What's cooking

Today was a lovely day - 70's, breezy, no plans, and best of all... good food. We took a stroll to the farmer's market this morning and picked up delicious local bacon, garlic scapes, and  a quart of strawberries (our patch seems to have been decimated by some sort of black-spot fungus and ceased production. So sad). While Cally girl slept and Joe took Taran out to practice riding his Thomas the Train bike to the library, I had some quiet time to putter in the kitchen. I picked kale and collards from the garden along with rhubarb, fresh basil and some variety of red leaf lettuce.

For lunch we had Potatoes Anna made with yukon golds and adirondack reds (all crispy on the top with soft, buttery layers of paper-thin potato below), slow-cooked collard greens with sweet onion and bacon, and basil and red leaf lettuce salad with fresh mozzarella, tunisian olive oil, chianti vinegar and sea salt. As Joe, Taran, and I scarfed everything down, I kept thinking, "I should really get up and take some photos", but I was worried that the boys would vacuum up the meal before I had a chance to eat my fill so I stayed put and elbowed them aside as I heaped food into my mouth. Ok, maybe not really elbowed, but it was too good to get up from the table.

Dinner was simple: kale and cheddar quesadillas and matzoh ball soup (yea for gf matzoh ball mix!). But after the kids went down, I whipped up some garlic scape, kale and toasted hazelnut pesto and a strawberry-rhubarb crumble in preparation for a brunch with friends in the morning. I've been alternately messing and cleaning the kitchen all day, but the house smells heavenly.

Once I had removed the last of the debris off the counters and floors, I did something I had been intending to do for weeks: I finally pulled my bike out of the garage and went for a ride along the riverside. In what seemed fitting for our mostly local food day, I listened to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on my ipod and dreamed of one day having a little farm with a converted barn that houses a mishmash cooking school-monthly supper club-public space for lectures on food/ spirituality/quality of life. Oh yeah, with gardens where guests could help pick fruits and vegetables for the meals and chickens and goats runafoot in the yard. A girl can dream, can't she?

Garlic Scape Pesto
10-12 garlic scapes
~ 3/4 cup chopped black russian kale (you could use other types. I love the tenderness of black russian)
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1/4-1/3 cup toasted hazelnuts (I threw them on a tray in the toaster oven for about minutes at 350 degrees)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
tsp sea salt
fresh ground pepper

I start with the dry ingredients first and blend them fairly fine before drizzling in the olive oil. You could probably throw it all in at once and it would work just fas well. I served this over brown rice pasta with some sauteed tri-color bell peppers and summer squashes from the farmer's market (ronde de nice and a beautiful small yellowy-orange squash). Extra Yum

On the child front? These days, the babes are lovin' more than fighting

Walking

Talking

moving lightly towards independence