Chicken Scampi

We were so busy with the apartment hunt and planning our trip to England that we got behind eating up the vegetables the past couple weeks. By this last weekend, we had 2 tomatoes and 3 ears of corn that were past saving. In our 18 weeks of CSA farm share, it was the first food we were going to "throw out." To make ourselves feel better we didn't actually throw it out, but took it to the community garden to compost it. When we got to the garden the host suggested that we feed it to the chickens. She promised it would be a sight that we had never seen before, and she was right. She held the mushy tomatoes out, and the chickens jumped up to eat them out of her hand. I had never seen chickens jump before, and I have spent some time with chickens. We were happy to pass the tomatoes along for another creature to eat.



We had chicken scampi for dinner. This is one of my husband's specialty dishes. It's usually served with shrimp, but I'm allergic to shell fish so at our house it's made with chicken. It's a quick meal and always a crowd pleaser. I already wrote about it once here, but here is another take on it.

Chicken Scampi
2 large chicken breasts, cut into strips
6 cloves of garlic
2 lemons, juiced
1/2 t oregano
1 T butter
oil
salt and pepper

Heat up a skillet and add some oil to coat the bottom. Add the chicken, and cook until done. Add the garlic and cook one more minute. Turn off the heat and add the lemon juice, oregano and butter. Serve over pasta or rice.

Lemon juice looses lots of flavor when cooked, so always add it right at the end of the recipe.

This post is part of Works-for-me-Wendesday and Real Food Wednesday.

Lentils with Beets and Goat Cheese

There are lots of things I love about participating in a CSA farm share: it arrives each week encouraging us to eat lots of vegetables, pushes us to try new and different things, and makes us get creative to find new ways to prepare vegetable overload. One down side is that I don't know the names of all of our loot. For example, we have gotten several beets each week for the last several weeks. When we pick them out of the bin (simply labeled beets)they are all lightly coated in dirt, and it is hard to tell what color they are. It is not until you are at home scrubbing them clean that their color is revealed. Are yellow beets simply called "yellow beets" or do they have another name? Are red beets just called "beets"? I did a quick internet search that was not very fruitful. I know the stripped ones are chioggia, but my knowledge ends there.

We made a simple dinner from lentils, carrot tops, goat cheese and yellow and red beets. I have made this before, and it is always satisfying. Here is the recipe from last time. This time we used some carrot tops we had on-hand. I had never really eaten carrot tops until recently. I always felt bad throwing them out, but I wasn't sure what to do with them. When I read about carrot top pesto over at Not Eating Out in New York it inspired me to change my ways. Carrot tops have a taste that are somewhere between parsley and carrots, and they add a nice fresh flavor to the peppery lentils, tangy sauce, sweet beets and creamy cheese.


Lentils with Beets and Goat Cheese

3 C chicken stock
1 c lentils
4 beets
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 T apple cider vinegar
2 t Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
handful of carrot tops, chopped
goat cheese

Check the lentils for stones, rinse, and add to the chicken stock. Bring it to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer. Cook until the lentils are tender (15 - 60 minutes depending on the type of lentils). Meanwhile, scrub the beets. Place them in a sauce pot and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil, and cook until a fork can easily pierce the beets. Remove from water and let cool. Add the vinegars, mustard, garlic and carrot tops to the lentils. Once the beets are cool, use a spoon to peel the beets. Cut into bit size slices, and add to the lentil mixture. Serve them with goat cheese crumbled on the top.

I found that the yellow beets cooked much faster than the red ones, so check on them periodically to prevent over cooking.


This post is part of Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade, Grocery Cart Challenge, Frugal Friday, and Finer Things Friday.

Plans for Week 17

Yesterday was one of those days when I was really excited to do some cooking for the week, but nothing turned out quite right. That really kills the mood. I bought a chicken at the Union Square Greenmarket on Saturday, and decided that I wanted to boil it to create some chicken broth and shred the meat to use on salads. I ended up using the huge stock pot because the chicken was slightly too big for the normal soup pot. This pot is pretty wide, so in order to cover the chicken with water, I had to use a fair bit of water. The chicken stock ended up being really watery. The upside is that we have a lot of it. Oh well. I was planning to cook quinoa and brown rice in it anyways. I guess I managed to stretch it farther. After making dinner, I decided to bake some cherry tomatoes. We just got them on Saturday in our farm share, but they were very ripe. I have done this lots of times, but yesterday I left them in the oven too long, and they cooked down to burnt bits. I managed to save a few. Hopefully I got my kitchen mishaps out of the way for a while.


