Family Food

This summer the kids don't have any activities where they are away from home during mealtimes. There have been very few bento-making opportunities. So I thought I'd share a bit of our lunch & dinner fare...When I'm not going to be home for a meal with the kids, or if I'm not eating with them for some other reason, sometimes I just put a big plate of food on the table (or picnic table, or floor, whatever!) and they choose what they want.

Other times I'll put out a muffin tin meal. Having a meal of all finger foods is fun for the kids (you know, I bet it would be fun for adults too!).

Summer is full of local veggies from Stearns Farm, so they are the centerpiece of most meals. Often it's easiest to just roast a variety in the oven.













Sit down lunches & dinners at the table are usually family-style now that everyone is old enough. It takes a lot of food to feed everyone nowadays!












Camping can be challenging. I need to bring along more reuasables and fewer disposables. We create a bag of recycling every day, but I need to learn how to create less waste when outdoors for multiple days.

One of my favourite
camping foods is Tasty
Bite meals. Most of
them are vegan, and
I love a spicy meal
when outdoors. The
packaging is actually
pretty minimal compared
to most other shelf-stable
food items. When I'm
alone I eat them right
out the package.

A quick food for camping
or at home is cous cous.
This tiny pasta is effort-
less to prepare, and it
goes with just about
anything.







Oh, and let's not
forget...Maia turned
3! Happy birthday!

no tomatoes in winter

Tomatoes are my favourite food in the world...but I have learned to go without fresh tomatoes for half the year. I will occasionally buy a couple to make a layered dip for a special occasion (there is a greenhouse in the next town that grows organic hydroponic tomatoes and they are available at the regular supermarkets), but throughout the winter and spring I mostly rely on jarred and dried tomato products, or whatever I froze or dehydrated in the summer and fall.

Two summers ago, local tomato crops in New England were ruined by late blight. It was then that I learned to go without them for such a long stretch that now 9 months doesn't seem like such a big deal to wait for a perfectly sun-ripened local tomato.

And so I can appreciate
what we DO get more as
well. This year the winter
farm shares at the CSA
are the longest yet,
stretching til the end of
March! That means there
will only be 2 month of the
year we are not receiving
locally grown vegetables.


Winter offers lots of root
vegetables, mostly stored
in the root cellar and
divided for each monthly
pickup through the season.
Carrots, parnsips, purple-
topped turnips, potatoes,
celeriac, onions, shallots &
beets. Roasting, mashing,
and making simple soups
takes care of the majority.

The rest of the winter
share consists of kale,
swiss chard, spinach,
baby salad greens, leeks,
cabbages, popping corn,
and a little extra garlic.

Amazingly most of this
is grown in the actual
ground, just covered by
a simple frame mobile
greenhouse.

This winter saw (and is
still seeing--it's snowing
as I type) some huge
snow accumulation. But
on a sunny day the
temperature in side the
greenhouse can reach
the 80sF.




Another lower greenhouse
was added this year to
increase kale and chard
production. While the kale
from the summer still
survives in the field, covered,
this kale is much more
robust, offering sharers a
large bagful at each pickup.

Spinach with Dried
Tomatoes & Garlic

8 oz. fresh spinach, washed
1 T. olive oil
1 T. margarine (I use Earth
Balance)
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 sun-dried or dehydrated
tomato slices, soaked
salt & pepper

Soak the dried tomatoes
in hot or boiling water
for 30 minutes. Save the
soaking water! Remove the softened tomatoes and slice thinly or chop.

In a large pot or skillet, heat the olive oil & margarine over medium heat. Add garlic & tomatoes and cook for 1 minute. Add spinach, a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Toss with a fork or tongs. Cook for another minute. Add a few tablespoons of the tomato soaking water, cover pot, and cook 1-2 minutes until tender.

waiting for winter share

It's friday! Hooray! Now I'm not usually excited about fridays because my husband usually works on the weekend, in fact he's been gone this month more days than he's been at home. But this friday is the first winter farm share pickup! I've been stubbornly refusing to purchase lettuce or other greens, subsisting on pea shoots from the cover crops and whatever extras were available. I even had to resort to pulling the leaves off the pea tendrils to put in the boys' wraps for lunch this morning...

Ryan
& AJ's
lunches:
banana
walnut
bread;
veggie
crack-
ers for
AJ,
dried
apri-
cots
for
Ryan;
Tof-
urky,
soy
cheese
& pea
shoot
leaves
roll-ups
on flax lavash bread; carrot; pickle; steamed broccoli; peanuts & raisins for AJ, peanuts & almonds for Ryan.

