The Food Literacy Project at Oxmoor Farm will be hosting another Family Farm Day this weekend.  We went to this last year and had an absolute blast!  I know there is some sort of “important” football game that day, but I don’t know what time it is and if it falls during the Farm Day, which runs from 11am to 3pm.

You should bring a picnic lunch and a blanket to sit on, and the suggested donation (which is tax deductible and goes to The Food Literacy Project) is $5/person.  The farm is located at 9001 Limehouse Lane, by Oxmoor Country Club. If you are a member of Field Day Family Farm’s CSA, this is in the same place as the farm pickup location.

Some of the cool things you can do include:
-meeting the worms
-baking bread in a solar oven
-making homemade butter
-craft and activity tables
-making homemade ice cream
-making paper
-taking a guided field walk

Make sure to dress appropriately, you’ll be on a working farm! If it rains, or for more info, go to www.foodliteracyproject.org

The great folks who put together the 100 Mile Potluck are posting all the recipes that people submitted with their dish up onto a blog. It’s really cool, as these are the delicious recipes of our friends and neighbors!  The recipe for the dish that yours truly brought, Panzanella, is posted right here.

Check it out!

If you are just learning to cook, or have been a “book cook” and want to start experimenting with making your own recipes or adapting existing ones, I have one word for you:  soup.  Soup is like love in a bowl, and if you put your heart into it (that’s a metaphor, people. but I guess if you can get your hands on some beef heart and are into that sort of thing, you could throw that in the pot, too), it’s likely to taste great and the people you share it with will be appreciative and happy.

I made a big pot of this soup this week, and will probably make another batch, with different seasonings, over the weekend,.  The cool part for me and anyone else on Weight Watchers, is that it’s easy to make great soups with no points; this soup is 0 Points for 1 cup.  You can halve this amount if you don’t want a huge pot like I made.  And remember, this is open to interpretation!  Change up the seasonings, add more vegetables (hence the Clean out the Fridge part), leave something out if you don’t have it or don’t like it, and make it into an easy complete meal by adding beans, meat, or even a seafood if that’s what you want!

Summer Harvest (Clean Out the Fridge) Soup

1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2-5 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs. tomato paste
6 cups broth or stock
1 cup carrots, chopped
1 cup green beans, cut into 1″ pieces (I used some cool Asian long red beans I got from Heritage Harvest at BRFM)
4-5 cups cabbage, sliced or chopped
1 cup zucchini and/or squash, sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Seasonings: To give my soup a hot and sour flavor, I added Sriracha hot sauce to taste (about 1-2 tsp), along with red wine vinegar, although rice vinegar would have worked, too; then I stirred in some fresh chopped basil at the end. You can also use oregano, basil, and parsley for an Italian flavor. For the next batch I’m going to put in some Sazon Goya with with onions and garlic, along with some cilantro and cumin, and I might add corn and black beans. Use your imagination!

Spray the bottom of a large pot with olive oil spray, or just swirl a bit of oil in the bottom. Saute the onion and bell pepper over medium heat for about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and tomato paste. Saute for 1-2 more minutes.

Add the broth, carrots, beans, cabbage, and any other “firm” vegetables you are using. Salt and pepper and other seasonings to taste. Cook 10-15 minutes. Add the zucchini and any other “soft” vegetables you are using. Cook another 10 minutes or so. At this point you can either stop cooking the soup and serve, or you can simmer it on low for awhile longer. If you are using fresh basil, stir it in at the end so it will retain a fresh flavor.

And here’s one of my favorite little soup secrets. Stretching. Sometimes you’ll open your pot of soup the next day or so and find that there is not a lot of liquid left. Or perhaps you’re too tired to make the dinner you planned for 2 days after you made the soup. Just stick it back on the stove and add more broth and seasonings. Heat. Voila. Stretched soup.

Happy Harvest!

The winner is #9, J.C. Tyson!  Congratulations, J.C., you are the lucky winner of a brand new, totally exclusive Eat Local Louisville market shopping bag!  It has my new logo on it and will hold a bunch of those Phoenix Hill Market veggies and some more flowers for your wife!

Here are some photos of the bag sporting the new logo!

Congrats again to J.C., and thank you to everyone for entering!  If you liked the contest, I’ll do more; I had fun with it!

My friend’s brother lives on a farm in Indiana, and I always love to hear her talk about his family’s place and the fun she and her kids have when they visit.  They sound like really cool people.  And now, said brother and his wife (Cameron and Molly Howard) have released a CD.  They are The Howards and their CD is called Farm Fresh.  They will be having a CD release party on Saturday at Lapping Park in Clarksville.  There will be free food from Sherry Hurley’s Farm to Fork Catering, Slow Food Bluegrass will be selling Foxhollow Farms burgers, organic hot dogs, and veggie burgers, vendors will be selling locally grown produce, and there will be a free concert by The Howards, and music afterwards.  “We’re having an old-fashioned hootenanny after the outdoor concert,” says Molly Howard, singer in the duo she shares with her husband, Cameron. “Musicians of any skill level are welcome to bring their instruments and play. We’ll pass out song sheets so everyone can sing along. It will go as long as people feel like staying,” she adds.  Who doesn’t love the word, and the idea, of a hootenanny???