This week's share brought us arugula, some bitter greens for braising, daikon radishes, potatoes, beets, garlic, heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

The plan for this week is:

Monday - Salad with pork chops and mushrooms

Tuesday - Steak topped with leeks and mushrooms, beet salad, and arugula salad

Wednesday - Chicken breasts with garlic scape pesto and salad

Thursday - Lentils with beets and goat cheese

Friday - Out to dinner


Last night we had some shredded chicken with tomato sauce, oven roasted potatoes and a big salad. The tomato sauce was really good and really dressed up a simple dinner. It was so simple, but full of great tomato flavor.

This post is part of Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Menu Plan Monday at I am an Organizing Junkie.

The Feast

I am participating in the Foodbuzz Project Food Blog challenge. If you like what you read, please vote for me by clicking on my profile in the right sidebar and following the directions.

In our neighborhood, The Feast refers to the Feast of San Gennaro. Imagine a county fair on a narrow street in downtown Manhattan. It's wild. Lots of stands selling sausage and peppers, deep fried oreos, zeppoles and pizza. There are even some small rides on the side streets including a mini-ferris wheel and parachute drop. There is a stage with live entertainment, and each night we are serenaded by a band playing Italian American classics such as the Rocky Theme Song, New York, NY, That's Amore and more. Oh, and it lasts for 10 days. Here are few photos:


This is the view from our front door.


Here is a view down our block with one of New York's finest.


Another angle of our block and one of the many t-shirt stands.

We thought we'd have dinner inspired by The Feast. We had some spicy sausage with potatoes, red pepper, garlic and kale.


This is an imprecise recipe. We used 1 lb of spicy sausage, 3 potatoes, 1 red pepper and 1 large bunch of kale. I cooked the sausage and potatoes for 30 minutes at 300 degrees, and then added the red pepper and kale and cooked it for another 15 minutes. It was piled high in a cast iron pan, and it cooked down nicely. Enjoy your own feast.

This post is part of Hearth 'n Soul Blog Hop at A Moderate Life, Top Ten Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, and Tuesday Twister.

Voting and Plans for Week 16

I entered the Foodbuzz Project Food Blog yesterday. Please check out yesterday's post to read my entry for the first challenge. If you like what you read, please click on my profile on the right sidebar and vote for me. Voting is open Monday to Wednesday.


This week's share includes leeks, salad mix, arugula, potatoes (the first of the season), hot peppers, radishes, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and garlic scapes pesto. We are looking forward to some delicious meals. Here is our menu for this week:

Monday: Steak, Scalloped Potatoes with Leeks and Salad

Tuesday: Chicken Cacciatore with salad

Wednesday: Pork Chops with Garlic Scape Pesto and Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

Thursday: Spicy Lentils and Beet Salad

Friday: Chicken and Arugula Salad

This post is part of Monday Mania at the Healthy Home Economist and Menu Plan Monday at Org Junkie.

Project Food Blog's First Challenge: The Story behind City Share

I am participating in Project Food Blog at Foodbuzz. The first challenge is to define ourselves as a food blogger and what makes our blog unique. I believe my set of experiences uniquely inform my blog. Here is my journey that led me to my City Share blog.

I grew up eating home cooked, well balanced meals. My parents did a great job of always getting dinner on the table for family meals. By the time I was a teenager, I had been helping in the kitchen for years, and could help prepare most of the family favorites.

After college, I worked in a couple of restaurants to help pay my rent. I worked as a server, but I spent all of the down time in the kitchen watching the chefs at work. I already knew how to cook the basics, but it was at that stage that I was exposed to sauces and creating more complicated dishes with layered flavors. Working in restaurants provided me with a turning point, food went from something you ate when you were hungry to something delicious you looked forward to, discussed, and contemplated.


