First CSA Pickup of the Season!

Today was the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pick up of the year at the for us at the Clintonville farmers market.  Before the growing season starts, you pay a lump sum to a farm, who in turn give you a share of the freshest available in-season vegetables each week.  Rock Dove Farm provides our CSA, a half share costing $350 and running from the first week in June to the last week in October.  

Last year was Rock Dove's first season doing the CSA program and was also a notoriously bad growing season across the Midwest (cold and extremely wet).  We are excited to watch Rock Dove hone their techniques and methods in their second season, and also equally excited to learn how the different weather this year will affect crop growth.  We learned from our farmer that dry seasons are typically better than wet ones, as no one can control too much water, but extra water can be applied in dry seasons.

Our Farmer's Market Haul:

From the CSA for 6/2/12:
Radishes + radish greens
Spring onions
Green lettuce (one head)
Red lettuce (one head)
Spinach
Strawberries
Mint
Dill

Outside the CSA:
Garlic Ramps - $2.00 from Frijolito Farm, Columbus, OH
Rosemary Plant - $3.00 from Swainway Urban Farm, Clintonville, OH
Fresh shelled peas, $7.00 from Folck Family Farm, Mechanicsburg, OH

Farms:
http://frijolitofarm.com/
http://swainway.com/
http://folckfamilyfarm.net/
http://www.rockdovevegetables.com/

What We're Doing with our Haul:
Grilled spring onions and garlic scape
Minted Peas
Dilled Potatoes
Strawberry sauce for homemade ice cream
Frozen strawberries for smoothies in winter
Large mixed salad for meals all week
Roasted radish salad with balsamic and goat cheese

In other News and Notes: Happy Birthday to Mister Distressed!! (June 2)

Gardening and Such

Hello folks, Mr. Distressed here.

A few weeks ago Ms. Distressed and myself decided that it was high time we bought some seeds, dirt and other general gardening supplies. This is what we came away with:

One interesting side note, we don't actually have a hose hook-up outside. The plan is to run the hose from our kitchen sink, out a window, across our porch to our garden, yikes! We still need to get the adapter to attach the hose to the sink though.

As of right now, we have seeds started for two tomato varieties, basil, oregano, dill, and some kind of squash sprout that was growing out of our compost pile. I also saved seeds from an awesome red bell pepper we bought from our Co-op and if I can find somewhere to plant it, I'll get that in the a planter soon. 

Clearing weeds in the front yard flower bed was an adventure. Digging in the dirt I found nails, shards of ceramics, tree roots thick as baseball bats, buried coaxial cable... all kinds of goodies. Most importantly though, we found lots and lots of worms, which is a good sign of healthy soil.

We got a variety of flowers for the front yard as well.

We used an old hard cider 6-pack sleeve to house our planters, which makes transporting them easier. 

 This is an unrelated photo of our farmer's market bounty from earlier in the morning. *Spoiler Alert!* That 4lb pork shoulder on the left ends up on the grill in a few pictures. Yum!

 After all day of digging in the dirt, we were forced to relax with snacks, wine, and smoked pork!

Saturday Morning Farmer's Market

Mr. Distressed has been working a LOT lately, so when we finally had a day off together with no plans, we were very happy.  The weather was perfect, in the 70s and sunny, so we headed off to two winter farmer’s markets, the last of the season.

What We Brought Home Today and Where We Bought It:

Markets

Clintonville Winter Farmer’s Market: 

http://columbuswinterfarmersmarket.com/

Worthington Winter Farmer’s Market: 

http://owba.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=4

Vendors

Taylor Made: Hot sauce

Dan the Baker: Sprouted multigrain (millet quinoa, flax and oats with whole wheat and whole rye flours)

Curly Tail Organic Farm: Pork shoulder

Speckled Hen Farms: Eggs

Vegetables:  Celery, potatoes, snow peas, onions (to be honest, I forgot the name of the farm, oops)

Personal Musings on my Relationship to My Food

My mom and I had a conversation yesterday about the technological advances in agriculture in the last hundred or so years and how they’ve affected our daily lifestyles.  My mom talked of how much time and energy some of our older relatives spent in food production and preparation, with hours upon hours spent both in the garden and kitchen.  When many in my grandparent’s generation found the convenience of the boxed mashed potatoes, they walked away from the garden and put down the potato peeler without ever looking back.  It’s understandable too.  The new technology of processed foods meant a huge surge in the abundance of free time.  The abundance of cheap and fast food has come at a price though, and our society is currently undergoing an identity crisis, looking for a balance between cheap, fast, productive versus meaningful, slow, thoughtful. 

Food exemplifies how I think about relationships in our world in general, and my desire to understand them (as well as my role in them) as much as possible.  I don’t want to be a consumer, to which large faceless corporations vie to sell me the lowest value product for the highest price.  I don’t want to walk into a grocery store and walk past an employee with a near-minimum wage salary and no personal pride in the food-like products he’s selling.  The vendors at the farmers markets think about their relationship in the world.  They think about growing cycles, animals and the care they need, the value of their products, being effective stewards of the land, and how to remain viable.  This understanding of and role in the cycle of life creates an enormous amount of pride, and the farmers are vested in the annual cycles of the earth, their local economy, and their community.  While I’m not sure I would have the vim and vigor to start my own farming endeavor, I’m so happy I have the option to partake in a system in which I can see the participants’ faces. 

