Thursday Night Fair Share Dinner

Following last week's tradition to have a meal based on the current fair share pick-up, we planned a meal using the bison, lettuce and wheat berries.

The bison was really easy to work with. We made middle eastern bison meatballs, which took more work than I had planned but were awesome. I plan on buying more of the bison to try it as regular cheeseburgers. I was pleased to find the texture was not as I remembered from when I had bought bison meat many years ago.

I was expecting to be confused about the wheat berries, but I did enough interent research before I got to the food pick-up I knew what to expect. I already knew I would need to cook them for an hour and would probably make a salad. Katie found a simple salad recipe that worked really well. We only had to saute some onions, then add some green onions (which also came in this week's share), carrots, balsamic vinegar and red bell pepper. It has a very pleasant, light flavor that went well with the flavorful middle eastern meatballs.

The food that threw me this week was the Claverach Farms pea shoots -- yes they look just like the clover in my yard. Jaime, at Fiar Shares, said to cut them up and add to soups, salads, even spaghetti sauces. I did throw some in the salad last night, but I'm going to have to get more creative with this.

I know Katie is planning on making the lemon spinach pasta again this weekend and this seems like something we could add.

The meal also included a tossed salad with the same dressing I made last week, also well as the bag of potato chips from The Billy Goat chip company. For desert we had vanilla ice cream, sprinkled with some of my granola using the local maple syrup. (I even bought more syprup so I could continue making the granola.)

Overall another successful meal based on local foods.

Week two's bounty

Food from Week 2 -- need menu ideas

Here's the next selection. I'm excited about the ground bison and it looks like we'll have a great salad with the produce. The one throwing me this week is Wheat Berries. I've already done a little internet searching and remembered I sometimes get a wheat berry salad from the salad bar, but I'm not clear how to cook it. I wonder if I can cook it in a rice cooker?

Seven Thunder Bison Ground
Our Garden butter
Dry Dock Chives
Claverach Shoots
Lehr Cherry Bomb Radishes
Yellow Wood Lettuce Mix
Lehr Green Onions
Private Recipe Cheese Spread Choice
San Luis Flour Torillas
Sappington Market Honey Roasted Peanut Butter
Missouri Wheat Berries
Hilty Egg Noodles
Billy Goat Potato Chips
Hilty Honey

I'm open to ideas for great meals from this list. Remember I still have the cuban beans from last week, too!

Using last week's food

Working backwards from this morning's breakfast, here are recipes I've used this week with my share of food from Fair Shares CSA.

Monday Breakfast :
My youngest daughter had hand picked eggs from Pilgrim's Acres Egg and a sausage patty from Hinkebein Hills. I love this descritpion from Pilgrims Acres about their pasture raised eggs. "Our hens are out in the pasture with our cows. They range around, finding delicious morsels all over the ground while pulling apart the cow patties, thereby spreading the fertilizing properties throughout the pasture without the use of fossil fuels! Synergies in God's creation are fully utilized to bring you farm-fresh, healthy eggs, from happy birds." And the info from Hinkebein Hills about their pigs is great, too, "All animals are raised outdoors in pastures and pens in sunlight and fresh air. The products offered by Hinkebein Hills Farm are all natural and the difference is in the taste." I have to agree. I tasted both the eggs and sausage and think they tasted wonderful.

I had a bagel with Triple Crown preserves (rasberry, strawberry and cherry) from Centennial Farms. This is a yummy combination, and one I highly recommend.

Sunday night dinner:
I wanted to make sure all the produce I had left was used in this meal to ensure anything with a short shelf life was used. That meant using the last of the mushrooms and two bags of lettuce. I opted for a meal of stir-fry lettuce, a fresh salad and pork tenderloin with sauteed mushrooms.

I used a recipe given to me by a friend from Cooks Illustrated magazine, March/April 2003, for a maple glazed pork. I used the maple syrup from Marble Creek, of Arcadia, MO. I missed a step and the pork didn't get much of the flavor from the marinade, but I did taste the marinade and it was wonderful. I ended up adding some of the marnade to the Ozark Forest fresh mushrooms I had sauteed with some butter, which gave them an instant punch. Overall I've been impressed with the maple syrup. The maple syrups I'd had in the past had a very strong, overpowering flavor, but this one has a mild, woodsy flavor.

I used a recipe from About.com for the stir-fly lettuce. The recipe called from iceburg lettuce, but I used a mixture of Ivan's lettuce in Ditmer and a spring lettuce mix from Yellow Dog in Warrenton. I know it seems like a waste to stir-fry such nice lettuce, but I wanted to make sure we didn't waste it and we can only eat so much salad. The girls and I didn't care from the warm lettuce but Scott liked the asian flavors and it all got eaten.

Which brings me to the salad. I used a combination of the above lettuces, added some feta cheese and made a dressing using the Triple Crown preserves from Centennial Preserves in Arcadia. The girls had seconds on the salad and it disappeared. I used a dressing recipe I found online from the Seattle times. Katie even used the dressing on the pork, which seemed like a good addition.

Saturday:
For breakfast I had granola I made with a recipe my sister and law sent me from The New York Times. It used the Marble Creek Maple syrup. I've been eating it with yogurt and blackberries. (I know, not local, but they were on sale and I couldn't resist.) I've enjoyed this granola so much that I have been giving sample baggies to friends and family to share the joy. I know I will be making more this week since, because in my generosity I am running out. I think roasting the pumpkin seeds and pistachios while it bakes gives it a toasty, slightly smoky taste.