A year after college, I decided to move to rural New York State. This may be hard for some of you to picture, but most of New York State has rolling farm land instead of have high rises. I got a job at The Farmers' Museum and taught visitors about rural life in the mid 19th century. When I arrived, I was a city girl from Arizona. What did I know about rural life in the Northeast? Not much! But I learned, and went on to teach others. The museum has a small farm used to teach visitors about historic foodways. Some visitors would walk in and be appalled that there were carrots with small clumps of dirt still clinging to them. They would declare that they would never eat such dirty carrots. This would be our chance to explain that carrots actually grow in the ground, and that if they had ever eaten a carrot, they had eaten a "dirty" carrot. They just get washed off before they are delivered to the grocery store. These types of interactions were a revelation to me. People had grown so removed from their food! Both children and adults preferred baby carrots from plastic bags and thought eggs came from Styrofoam cartons.


While I was growing up, I knew that carrots grew in the ground and oranges grew on trees because we had a small garden and a few citrus trees. This was knowledge I had taken for granted. Something I had not appreciated before my time at The Farmers' Museum was the seasonality of food. We have gotten so out of touch with our food that we don't know when produce is naturally available in our area. Grocery stores ship produce grown around the world so we can get strawberries in February, oranges in August and asparagus in October. During my time in upstate NY, I started shopping at farmers' markets, and getting to know family farmers. It was an amazing experience meeting the people who raised my food. I learned about the challenges they face from factory farms and agricultural corporations. After I moved away from upstate NY, I continued to read about local and organic foods and their benefits to the environment and our health.


This year, my husband and I decided to participate in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share as part of our effort to eat more local and sustainably produced food. I decided to write about the challenges of eating up the veggies that kept coming each week. It's a very different way to think about food. We aren't thinking of what we want to eat next week, but waiting for the vegetables to arrive and then deciding how to prepare them. I originally wanted to write the blog just to hold us accountable and share some suggestions for veggie overload with other CSA participants. I envisioned my blog as a digital recipe swap. We experimented with names that would convey that we are living in New York City and eating a farm share, and City Share was born. This journey shapes how I think about food, and helps set my blog apart. We want to encourage other apartment dwellers that they too can eat a farm fresh diet. My blog is my way to participate in the conversation about food, farmers, cooking and more. Thanks for joining me.

If you enjoy my blog, please click on my contestant button on the right sidebar and vote for me. Voting begins on Monday, September 20th and continues until September 23rd. Thanks!

Composting

We are composting! Or, at least saving vegetable scraps to put in a compost bin. I always thought composting was out of our reach because we live in a small apartment without a yard or access to any dirt, but last Saturday we discovered otherwise. Our pick-up point for our CSA share moved to a community garden, and they have a compost system. Our CSA organizers pointed out we can bring in our vegetable scraps. They suggested putting the peels in the freezer for the week, and delivering them to the community garden when we pick up our share each Saturday. It was one of those moments when I felt silly that I hadn't thought of that myself. Of course! Freeze the scraps! Why didn't I think of that? At least we are composting now.

We are still getting in the habit of saving our vegetable peels, but we are getting better each day. It's great to see our garbage really decreasing in volume.


Tonight we had chicken baked with kohlrabi, turnips, onions and garlic with sides of beet greens and brown rice. Baked chicken is one of our favorite meals for cool weather because it is so versatile and forgiving. We placed a chicken in our Dutch oven, surrounded in by chopped vegetables, covered it, and baked it. Cook it for 1 to 1.5 hours depending on the size of your chicken.

Here's another post on Oven Roasted Chicken with Vegetables.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade, Frugal Fridays and Grocery Cart Challene Recipe Swap.

Brisket with Vegetables, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

The weather suddenly feels like fall here in New York City. It's making me crave roasts and baked vegetable dishes. It's a great change of pace after spending a hot summer eating lots of salads and planning meals around cooking as little as possible. I thought I'd make another meal plan this week to make sure we eat up all our farm share vegetables.

Monday - Fresh ham baked with maple and mustard sauce, brown rice cooked in chicken stock, boiled corn, and sauteed kale.

Tuesday - Hamburgers with tomatoes, oven roasted beets, and sauteed beet greens.

Wednesday - Leftover ham, baked corn, and kale salad.

Thursday - Baked Chicken with kohlrabi and leeks, and a tomato salad.