The festivities get going at 5:30 at Endris Lodge, and the concert is at 7.  This is a family event and there are playgrounds nearby.  Bring some lawn chairs because you know they are going to run out of picnic tables.  Alcohol won’t be sold, but you can bring your own.  Also, make sure to bring some cash for purchasing food items (there is a free first-come-first-served buffet of finger foods), and make sure you buy the CD, Farm Fresh by The Howards!

Cameron and Molly really believe in eating locally, farming sustainably, and living in a way that makes sense for body, mind, and spirit, so we should all support them and their new adventure!

It’s the first ever Eat Local Louisville contest! The winner will receive a very cool prize, courtesy of yours truly.  I am so excited about it!  All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me what Farmers’ Market(s) you frequent, and your favorite thing to buy there.  I will leave the contest open until this Friday at noon, then I will pick a winner using a random number generator.  How simple is that?  Leave a comment, enter to win an exclusive prize!  Spread the word!

Being holed up in my sick bed has given me time to ponder a fall garden.  Since we moved at the first of June, I didn’t get to plant a spring garden, and almost all my seedlings died in their containers.  And now, we have this fabulous front yard with a giant hill in front that my man hates mowing (yes, we have divided many household tasks based on “traditional gender roles”, but I just don’t like mowing and he doesn’t love cooking, so there you go).  The neighbors on both sides of us have ingeniously tilled up their hills and planted food.  So this is what I’m dreaming of for our front space.  Food not lawns, people!

I was reading this handy missive about preparing a fall garden in Kentucky.  I like that you can sow the seeds directly into the ground – being as I haven’t started anything in trays.  Also, I like that it says “fall gardens can offer you a wide variety of vegetables well into the winter months with very little effort”.  Did you catch that “with very little effort” part?  As I sit here feeling like compost, that sounds pretty good to me.

The problem is getting the hill tilled.  The Husband says that tilling it is going to be a major p.i.t.a, and that the “man with a tractor” my friend had to till his garden won’t be able to do ours because it’s on a hill.  So unless I can find a way to get that sucker tilled up, it looks like I’m just going to have to be bummed out all winter with no veggies in the front yard.

But for any of you who already have spaces ready, you should be thinking about a fall garden.  Many types of radishes, including my beloved Chinese Reds, do wonderfully in the cool weather.  As does broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, turnip, onions, and kale. The end of summer doesn’t have to mean the end of eating locally!

The weather has been so unseasonably cool this summer, I wonder if it is going to be freezing by October first, and how it will affect fall gardening.  Now I’m wishing that I’d bought a Farmers’ Almanac this year!

Sorry for the lack of posts of late.  I have pneumonia.  So there’s not been much going on in the kitchen for me, and I am forbidden from going to the Farmers’ Markets until I am better.  Which is pretty easy to comply with, since I am exhausted after about 15 minutes of moving about.  Right before I got sick, Andrew and I did make two different summer soups.  I didn’t like either one, so I’m not going to post the recipes.

One was a summer squash soup, and the other was gazpacho.  There must be something wrong with me:  I don’t like gazpacho.  The recipe I used, from Recipezaar, got about a million rave reviews. People went on and on about how much they loved it, how it was summer in a bowl, how they were going to serve it in shot glasses at a party…  So I made it.  I even stuck to the recipe this time (and you all know how hard that is for me!).  I dutifully pureed everything and then put it in a big bowl to chill in the fridge.  I was eagerly anticipating it by dinnertime.  And then … blah.  It just didn’t taste good to me.  At all.  As in, I didn’t eat any more of it and finally tossed it out.  Now, this could be because I was getting sick at the time.  Maybe my taste buds were affected.  I can’t even really explain why I didn’t like it, but I kind of felt bad for wasting my tomatoes that way.  Like they should have been made into something much more delightful, especially given that so many people are having trouble growing tomatoes this year.

So here’s my call, fellow Lou-cavores, send me a summer soup recipe.  Something simple and delicious that my dear, wonderful husband can whip up for us this week.  I don’t care if it’s hot or cold, I just want it to be yummy.  Bonus points if it is healthy enough to be 3 WW Points or less!

Humble succotash.  Usually only found on Thanksgiving tables, overlooked in favor of mashed potatoes, cheesy broccoli casseroles, and gooey sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows.  How often do you hear someone say “Boy, I had the BEST succotash the other night!”.  How exciting can some corn and lima beans mixed together be?o

Uh…. very!  I had the BEST SUCCOTASH last night!  I found lima beans at the Beechmont Open Air Farmers Market, right over here in the ‘hood, and of course corn is in season.  So I thought, eh, well, I’ll see what I can find on the Internet.  If nothing else, I’ll just boil them.  A brief search and some adaptations left me with one of the best things I’ve eaten this summer.  Andrew doesn’t like lima beans (weirdo), so he didn’t devour them like I did, but the kids both ate big servings.

