Garlic Focaccia Bread and Radish Shoots

Tonight I picked up two weeks of food from Fair Shares. (Last week's pick up was postponed for a week because of the snow and ice.) There was a couple of new items, including a Garlic Focaccia Bread made by Yellow Dog Farms of Warrenton, MO. We have received fresh greens and lettuces from Yellow Dog Farms throughout the growing season so I was glad to see they are finding ways to supplement their income in the winter months.

I love focaccia bread, and this was as good as I was hoping for. I cut off a couple of slices to eat with fresh pasta and tomato sauce. I used a jar sauce that I always love, but added some Ozark Forest Mushrooms and Claverach shoots.

That is where I made my mistake. I picked up radish shoots this afternoon and didn't realize they had a strong flavor. I had thrown shoots into sauces in the past to increase the nutritional value of the sauce, but they had been mellower shoots. Tonight the radish shoots did not compliment the other ingredients.

When we started receiving shoots last spring I didn't know what to do with them, but I was willing to try. Everything I read pointed to the higher nutritional value of the shoots, than the actual vegetable. One cup of radish shoots has 28% of the daily recommended levels of vitamin C, and is high in other vitamins and potasium, too.

I sometimes throw the shoots into sauces, and once added shoots to a meatloaf, but a couple of weeks ago we used them as the main ingredient in a chef salad. As usual we were in a hurry and needed to create an easy, nutritional meal. We opened the refrigerator and started pulling out whatever we could find - which wasn't much. What we did have was a cucumber, a bag of pea shoots, a lot of cheeses and a stick or hard salami. I made a simple dressing and my husband made a salad with the other ingredients. It was quite tasty, easy and healthy.

Why I Haven't Been Updating the Blog

I have to admit I haven't been posting too much because eating local has become habit. Even when I don't have time to cook I have enough food available to eat using local ingredients. Some of my staples have become locally made cheese, pasta and pesto, with whatever produce has arrived for the week. Here is a typical fast night dinner for us. The macaroni and cheese is made with a combination of cheeses from Ropp Farms and Heartland Dairy. The ravioli has pesto on it. The greens are collard greens from Yellow Dog.

The small peppers were a new surprise from Yellow Dog, called pimientos de padron. They are tiny bite size peppers. I put a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan and got it hot. Threw in the small peppers and tossed them around until they started to blister. I took them off the heat and added some sea salt. They were really fun --- just bite off the pepper and throw the stem away. Most were mild, with an occasional hot one. Someone described it as playing russian roulette with peppers, you never know which one will get you. I have to agree and think that is part of the fun. I'd love to have more and make a meal of them with sliced sausages and cheeses.

Other foods we've had recently include breakfast sausage, eggs, yellow watermellon and a lot of squashes. I've been grilling the squash and putting a little honey on it. The combination of smoky and sweet plays off the squash really well.

We received a meal of black beans and rice from del Carmen. My older daughter has been eating it as a snack and loves it. I guess I need to get more.

Sitting on my counter ready to go is a pattypan squash, an acorn squash and fingerling potatoes. We also have some sunchokes and mushrooms waiting to be eaten.

I gave my mother the grapes and radishes since we never seem to eat them.

Overall we have been eating much healthier and with more variety being a member of Fair Shares and I am looking forward to what the next season will bring.

Leftovers and Ribs

Tonight we had some leftovers and ribs. All of the items were either from a weekly share or purchased from Fair Shares. We're at the point in the week that I work on cleaning out the refrigerator to make room for the next week's food. The highlight of the meal was pork ribs from Hinkebein Farms in Cape Girardeau, MO. All of their meat is hormone free and antibiotic free, and as their website says:

The meat is very tender because the animals are not exposed to the stress of living in a feed-lot. Little shrinkage occurs in the cooked product because the animals have room to roam and run, thus building up more muscle.

I have been smoking ribs for years. I worked at Barney's Bar B Q throughout high school and college and believe a dry rub, slow cooked is the only way. My family thinks I make great ribs, but my husband thought these were some of the best ever. I used the Galena Street rib rub from Penzy's (I used to buy it on line, but they have opened a store on Manchester Road in Maplewood. It is worth the trip.) And slow cooked them with indirect heat on the Weber kettle yesterday afternoon. I wrapped them in foil and kept them in the refrigerator until tonight, when I reheated them in a 275 degree oven. The meat just fell off the bone, as usual, but the texture was better than usual.

I love dinners that use left overs, or as my uncle used to call them planned overs. While I was smoking the ribs yesterday afternoon I also grilled the last of the asparagus (tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and grated parmesan cheese) and refrigerated it. Tonight we ate it cold with the ribs, as well as the left over kale salad and cole slaw I made to go with burgers yesterday. The cabbage was from Yellow Dog farms, which means all of the dishes in tonight's leftover/planned over meal were from local producers.

Tonight I finished on the strawberries in a smoothie. That means the only produce I haven't finished off from last weeks share is a little lettuce. Tomorrow night we'll have it with the pasta from Mangia Italiano and a pesto sauce I purchases frozen from Fair Shares last week.