Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden. 

I really enjoy chowing down on these fast little burritos; something about the couscous is so unexpected and surprisingly filling.  They make the perfect quicky lunch, at home or school or work.  Or in the park when you’re playing hooky from one of the above…

The fillings, aside from the couscous (it’s what makes these puppies fun and unique so don’t skip that), can be whatever is in season.  Right now I’m getting literally buckets of cherry tomatoes from my gardens and a few green peppers so those immediately went into my burritos.  I sometimes add a little scrambled egg for protein.  I bet some bits of grilled chicken thrown in would be tasty too if you’ve got some on hand. 

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During this bountiful season of the tomato harvest, there’s a certain classification of recipes I turn to. No sauces, no stews, nothing that uses cooked tomatoes or anything I can make in January with my frozen tomato booty. Celebrate the final summer hurrah by savoring the fresh and relish those special recipes that can only made this time of year.

This Tomato Crouton Casserole fits that bill nicely — and can readily be a side dish or we even serve it with breakfast at our B&B. Recipe after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

Summer’s fleeting, but we’ll undoubtedly still have a few hot days and men are still selling watermelons off trucks by a gas station near my house.  I love watermelon, and I love agua fresca, the fruity, refreshing beverage sold at taquerias on Cherokee Street in St Louis that are easy to make and easier to drink.  You can use any juicy fruit you like, but as long as watermelons are around, I’ll be using them.

Watermelon Agua Fresca

6 cups cubed, seedless or seeded watermelon (about one medium watermelon)

sugar, honey, or agave nectar, to taste

juice of two small or one large lime

2 cups water, divided

pinch of salt

mint leaves, for garnish

1. Puree half the watermelon with half the water.  Strain juice into a pitcher.
2. Repeat with remaining watermelon and water.
3. Add lime juice, sweetener to taste (a tablespoon or two should do it), and a pinch of salt.  Mix well.
4. Chill.
5. Serve cold, garnished with mint leaves

If you desire, you can turn this into an adult beverage with the spirit of your choice.

Photo courtesy of Steve Evans at Wikimedia Commons

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Many home gardeners gratefully complain about having too much zucchini during the summer once their plants’ fruits ripen.  They just don’t have enough to do with it.  In my house, it’s even more of a problem because my husband, like Jessica Seinfeld’s kids, only eats “green things” if I hide them.  He will actually eat this dish twice a year or so, mainly because it’s deliciously creamy and cheesy.  It’s kind of a sauceless lasagna, and it’s pretty hard to mess up.  It makes a great meatless main dish or a substantial side dish, and can be altered to use whatever you happen to have on hand.  The recipe, after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

“Free organic fruit. Perfectly ripe. Locally grown. Yours for the taking.”

Your ears perking up yet? If this showed up on your local Craig’s List or Freecycle would you be frantically e-mailing, “When can I come over”? Amazingly, such an opportunity probably exists right now, perhaps right down your road, as fruit trees ripen and – too often – fall to the ground and rot.

Like an archeological remnant of a past generation, industrious homeowners often planted these fruit trees several decades ago, before our era of mega-supermarkets and the universal concept that we can, and should, buy everything 24/7. Seems these trees tend to fall into two categories: either they belong to senior residents who can’t physically pick and process the fruit, or newer residents who bought the house with the tree and don’t have the time to pick, much less know what to do with four bushels of pears. Other folks even go as far as considering these trees a nuisance, as overripe fruit falls to the ground and attracts bugs and rodents, eventually chopping the tree down.

Don’t anger the Lorax, make pear pie instead. By connecting with these untapped fruit sources, you cook up something bigger than your private food stash – you will be an ambassador for building community, one bite at a time. I made my annual pilgrimage yesterday to local seniors John and Mary’s house to raid their pear tree, coming home with three five-gallon buckets of fruit. No secret invasion needed; Mary calls every year right before Labor Day to let me know the pears are ripe and we’re welcome to harvest.

Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m eating a lot of oat groats these days. I found a source for locally-grown oat groats, but the minimum order was 25 pounds. Oat groats are the least processed of all edible forms of oats, so they store a very long time (some sources are giving them 30 years under the right conditions.) So even though I’d never tasted them before, I decided to give them a try. I figured any minimally-processed food was a good addition to our diet, and even if it took us years to use them up, it’d be okay. And in the meantime if the apocalypse arrived, there’d be something to eat. Win-win-win.

Oh. My. God. This is what oats taste like. I like good old-fashioned oatmeal just fine — I’ve eaten it for years, still happy to eat it if that’s what’s on the table. When I discovered pinhead oats and stone ground oatmeal, though, I realized just how much regular oatmeal had lost in the process of being…well, processed. (Don’t speak to me of instant oatmeal. That’s not a food.) So it comes as no surprise that getting closer to the whole grain results in an even more interesting taste and texture.

Even so, oat groats were a revelation. Read the rest of this entry »

Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.

It’s almost here and I thought I’d better prepare all of you for it.  It’s the ying to the yang of vegetable gardening.  Those of you that are fortunate enough to have a little piece of ground to grow your own food will be very familiar with it.  And those of you that visit farmers markets and can’t resist the siren song of all those amazing late summer vegetables know it too.  Perhaps you shudder a bit just to think about it.  Or, if you’re like me, you lie in bed, eyes wide open, conjuring up ways to creatively sidestep it.  

“It” is that deluge of fresh produce that starts to haunt every corner of your kitchen, entryway, and basement, taunting you as it slowly deteriorates while you fret over and hunt out ways to use it up.  By late summer, you’ve grown a tad tired of zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, peppers, and even tomatoes.  Actually, I never tire of tomatoes, but I do get full before I can finish each new batch that comes off my prolific vines.  That’s where this recipe, appropriately named Use ‘Em Up Cold Summer Soup, comes into play.  How full of promise is that title?  Question is, does it live up to the hype?

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or

Reasons to be a Vegetarian!

As a former vegetarian, I eat a very select and small amount of meat and consider myself a conscious carnivore these days. I’m doing research for a book and i wanted to gather some facts about the environmental impact the industrialized meat production system. I’m all about creating a safe, humane, healthy and regional farming system for both veggies and animals.

After scratching the surface of the topic of industrialized meat production, I’m more convinced than ever, we will not survive if we continue (as a culture in the US) to demand and consume as much meat as we have become accustomed to. Churning out beef, pork, chicken, etc. on this scale can’t be sustainable, and I’m sure there are hundreds of great arguments about why we really don’t need to consume this much meat. I’ll leave that debate to those better qualified to cite studies and reports. I just know how I feel and what works for me. I’ve got many addictions, but thankfully meat isn’t one of them.

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Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.

Okay, I have a secret to share.  No, it’s not the formula for calculating the volume of a square container with tapered sides (a recent question in my Math for the Green Industry class), but it’s pretty shocking nonetheless.  Here it is: I’ve never made my own risotto before.  GASP!   Seriously, I haven’t.  I always squirmed at the idea of standing around and stirring the stuff for 20 minutes.  And frankly, no risotto I’d had out somewhere had ever piqued my interest enough to make the effort seem worthwhile.  No risotto, that is, until this Green Bean Risotto.

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If I had to sum up Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods (Chelsea Green Publishing, $35) in one sentence it would be, “Everything old is new again.”

Gary Paul Nabhan, PhD maybe America’s premiere Locavore. He spent years helping to compile lists of America’s endangered food products. He asks, “Do we put pretty pictures of these edibles in a museum so we can look at them?” His answer, No! We preserve foods, tastes, cultures by what Slow Food calls “eater-based conservation”. Mr. Nabhan has said that isn’t just about the genetics, “If we save a vegetable but we don’t save the recipes and the farmers don’t benefit because no one eats it, then we haven’t done our work.”

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