Sunday, June 13, 2010

Summer Bounty

The farmer's market yesterday was amazing.  We picked up our bag from the farm and filled it with organic cilantro, red leaf lettuce, radishes, arugula, spinach, beets, red romaine, and spring onions.  We also bought some morel mushrooms to fry for dinner (mmmm!).
We woke up today and headed to mass, then off for coffee and the Sunday farmer's market.  There we picked up a dozen eggs, some onions with the greens still attached and leaf lard.  I rendered the leaf lard for dinner and we also got some cracklings.  

Summer is here, and I am so super excited for this week.  We're planning to do a couple slow weeks of no eating out, and only buying what we absolutely need (mainly food, toiletries).  I planned a week's menu of food tonight and honestly it involves only buying 4 things:  a chicken, celery, butter, and white beans.  We're also buying jalapenos to use with the cilantro to make salsa for next week (you can freeze it, so we're making it ahead of time).  Summer is a good time to do a slower, home-cooked period since veggies are so easy to get, and fruit is ripe for the picking.  Would you ever do a slow week of no restaurants/fast food?

5 comments:

  1. Those onions you have bought don't look like normal onions (ie either brown or red ones), they are salad onions (which look like spring onions/shallots except they have a pronounced white bulb). There seems to be a bit of confusion in recipes and on the web over the names of these - they can also be called spring onions or green onions. In order of this onion type "family" it goes:

    chives
    spring onions/shallots
    welsh onion
    salad onions/scallions
    leek
    brown onions
    red onions

    I was always taught you should never use two adjacent types of the above 'onions' in recipe. I don't know if that's true though!

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  2. The food looks amazing! I didn't realise you got to pick it yourself from the farm. What a wonderful way to spend a morning and to make sure you get the type and quality of food you are happy with!

    J

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  3. Oops! I just saw that you do a CSA. Ignore my comment - and enjoy your vegetables!

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  4. We did a month and a half of no restaurants earlier this year to save up for a big trip. For the most part, we eat better at home, but I like to get out of the house sometimes and there are so many great restaurants where we are!

    Have you ever thought about doing a CSA (veggie subscription?) I'm doing one for the second time this year and it's amazing. Every week, we walk over to the pick up and fill our bags with delicious, seasonal veggies and eggs from a local farm. It ends up being around $30 a week for a full share (3-4 people) but the two of us eat it all ourselves. We were so healthy last summer!

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  5. Anon-- the onions are white onions, we typically use them in quiche and salsa. We picked up some spring onions from the CSA that are smaller and look more like large shallots.

    J-- They bring the produce to the farmer's market, hand you your bag and you pick it yourself. It was nice. We're planning on trying things we've never made (like beets), so next week I think I'm getting greens to saute.

    Stephanie-- We really have come to eat out too much, and we cut back on it, but we're eliminating it entirely for a couple of weeks because why spend money when we have all this amazing produce and I can cook? But we too have some amazing restaurants that tempt us too often!

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