As I sit here and write, I think about all the topics I’ve left out, or barely glossed over.  I’m not trying to write a book though, Michael Pollan already wrote several of those J  I’m just trying to show you a picture of my farmer’s market bounty.

Color Coded!

Mr. Distressed here,
I took this picture the other day when we were making the lemon cake. I was looking at all the produce and realized that if I switched two pieces of fruit that all of the baskets would be color coordinated. Totally random! Anyway, it made for a cool photo. 


Post Script!


Red = Gala Apples, Red d'Anjou Pears and Sweet Potatoes
Yellow = Lemons, Oranges, Yellow Onion and a Squash
Green = Granny Smith Apples, Limes and a Bell Pepper

Lemon Cake

 I don’t even care for cake that much, or maybe the word “cake” conjures up images of super market sheet cakes with sickly sweet icing served at birthday and office parties surrounded by a host of other fast and cheap foods.  But the March edition of Saveur magazine had a huge, sumptuous article and on sultry Southern cakes, one whole page showing off a larger than life slice of caramel cake, another red velvet cake, and so on.  The coffee table taunted me every time I walked by.  

Having nothing in particular to do on a lazy Sunday morning around 10:30, we decided to make a cake, which you’d think would be relatively easy.  Mix dry ingredients, set aside.  Mix wet ingredients.  Add dry ingredients in intervals to wet ingredients.  Bake.  Fairly straight forward, right?

Several hours and many, many lemons later, we realized that making a four layer cake with lemon curd / butter cream based icing is no small endeavor.  The process can be divided into several stages, which I outline below.  The below list is a lot simpler than the actual recipe, but the simplicity itself allows the sheer amount of effort to shine through.  Had we seen this before making the cake…well, we probably woulda still made it J  I have also provided a comparison of our original versus our revised Sunday plan, per “the Cake.”

ORIGINAL SUNDAY PLAN:  2 hours for cake making / 8 hours for video games.

REVISED SUNDAY PLAN: 8 hours for cake making / 2 hours for video games.

Basic Outline of Cake Making Activities:

•Make and bake the batter

•Cool the cake

•Make lemon curd

•Chill lemon curd

•Make icing

•Make syrup to accompany icing

•Cut cooled cake into halved sections

•Ice the cake

•Chill the cake

•EAT THE DAMN CAKE!!


SOURCES:
Recipe from Saveur Magazine:  Saveur's Lemon Layer Cake
Scientific Knowledge obtained from:  On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee

STEP ONE: THE BATTER
As the recipe outlines, "lemon infuses this layered masterpiece in three ways: zested into the batter, in a tart syrup that gets drizzled over the cakes, and in a thick lemon curd frosting."  Here, we started by zesting a tablespoon of lemon for the cake batter.

The next step is to cream butter and sugar together for the batter, adding the eggs one at a time.

I'm getting excited because I know that licking the beaters is soon to come.  Combine the flour mixture and vanilla/milk mixture in equal intervals.

First buttering and then flouring the baking vessels makes it easy to remove the cakes after baking.  Note that we don't have cake pans, so we improvised and used pie pans.  I don't think anyone noticed in the final product.

Almost ready for the oven!

Mr. Distressed is a dirty, dirty man.

STEP TWO: LEMON CURD
The lemon curd uses a cup of juice, so Mr. Distressed got to squeezing.  Notice the 12 (TWELVE!) egg yolks sitting in the background.  Those will also be going into the curd.

Lemon curd: sugar, corn flour, lemon zest, salt and eggs.

Most importantly: do NOT stop stirring!!

This is the beautiful, beautiful finished lemon curd product.  It made me want to make lemon curd tartlets.
We took the opportunity to take an hour walking tour of Clintonville on a gorgeous sunny winter day, to let the lemon curd chill before the next step.

STEP FOUR: LEMON SYRUP
This was after our third trip to the store...we kept realizing we hadn't bought enough lemons.  Laika helps out!   One of the lessons is to read your recipe carefully!!

Lemon Syrup: lemon juice and sugar heated on the stove.  The book is "On Food and Cooking:  the Science and Lore of the Kitchen," which we have found to be immensely interesting and helpful in understanding the science and reasoning behind processes in the kitchen.  This particular page explains the heating of syrups and what temperatures create what reactions.

STEP FIVE: ICING
The frosting:  a cup and a half of butter + lemon curd.  Very intense.

STEP SIX: CAKE ASSEMBLY
Halve each of the two cakes to create four layers.

In between each layer of cake, add not only icing, but also the tart lemon syrup.

In summation, we had a blast making this cake and learned a lot!  There were a few snafus, but overall the cake turned out quite tasty.  Incidentally, I realized while creating this post that I used 12 egg yolks for the lemon curd while the recipe only calls for 10, but that's not exactly a fatal error...it just made the cake a little bit richer.  This recipe is very involved and I would not recommend it for the beginning cook.  If you're looking for a weekend challenge though, this one definitely yields good results both in time spent creating as well as eating.