Yummy Beet & Wine Vegetable Soup

One of my favorite things about the cold seasons is soup. Soup everyday! I love soup. I am indiscriminate.

“But, Alien Mind Girl, it is 70 degrees in Oklahoma!” you might say. This may be true, but it is still November, and November means I get to make soup. I made a soup last week that I was especially pleased with. There aren’t any pictures because… well, we ate it all. It might sound weird, but just trust me, k? We ate it. All.  And because the soup was wine-red, it looked so pretty and colorful dished up with a plate of greens and basil-and-cheese-sprinkled toast.

Beet & Wine Vegetable Soup

2 cups of chicken stock

½ - ¾ cup of red cooking wine

6 cloves of minced garlic

Half an onion, chopped

A cup and a half of beets, boiled and diced

A cup and a half of cabbage, diced or shredded fine

1-2 cups of fresh kale, chopped

Sprig of dill

Basically… throw it all in the pot together, and add water to cover, bring to a boil, then simmer it for as long as you can stand, stirring occasionally and checking the water level. By the time I had finished cooking it, the beets had mostly dissolved into the broth along with some of the onions. When you’ve decided it’s done cooking, find the sprig of dill and pull it out to discard. Then it is ready to eat!

I really enjoyed it. Super healthy, and I thought it tasted decadent with the rich broth, hint of wine, and garlicky-sweet flavor.

CSA and Cooking Beets and Zucchini Bread

This will be my last CSA recipe installment. I saved my favorites for last. I hope you enjoyed them!


On one fine zucchini-acquiring Saturday, I thought I'd treat myself and try this recipe for chocolate zucchini bread from the Prairie Homestead. And, my friends, it was one of the tastiest things I put in my mouth all month.  If you love chocolate, if you love bread, if you ever have a zucchini, YOU MUST TRY THIS! Go to the link. Then make this bread. Just do it.

Picture from Prairie Homestead

Beets are one of the vegetables that the CSA has taught me to love. During my first CSA, the uber-drought year, beets were one of the few crops that defied the drought and flourished. So despite having never touched a beet before, I had beets every week, for many weeks in a row. I tried very hard to like them alone; I simply don't. But, like tomatoes, while I don't eat them individually, I love to cook with them! They lend everything I put them into a natural sweetness and a pretty red color.

What follows is my favorite beet recipe. It is delicious, easy to cook, and filling. I love this one so much, I would say that 90% of my beets go into this. I have gleefully stored packs of chopped beets in the freezer, just so that I can whip out this spicy-cozy recipe on an icy winter day. It even made my hubby's list of favorite dishes.

Red Flannel Hash - One of our favorites!

Red Flannel Hash – adapted from Vegetarian Meatand Potatoes Cookbook

4 small red beets (or more to taste - I sometimes do 5 or 6)

3 medium size potatoes

1 large red onion

1 lb ground beef

1 tablespoon soy sauce

½ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne (or more to taste)

Cook the beets in boiling salted water until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain and cool. Skin, peel and chop. Set aside.

Peel and dice the potatoes. Steam over boiling water about 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Brown the beef and drain.

Add onion, cover and cook, strirring a few times until softened, about 5 minutes. Add potatoes and beets. Increase heat to medium high and cook, stirring frequently, until potatoes are lightly browned. Add soy sauce, salt, and cayenne and cook until flavors are blended, about 5 mintues.

CSA and Cooking Cucumbers

Cucumbers are another of those that are best raw... especially Berry Creek cucumbers, and especially the delicious variety they had that was called a lemon cucumber. Whenever we made dishes like these we used the Armenian cucumbers they gave us. I started cooking them for two reasons. First, cooking them used up more cucumbers than we could eat raw, and made those cucumbers last longer in the fridge. Second, I discovered this year that I am allergic to cucumbers in raw form but not in cooked form. So I have been a devourer of cucumber soup, which is extra good with a thick slice of buttered and toasted bread.

Sad to say I saved these recipes without citing the sources... 

Picnic on the Patio: Cucumber Soup with Buttered Wheat Toast

Cucumber Soup

2 cucumbers (or 1 giant one! Our usual)

2 tablespoons diced onion (optional)

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

4 cups chicken broth

salt to taste

1/8 tablespoon dried tarragon

½ cup sour cream

Peel, seed, and chop 2 cucumbers.

Cook onions in margarine until soft. Add cucumbers and vinegar. Pour in broth. Salt to taste. Let simmer for 20 minutes or until cucumbers are soft.

