Category Archives: Food

Red, white, and blueberry

For the past couple of summers, we placed our order for blueberries and sour cherries on my MIL’s annual trek to Michigan.  We enjoyed the fruit throughout the year, though with a nagging feeling of unrest, because we knew that the orchard owners sprayed their fruit — not exactly in line with our usual choices.

Berries rank high on the list of produce with high levels of pesticide residue.  While convenient, delicious, and affordable, our purchases were bad for our bodies and the environment.

With a little investigative work, we found a no-spray blueberry farm within an hour of St. Louis.  Yesterday, we drove out to Huckleberry Hollow for a pick-your-own adventure.

Some of the blueberry bushes were over six feet tall — I had no idea they could get that big!  We had fun, but we also worked really hard and still fell short of our target quantity for freezing.

Today, I’m suffering the effects of picking 9 gallons of blueberries (2-person effort) over 5.5 hours, only the first few of which exhibited something like pleasant temperatures.

Suddenly, the price of blueberries at the farmers’ market, pre-picked blueberries, seems pretty darn reasonable.  It’s easy to walk through a farmers’ market and turn your nose up at the prices, but when you start getting your hands dirty, those prices make sense.  Growing food in a sustainable manner is hard work!

Happy 4th of July!

In season

If you buy really fresh (i.e., picked that day, or maybe the day before) local sweet corn, try eating it raw for a refreshing treat.  Fresh corn (sans fungus) graced our dinner plates last night, and I was well into my ear when I thought to take a picture.

We’re also enjoying local blueberries and peaches.  In honor of the peaches, we baked some sweet biscuits*.  For a delicious and relatively healthy treat, crumble a biscuit, spoon on fresh peaches, and top with a bit of whipped cream.   I often add some of the juice from the peaches and a bit of milk (soy milk works fine) to get it just right.

*Our sweet biscuit recipe comes from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Gelles.  If you’re looking for a good cookbook, vegetarian or no, check this out.  It is our go-to cookbook for delicious main dishes, baked goods, soups, and much more!  If your library has it, you can take it for a test run, or look for a used copy.

Thyme for lunch

Last weekend, I attempted to recreate the delicious borscht I enjoyed at Local Harvest Cafe.  My first thought upon tasting my creation?  Major flop.  Great sadness ensued.

But not all was lost.  The leftovers tasted good — I learned a few things in the process of coming to like it.  First, you can serve borscht warm or chilled, but I HIGHLY recommend chilled.  Second, add creamy white stuff, either sour cream or yogurt (pictured above) — this is important!  Third, it’s kind of a salty soup.  I’m a bit of a salt-phobe, so this one is hard for me, but again, important here.

I enjoyed the leftover borscht (properly chilled) for lunch today, along with a quickly concocted rice-lentil salad.  I started with leftover cooked lentils, to which I added brown rice, cucumbers, raw garlic (minced), olive oil, fresh thyme, s&p, and a bit of leftover vinaigrette from a previous salad.

Summer eats and treats — Part 2

Tom and Jo invited us to dinner on Sunday night.  Grilled pizza was on the menu — a summertime classic! 

My pizza contribution involved a combo of homemade pizza sauce and pesto as the base, topped with red bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, and walnuts.  Tom suggested the walnuts, and they added a lovely crunch.  I added some small pieces of fresh mozzarella, keeping it low cheese.
 And for dessert, homemade ice cream sandwiches, featuring triple chocolate cookies and strawberry ice cream!  As we feasted, a summer storm rolled in, and we’re finally getting some relief from the heat.  Ah, summer.

Summer eats and treats

I kicked off the weekend with a strawberry banana smoothie, made with frozen local berries, homemade yogurt from local milk, and The Last Banana, recovered from the depths of the freezer, served in a green glass.

Delicacy or discard?  That funky looking growth is huitlacoche, a fungus that grows on corn (known in the U.S. as “corn smut”).  It’s edible, and in Mexico, it fetches a high price, much higher than the corn itself.  Matthew handled the prep work.  I avoided touching it until he cooked it.  (If he’d been feeling ornery, he could have chased me around the apartment, threatening to touch me with it.)  Once cooked, it looked and tasted much like any other cooked fungus (i.e., mushroom).  Click here to read more details, including potential health benefits.

At my urging, Matthew bought a tomato at the farmers’ market.  (He liked the idea of our first tomato of the season being from our garden, but we’re not quite there yet — soon!)  Dressed up with basil (courtesy of our neighbors’ plant — hope they won’t mind 😉 ), olive oil, and s&p.  Yum!

Partial results of another oven extravaganza: zucchini bread and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.  I have not purchased bananas for a year-and-a-half, due to their large carbon footprint (which gives you a sense of the age of the banana that went into the aforementioned smoothie).  As predicted, these two quick breads make great alternatives to banana bread.

Sneak peak of “Summer eats and treats — Part II” coming tomorrow: homemade pizza and ice cream sandwiches!