A busy month indeed.....I did a variety of cooking projects so I will start highlighting.
Blueberries.....
Pat's mom and Dad came for an overnight visit so of course I had to cook up a nice breakfast. Included along with the farm fresh eggs were these blueberry muffins. We are really savoring the blueberries right now. Unfortunately with the late frost we had a few weeks ago we lost about 90% of this years blueberry crop. We are quite sad so these are especially special.
eggs and kale.......
We are regularly getting 5-6 eggs each day. One evening I made this frittata with some kale that volunteered in the garden. I added some of our venison sausage, leftover cooked rice and some of our dried tomatoes from last summer. Delicious. When the kale bolted I cut a bouquet of yellow flowers and put them in the kitchen window. Beautiful.
Rhubarb.......
Blackberry rhubarb crisp. YUM. The rhubarb was not damaged in the frost at all. I did my first cutting a few weeks ago and made this crisp. I gave a co-worker some and then froze the rest. I have some in the fridge right now that i need to trim up and get in the freezer so I can make a bit more blackberry rhubarb jam when I am bored some day. HA HA
Easter Dinner.....
Pork chops from the CSA. I baked them with apples, sage from the garden, raisins and onions. The rice came from the farmers market. More about that later.
Fish tacos......
Pat introduced me to these. He will frequently order these on the rare occasions we dine at a restaurant. He recommended we try to do them at home so I dug up a recipe for the sauce from the internet . Success..... They are delicious. I served them with salad and corn and pintos.
Carrot cake........ funny story I can tell on myself.
The frosted cake is what happens when you follow a recipe correctly. The unfrosted cupcakes are what happens when you DO NOT read the recipe. So here I can tell on myself. I needed to make a dessert for a marriage encounter meeting we were hosting at our house. I wanted to make the cake it on Thursday after work so I started to prep it on Wednesday. Frequently when I bake on a work-night I prep stuff the night before. I pulled out my Mom's classic recipe and got to work. I dumped all the dry ingredients in the mixer and covered it with saran wrap. Then I read the directions. I know I know, I should have done that first but oh well. I discovered I was supposed to cream the sugar, oil and eggs first. Whoops.... I had already put the sugar in with the flour and other dry ingredients. Since I am a cheap wad....... frugal.....cheap......a miser (you fill in the word of your choice) I wasn't going to throw it away. I thought, how much difference can that really make after all?????????? But I didn't want to mess with a dessert for guests so I started over. After successfully baking the sheet cake that I ultimately frosted I proceeded to make the cake the wrong way so I didn't have to throw away the ingredients. I decided to make it into cupcakes so Pat and I would have them in the freezer to eat a bit at a time. WELL......let me tell you, the directions are written that way for a reason. For some scientific chemistry reason I can not explain........some might remember that the only "C" I made in college was in chemisty....... these cup cakes rose up but did not have enough body to form a dome and when they exceeded the boundaries of the cake pan they started to runneth over and runneth over they did. I made a mell of a hess in the oven. They caramelized on the top of the pan and I had to chip them out. They tasted good but the texture was all wrong. Moral of the story...read directions and be willing to laugh at yourself. You see I could have kept this between Patrick and myself. I could have you think that everything turns out nice in my kitchen.........NOT
Farmers market is open for the 2012 season.....
Rice, yes rice from Morganton. Amazing. This is the most amazing stuff. A man in town grows a variety of rices. We bought 2 of his varieties last year and loved them. This year he has some "sticky" rice. This stuff smelled amazing while it was cooking and tasted just as good. It is all whole grain and un-polished so it has all the good nutrients in it. The asparagus came from Sharee's uncle. He is one of the organizers of the farmer's market in town and we love to shop from him. We planted an asparagus bed this year but won't be able to harvest from it until next year so until then Mr Crowe is our supplier. We roasted this with some olive oil and season salt.
And last but not least......toffee bars
Our contractors Brian and Phillip are back helping us with the grass planting. So when they showed up on Friday with the heavy equipment I wanted to have some kind of treat for their lunch break. These toffee bars hit the spot. Brian had one for breakfast.
Are you ready to join us for dinner yet? Join us as you can; the door is always open. See you next month.
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