Friday - Steak with fried onions, corn on the cob, tomato, radish and salad turnip salad.


Last night we had brisket with mashed potatoes and vegetables. I heated up some oil in my dutch oven, browned the brisket, and set it aside. I then quickly browned some onions and garlic, and added the rest of my ingredients. Once I had everything in the pot, my husband shared that he thought mashed potatoes would be really good with the meal. I had to agree that some mashed potatoes with gravy would be delicious, but I already had the potatoes stewing in the pot with everything else. But then we decided to try something new, we would cook the potatoes in the dutch oven with the brisket and broth soaking up flavor, and then pull them out after 30 minutes and mash them. It worked really well. We ended up with really flavorful potatoes, and only used one pot!

Brisket with Vegetables, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
2 T oil
1 (2 1/2 lb) brisket, with "fat cap" (do not trim)
3 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus for brisket
Freshly ground black pepper
2 medium yellow onions, cut into thick slices
12 - 16 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 c cooking sherry
4 c chicken broth
2 T fresh sage, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled, and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 turnips, peeled and chopped
8 red potatoes, cut into large pieces
2 T butter
1/4 C flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy bottomed Dutch oven over medium-high heat until beginning to smoke. Season the brisket generously with the paprika, salt, and pepper. Place fat side down in the Dutch oven and cook until brown, turn and continue to brown on all sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate and set aside.

Add the onions and garlic and cook over medium heat until starting to brown. Pour in the sherry and cook until reduced by about half. Nestle the brisket into the onions and garlic fat side up, add the broth and sage; bring to a simmer and place in the oven to bake, covered, until the brisket is fork tender, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Uncover, scatter the carrots, turnips and potatoes around the brisket and cook until they are tender, about 30 minutes more.

Fish out the potatoes, and place in a mixing bowl. Mash the potatoes with a fork or masher. Add broth from the brisket until they reach the desired consistency.

Transfer the brisket to a cutting board, thinly slice the meat across the grain.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the vegetables from the broth, and set aside to serve with dinner.

For a Pan Gravy: Melt the butter in a skillet and slowly add the flour. Make sure the four is entirely integrated with the butter before adding more flour. Cook until golden brown, and then starting adding broth ladle by ladle. Stirring until smooth, and then adding more broth. Once the gravy has reached the desired thickness, pour into the gravy boat.

Save the rest of the broth for another dish. We plan to use our for cooking rice this evening.

This post is part of Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Menu Plan Monday at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Deadlines and Week 15

I haven't posted for several days because we were off to a wedding in Easton, Maryland. It was quite the affair. There was a traditional Hindu ceremony in the morning with a luncheon, we had about an hour for a costume change, and then there was an Episcopal service and a black tie reception. We are generally shorts and t-shirt people, so this was a big deal for us. I bought a new floor length black dress and heels. My husband bought a tux, a tux shirt, cuff links, a bow tie and cummerbund. We had made it to NJ when he realized that he forgot his bow tie at our apartment. There was not time to turn around, but luckily there ended up being a men's store right down the street from the hotel. The second tie was a real bow tie, so we also learned to tie it (our new skill for the weekend).

The luncheon featured a delicious Indian buffet made by the bride's family. For dinner, we enjoyed salmon and chicken entrees. My husband and I split the entrees, but we each liked our own dish the best. The salmon had a rich buttery sauce served on a bed of vegetables. The chicken had a flavorful maple, ginger and clove sauce with squash and spinach.



On our way home yesterday, we got a call from Zip Car telling us that our car was overdue. We thought we had it until 5:00, but they said our reservation ended at 11:00. Oops! They were able to rearrange the schedule and let us have the car until 3:30. There went our time buffer. We were racing the clock the rest of the way home. We were just entering the Holland Tunnel at 3:10, and we pulled into the garage at 3:30 on the dot. We quickly dropped off our wedding gear at home, and raced to pick-up our farm share. We arrived at the building, and learned that the pick-up point moved again this week. No climb to the roof top, but a walk a few extra block to a community garden. We made it in time, and because we arrived at the end of the day we got extra corn and garlic.


We saw the return of some favorites that we hadn't seen since the beginning of the summer. This week we will be enjoying garlic, corn, kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, kale, cherry tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes.