Put soup in blender and puree.

Pour puree in a bowl, and whisk in sour cream.

I like this eaten cold AND hot, but usually eat it hot... It is especially delicious paired with a thick slice of herbed bread. Says me.

Cucumber Salad

2 cucumbers (or 1 giant one)  peeled and thinly sliced

½ red onion, thinly sliced

1 ½ cup water

½ cup vinegar

2 tsp sugar

¼ tsp season salt

Mix cucumbers and onion in one bowl. In a second bowl mix water, vinegar, sugar and salt. Pour the wet mixture over the cucumbers and onion. Chill for at least an hour before serving.

CSA and Cooking Peaches

Of course the healthiest (and often most delicious) way to eat a peach is raw, but through my CSA I learned about peach varieties. Some varieties really ought to be cooked! Berry Creek has two varieties that I know of... one soft, ultra juicy, and very sweet, the other pale and crunchy. The crunchy one is great for cooking; it keeps its shape and gets sweet without getting *too* sweet. Here are the recipes we used most often for this particular peach.

From AllRecipes.com

Stuffed Peaches – shared by a coworker

Cut the peaches in half and deseed

Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar

Bake up to 30 minutes at 350 degrees

Let cool

Put a dollop of cheesecake filling in each

Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and/or crushed graham crackers

Tipsy Peaches from AllRecipes.Com

Grandma's Peach Cobbler - This recipe is ubiquitous, apparently... but I did try a few recipes for cobbler and this was the only one I was any good at!

CSA and Cooking Pumpkin

I LOVE pumpkin! My all-time favorite pumpkin recipes are sweets (pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pasties, and pumpkin butter), but for CSA pumpkins, my favorite recipes are pumpkin puree (which is then used or frozen) and pumpkin curry stew.

Pureed Pumpkin

Bake pumpkins, whole, in the oven at 350 until they are soft when you poke them with a fork.I left the little pumpkin below in the oven for an hour, but it probably would have been fine at around the 45 minute mark.

Remove and let cool.

Them remove skin, scoop out the seeds, and chop into cubes.

Puree in blender.

Here I am baking the pumpkin and sweet potatoes at the same time.

You can see the color change in the pumpkin and the holes where my fork easily pierced the skin, indicating that it is done cooking.

Pumpkin Curry Stew adapted from Martha Stewart

3 tbsp canola oil

1 onion finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp curry poweder

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

2 cups halved cherry or golden tomatoes, or 2 chopped large tomatoes

2/3 cup water

1 small pumpkin, chopped

1/2 cup – 1 cup of pumpkin puree, to taste

1 can of red kidney beans or 1 chopped chicken breast

1 sliced carrot

2 chopped potatoes

1-2 spicy peppers, seeded and chopped

Either follow Martha Stewart's directions for cooking, or put ingredients in a crockpot on high and add enough water to cover. If using the crockpot method, give it a stir every so often to prevent burning, and turn the heat down to medium after a couple of hours.

Cooking Adventures with Community Supported Agriculture

CSA Haul from 1 week in September: Okra, tomatoes, onion, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, eggs, watermelon, butternut squash, and orange bell peppers

One more year of our Berry Creek Farm CSA has come to an end. (Learn about their CSA here, or see my previous posts about it here)   This is my second year with the CSA and I’ve learned a lot. I was amazed at the different types of produce we got from the CSA this year than last year! With the kinder weather and whatever the farmer was doing differently, we had a wider variety of produce types throughout the season, and several different types of veggies and fruits in each bag (along with our fantastic eggs).

I have found this experience to be far different from grocery shopping. And I think this CSA, more than anything else (ever), has made me comfortable in the kitchen. Because not only did I have to eat things I’d never tried before, I had to learn to make dishes with them. Even more – if I made, say one eggplant dish I didn’t like, instead of giving up on eggplant, I would have to keep trying different recipes until I FOUND a way to like it! Because like it or not, we would keep getting that same vegetable each week as long as it was in season, so I had to learn how to eat and enjoy them all.

If there was something we already liked (for example, cucumber), I still had to find new ways to prepare it because after a looooong robust cucumber season we were starting to get tired of the usual ways of munching it. Along similar lines, I had to learn what would freeze well and what would not. Some things freeze, but just aren’t as good thawed, or when thawed should only be cooked a certain way (boiled into soup, pureed, diced into a baked dish or sauce) to disguise texture changes.

