It must be spring... a new ingredient!

This spring has really seemed like an extension of winter. It was 32 degrees the other night! I don't ever remember such a cold April. However, April is almost over and things are looking up. This week's Full Circle Farm box contained a new ingredient that I'd never used before!

This alien-looking bunch of produce is kale raab.

I was already a fan of broccoli raab, or rapini, so I was excited to see it on the list for this week's box. I made a version of my favorite white bean soup, using carrots, an onion, tomatoes and the kale raab, throwing in the leaves and the broccoli-like florets. It turned out really, really well. So well that my husband went back for seconds.

Zucchini from Mexico has been a fixture in the produce box all winter, and I've been happy about that, because I really love it. I even attempted to grow some last summer, but unfortunately only got about 2 usable zucchinis from our two plants. Whenever we get it, I make Mark Bittman's wonderful rich zucchini soup from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and zucchini bread.

My favorite recipe is this one from Paula Deen. Shockingly, it does not count butter among its ingredients. It is incredibly rich, though, and with flour and sugar being in nearly the same proportions, the top carmelizes and becomes crunchy, sweet and irresistable. It also makes your house smell amazing.

It's not exactly health food, despite containing zucchini, but it's so good, I don't care!

Things are looking up

Braising mix is available again from Full Circle Farm! Spring is definitely, fiiiinally here. We eat greens two or three times a week. They have become a true staple in our diet, and all winter, I washed, stemmed and chopped countless bunches of collard greens, kale and chard. Now the best, easiest way to enjoy greens is back!

That right there is a big pot full of nutrition. That's one bag of braising mix, before it cooks down. It's soooo good.

Just over two months left till the farmer's market comes back. I am craving okra and sunshine, so it can't come soon enough!

Variety is slowly starting to creep back into our weekly produce box, but I haven't made that many new recipes yet, except in the world of baking. My 3-year-old asked me so sweetly to bake her a cake, I couldn't resist her request. She asked for a chocolate cake with blue frosting and three candles. After making a cake from scratch for the first time a few years ago, I can't bring myself to use mixes anymore. They just suck in comparison to a cake made from scratch, all with ingredients that are whole foods that you can pronounce. So off to Food Network I went, and found this wonderful, unbelievably rich cake recipe that I was able to make with stuff I already had at home.

I whipped up some buttercream icing (the one true icing!), colored it blue, and it was ready to go. Cake for no reason, to the specifications of a 3-year-old. What is better than that?

The return of the Maple Valley Farmers Market!

One of our favorite things in the world, the Maple Valley Farmers' Market will be back on June 18th, less than 3 months away! I can't wait. It's been a long, gray winter and it'll be wonderful to have our Saturday morning fun in the sun back. The music, the fresh produce, the freshly-baked bagels, the socializing... I look forward to it all!

More variety is starting to appear in our Full Circle Farm box and in the garden, our sage and mint have survived the winter and are coming back! I hope to get planting soon and add dill, oregano, basil, thyme and other favorites. I've still been baking but haven't tried many new recipes for dinner. That will change as more ingredients come back in season. I am also positively dying for some of our favorite veggies, like okra. I'm going to be on a mad hunt for okra the first day the farmer's market opens, and I'll also be looking for Rainier cherries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. All organic, all awesome. Hurry up, June!

Baking to stave off boredom and blahs

I really need winter to be over. The dark, dreary weather and the lack of variety in produce has me bored and longing for spring. The dinners I've been cooking have been good, but there hasn't been much new. Lots of braised greens, lots of lentil soup. I have tried a few new recipes from Bon Appetit, but none of them have really been Earth-shattering, omigod-I-must-make-this-again recipes.

The cold, crappy weather has done more than just give me a case of cabin fever, though. It's driven me to bake! Over the last few weeks, I've been baking a lot. I've been baking cranberry scones for breakfast, using a wonderful, quick, easy recipe from Alton Brown. They make the best breakfast, particularly when they're fresh out of the oven, still warm with a little butter.

The March 2011 issue of Bon Appetit is positively loaded with recipes that I want to make. Last weekend, I made the Fudgy Meringue Cookies featured in this issue, and this recipe is definitely a keeper. It's total death by chocolate. The cookies are so delicate, so impossibly, intensely chocolatey. They were a big hit at my house. Well, they were with my husband and me. Our kids wouldn't have anything to do with them. More for us!