Look for beans at your market.  I know oftentimes I skip over the beans because I figure they are all just some variety of green bean, and I find green beans to be “just okay”.  But it is interesting to find new varieties at the markets, and to learn to cook new things.  I shelled these beans, into my Mom’s Texasware bowl no less, so I felt all cool and connected to my roots.  Of course, instead of sitting in a rocker on the front porch, I did it in the A/C, watching Law & Order.  Whatever works.

Without further ado, here is my recipe for

ELL’s Sufferin Succotash

3 slices lean bacon (center cut or low fat)
1 large onion, (I like red for sweetness), chopped
salt to taste
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups fresh corn, cut off the cob
3 cups fresh tomatoes, chopped
2 cups lima beans
3 Tbs. basil, thinly sliced

First get all of your ingredients ready to go, because once this gets started, you don’t have time to stop and chop anything. This is called mise en place. In a decent sized heavy pot, brown the bacon over medium high heat. Remove the bacon, add extra fat if you need it (just a bit, any type will do; remember if you are doing WW that this will change your Points value). Turn the heat up and add the onion and salt. Stir constantly until browned, careful not to burn. This is a faster way to carmelize onions than the usual slow cooking over low heat.

Once the onions have carmelized, add all the other ingredients. Crumble up the bacon and throw it in Stir to combine. Cook over medium for a while, then you can turn it to low if you have other stuff to do. It is important to cook lima beans, because they contain a toxin in their raw state. Leaving the lid off the pot and letting the steam escape helps the toxin to escape, too. But don’t be afraid, if they are soft and cooked through (they don’t have to be cooked “to death”), with those slight wrinkles in the skin, you are fine.

This has, according to my recipe builder, 4 WW points per serving and makes 4 generous servings. Oh, and the leftovers are good, too.

I know, I know. I’ve been gone forever. Two long weeks. I didn’t intend for that to happen, but a lot of stuff has happened. I’ve been busy with lots of things.

First there was canning. A simple, fun family trip to Huber’s resulted in 40 pounds of fresh peaches, 2.25 pounds of raspberries, 4 pounds of blackberries and one Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving. It was all downhill from there. I got the “family canner” from my brother (my mom bought a hot water canner forever ago, and neither my brother nor I have bought our own, we just trade it around), bought some jars and went to work. I ended up with:

-Peach Melba Jam
-Blackberry Preserves
-Raspberry Jam
-Kiwi Preserves (not local, but my son had wanted a bunch of kiwis, they were going soft, I saw a recipe…)
-Peach Butter
-Peach Salsa
-7 qts. canned peaches

And I still had peaches left. So I made peach leather in the oven, dried peaches in the food dehydrator (I’ve also dried carrots, zucchini, and corn), and froze some peach pie filling. Then I was finally out of peaches.

Then I found a nice man on Craig’s List selling tomatoes for .50/pound. So I bought 60 pounds. Granted, my girlfriend was going to share the canning and the results with me, so it was really like 30 pounds. But seriously, it took a long time. I blame her wacky seed aversion (don’t send me hate mail, L). I later heard that you should just can them whole and deal with seeds later if you are opposed to them, and in retrospect, I see why this is a good idea.

A note on canning: It’s really not that hard. I was a bit terrified to try it. All the stuff you read on the Internet says you are practically guaranteed to kill your family with botulism posioning if you don’t have a degree in chemistry and an industrial kitchen that you can hose down with boiling water and bleach. But then I started thinking about this Amish woman I once knew who canned (duh, she had to if she wanted to feed her family through the year). She set up an outdoor kitchen (no A/C, right?) and had her woodburning stove on the porch, right next to the strawberry fields and the washtubs. They were fine. So if you want to learn to can, and I know a lot of people do, I want you to do something with me. Ready? Ok. Here goes….. Take a deep breath. Let it out. Be assured that you can do it, it’s not that hard, or that technical, and (as long as you use common sense) you won’t kill your family. I’ll do another post on canning later, so in the meantime, you look for jars.

Other things I did on my summer vacation: my first born went off to big kid school for the first time! Kindergarten! Oh! He is so grown up! He loves school and is much less emotional about the whole ordeal than I am. To ease my pain, I’ll be attempting some posts on a Locavore Lunchbox. If I can get him to stop begging for peanut butter and jam. Hey, at least he wants my homemade raspberry jam.

Also, I started Weight Watchers. I had almost lost all my “baby weight”, but then we moved and got off track and it was just bad news. I’ve been doing WW for a week now and feel great, and am really able to work it into a locavore diet. In fact, I am eating even more local foods now than I was before! So from here on out, I’ll be including the WW Points value for my recipes if possible. If anyone else out there is doing WW, let me know, and share some recipes!

I have three recipes that I can’t wait to share with you all; they’ll be posted over the next few days (complete with pics!). Thanks for hanging in there with me and allowing me to take a much needed summer vacation. I am back now, and looking forward to sharing this time of amazing bounty with my friends and readers!