A Doom Was Almost Met – & We Made Some Food

We did great things with food and eating this week.  First we made this yummy Stuffed Squash & Red Bell Pepper recipe recommended by my friend Juliana.  I took some pictures but they weren’t that good.  Just imagine the giant squash we got last week with some ground turkey inside.  The “funny” part is that my “friend” Lisa (who’s husband is a published author of a Young Adult book for boys that you really should read and buy) gave me this hot pepper the other day.  She told us it was hot.  She gave us some beans that she cooked and then tried to cool down with a 1/2 cup of honey and some lime juice.  We ate the beans.  They were hot, but also sweet which made them strange.  Either way, we thought we could handle the heat.  So, this squash & red bell pepper recipe called for some marinara sauce.  I thought I’d make some using some diced tomatoes, basil from the CSA, garlic, onion & one of these peppers (seeds removed).  Oh yeah, and some awesome bacon that our friends (who run a great wine blog) picked up for us.

P.S. Friends giving us food and/or anything is generally awesome.  Friends reading this who did not give us anything this week – what the fuck? Step up and do your duty as a friend by giving us something soon.

Like I said, one pepper – no seeds.  I was cutting up what I thought was a zucchini when I realized it was a cucumber (oops).  I took a bite of a slice of cucumber, it was cut with the same knife and on the same spot as the pepper.

HOLY SHIT BALLS. JUST BITING SOMETHING WHERE THE PEPPER HAD BEEN WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME WANT TO DIE.  Then my husband bit the cucumber.  Soon we were both sneezing and coughing and burning.  This was no ordinary pepper.  This was a bhut jolokia.  AKA the GHOST CHILI. AKA THE HOTTEST PEPPER IN THE WORLD.

Did I mention that I had already put the pepper in the sauce?  Yeah – I already put the pepper in the sauce.  So we didn’t use the sauce for that meal. My lips literally burned for an hour.  My fingers burned all through the next day.  If you use this pepper, know its power.  Do not tempt or sass the pepper.

Good news: we saved the sauce as I was convinced that it would be ok once we fully recuperated from the initial burn.  I was right.  Tonight we ate it over the leftover stuffed squash.  It was HOT, no doubt about that.  But it was manageable.  The heat was like Thai food ordered hot or extra hot, depending on the place you get Thai food from.

But enough about the pepper made from Satan’s tears – we made some other food this week.  Grilled Pizza:

and Summer Squash Quiche:

And we just straight up ate the yummy yellow watermelon – which was pretty awesome, even if it had a bunch of seeds:

We did pretty good this week.  The only thing I’m having trouble with is the green beans.  I have the beans from the past two weeks.  I’ve been meaning to blanch & freeze or can them, but I just can’t seem to find time.  I think the ones from 2 weeks ago are probably bad.  I will have a funeral for them and bury them in the backyard with the one remaining demonic pepper unless anyone wants it.

I suck

I present to you…the Maple Creek Farm Week 10 CSA share:

I also present to you a confession (one that most of you who know me are already aware of): I am an ass.  I did a very, very bad job of blogging last week.  I’m sure you all were DYING WITH ANTICIPATION over what we got and what we made.  Let me tell you – we got some stuff, and we made some stuff.  I had a mild disaster – burnt some caramelized onions & failed at some corn fritters that I was super excited to make.  But I persevered.  Burnt onions are aiight – I’ve been sprinkling them on sandwiches and stuff.  And I added the mega-FAIL corn fritters into a delicious brunch hash.  All was well.  I wish you could have e-been there to e-see my e-pictures, but I was real-lazy.

Hopefully, I’ll do better this week.  We got:

Yellow Doll Watermelon
Hot Peppers (not pictured)
Red Sweet Onions
Zucchini
Summer Squash
Beans
Basil
Tomatoes

OMG FRUIT! We are gonna straight up eat that.  I got plans for the other stuff.  You’ll see (maybe!)

Maple Creek Farms CSA Week 8

This week’s share was quite similar to last week’s share – not that there is anything wrong with that.  Here’s what we got:

More Young Onions
Green & Purple Bell Peppers
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Cabbage
Sweet Corn
Green Beans
Yukon Gold Potatoes

Excited to use that crazy purple bell pepper, we’ve never had one of those before.  We’ll see what we do with all that cabbage too – any suggestions??

Elotes + Zucchini & Yukon Potato Gratin = Yum

Another week is coming to an end – and again, I’d say that we’ve been PRI-TAY PRI-TAY good at eating food this week.  Sorry for the lack of play-by-play.  Honestly, most of the veggies were used last weekend up north and we simply tossed them with olive oil and spices and roasted them.  Turns out that is AWESOME & also a great way to use up a crap ton of veggies.

We did make two things of note:

I’ve been waiting to make this ever since the recipe popped up on my google reader.  We got yukon gold potatoes & zucchini this week, which is close enough to summer squash & red potatoes for me, so I made it!  Lesson Learned: I need a Mandoline Slicer!  Slicing up all the veggies by hand was not fun.  But it was worth it.

We ate the gratin with a side of PORK CHOPS from Western Market.  The gratin was super good, obvs.  Even though it had a bunch of cheese (parm on top, goat cheese sprinkled inside) the veggies still retained their awesome, natural flavor.  This one’s a keeper.

