Mache.

By on April 14, 2012 in Food for your Belly, Recipes, What is it?, Who's your farmer?

Another delightfully edible photo from our friend Christopher, this time featuring our own beautiful mache greens on top of Canadian tuna from Fisherfolk and creme fraiche from Monforte – everything from Wychwood Market but the capers, lemon juice, and crisp breads!  Who says sustainable doesn’t mean delicious – or gorgeous?

The mache was grown by Ephraim and Marie Schmucker on their family farm – a property they share with Marie’s parents, 6 of her younger brothers and sisters (ranging from 5-20 years old), and their own 4 children, one of whom was just born 3 weeks ago (though Marie barely missed a step in the garden…) – multi-generational farms being a wonderfully common trend in the Amish community.  Mache is a very cold tolerant green that’s growing right now in their passive greenhouse = no extra energy inputs, beyond their own labour (and that of friends, brothers, sisters, family, etc….the wonderful hands and hearts that grow your food!).

These were seeded in November – growth is slower over winter then speeds up with more sun and longer days – and they’ve been cutting the rosettes for the last few weeks, as you’ve likely noticed in your box/at the market.  Also called lamb’s lettuce or corn salad, mache is tender, mild, and not so green flavoured as other spring greens – perfect as is, or in salads, or on crisp breads or crackers atop tuna canapé….a million and one ways to be delicious.

Ephraim and Marie are also the growers of your other new favourite vegetable, the winter radish….they’ve focussed primarily on winter crops these last 2 years to help fill that void in our community.  Last year’s winter greens production was fully experimental and this year I’d say they’ve nailed it, as shown by the addition of incredible greens in every one of your CSA boxes – we’ve also had greens on the market table every week but one!  They’re also the growers of your kale, claytonia, spinach, salad greens, mustards, and more to come, and our hats go off to them for keeping our bodies happily greened in the greyest times of the year.

How’s that for a lovely salad?

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the art of sausage.

By on April 9, 2012 in Food for Thought, Food for your Belly, Who's your farmer?

a beautiful shot from market friend and obvious food lover Christopher B., in which I really think he captured the soul of the summer sausage, so to speak….

how can you argue with a model like this:

1/2 beef, 1/2 pork.  the animals were naturally and ethically raised by Stephen Stoll in Cameron ON, where they lived their lives on pasture and in peace as all animals should. butchered at a small, family run abattoir in Lindsay ON, Len and Patty’s Butcher Block, where they were slaughtered humanely and with care.  the meat was then taken to Wallenstein ON where Albert Weber and family processed it using their generations-old family recipe into the nitrate-free, sugar-free, organic, deliciously cured summer sausage photographed here. then over to Wychwood Market with me where it was purchased and appreciated by our friend Christopher, who saw the beauty within….

a shameless plug maybe, but in my humble opinion this sausage is a work of art all the way through, a beautiful process culminating in the gorgeous shot you see here.

Enjoy.

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A special dinner at Sausage Partners!

By on April 8, 2012 in KEG Events

Our dear friends at Sausage Partners are hosting a local spring dinner this May!  They’ll be using 100% local ingredients from your favourite farmers…details below!

—–

Come taste the best the Kawarthas have to offer: a beautiful, intimate spring meal cooked by Chef Kyle Deming. This multi course dinner will feature local ingredients, great drinks, live music and fantastic company!

$85 per person. May 11th or 12th. 7.30pm @ Sausage Partners.

Seating is limited to email your booking request to: shop@sausagepartners.com  ASAP.
Payment can be made by cheque or in person at the shop location:

1378 Queen St East,
Toronto, ON.
M4L 1C9

More info at www.sausagepartners.com, email: sausagepartners@hotmail.com

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peanut butter blondies

By on April 2, 2012 in Food for your Belly, Recipes

alright Shannon, I’m upping the bet.

 

Peanut butter blondies

6 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup (packed) brown sugar
1/2 cup roasted and mashed sweet-potato
1/2 cup steamed, mashed carrot (try a food processeor or food mill for this one, even steamed carrots can be hard – or just grate it and leave it raw)
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter (plus extra to use as icing, optional)
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup oat bran (or oatmeal)
1 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
Powdered sugar, optional

Note: Carrot and sweet-potato can be used interchangeably; use one or the other, or both, as long as it totals 1 cup.

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.grease a 9 by 13-inch pan.

2. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter and brown sugar. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool a bit.

3. Whisk in the vegetables, peanut butter, vanilla, eggs, and salt. Add the oat bran and flour, and mix until just combined. then pour into the prepared baking pan.

4. Bake for 30 to 33 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool completely in pan. Frost with peanut butter and/or dust with powdered sugar.

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beet this dessert.

By on March 31, 2012 in Community Shared Recipes, Food for your Belly, Recipes

This one’s a classic, which I just discovered thanks to Wychwood member and food lover Andrea and her search for more things to do with beets…a great use if you ask me, and having alluded to it earlier I thought it made sense to share it.  Because who doesn’t love chocolate?  And who doesn’t love cake?  And who doesn’t love hiding ridiculous things in either one of those?  And if those ridiculous things happen to be beets, well then, that’s simply brilliant.

Recipe comes from the book ‘Simply in Season’, by Mark Beach & Julie Kauffman. An MCC project I believe, and a good one.

Secret Chocolate Cake

2 cups beets (about 3 beets)
½ cup applesauce
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup oil
½ cup plain yogurt
3 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
1 ¼ cups flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup baking cocoa (do I need to mention Chocosol again?  I can’t help it.)
1 ½ teaspoon. baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips (ahem….)