Liver and Onions with Collard Greens and Corn

I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day. We used our day off to explore a couple of neighborhoods in Queens. We continue to expand our horizons and consider new places to live. A couple of neighborhoods were really promising, but we haven't found an actual apartment we like yet.


Labor Day is often associated with cook-outs, grilled meat and all those great summer foods. We don't have a grill, so we had something more akin to a Sunday dinner (on Monday). We had liver and onions, collard greens and corn. I read about a technique in Mark Bittman's column a while back that recreates the taste of grilled corn without a grill. What you do is heat up a cast iron skillet, melt some butter, and pan fry the corn. It looked beautiful, but unfortunately tasted mushy and flavorless. I think our CSA farmers gave us cow corn! Oops! We each took a couple of bites, but couldn't finish it.

The rest of the meal was a huge success. We always like liver and onions. This time around it was bison liver. Here is my recipe. For the collard greens, I basically followed ChezSuzanne's recipe off of Food 52. My husband exclaimed, "These are the best collard greens that I have ever tasted!" and a few bites later "These are amazing." They are definitely worth a try. It includes garlic chips, bacon, and a butter and apple cider vinegar sauce- need I say more?


Here is a close up of the garlic chips and bacon bits awaiting their fate (That's a small plate).

This post is part of Two for Tuesdays at A Moderate Life, Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam, and Tempt my Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace.

Making a Plan

We had a busy day walking around Brooklyn. We are considering moving to have some more space, so we were checking to see how we felt in a couple of different neighborhoods. There are lots of nice places, but we are weighing living space, distance to the subways, outdoor spaces, and things to do close by. It is hard because there are so many choices. It feels that we need to keep looking and looking so that we won't miss that one good deal right around the corner. A decision will need to be made in three weeks, which is good. Sometimes it is good to have deadline.

I thought we should get more organized this week and plan out our meals. We are going out of town for a wedding on Friday and Saturday, so this plan will only take us through Thursday. I want to eat up our farm share veggies and our farmers' market finds:

Monday - Stuffed Peppers with some grass-fed ground beef, corn, carrots, garlic, mushrooms and fresh tomato sauce.

Tuesday - Liver and Onions with Collard Greens and Corn on the Cob.

Wednesday - Salmon and a Mediterranean Salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, avocado, chickpeas, sorrel, garlic and feta (inspired by a dish at Miriam Restaurant in Park Slope)

Thursday - Lentil and Beet Salad with goat cheese and beet greens


Last night, we had steak with leeks and mushrooms over some yellow beans (or should they be called wax beans?). It wasn't the most photogenic meal, but it was delicious. The steak was a tough cut, so we cooked it pretty rare.


Steak with Leeks and Mushrooms
1/2 lb steak, thinly sliced
1 head of garlic, minced
2 T soy sauce
Juice of half a lemon
oil
1/2 lb of Oyster mushrooms, chopped
2 leeks, whites finely sliced
2 T butter

Mix the steak, garlic, soy sauce, and lemon juice and let marinate for a few minutes. Heat a skillet and coat it with oil. Add the steak mixture and quickly toss it in the pan for a minute and turn off the heat. Cook mushrooms, leeks in the butter until brown (about 10 minutes). Combine and enjoy!

This post is part of Monday Mania and The Healthy Home Economist.

Smoked Trout

Two years ago we were in Arizona to visit my family, and we spent several days on an AZ sightseeing trip. We went to Jerome, Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, Williams, Grand Canyon and Flagstaff. My husband hadn't seen most of it before, and I was excited to show him the rest of the state where I grew up. In Flagstaff, we ate breakfast at a small diner downtown. It was great! We love the type of places where the waitstaff knows how the regulars like their coffee and their eggs. My husband ordered scrambled eggs and smoked trout, and the combination was amazing. We wanted to buy some, and we tracked the trout to Oak Creek Canyon, but they only smoke it for restaurants. We hadn't tried it again... until, yesterday! We were walking through our Whole Foods, and spotted some local smoked trout. We were so excited!