The girls and I had the all-beef, grass fed hotdogs for lunch. They were yummy, too.

And that takes us back to Thursday when I made the Lemon Spinach pasta. This is the recipe I used. In the past we've used recipes that included yogurt, which made a creamier sauce, but I thought with the fresh spinach this one sounded lighter. The family loved it. As noted in last weeks message, I added asparagus and fresh mushrooms.


The only thing I didn't eat out of this weeks share was the black beans. They are in the freezer and will come out later. The package says cuban black beans and we love cuban food so this will be a great treat.

I still have some asparagus left and will be eating it tonight in a chicken and rice meal. I think it will be interesting to see if the flavor has changed since it has been in my refrigerator for 4 days. On Thursday it had a sharp, fresh flavor that I'd never experienced before.

Please share comments or questions about what I've done with my food. I'd love to hear how you would have used it.

Week One -- Here's what we got

This is what I got in our share this week.









When I got there I found you can buy additional items so I added asparagus, grass fed all beef hotdogs and handmade pasta, which if I understood right was made from quail eggs. They said the higher yolk ratio made a richer pasta and I had to agree.

My girls loved the pasta and asparagus. I've never had asparagus that fresh and was surprised and the full, sharp taste.
Very nice!

Mom, don't eat the leftovers today, they're mine!

Yes, the first Fair Trade meal was a huge success.

This morning Katie announced she gets the leftover Lemon Spinach Pasta, which was made with locally grown spinach, locally made pasta, and locally grown mushrooms and asparagus. And both girls were fighting over the locally made strawberry bread for breakfast. We're off to a good start.

Celebrating Earth Day with Local Food

Today I pick up our first share from Fair Shares. I got an email yesterday listing the food I should be receiving.

5. STC/FSE (that's my pick-up group) will get:

Hinkebein Hills Pork Breakfast Links
or patties (choice)
Ozark Forest Fresh Mushrooms
Ivan's Lettuce
Yellow Wood Spinach
Yellow Dog Lettuce Mix
del Carmen Black Beans, Soup or BB & Rice
Pilgrims' Acres Eggs
Marble Creek Maple Syrup
Centennial Preserves
Companion Strawberry Poundcake

I have to admit at first glance I was a little disappointed. But then I remembered I am buying local, which means what is in season, and this is perfect. The next step was to figure out how to use these items in our family diet this week. Falling to my old ways all I could think of was soup and salad.

Then without even knowing, my older daughter came to the rescue. This morning she announced she wanted one of her favorites for dinner -- Lemon Spinach Pasta. Perfect!! While I know the lemons won't be local, it seems the ideal way to use the spinach, and I may even be able to pick up some locally made pasta when I get my allotted share. If not I should be able to stop at the Bush's Grove Market to get some local pasta. I'll make a homemade dressing with the preserves to put on the lettuce and we can have the poundcake as the finish.

Tomorrow I may make a quiche with the eggs and mushrooms, that is if I can stop myself from adding the mushrooms to the pasta.

I've never been a fan of maple syrup, but I'm determined to try all the local products we get. Anyone have ideas how I can use it?

Something to Strive For

I think Spring Fever has officially hit.

I'm picking up my rain barrels this weekend.
I've started prepping the mini-garden space for my homegrown tomatoes.
And I'm looking online to see what local gardeners are doing.

I've found one family that has given me someting to strive for. Justin and Danielle have transformed their suburban yard into a full-fledged farm. Besides planting corn, tomatoes and the regular suburban vegetables, they are raising goats, squab and bees -- and butchering pigs. I recommend you take a minute to look at this article in the River Front Times. While I don't really want to try this, (my husband won't let me anyway. I've already asked.) it does make you think about how we can use our yards a little more effectively. Instead of wasting water and space to raise a perfectly groomed spread of green grass, shouldn't we be looking ways to effectively make our yards work for us?

Oh, and by the way, I start getting my local food next week. I'll be thinking recipes and looking for help.

Should I plant tomatoes this summer?

This weekend the sky was the color blue we only see a handful of days in Missouri, between the grey of winter and the haze of humid summer, the trees were blooming and the grass was the beautiful yellow-green of spring. It was a perfect day to walk around the yard and dream of planting for summer. We moved “in” from Ballwin almost five years ago, leaving behind the treeless suburban sunny yard for a well-established, much smaller, shaded yard.

We left behind two 8’ X 8’ raised beds where I planted vegetables. The tomatoes and peppers thrived. We also grew some zucchini and pumpkins over the years. (Sometimes I would forget to pick the zucchini regularly and found 2-3 foot long giants the next morning.) The first year I even planted two rows of corn, the biggest waste of space in a small garden – who knew you only got one ear of corn per stalk?

In our new yard I tried tomatoes in tubs, moving them throughout the day to find the sun, but that got old very quickly. Last year we had some dying trees cut down and I found one small space in the middle of the yard had some sun. I planted tomatoes and peppers and re-found the joy of eating cherry tomatoes right off the plant.

Which brings me to the dilemma – do I plant tomatoes again this year? We haven’t started receiving our local food yet, but I have to believe we will be getting a lot of tomatoes, zucchini and peppers when they are in season. These are the easiest to grow in St. Louis and are enjoyable. I asked my family at dinner what they thought and my oldest daughter immediately responded YES! She loves the fresh tomatoes and shares my joy of eating her snack off the plant when out in the yard. But it does seem like a lot of unnecessary work, which may even lead to wasted produce.

What do you think?