This weekend, I was able to spend some serious time in the kitchen. On Saturday, we went to the local farmer's market. There's one stand in particular that I love. It's a father/son duo (there is a daughter, but I seldom see her) and they are just the nicest people. We've been going there for 3 years now and their stand is always packed with beautiful and tasty produce and a bunch of happy customers. They are friendly and, as we are loyal customers, know us well. Which I think is a nice and rare thing these days. After all, I'm a regular and very good (some - ahem, the husband - might say too good) customer of Amazon, but Mr. Bezos sure isn't sending me a personal message thanking me for my order or throwing in a free book. Which would be awesome, btw, and I really think he should do that.
Anyway, they often throw in an extra something or just don't charge for something I've already picked out. Also, they give The Little Miss random things to try - blueberries, cherry tomatoes, strawberries - which is a very good thing because this kid could eat her body weight in cherry tomatoes before we get back to the car. I tell her we're going to the farmer's market and she is down the stairs getting her shoes on in a nanosecond.
This weekend, I bought the usual suspects - tomatoes, greens, eggplant, bell peppers - but also went for some gorgeous looking blackberries and summer squash. I'm not a super huge berry fan (love blueberries and sweet strawberries, but I find berries generally too tart for me), but I've been dying to make blackberry ice cream and they looked so good.
The squash I bought because I have a recipe for squash pickles that looked really good. Don't turn up your nose. I'm telling you, the recipe sounds pretty ho-hum, but they looked really good. Besides, squash is definitely down at the bottom of the list of summer veggies that I want to eat, but it's fairly cheap and plentiful and I thought it would be nice to try to do something besides roast or grill squash to see if maybe I'd like that better.
So I returned home with my fresh produce and thanks to a particularly dreary Sunday, attempted the new recipes at home. Let's start with the squash first since dessert should really be last. All I can say is...OMG, delicious. These are so good that I will definitely load up on the squash next week and make some more. Although they're in canning jars, I didn't process them. They are refrigerated and good for a month. They won't last that long, I guarantee it. They are delicious eaten as is, but I think will also be good on sandwiches (hello, we're having paninis this week) or even in a pasta salad.
Behold!
First, ignore my crappy phone camera. Second, look at how pretty the squash and peppers look together, marinating in a sugar/vinegar mixture with chopped onion, celery seed, and mustard seed. Pure yumminess.
Moving on to the ice cream, this was also delicious. The recipe is similar to a strawberry ice cream I made earlier this summer. It calls for blending half of the berries with the ice cream base and then adding the remaining berries at the very end of churning. I thought the strawberry ice cream was a bit too tart with so many chunks of berry in it, so this time, I blended all of the blackberries into the base, but didn't fully puree it so there were some little pieces to give texture. Next time I would sieve out the seeds, but this was also a winner. And, yes, it's vegan.
I know, I know, it looks kind of boring sitting in that white bowl, but believe me it didn't last long.
As a bonus, I also went wild on Saturday and baked bread. I used to bake bread every weekend, but now it's just every couple of months. I made Anadama bread...that delicious wheat/cornmeal/molasses combo. Because we are very crunchy (after all, the hubby is from Oregon), we even ground our own wheat berries for the bread. There's nothing like fresh-baked bread and I'm inspired to try to bake it a little more often.
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