We had smoked trout and poached eggs for breakfast, and it was delicious. I hadn't tried poaching eggs in a while, so I looked up some tips. People recommended cracking the egg into a ramekin, and then gently submerging the ramekin into the boiling water and transferring the egg into the pan. We don't have any ramekins, so I used a small shallow bowl. They don't look perfect, but they were delicious. My husband came up with the idea of using a ladle tomorrow. We sprinkled a little chopped sage over the top. The creaminess of the egg yolk with the smoky, salty taste of the trout and the herby, fresh taste of the sage created the perfect flavor combination.





We also picked up our farm share yesterday. It was another roof top week, and we had to climb the 7 flights of stairs to pick-up our veggies. I just tried googling Anthill Farm the other day (the farm that provides our veggies) and they now have a website!


This week we will be enjoying garlic, onions, leeks, beets, carrots, kale, yellow beans, and corn. My goal is to eat them all from root to tip (if possible).

Chicken with CSA Succotash

My husband made dinner last night while I worked away on the computer. I worked at the table while he was cooking about 9 feet away (I know because I counted floor tiles.) We chatted about our days as we cooked and worked. He asked a couple of times if I was ready to type up the recipe, and taunted me that I was going to find the succotash recipe shocking. Mmm, what could make succotash shocking?


As he was plating up dinner, he revealed his recipes. The "shocking" ingredient was Sazon. It is really tasty, but I worry that it's full of chemicals.

This was a great meal for using leftover bits of veggies. We were getting down to the end of our CSA veggies, so my husband supplemented the succotash with the "emergency" can of black eyed peas from the cabinet. You can substitute whatever you need to eat up, and if you want to forgo the Sazon choose some spices of your own. A little chili powder would be a good choice for a similar flavor.

Chicken with Herbs
4 cloves of garlic
2 T fresh basil, chopped
2 T fresh oregano, chopped
1/2 t red chili peppers flakes
1 t paprika
1/2 t Dijon mustard
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 T melted butter
1 T olive oil
2 large chicken breasts, thinly sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Combine the garlic, spices, mustard, vinegar, butter and oil in a mixing bowl. Add the chicken and mix together with your hands. Let marinate for an hour or more. Heat a wok or pan with deep sides, and add the chicken mixture. Cook until cooked through (about 5-8 minutes).

CSA Succotash
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
1/2 onion, chopped
2 ears of corn
6 oven roasted tomatoes
2 frying peppers, julienned
1/2 lb of green beans, chopped
16 oz black eyed peas
1/4 c pepitas
1 package Sazon

Saute corn for 2 minutes. Add garlic, onion and peppers and cook for 1 more minute. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 5 minutes or until they are tender.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays from Food Renegade, Finer Things Friday, Frugal Fridays, and Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap.

A Local Foods Feast with Friends

Yesterday, we had a bunch of veggies to eat up, a clean apartment and no plans for the evening, so we decided to invite a couple of friends over for dinner. We have done almost no entertaining this summer. I blame it on the fact that it has been so hot. We have felt like eating simple meals that required limited cooking and lazing about in minimal clothing. Finally it is cooling off a bit, so we can start being more hospitable again.

We quickly decided on our menu. We prepared thin slices of raw beets and cucumbers with a smear of goat cheese for starters, plus our friends brought two types of feta, olives, hummus and pita. We almost didn't need dinner.


I made a corn and tomato salad with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and apple cider vinegar, one clove of garlic finely minced, and a pinch of salt and pepper. The last few time I cut corn off a cob, I made a huge mess. I recently picked up a tip from the blog How to Cook Like Your Grandmother that made a big difference. He suggested placing the corn cob in the middle of a bundt pan or an inverted bowl inside a bigger bowl. I don't have a bundt pan, so I used the latter method. It worked like a charm. I don't know why I never thought of it myself.


The other side was green beans with lots of garlic and some sesame seeds, but the real star was the pork chops with mustard sauce and onions. I made the corn and tomato salad and my husband made everything else. Everything was fabulous. All of the vegetables came for our CSA share, and the pork chops came from the Winkler Family Farm (we bought them at Whole Foods). We also served some lacto-fermented sauerkraut from Hawthorne Valley Farm. Here is a photo of the spread:


Pork Chops with Mustard Sauce and Onions
2 pork chops
Old Bay
oil
1 onion with its greens*, sliced

Set the pork chops on the counter and let them reach room temperature. Dust both sides with Old Bay. Heat a cast iron skillet. Coat the bottom with oil. When it begins to smoke add the pork chops. Cook about 5 minutes per side (more if they are really thick). Remove from the heat. Let rest and then slice. In a separate pan, cook the onions stirring frequently. Cook until caramelized.