And Nate needed a lunch to eat at Grandma's house...
Nate's lunch: carrots; pickle; cherry tomato; pea shoots; peanuts, almonds & raisins; broccoli; banana walnut bread.

As soon as 1 o'clock
arrived, Maia & I were
off to the farm. We
brought home 3 big
bags of food: potatoes,
celeriac, carrots, sweet
potatoes, kale (2 kinds),
collard greens, parsley, sage,
chives, leeks, onions (red
& yellow), bok choy, butternut
squash, mixed salad greens,
spinach, cabbage, & 4 heads
of lettuce! The only thing I was surprised not to see was parsnips, which means I'll have to alter out Thanksgiving menu slightly, but that's fine.

making Stone Soup

I volunteered to make the Stone Soup at Stearns Farm today. This meant I would be preparing food mostly outdoors in 40 degree overcast weather with only cold water available from an outdoor faucet and only a
small plug-in electric
burner. And I had to get
most of the ingredients
from the seconds and left-
overs in the farm's root
cellar. But I came prepared
with a bag of red lentils, a
can of black beans, and my
bottle of liquid hickory smoke to add just a touch of something different for the farm staff.

All the soups at the farm
are vegetarian, usually
vegan, so this was a piece
of cake for me. What wasn't
a piece of cake was the fact
that I wanted to bring a
little something extra to
accompany the soup...which was a good thing, because they were out of bread. BUT the farmer has recently switched to a gluten-free diet, AND I didn't want to exclude anyone that might happen to be anti-soy. SO whatever I made had to be vegan, gluten-free, and soy-free.

So before I left for the farm
in the morning I whipped
up what I hoped would be
a decent batch of muffins.
No wheat flour. No Earth
Balance margarine. None of
my usual crutches.


I had just broken down
most of our jack o' lantern
pumpkins, including one
pie pumpkin from the
farm. It was already in
the fridge cut, steamed,
and ready for use. So
pumpkin muffins they
would be!

I sub-
bed
coco-
nut
oil &
maple
syrup
for my
usual
melted
marg-
arine.
This
res-
ulted
in a
slightly
greasy
exteri-
ior to
the
muffins,
but the flavour was absolutely fantastic, so I think it's worth posting the recipe of my crazy concoction. The kids and my husband tested them first and absolutely loved them. They commented on the different texture (since they're used to wheat) but kept asking for more since they tasted so good.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Muffins

2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup unrefined coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 T. Ener-G egg replacer powder + 4 T. warm water
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups pumpkin or other winter squash, peeled, cut & steamed
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour
1/2 cup glutinous rice flour (otherwise known as "mochiko", or sweet rice flour, available at most asian markets)
1/4 cup organic cornmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1 T. vegan cane sugar for garnish
spray olive oil for muffins tins

In a large bowl, mix first 3 ingredients. Then prepare egg replacer, whisking with a fork until frothy, and add to bowl along with the vanilla. Stir well.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Puree the steamed pumpkin (or mash very well) and add to bowl, stirring to combine. Add the next 9 (dry) ingredients. Mix well. Add the walnuts (or your nut of choice).
Spray mini muffin tins with olive oil. This recipe made 30 mini-muffins so plan accordingly.
Fill muffin tins with batter just up to the top. Sprinkle a little sugar over each. Bake for 18 minutes.

lots of

Every season brings its bounty. Apples are done, and cool weather greens are thriving. Up at the CSA, I can still pick plenty even though our summer share is officially over. Many herbs don't mind the dropping temps, and cover crops often produce their own treat. Dada worked at the farm yesterday harvesting carrots & leeks for the upcoming winter shares...






















Maia and Nate ate a few
dozen raw pea shoots
from the cover crops.
Then we joined the day's
farm staff for soup and
sides. I brought along
extras for the kids. And
we made applesauce
oatmeal cookies from our
dwindling local apple supply.

I had made a whole lot
of applesauce, and I
needed to do something
else with it. It just felt
like a cookie day. And
my recipe created 3-4
dozen cookies, enough
to share at the farm as
well as pack for snacks and lunches the next day.Ryan & AJ's lunches: Toy Story pasta & broccoli w/Daiya cheese; honeydew melon; applesauce oatmeal cookie; baby carrots; cucumber slices.

Maia's lunch: Toy Story pasta w/broccoli & Daiya cheese; applesauce oatmeal cookie; honeydew melon.

