Eating from the garden: Week 10

Swallow Crest Farm, my CSA source, has fully recovered from the hailstorm damage of several weeks ago as evidenced by this week’s bounty of salad greens, kale, chard, baby carrots, peas, basil, cilantro and cauliflower! I bought only a red pepper and mushrooms from the produce section of the grocery this week!

I found a recipe for a chard and mushroom popover, made with gluten free garbanzo free flour. I downsized the recipe for my 5 inch mini deep pie dish, subbed gruyere for the provolone in the recipe and had a Sunday breakfast treat extraordinare!

Next time, I will add red pepper and kalamata olives as well but no complaints for this first round.

This week’s pasta salad used the garden peas, red pepper, olives, monterey jack and a dressing made with pesto (using the garden basil), a little mayo and some pickle juice.

The chard was beautiful and tender. Several times during the week, I gave a couple of leaves a chiffonade and sauteed them lightly with a few mushrooms.

I used some of the chard, mushroom mix with leftover ribeye, baked potato and some sweet onion to make a breakfast hash – a poached egg, bagel bun with goat cheese and my own citrus marmalade made for a darn hearty breakfast that held me until mid-afternoon one day.

My real experiment of the week was curry-cauliflower pickles. So pretty in the jars and they turned out sweet-HOT and crunchy. Seriously good alongside a hamburger sandich on English muffin bread (yes, MY english muffin bread!) and a slice of havarti.

Eating from the garden: week 10 – delicious!

A Sunday Evening

A hot week followed by a cool, but anomalously humid weekend that finally recouped into an absolutely gorgeous Sunday evening with clear, cool air! The sky turned blue, the air dried and the light was picture perfect.

I stood in the sunroom and enjoyed.

Quiet. A cool breeze. Late afternoon light through the trees.

Bear…relaxed and comfortable.

Bob was out as well…

…seeing what there was to see.

A Sunday Evening.

Beating the heat

Sherbet…I love sherbet…icy, fruity, sherbet.

I was talking to my mother about the frozen yogurt and she related that when I was born… August, 1955 – a VERY HOT!!! August…my grandmother made her pineapple sherbet. My mother remembered that the recipe included buttermilk. As we were talking, I was Google-ing and found a pineapple sherbet recipe…WITH buttermilk – and NO ice cream maker needed.

I had a fresh, uncut pineapple in my refrigerator. I had buttermilk. I had fresh basil.

Pineapple-basil sherbet – So VERY good! It was almost worth the 90-92F temperatures to enjoy this treat. I added the basil to the recipe and if you have not experimented with fruit-herb mix, I highly recommend. Basil and cherries is good as well. I will be experimenting further.

Today, Saturday, it was much cooler at 74F. At my house, the forecast rain did not happen and the overcast sky and heavy air was not as comfortable as 74F usually is in Northwest Montana…still – it was nice to have the A/C off and the windows open. We are to be at our normal low to mid-80’s this week.

Saturday evening: beating the heat.

Pillow Monster

Loch Ness has Nessie, Flathead Lake has the Flathead Lake Monster…

… and I have Bear, the Pillow Monster.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Nut butter and an indulgent smoothie!

I love my Vita-Mix blender!

I have had it for almost 6 years. Although spendy, I had been burning up a regular blender about once a year AND no way could they liquefy whole fruits and vegetables like the Vita-Mix can. In response to the customer base’s: “We love the blender but it is so tall!” comments, V-Mix came out with a shorter, fatter jar and I recently succombed to purchasing one – perfect! It is a much better fit under my counter AND easier to get things like nut butter out of it.

Nut butter! I like to mix almonds, cashews and a few pecans for my nut mix. A pinch of sea salt and just enough sunflower oil to allow it to come together as a butter.

It is on the pale side, color-wise as I use blanched almond slices, i.e. no skins.

I always make nut butter in the morning…when I have some hot coffee left in the pot. My bonus from making the butter is an indulgent smoothie that uses the nut butter I can’t quite get out of the blender. Some hot coffee, milk, dark cocoa, a dollop of yogurt, protein powder, psyllium (fiber!) and even a bit of kale and spinach…you can’t taste the green stuff…

A nutty, mocha smoothie: breakfast :) !!

**** I just picked up a morning email from Swallow Crest Farm:

Todays’ produce will include:
Salad mix
Kale and swiss chard-both are good for steaming or stir-fry
Bagged baby carrots-thinned from the beds so the remaining carrots size up
Peas
Cauliflower
Basil
Cilantro

Ooooh boy – it will be a GREAT week of cooking from the garden!

Keepin’ cool

It didn’t make it to 97 thankfully, but it did get to 92 before it started down and at 7:15 p.m. is 83 thanks to clouds, wind and an approaching “disturbance”. We have been mostly cooled off to a reasonable night time temperature by sunset thanks to the afternoon disturbances.

Still…hot and in addition to the fan, the behemoth A/C unit has been rolled out in the living room and is running full blast.

The A/C unit is pointed to the fan. The fan is pointed to my desk. Bear has been my cool companion.

Bob…he’s always one cool cat.