I also had to learn how to improvise in the kitchen for meals. This is something I could already do to an extent, but doing it with items that I’m less familiar with (like eggplant) took a lot more thinking! (I can tell you that stir frying eggplant was not a good idea, but doing the same with okra, if done with care, can come out ok).

This week I’m going to post some of our favorite CSA produce-using recipes. Some are healthier than others – we are fine lovers of things rich and cheesy, and some of our favorites reflect that. I hope you enjoy it!

CSA Day on the Farm

I mentioned a little while back what a great time we've been having with our CSA, Berry Creek Farm. We've had a huge bag of fruit and veggies and delicious eggs every week since March. We've tasted new things and learned new recipes (the last couple weeks we've been digging on cucumber soup and baked eggplant ziti). We had enough to share with our family, and our freezer is stocked.  Last weekend was the annual picnic at the farm. We invited my parents, who, hearing of our CSA exploits, were considering joining for next year. It was fun to eat outside in the pretty weather, and have a tour of the farm where our food was coming from.

   This is the Berry Creek pest control squad.

This is where my boxes of delicious grapes came from.

These guys made me beautiful eggs all year.

This fellow is ready to make me yummy food next year...

Two tummies that enjoyed Berry Creek food this year, after lunch at the farm...

List of what we got from the CSA this year:

Spinach

Lettuce 

Alfalfa sprouts

potatoes

sweet potatoes

okra

watermelon

honeydew melon

cantaloupe

grapes

beets

radishes

eggplant

turnips

persimmon

Armenian cucumbers

lemon cucumbers

onions

eggs

peaches

cabbage

cauliflauer

broccoli

sweet peppers

The amazing thing to remember is... with drought, record heat, and a late freeze, this was a hard year for farmers!  Just think how great it will be on a good year.

Building a Garden, take 2

This is the second garden I built this year. You might argue that this one was more work than the raised bed garden. I dug up a plot of yard, pulling out all the bermuda grass, using a shovel and hand tiller. I unearthed several LARGE pieces of concrete in the process. This took quite a while... I'm not good with major digging to begin with, and adding concrete to the challenge was not helpful. But in the end, I had a bunch of turned up clay/top soil, and that was what I needed. The border pieces are really just debris that had been sitting around in the yard. I really can't tell you why we had a long metal pipe. I don't know where it came from. Some of it is made of bits of concrete I dug up. A fence post that had broken off and fallen over, a cinder block. I think Not Fancy might be the official title of this border style. Maybe even Trailer Park Chic? But it works fine.

Inside are canna lilies that people at work were giving away after spring dividing, and a squash plant that was a gift from my mom. I stuck that in with the cannas on a whim, and I'm pretty surprised it liked the poor soil over there. Lucky for me! I had to fit this bed with a drip hose and mulch during the drought. My cannas are stunted (these are supposedly the six-foot tall variety) and haven't bloomed much, but they are growing happily now, so I'm pleased! I'm sure they will do much better next year.

One morning I walked out and saw a giant sphinx moth drinking out of these flowers. Little fellow let me get right up close and take a good look while he buzzed around... so nice of him!

Building a Garden

TA DA!

This is my new raised-bed flower garden, now seeded and sprouting for fall gardening. I built it myself this past April. I had been planning to build this since we moved in, the winter of 2008. I have had the size and shape laid out for a year. I’ve had the bricks for two years. I finally got the push to do it after my mother-in-law started stacking bricks while she was house-sitting. I couldn’t believe it might be that easy, so I took several thoughtful trips around the neighborhood scrutinizing the yards of others. At last I realized that the only reason I hadn’t built it yet was because I was making it harder than it actually is. I thought I had to dig down into the dirt, build up a base, mortar those suckers in there, and pull up all the grass inside. I couldn’t decide if I should hire a mason or learn to do bricklaying on my own.

But I didn’t have to mortar. I didn’t even have to pull out the grass. All I had to do was stack the bricks up, like so. Because I was concerned that I would lose soil between the cracks, I lined the interior of the bed with landscape fabric and anchored the fabric under one of the brick layers. I grudgingly purchased soil from the hardware store, putting in a layer of manure on the bottom and good garden soil on top. It’s about 7” deep, and there is enough depth that I can add more soil/mulch/compost without running out of space.

