You could blame Brooks Robinson and George Brett, but mostly you should blame a slap-hitting, drag-bunting, slick-fielding, former Atlanta Braves farmhand named Terry Muck. Terry played short and sometimes second on the Aurora SealMasters, a men’s fast-pitch team from my hometown that won a bunch of National (and World) Championships when I was a kid. Sounds corny, I suppose, but they…
Tag: csa
Blubarb Jam: A Sweet and Slippery Slope
If you’re new to making fruit preserves, blueberries are the perfect gateway. Widely available, rich in their own pectin, and relatively inexpensive, blues are a small-batch-friendly fruit. And with no hulling and no pitting, your prep is pretty much limited to a quick rinse and a scan for stray stems and bum berries. Lovely when sugared…
Another One-Pan Wonder
You may have noticed I have a thing for stews—particularly, chicken stews—one-pot (mostly), unfussy (definitely) dishes that are simple to assemble, easily scale up or down, take advantage of seasonal produce, and taste as good leftover as they do on Night One. There was the Riesling-fueled, Alsatian riff on Coq au Vin; the Mexican corn-and-poblano take; the Southern-influenced, peach-tomato-okra jumble; and,…
Hand-Me-Down Muffins, Share-Worthy Curd
Kim Severson’s lovely and poignant Mother’s Day piece in last week’s Food Section sent me sorting through my stash of handwritten, handed-down recipes for one of my favorite fruit-spread vehicles, my mom’s Vanilla Muffins. Fragrant, moist, and simple, these were not muffins you studded with fruit; these were muffins you smeared with fruit. With, say, Aunt Harriet‘s peach butter, made…
Forage Potage
(faw-razh paw-tahzh) A thick soup, stew, or porridge in which found or scavenged items are boiled together until they form a thick mush. Yes, this one was a real hodge-podge. Ramps, the spring-heralding, wild allium that gave Chicago its name, picked up at the season’s first Headhouse Farmers’ Market Sunday. Stinging nettles—another truly foraged plant—that came…
Eastertide Fermentation Miracle
Perfectly Paschal purple, this ferment came together Easter morning, after I’d finished up a mixed-veg slaw to contribute to that evening’s holiday table. The slaw used up all the carrots, but the remaining cabbage and celeriac volunteered for laboratory duty. Time for more small-batch fermentation experimentation! I suspected my sunnier, Spring-warmed kitchen might kick the fermentation process into a higher…
More Carrots, Fewer Sticks
We haven’t been stockpiling on purpose, but Sunday morning I noticed our crisper’d somehow accumulated three pretty big bags of carrots. And LFFC’s weekly newsletter predicted another bunch would arrive on Tuesday. Yikes. For sure, we could stand to bump up our share of raw carrots consumed, so I peeled and sliced the biggest roots into snackable…
Miracle Cure for Root Fatigue
Carrots. Parsnips. Beets. Rutabagas. Celeriac. Kohlrabi. Radishes. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. Our LFFC farmers’ high tunnels and hoop houses have gifted us each week with a small bunch of kale or spinach or cress or rocket (and last week, green beans!), but easily two-thirds of each sharebox has been roots—and as much as I love ’em, here, at the…
A Stew So Nice I Made It Twice . . .
. . . just so I could eat it once. A recent all-night (and all-the-next-day) bout with a hidden crustacean left me, um, shell-shocked. I’ve been so careful these past few years. But with too many plates—and probably too many glasses—on the six-top that night, I didn’t ask our server all the questions I should have. I…
Sunny & Crisp Triple-Root Salad
Fresh and bright in a way that makes you ask the Polar Vortex how many days until pitchers and catchers report, here’s a crisp and crunchy three-root salad that’s somewhere between a slaw and a remoulade. Triple-Root Salad Really, any roots will do. I loved this combination of celery root, beets, and carrots from last week’s sharebox,…
Boxing Day 