvest website:

Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.

It goes on to list advantages for farmers and consumers. Here's an example from our CSA. Every week at Allandale, we get a CSA newsletter called "The Pick List". In the 6th week, the newsletter mentioned how the weather, which was super hot and humid for that time of year, basically liquefied 1000 heads of lettuce, and mentioned how the support derived from the CSA helps the farm recover from that "crop-tastrophy".

A CSA is basically a shared risk. If the growing season goes well, the proof is in your box every week. If the growing season doesn't go well, again - the proof is in the box.

That said, I've been nothing but thrilled with our CSA. This week, we received a beautiful bag full of ripe tomatoes. We got 10 tomatoes that had to have weighed at least 4 lbs total. If I walked into the farmer's market to buy 4 lbs of tomatoes, the cost would be at least $3/lb. In addition to that beautiful bag of tomatoes, I also got a pint of cherry tomatoes, a pint of potatoes, a small container of shallots, and peppers, eggplant, arugula, summer squash, garlic, carrots, beets, leeks and corn! And all for $18/week.

A fun challenge with the CSA is to use up veggies that might not regularly be part of your diet. I realized this week I had collected 4 bunches of beets from the last 4 weeks! So I steamed them up, put them into 2 jars (one of which, I froze), and used the other jar to make a chocolate beet cake. Oh, wow, is it good. Recipe to follow!

Eating Fresh, Locally & Seasonally

I'm pouting.

It's hard to eat local; it's hard to eat seasonal.

I find my body is craving all the greens from the beginning of the season, and because of all the unseasonably hot weather we've been having here, all the greens look wilted and sad. I did manage to pick up one bag of mixed greens at the farmers market today, but when I go to the supermarket, I look at those perfect looking heads of lettuce and think, "what did they spray those with to make them look so perfect?" Now that we have a farmshare, I'm used to my vegetables having holes in them, and even sometimes having worms or snails. Yes, that's normal and healthy.

Frankly, it now grosses me out to look at much of the conventional produce at the grocery. Even the bagged spinach I use for my smoothies is unappealing.

I'm ruined!

It makes me wonder how people in cold weather climates eat seasonally. How do you make it work?

Week 5 of Allandale CSA

It's week 5 of my farmshare from Allandale Farm, and I am loving it! Read about week 1 here.

Week 2: sugar snap peas, fennel, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, scallions, and spring garlic
Week 3: garlic scapes, green garlic, cilantro, dill, mesclun mix, scallions, lettuce, kale, sugar snap peas, broccoli, and collard greens
Week 4: cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, beets, sugar snap peas, hakurei turnips, lettuce and garlic scapes

And here is week 5:

This week feels so abundant! It overflowed out of my extra large grocery bag. If you start with the kale in the upper left corner, here's what I got:
Purple kale, cabbage, cauliflower, romanesco, lettuce, spring onions, carrots, basil, beets, sugar snap peas, and fennel!

Last week, I used the bounty to make a new collard chips recipe and a white bean dip with dill & garlic scapes. Yum! More recipes to come soon :)