I really like my bricks! I salvaged them from an old brick sidewalk in my friend’s yard when the sidewalks were being replaced with concrete. They’re 100 years old; literally.

I thought growing a garden would be an easy success for me – I’ve spent time as a horticulture technician, and I helped my mother and granny with their gardens as a young’un. I quickly learned that while I had plenty of experience maintaining a healthy garden, I had no experience at beginning one from scratch. I thought I was choosing my plants wisely for my garden’s sunny micro-climate. I did a combo of seeds, root stock/bulbs, and baby plants; mostly these were purchased from OSU-OKC or garden clubs, but a few came from Lowes. 

Success? Well…

·               Some sprouted. Some didn’t.

·              Some that germinated, produced. Some didn’t.

·              Some of the bought-plants grew larger. Some didn’t.

·        I’m not sure WHY any of the above things happened. But...

·               I got a decent spinach harvest.

·              My mesclun and onion harvest were teensy tinsy.

  One of the squash lived to start producing at long last this month. 

·             Strawberries, cucumber, tomato: nil.

·              I’ve gotten a pretty good sustaining harvest from most of my herbs. I get a ridiculous amount of comfort from having drying herbs hanging in the kitchen.

Lessons?

·              I successfully (and accidentally) grew a LOT of mushrooms. Turns out that this was because I was watering at night, instead of during the morning.

·        Apparently, I should have started my spinach when it was still chill outside to prevent early flowering and climaxing. (Despite this, I still got a modest harvest of spinach, which tells me that spinach must be Really Easy to grow.) I think I should have planted my onions earlier, too.  I may get a Farmer’s Almanac for next year.

·              You should harvest mesclun when it is tiny and young. You should let dill flower before harvesting. Don’t let basil or spinach flower.

·              You can give chives a buzz cut, and the next week they will be almost the same height again.

My garden has not been nearly as productive or lush as I’d hoped (notice how far apart some of the plants are? I wanted to give them plenty of room to get BIG!). However, since it is my first year at starting my own, since the weather has been rough, since I have learned so much, and enjoyed it so much, since I still have enjoyed (and am enjoying) some harvest from the garden, I’m happy. Having nothing but a wide expanse of crunchy Bermuda grass in my backyard is a thing of the past – and thank goodness for that!

Here is a recipe for my favorite use of summer garden produce:

Medium-sized sprig of lemon balm or a few large sprigs of lemon thyme

Small sprig of lavender

3 basil leaves

Pitcher of water

After a couple of days in the fridge, this is so delicious! Not strong enough to be tea, light enough to be refreshing, just a bit sweet and flowery. Of course the bottom of the pitcher is the best part… 

On cue for the fall garden:
Still going good from the summer, we have squash, carrots, basil, parsley, lemon thyme, regular thyme, lemon balm, and oregano. 
Currently sprouting: Spinach, lettuce, and peas.
Seeded, not yet sprouted: Chard, kale, garlic.

Central Oklahoma Farmer's Markets

One of the things that spurred me into starting this blog is that I was tired of looking up the same information over and over, running all over the web to retrieve it. In specific, I kept having to look up the times and locations of our various Farmer’s Markets. I'll also add links on the ECOlinks tab.

So without further ado, below are links and charts relating to the OKC Farmer’s Markets. I am sure it is not comprehensive. If you want to add to this, please do. Just use the same format I have used below – send it to me and I’ll post it.

Market	Location	Time of Year	Day	Times	All Local
OSU-OKC Farmer’s Market	400 N Portland	Winter	Saturday	10am-1pm	X
OSU-OKC Farmer’s Market	400 N Portland	Spring-Summer-Fall	Saturday	8 am-1pm	X
OSU-OKC Farmer’s Market	NW 63rd and Western	Year round	Wednesday	2:30pm-7pm	X
Walker Square Farmer’s Market	SW 59th and Walker		Thursday	5pm – til all sold	X
Walker Square Farmer’s Market	SW 59th and Walker		Saturday	9am – til all sold	X
Urban Agrarian Local Foods Market	NW 23rd and Hudson	Year-round	Sunday	11am – 3pm	X
Urban Agrarian Local Foods Market	NW 10th and Walker, St. Anthony’s parking lot	Year-round	Friday	2:30pm-7pm	X
Sterling’s Produce	Farmer’s Public Market, 311 S Klein	Year round	Daily	8-5:30	X
Angel’s Produce	Farmer’s Public Market, 311 S Klein	Year round	Daily	8-6	part