Ambitious Delicious(ness)

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

Thanks to readers Tom and Christina for pointing out that I had the wrong name of the squash in my last post. It’s good to know that my readers are paying attention!

As I mentioned before, this is the second dish that came out of all those  roasted vegetables. I realized that while kale, in all of its goodness, is a wonderful green vegetable, it can get a little bit bitter if you cook it for too long.

I added some of the squash mixture from my last post into this dish, giving the broth a slight orange color and contrasting the kale with a hint of sweetness. Some stewed tomatoes would also help cut the bitterness of the kale. The soup was also perfectly flavorful with a surprising kick of heat at the end, which I absolutely loove! Try making this with whatever vegetables you have on hand.

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

There was a collection of beautiful vegetables from my CSA share. I hate wasting food, so I wanted to make something to incorporate all of the goodies I had on hand. I asked for some squash suggestions on my Facebook fan page and one of them was a soup. (thanks!!)

My initial goal was to create roasted kale and butternut acorn squash soup. But after roasting and blending squash, garlic, onion and green pepper – I felt that it would be a waste of superb flavors to just dump it into the soup. So in one pot, I made a kale soup with chicken broth, roasted carrots and potatoes, and in another, was this soup. I added a hint of cream to finish.

This soup is jam packed with flavor, stemming from the flavors of the roasted vegetables. It is so yummy that I have a feeling that you’d want to make this soup at least five more times before squash season is over. It’s sweet, earthy with subtle hints of garlic and green pepper, juxtaposed with the cream, which adds a light creaminess.

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is when a farmer offers a certain number of “shares” to the public. Interested consumers then purchase a share to receive a box of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season. The produce is fairly priced, local grown, and in my case, organic.

My friend E (check out her awesome design work!), came over with R a couple of weeks ago. R brought wine and we were eating, laughing, and chatting it up from the moment we got there, right up until we went to sleep. Then we woke up the next morning and ate some more. Thanks for coming, friends!

I had yams from my CSA share from the week before, and wanted to incorporate it into our breakfast that day. I grated the yams like I would carrots; the color are close enough, after all!

The yams were a bit crunchy, as they were undercooked, and not as sweet as I would have liked. Next time, I will saute the yams separately first, so that it adds a nice, soft, starchy texture to the omelet. I didn’t really do a great job, as you can tell from the photo. But it was quick and yummy!

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Have you ever cooked with pork butt before? Apparently, it’s a common cut of pork, and can easily be found in supermarkets and butcher shops.

So I decided to make pulled pork! (The kimchi on top was an afterthought.)

I chose a cold and rainy weekend to make experiment with pork butt. To me, there is nothing worse than cooking under time constraints. Unsurprisingly, the end product is not as good when I’m not relaxed and enjoying the creative process. So during the course of my lazy day, I read a book, finished laundry, and made myself a Pumpkin Spiced Latte (recipe to follow)- all while this was in the oven, doing it’s thing.

Once my microwave timer went off, I excitedly removed the pork from the oven, then poked at the meat with a pair of tongs, I was so happy to see that the meat had tenderized beautifully, giving way to perfectly cooked pieces of delicious pork.

But then I ran into a couple of problems.

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It’s that time again! As the weather gets colder, all my body wants to do is drink hot soup and sleep all day. And that’s when soups become a part of my every meal ;). This chili would go excellently with the whole wheat bread from my previous post!

I soaked dry beans overnight, then cooked it for about 2 hours before adding the other ingredients. But feel free to use canned beans to save time. What are some of your favorite winter soups?

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Here’s a recipe from Sullivan Street Bakery that I tried a while ago, while I had access to a dutch oven. I tried the same recipe again with a few changes:

*I used whole wheat flour instead of bread flour, mainly because it’s healthier. i was afraid that the texture would be too tough, but this was actually quite delicious.

*I recall thinking that this recipe needed more salt, so I added some more and it was perfect.

*Since I don’t have a dutch oven, I used a cast iron skillet to see if that would be a good substitution. To my delight, it turned out good!

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I’ve fled the abundant land of zucchini and found myself smack in the middle of pumpkin land. I was never a huge fan of pumpkins but lately, I find them alluring. My goal is to be more intentional about using produce that are in season. What’s autumn without this orangey goodness?

A funny story about these cookies: I distinctly recall taking the baking soda out and setting it on my counter as I was adding the ingredients. But then, it went back to its resting place without ever making it out of the bottle.

So the end result ended up being a weird-shaped cross between cookie and cake. I’m not about to go making up words like stoup: thicker than soup but not quite a stew, so I’ll just call these cakey cookies.

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