Shopping is easy. Shopping with a plan is hard.

The Goods

As I sit, planning out the weeks meals for the first time in years, I am looking back on last week’s impulse items at the Farmer’s Market and am pleasantly surprised to see that I have used up most of them. As of now, I have about half a jug of cider, the peppers, the onion, the parsley, and most of the granola left. Also, most of the sweets are still in tact though I don’t imagine that will continue through the evening.

I really feel like farmer’s market grocery shopping has begun to change the way I think about food. I think about what I need and instead of a brand name, I get a picture in my head of the farmer who I can get it from. Maybe I don’t know their first name, but I can imagine their face. I feel like this is a huge change in my outlook and in my life with food.

Where before I would put my energy into which store to support, it’s more about what do I need…and about what’s in season. When I make my run tomorrow, I will be eager to see what is available considering the miserably cold weather we’ve had here in the last few days. (This morning the sprinklers were on in my neighborhood – but it was so cold that the water on the sidewalk was freezing – I had to walk over ice to get to my car…not to mention the icicles hanging off the flowering plants – yikes!). It really makes me feel like I am part of a community.

Still, while all that is great, it has been hard to get the hang of planning meals. The flower-child in me is rebellious and wants to “cook what I feel like having” but that has often meant that I don’t have the ingredients and therefore can’t cook what I actually want to. As part of this, I am planning on using the slowcooker twice this week and am excited to see the results. While I have had a slowcooker for years, I almost never used it. I have plans for my 500 Slow Recipies cookbok I got for the low low price of $3.99 and I’m excited. Here’s to goals.

So while not everything on my shopping list is findable at the farmer’s market, I’m going to do my best to buy only from the list and not get to distracted by all the pretty citrus. I’m also looking forward to another batch of crepes…So here’s to a lovely night and another good day at the market tomorrow…date night with the husband calls.

 

Old Town Farmers Market en Photo – January 22, 2011

Farmers Market, Landscape, 2011

 

Grass Fed Beef

Fries and Crepes for Breakfast, what could be more French?

Fried in Duck Fat!

At this moment, I was regretting my decision not to get one.

Mmmmm…Crepes!

These guys were super cool - and their food was awesome!

Now you know what to look for...

What more you you ask for than this?

Now go get yer own.

Untapped Bounty

Vegetables, how do they work?

This weekend, my mom came over with a box of vegetables for me to have (and split up with my friends). When she told me there were lots of vegetables, she may have understated it a bit. So now I have some eggplants, banana squash, zucchini, corn, chile, and tomatoes. I was pretty ready to make calabacitas, but it struck me that I ALWAYS make calabacitas. So here it is internet, the question: what should I do with these vegetables? I’m looking for ideas, recipes, plans, anything new or different. Not everything has to go together, of course, and having things separate would stretch them over the week…but right now I can’t think of much other than sauteeing them with butter.

I know that I have recipe books full of ideas, but I guess I’m sort of interested in seeing what you think. I’m almost done with my current food book (a surprise until I review it) and after that, though I have a couple more non-fiction food books, I was thinking of digging into a cookbook as my nighttime reading. While I’m talking books here (and asking for advice) I’m a little interested in knowing where you keep your cookbooks. I already have too many (and not enough space) for the kitchen, and I know they’d just get immediately spilled on there anyway, but where should one keep them? Right now, they are in a book shelf in the garage (door entry just off the kitchen). They’re out of the way, but maybe a little too much. Ideas?

On a small note, I made killer tacos for dinner tonight with some grass-fed local beef I got from the farmer’s market. Add in some local organic lettuce, menudo mix for spice (a staple in my kitchen), colby jack cheese, corn torillas, and Herdez Salsa Verde. Delish!

My Weekend in Food: Jan 8-9, 2011

My lovely friend Michelle called me and asked me to join her at a local free cooking class again. We went almost every week last fall and learned lots of great things, but that was not the case on Saturday. That’s a whole other post, but generally, there are a couple of tips we learn and we have a good time. This week was about stir fry, and we got through 1 of the 3 recipes on deck. It was tasty and I’ll be excited to try it at home. Afterward, we went to the Old Town Farmers Market for breakfast and it was quite tasty. We got crepes and while it was a little hard to eat, I’ll definitely try them again. Then we wandered around getting various tastes and groceries. Definitely a success in that I got some Tangelo Honey-belles which I had been ogling in my Harry and David catalog earlier that morning.

Once we got back to the house (husbands were gathering for a music practice), I got my bread machine going on a loaf of the Home-style White. It is one of three breads in the beginning of the killer bread machine recipe book Brendan got for me (along with the epic breadmachine) for my birthday. The book is neat in that it teaches you how to use the machine through a few simple recipes. I am trying each a few times to get the hang of the machina before advancing to crazy awesome breads. It’s still ridiculously tasty. I love it. Anyhow, once the ingredients for that were situated, I decided to make a cake from a mix I had in jar. When my friend Lauren got married (she loves zombies) I found a jar cake mix online and made dry mixes for all the girls at her shower, calling it Lauren’s Country Zombie Cake. In rereading the recipe I was totally scandalized by it not needing eggs. I should have know it would produce a flat cake. Oh well. Once that was baking, I wanted to make Orange Biscochitos, which I had bought the ingredients for for my Christmas baking, but hadn’t gotten around to making them.

I had no idea what I was getting into. The state cookie of Nuevo Mexico is not so easy. I was SO thankful Michelle was there to help me mix, and then dunk the cookies into the sugar-cinnamon coating because the 5 dozen the recipe mentioned as the bounty was spot on. It was my first time rolling out dough with cookie cutters. It took way longer than I thought it would. The cookies themselves were cutout with a star, which was fun, and they tasted pretty good. They had flour, lard, anise, orange juice, sugar, cinnamon, and triple sec. They tasted really mild despite all the crazy ingredients.

At that point it was like 4:30 or something, and we started to frost the cake. The frosting recipe we tried said unsweetened chocolate. I made the mistake of thinking that cocoa powder would work. Not so much. So then I had to add more water (didn’t work)…so then we added butter (tasted better, but the consistency was still junky). In the end, we just didn’t like the taste of the cake or the frosting, so we decided to layer it with raspberry jam to make it better. We cut the cake into three even pieces and then filleted them into 6 thin pieces. We layered jam and liquidy frosting alternating, and then Michelle artfully poured frosting over the top, getting a nice drip effect. At this point we decided that even if it didn’t taste good, it would look good. We tried to chill the frosting with the hopes it would set, and eventually it set enough that it changed colors. Michelle poured another layer on the top, making it zebralicious and it looked amazing. I busted out my fancy cake platter I received for our wedding and it looked killer.

It was maybe 5, 6′o clock and we were getting hungry so I decided to transition straight into enchiladas. I threw the green chiles I had purchased at the farmers market under the broiler and asked Michelle to peel some garlic and grate some cheese. About an hour later, we had neat stacked red chile enchiladas (both chicken and cheese) and I hadn’t burned myself during the dutiful dip in oil, dip in sauce routine needed for the tortillas. Mixed with a little green onion and cilantro – they were definitely a success.

As we sat around with Michael and Michelle and Mack, eating cake and cookies, and drinking tea, only then did I begin to feel tired from being on my feel almost all day. Cooking weekend #1 = success.