Preheat oven to 350°. Boil beets for 20 minutes. Drain, cool, peel and chop. Puree with applesauce in a blender and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat the sugar, oil, yogurt, eggs and vanilla, for 2 minutes. Mix into the beet mixture, the flours, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Pour ½ of the mixture into a greased bundt pan. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the batter in the bundt pan, and then pour the remaining batter on top. Bake for 45-50 minutes.

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muffins: not just for carrots anymore….

By on March 30, 2012 in Community Shared Recipes, Food for your Belly, Recipes

I love it!  We’ve already got sweet potato cookies and black bean brownies on the blog, and now our friend Sogol from Leslieville has sent us her muffin recipe – for use with sweet potatoes or beets!  Maybe we should put a call out for interesting desserts/recipes that think outside the veggie box…send us yours!

Thanks Sogol – they’re gorgeous!
*****
Hi Shannon,
Hope you are well! I had roasted all my sweet potatoes and beets and was pondering what to do with them when I did a search for muffins and there you go.  All I did for the beet ones was substitute the beets instead of the sweet potatoes. (Recipe adapted from Epicurious.com)

Yield: Makes 12

1 large orange-flesh sweet potato (about 1 1/4 pounds), baked until tender, peeled
2 eggs, beaten to blend
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup unsulfured (light) molasses (I used maple syrup!)
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour (I put 1 cup white and took the 1/4 and used whole wheat)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (I used ground anise for the beet muffins)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line 12 large muffin cups with foil muffin papers.

Puree potato in processor. Measure 1 cup puree and transfer to bowl. Mix in eggs, then milk, molasses and butter. Add all remaining ingredients and stir until just mixed. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake until springy to touch and tester inserted into center comes out with just a few moist crumbs, about 25 minutes. Transfer to rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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black beans for dessert? yes please!

By on March 29, 2012 in Community Shared Recipes, Food for your Belly, Recipes

it’s true.  and unbelievably delicious!  first there was chocolate beet cake, now this – are there no limits to what can be in dessert?  me thinks not….what a glorious world we live in.

Not sure where the original recipe came from, but kudos to that guy or gal!

Black Bean Brownies

2 cups cooked black beans (shell, soak and cook! other beans would work too…)
3 eggs
4 Tbsp cocoa (or grated chocosol pucks…just saying.)
1/2 cup sugar (we used honey)
1 tsp vanilla
pinch salt
1/3 cup chocolate chunks (and chopped chocosol pucks? yes please!)
1/3 cup walnuts or other nuts, chopped up.

put it all in the food processor except nuts, fold in nuts after
bake at 350 for 30 minutes – 8×8 pan was perfect size.

WARNING: it’s hard to stop eating these once you start…so good.  I may or may not have eaten an entire pan – I refuse to say either way…

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article: The Super Cost of Superfoods

By on March 28, 2012 in News

“It seems like every time I open a food magazine or read a food website these days, people are promoting the latest “superfood.” I’ve learned from these sources that my smoothie just isn’t complete without açai berries or maca, and that day without chia seeds is like a day without sunshine.

Superfoods are very trendy right now. Experts estimate that the global market for “functional food” will reach $177 billion by 2013. With so much money at stake, the “superfood” trend has been co-opted to sell everything from broccoli to vitamin supplements.

So, with so much ado about superfoods, just what is a “superfood” anyway?

“Superfood” is nothing more than marketing jargon for a food that is particularly nutrient-dense, with more antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, enzymes or protein than most of the foods we are accustomed to eating.

As you can imagine, there is wide latitude in that definition.

In various healthy lifestyle communities, superfoods are usually exotic plant products that come from far away lands. These expensive, fashionable foods include things like goji berries from China and Tibet; açai, maca, chia, and quinoa from South America; coconut, nonifruit and durian from Southeast Asia; mesquite, agave, and spirulina from Mexico; and chlorella from Japan.”

read the rest here:

http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/the-environmental-impact-of-imported-superfoods/

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Baked black beans

By on March 28, 2012 in Community Shared Recipes, Food for your Belly, Recipes

mark Bittman is basically the food God at our house. This is a tweaked recipe of ours, which is largely based on another one of his really simple, “you already have all the ingredients in your kitchen” and very delicious recipes, out of his book ‘how to cook everything’.

1 pound dried beans (any beans will do, but since black beans just came in your box last week….)
1 small-ish onion, chopped
1/2 cup of maple syrup (hey! this also just came in your box recently!)
2 tablespoons of ketchup or BBQ sauce (i think i found both of these in a box once before too…..)
salt and pepper

you can also add in some small pieces of carrots, thinly sliced leeks, small chunks of potato, maybe canned tomatoes, or if you’re a meat-eater toss in a big handful of finely-cubed pieces of bacon or summer sausage.

cook beans in a pot on the stove until they become tender but before they are falling apart and mushy. drain the beans, reserving the cooking water.

mix beans with maple syrup and other seasonings. toss in your ‘extras’ like the vegetables, meat or tomatoes, or leave them just as they are.

pour beans into baking dish, add enough of the bean cooking water (or a soup stock if you’d like) to cover the beans by about an inch or so.

bake uncovered, checking every half hour or so and adding more liquids if necessary. serve hot.

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a chocolate equinox.

By on March 19, 2012 in KEG Events

hope to see you there!

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