Monday morning dinner blues

Monday mornings are usually spent taking refigerator inventory, making my grocery list in my head and getting ready for work. I like shopping on Monday since there are less people in the stores.

I have a lot of fresh vegatables left from the farmer's markets and stuff a friend gave me from her CSA (community supported agriculture) pick up at the Wilson College. That's where I got the garlic snakes (scrape) from.

I used some of the snakes by cutting off the ends, cut out the bulbous part and chopped them up. I then washed and cut up some little new potatoes and boiled them with the garlic snakes then mashed it all up using butter, skim milk and my emersion blender. It was very yummy. I also chopped up some snakes along with a green pepper, and onion, adding it all to some ground turkey I got at the farmer's market. I added a bit of salt and pepper and made it into patties. The potatoes, turkey patty and small salad was what I had for dinner last night. For lunch I brought a left over patty, red leaf lettuce and vined ripened tomato. Everything on my plate last night and for this lunch are totally local ingredients. I'm proud of myself!

I don't think there's much I need from the store so my list will be short. Anyone who says eating organic and local is expensive hasn't done their homework. It's less expensive for me and I feel good supporting the farm families in my area.

Garlic Snake

No, not a real snake! It's the tops before that pop up as the bulb is forming that wonderful fruit. Anyway, I have these beautiful snake like garlic tops and was clueless as to what they're used for. I asked friends and almost all of them said "stir fry". I don't want stir fry I want something that will taste a bit different from the usual use of the product. While surfing the net I found some wonderful choices, from pesto to grilled pizza, YUM! I'm looking forward to the experiments.

I went to both of the local farmers markets today. What's good about having them around is that I know where my food's coming from. I can interact with those who grow my food. One of the markets has produce from Wilson College's Sustainable Living Program. It's all organic and priced much better then the old food labeled organic in the grocery store. Becoming a Locovore isn't difficult if you live in a rural area like mine.

The sad part was that I didn't have time to cook today. I was too busy running around all over town and down to MD. I plan on making the grilled pesto shrimp pizza using a whole wheat dough tomorrow. I'm going to put one of my pizza stones on the grill too to see which pizza tastes better. I think it'll go really well with Shock Top beer.

Kitchen Time

Being in my kitchen’s like spending time on the Internet. I begin one place and end up in another. The recipe calls for 3 eggs and I decide it's too much and change it to 2 whole eggs and 1 egg white, then decide the cake needs to be cupcakes with poured fondant and embellishments. Not to be forgotten is the shopping that was done for one menu item that has suddenly taken on a life of its own; transforming the ingredients from a simple side salad to lettuce wrapped tuna or chicken salad with sliced tomatoes and cheese, so much for simple.

That said, cooking is a time warp if I'm not rushed. There's no telling what will happen once I enter the zone. Foods can from sweet to savory, simple to over the top. No matter what comes out of the kitchen it’ll taste wonderful, or you wouldn't know I was there. Experiments that fail would be thrown out and the kitchen would be cleaned so no one would be the wiser.

Maybe it's just an A.D.D.er in the kitchen. The T-shirt reads "They say I have A.D.D., but they just don't understand...oh look a chicken!" I can hatch a lot of chickens during my kitchen time… cluck, cluck, cluck.