Our onions from our CSA share come with the greens still attached. If you don't have onion with greens, you may use an additional onion, or some scallions.

Mustard Sauce
6 oz beer (we used Brooklyn Brown)
1 T mustard
2 T butter

After the pork chops have been removed from the skillet, drain off the excess fat. Scrape the bottom of the pan, and add the beer to help deglaze it. Turn on the burner to medium heat. Add the mustard and butter. Whisk continually, and let cook down and thicken.

The heat was too hot for our sauce, and it "broke". The butter separated from the other flavorings. Don't worry if that happens - it's still delicious. We served our on the side (we use our creamer as a gravy boat).

This post is part of Two for Tuesdays at A Moderate Life blog.

Week 13

We went to go pick up our CSA share yesterday to find no tent, no people and no vegetables in the normal spot. We did get there a little later than usual because we had a busy morning, but we were still well within the 12-4 time slot. We decided to head into the Bluestockings Bookstore (they help organize the CSA) and see if they knew what was going on.

We were informed that they had been running into problems with the parks department (he used the phrase "the Man was keeping them down"), so the share pick-up point had to be moved. He directed us to walk around the corner to an address, someone would be there to let us in, climb to the roof, and we would find our vegetables. It almost felt like a scavenger hunt or a speakeasy during prohibition. We walked around the corner, a girl sitting in a lawn chair asked if we were with foodstockings, we said yes, and she let us in. We climbed 7 flights of stairs, and got to enjoy a great view of the city while picking out our vegetables.


This week we will be enjoying tomatoes (there are 3 additional heirlooms that I forgot to put in the photo), garlic, corn, green beans, collard greens, leeks, and onions.


Check back in to see how we eat it all up. The big challenge for the week: tomatoes. We still have some left from last week, and we got a bunch more this week. Readers have made some great suggestions for pasta sauce, but my husband doesn't really like red sauce. I mentioned to him that the tomatoes we got yesterday would make a great tomato sauce, and he responded that he thought they would make an even better salsa. So, I guess we will be having some salsa this week.

Adventures in Farming

I haven't told my coworkers about my blog. Maybe one of these days I will come clean, but for now it is a private part of my life. I have told them about my CSA share. None of them had heard of a farm share before, and it was an intriguing concept to them. Most of them don't really cook, it is amazing how few people in NYC really do. I guess it could be blamed on small apartments with even smaller kitchens, so many good restaurants only steps away, or busy lives with long hours at work. Anyways, I always try to bring a homemade lunch to work, so between that and the farm share, I'm really the odd woman out.

A couple of days after I mentioned my farm share, a coworker shared that he found a show on a new cable channel that featured the story of two former New Yorkers who moved upstate to try their hand at farming called The Fabulous Beekman Boys. He was telling me about their trials and tribulations and how much he enjoyed the show. I asked where they lived, but he couldn't remember. He happened to mention that there was a hotel close by. I asked if he could remember the name of the hotel. He answered, "The American Hotel." It turns out the show is set only about 20 miles from where I used to work, and I think I have driven down their road. What a coincidence?!?

I think this show and my coworker's interest in it reveal a growing interest in food, where it comes from, and getting back in touch with the land. There seem to be a fair number of books coming out on the topic. Last weekend I noticed a sign in our neighborhood bookstore, McNally Jackson, that there would be a book reading today by Keith Stewart from It's a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life.


I had no expectations for the reading. I knew only the title of the book before going. It turns out that he sells his tomatoes, garlic and other organic vegetables at the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He has been selling there for 24 years and is one of the longest running vendors. There were about 30 people in attendance, and many of them were his long-time customers. Keith shared some stories from the book about his transition from a corporate job in NYC to organic farmer in Orange County, NY at the age of 40. He was charming and entertaining, his New Zealand accent animating his humorous anecdotes. It was an evening well spent.

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday at A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa, I'm Lovin' It Fridays at TidyMom, and Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade.