Today I made a wonderful Bittersweet Chocolate and Pear Cake for the second time. It came my way from the Full Circle Farm box. It was one of the farm-to-table recipes in January. This cake will be one that I'll make over and over, in the summer when our Asian pear tree explodes with fruit, for special occasions, for guests, for parties. It's unbelievably simple and fast, but tastes extremely complicated. This is thanks to the fact that it counts brown butter among its ingredients. Brown butter is something I'd never tried before, but now I understand why so many recipes feature it. It's so, so tasty! The depth of flavor that it gives this cake is unbelievable, especially when combined with Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips and organic D'anjou pears from Full Circle Farm. The combination of flavors is like something you'd find in a high-end restaurant dessert. Looking at the Smitten Kitchen blog post about it (link above), it appears that this is because it is a dessert from a high-end restaurant. And so easy. Who knew? Just look at what I did in my kitchen this morning, in about 20 minutes of prep time while watching my two toddlers:



The pears and chocolate chips go on top before it goes in the oven, and as it bakes, they sink down into the batter. It's hard not to just sit down with a fork and devour the whole thing.

Don't be intimidated by all the talk of beating the eggs for X amount of minutes and professional mixers vs. home mixers. I don't even have a stand mixer (YET!). I have a crappy little hand-mixer, but it makes this recipe just fine. I also didn't leave the eggs out to get to room temperature, which is something that both the pear cake and the meringue cookies call for, and you know what? Both turned out perfectly. I have come to accept that as the mother of two small children, I am just never going to remember to take the eggs out ahead of time, and despite this everything always turns out just fine. An important life lesson learned from some cookies and a cake.

Pining for the farmer's market

After many weeks of dark, dreary, gray and rainy days with hardly any breaks, finally we are going to have a couple sunny days. A sunny Saturday makes me absolutely long for the farmer's market. It comes back in June, 5 long months away. I can't wait! I can't wait for the produce, the baked goods, the sun, the socializing. The lack of a farmer's market combined with weeks of not being able to spend much time outside make winter pretty lonely around here.

Most of the produce in the Full Circle Farm box comes from California right now, and I'm glad that California can grow so much of the good organic stuff we love to eat. It's all good stuff, but man, I can't wait to have a box full of locally grown greens, berries, cherries, peaches! This is the first year that we've ever tried to eat what's in season instead of getting produce from Chile or places even further away. We love the winter veggies, but seriously, spring, hurry up and get here, we want our spring and summer fruits and veggies back.

Lately I've mostly been cooking old standards and favorites, but we did just get a new issue of Bon Appetit that has a black bean chili recipe that I'm dying to try. Tonight we're having more Curried Lentil Soup (mentioned in the post below this one), because we still cannot get enough of it! It is just the best winter recipe. Warm and hearty!

Recipe obsessions

Periodically, Brian and I will discover a recipe that we can't get enough of. It might come from Food Network, it might come from Bon Appetit, from the recipe leaflet included in our Full Circle Farm box or somewhere else.

Currently, we cannot get enough of the Curried Lentil Soup recipe from the December issue of Bon Appetit. We're both big Indian food fans, so this recipe was a no brainer. We knew we'd make it and we knew we'd love it, but we had no idea how much! It's nothing short of heavenly.



It's super-simple, super-fast and super-inexpensive. You can make it while watching two toddlers tear around the house. It smells amazing while cooking and the delightful scent of curry winds its way around your entire house. We serve it over rice, like Indian food, and it's as good as the best Indian food you've ever had. It's perfect for this time of year, because the warmth of the soup and gentle heat of the curry warm you from inside out. It's craveable and wonderful, and we've made it twice already. It was our New Year's Eve dinner, in fact.

Lentils might make you think of Neil from The Young Ones, but this isn't anything like the slop Neil cooked up. This is good, good food.

The December issue has another great recipe that we've tried and love, the Risotto with Butternut Squash, Leeks and Basil. This, like the Curried Lentil Soup, is warm, creamy, comforting and perfect for a winter dinner. The leeks break down and become as smooth as the rice and the butternut squash becomes nice and soft and retains its sweet flavor. It was nice to find another butternut squash recipe in case I ever get sick of making soup with it (doubtful).

Cookie cookie cookie starts with C

I baked cookies this afternoon, like a proper stay-at-home mom. They're good old Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, from the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips. I must say they are divine! Happy holidays, everyone!