Applesauce Oatmeal Cookies

1 stick Earth Balance, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup applesauce (if it's fresh and hot it creates a caramel texture when mixed with the sugars)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups quick oats

Melt margarine and mix well with the sugars. Add applesauce & vanilla and mix again. Add the next 6 (dry) ingredients and mix well. Add the oats last, stirring to combine.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees (actually just between 325 and 350 would be ideal...depends on how accurate your oven is).
Lightly spray/grease 2 cookie sheets. Drop a dozen blobs of dough on each sheet. Bake 12-14 minutes. Remove with a spatula to cool on a wire rack. Repeat once more with remaining dough.

almost a holiday

This year the public schools in our town declared Election Day a school holiday, mostly to avoid tip-toeing around the voters at the schools. But the younger kids go to preschool in an adjacent town where schools were open, so it was sort of a half holiday here. Maia was the only one needing a packed lunch.

Maia's lunch: honeydew melon flowers; grilled nutritional yeast cheez sandwich circles; gherkin pickles; carrot matchsticks wrapped in cucumber; roasted butternut squash seeds; steamed broccoli.

Last night at sunset I went up to the CSA to pick pea tendrils from the cover crops. There were two deer watching me from a distance, but you can't really see them in the picture unless you know they're there.
A third mobile greenhouse
has been added this fall to
increase and lengthen the
winter share production.
Instead of weekly pickups,
the winter shares are monthly
from November through
March. Only two months of
the year now that we won't
be receiving local produce!
Hopefully what I dry or freeze
will take us through until June.

Today's lunch...
Pea Tendril & Sausage Pasta

1 T. Earth Balance
1 T. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tofurky Italian sausages, sliced
4 cups pea tendrils (a few heaping handfuls)
1/2 cup vegetable broth (or water + 1/2 a bouillon cube)
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 cup white wine
pasta, cooked and drained

In a large skillet or pot, heat Earth Balance and olive oil and add garlic & sausage. Cook, stirring occasionally over medium-low heat until sausage has browned. Add pea tendrils and broth, salt & pepper. When pea tendrils have wilted, add white wine. Cook for a couple more minutes, adding more broth or pasta cooking water if necessary so the sauce isn't dry. Toss with cooked pasta.

Care for Collards?

Rain or shine, we still
have to pick up our
CSA share at the farm.
Nate loves going to
help with the pick-your-
own items. The collard
greens were looking
lovely all speckled with
raindrops.






















The kale was taller than Nate, almost up to my shoulders!
Collards with a Kick

12 large collard green leaves, washed, stems removed, thinly sliced
2 T. Earth Balance buttery spread
1/4-1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. liquid smoke
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

Prepare collard greens.
In a medium pot melt
margarine over low heat.
Add collards & salt. Stir.
Cover & cook about 2
minutes.
Add liquid smoke &
cayenne pepper. Stir. Cover.
Cook another 5 minutes over
low heat until collards are tender.

Maia's lunch: meatless meatball; green bell pepper; heart sandwich of hummus & lettuce; chocolate chip bunny cookies; carrot flowers.

AJ's lunch: spaghetti w/tomato, carrot, kale, onion sauce & meatless meatballs; mini zucchini muffin baby carrots; cashews; raisins.

Ryan's lunch: spaghetti & meatless meatballs; 2 heart sandwiches of hummus & lettuce; baby carrots; dried apricots.

CSA fluff

I have posted quite a few times about our awesome CSA, recently in July here and here, in 2009 here and here. and a full review in 2008 here. In 2008 I also chronicled every
weekly pickup, listing what
we received with photos,
and including ideas to use
various items, such as this
post about greens.

But Stearns Farm CSA
never ceases to amaze me,
producing such huge
variety on its few acres
of land. Certainly the Loving Local blogathon deserves one more photo fluff post about our favourite local farm!

One
thing
I don't
mention
often
is the
Stearns
Farm
pick-
your-
own
flower
garden.
I'm just
not a
big
flower
person.
But
anyone
can
come
to the
flower garden and pick flowers during the summer for 25 cents per bloom, or $1 per sunflower. You can even purchase weekly flower shares for yourself or as a gift. It is just as important to the environment to purchase organically grown flowers as well as food. And there are many edible varieties of flowers, which can be used to brighten any meal, like I did in my Harry Potter bento here using red & yellow nasturtium petals and blue cornflower.
Here are some more beautiful photos around the farm...





















The resident bee population is kept very busy!