Week 12

I grew up in a house where there was almost always a grocery shopping list on the fridge. If someone drank the last of the milk or ate the last slice of bread, they needed to put it on the list. This was our household inventory, and helped to ensure the basics were always around.

Our CSA veggies have started to pile up a bit, so I decided to make a list. This one is not a list of what we need to purchase, but a list of what we already have. It's pretty impressive, right?


When we went to pick up farm share #12 yesterday, we got more corn, tomatoes, garlic, green beans, onions, basil and our first blueberries. After running the vegetables home, we hopped in a Zip Car to head out of town to a family party. We just got back today, so we haven't made any additional progress on the veggies. Better add the new ones to the list!

Do you have any suggestions for way to eat up lots of vegetables or ways to preserve them for later?

Blackened Catfish with Quinoa and Greens

People living elsewhere in the country ask us if it's difficult living in New York City. I always answer with a resounding "No." Maybe we set up our lives to make things simple, but living here has been really easy. My husband walks to work. I can take one subway to work. During the weekend, we often don't take the train at all because there are so many things to do within walking distance. There is lots of great food all around us. The list goes on and on, but the moral story is that we find living in NYC really enjoyable. There is one exception to this easy, enjoyable life; we have an ongoing battle with the Post Office. We cannot get them to deliver packages to us. We have gone round and round with the little brown package slips, and it's really frustrating. Yesterday my husband and I met at the Post Office to pick-up a package, but the mission was unsuccessful.


On the way home, we stopped by Gourmet Garage to pick-up some fish. We decided to get catfish. It's really mild, so I always like to add some spice to it. We served blackened catfish over some quinoa and greens. Here are our recipes:

Blackened Catfish
1/4 t cayenne
2 t chili powder
2 t oregano
2 t paprika
2 t chili pepper flakes
2 t Old Bay
1 lb catfish fillets
oil

Mix all of the spices together in a shallow bowl or pie plate. Rinse the fish and pat it dry. Coat each fillet in blackening mixture. Heat a frying pan and coat the bottom with oil. Add the fillets and cook on each side for about 4 minutes. The key is to not fidget with the fish while it is cooking, so that the spice mixture forms a nice blackened crust. This spice mix was pretty spicy. If you like things mild, cut back or cut out the chili pepper flakes, Old Bay, and/or cayenne

Quinoa and Greens
1 c quinoa
1 large bunch greens, roughly chopped
4 c water
1 clove of garlic, minced
pinch of salt

Rinse quinoa and drain. Place quinoa in dry sauce pot and cook until it starts to smell nutty. Add greens and water. Cook over high heat until it starts to boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer and cover. Cook for 30 minutes. Remove from the heat, and mix in the garlic and salt.

This was an experiment to use only one pot, but the results were great. The extra water I added to help cook the greens made the quinoa have a really creamy texture. I used mustard greens in our version, but any braising greens will work.

Week 11

This week's share marks a turning point. We got our first tomatoes and sweet corn through the farm share. A very exciting development! We immediately started plotting delicious ways to prepare them.


This week we will be enjoying corn, tomatoes, onions, wax beans, garlic, yellow cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, rainbow chard and zucchini from our CSA share.


At the end of the day, we headed over to the Union Square Greenmarket to see if there were any bargains to round out the vegetables from this week's share. We did quite well. We picked-up some tomatillos, peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, sage and blackberries. I'm going to try my hand at making some sauerkraut from the small cabbages. I realize it will be a small yield, but I see this as a test run for when cabbages really come into season in another month or so.

Week 10

We love getting out of town and visiting new places, but this year each weekend away is a little bittersweet. Our farm share pick-up is on Saturday afternoon, so each time we go away we miss out on the week's vegetables. Last weekend we were in Boston, and missed out on week 9. That put us up all the way up to week 10 of our CSA. Hard to believe! This week in our share we got some old favorites including kale, radishes, beets, braising greens, cucumbers and carrots, plus onions and basil.

We have been feeling a bit under the weather, so it will be good to eat lots of fresh vegetables and get us back to our regular selves. Any suggestions on easy greens recipes? We're not using our oven because of our hot summer weather, so we're looking for stove top recipes for collard and mustard greens, kale and beet greens.