We also made MUTHAFUCKIN ELOTES.

ZOMG – just looking at that picture makes me salivate.  This corn is like if God had corn hands and let you eat them.  Let me tell you one thing that will make you say “Gross, I don’t want that.”  Part of the spread you see, the stuff holding the delicious cojita cheese on the corn, is MAYONNAISE.  BARF, rite?  WRONG.  Regardless of the fact that some of that junk on there is Helmann’s (or Best Foods depending on which part of the US of A you reside), I’m telling you – YOU WANT THIS CORM.

We first tried this at Cafe Habana in NYC.  Our friends were like “GET THE CORN” with this fiery half-crazed look in their eyes.  After one bite, we knew why.  But when I went looking for the recipe, I couldn’t believe mayo was an “authentic” part of this recipe.  After much internet scouring, I found what claimed to be Cafe Habana’s recipe (or at least one inspired by them).  It used mayo! That doesn’t mean that it’s authentic, however I did a lot of googling in between watching this and I only found one recipe that called for an alternative to the mayo.  So mayo it was and BY GOD’S CORN HANDS it was incredible.

There was a lot of food this week.  I’m already getting nervous for the weeks to come.  I see many dinner invites going out in the coming weeks and I look forward to the challenge of putting as much food into my face hole as possible.

Belated Maple Creek Farm Week 6 – Guest Post

Kevin, a librarian friend of mine who loves his job more than precious words can say, shares a dual CSA share with my husband & I.  He splits his share with another librarian friend.  Following? 2 boxes, 4 adults (2 of which are librarians).  Anyhoo – Kevin got an entire box to himself the week we were on vacation – this is his story.

So, why am I here? Why did I crawl out of my corner of the Internet and start throwing up words on this food blog? Why am I torturing you with my utter lack of poetics? This is what’s known as the James Stockdale introduction.

Basically Amberto said, if you want more foodz, you need to put words on this here blog o’ mine. It was a very convincing argument, and appealed to my desire to see more foodz in my CSA box.

See, back when this whole CSA thingamajobber got started, we all decided to throw in on a family share and split it 3 ways. Our CSA keeps tellin’ us things are gonna get mo betta soon, and I keep wanting to believe – but so far my half of a 3/4 bushel box has left
me with this deep sense of longing. I have yet to stamp the ground and throw a tantrum – but I’ve come close. [Ed. Note – I’m pretty sure you’ve stamped the ground & thrown a tantrum]

So when Amberto mentioned that the Gunts were taking a little vacation – and would I like to have their share on the condition that I spew some words here? – I ruminated – and then I decided. Obakaybee. I’ll do it. I’ll do this blogging thing and I’ll talk about the foodz that I get and maybe I’ll even make something A-MA-ZING.

So after they walked me through the process of picking up the share from a house just down the road from them – I had to start thinking of what I was gonna write. I’m still shaking the rust off from my own long neglected blog, and I’ve never really blogged about food/cookery, at least not noticeably so. How could I manage? Originally I decided
that I was just going to go into excruciating detail about what the food looked like. I would rant on and on about how green the cukes were until your eyeballs would bleed from the monotony of it all.

Then I picked up the CSA box.

Then I failed to take a picture of ALL the ingredients.

Then I confused radishes for beets.

Then I made a salad with the cucumber and one of the tomatoes…and it was good.

But the thing that really stuck out from the CSA box were the flying saucer squashes.

What the hell was I supposed to do with these things?

WELP – the first thing I did was figure out that they were actually called Pattypan Squash. It took me longer than I’d like to admit, given my librarian background – but I
found it. YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME PATTYPAN.

(I should note that with the CSA – every week has become a cooking lesson. There are things showing up in the boxes that I have no idea what to do with. The pressure is on though. You gots to be quick or sometimes that stuff goes bad right before your eyes. Which is something else I’m getting an education in — I could really go for a
flip chart of how to properly store your veggies. I mean – yeah – it’s probably out there on the Internets – but it’d be really handy to have a fridge magnet, gnaamean?)

BUT I DIGRESS…

Once I’d figured that out – it became all too obvious what needed to be done next. This recipe for Stuffed Pattypan Squash looked easypeasy — and I had all the ingredients
already, including BACON.

So I boils that Pattypan.

I cooks that bacon.

I dice those peppers and onions and cook dem bitches in the leftover
bacon grease.

I also cooked up a little ground sirloin, seasoned all that stuffz with salt n peppa, and stuffed those Pattypans good and full.

Now – the recipe calls for parmesan, buuuuutttt. GOUDA WAS ON SALE YOU GUYS. So I covered the whole mess with some of that delicious gouda mess and was ready to get it on with my foodz.

Pop that stuffed and covered pattypan back into the oven and grab some helpful accompaniments:

And then it was time to eat:

It might look slimy in that picture — but that’s mostly BACON GREASE you guys so it’s all good. If I had one thing to do over again it would probably be to wait a while longer before starting in on the ground sirloin, but it was still a pretty good meal for an easy to
please bachelor like me.

Good job Kevin.

Maple Creek Farm CSA Week 7

And we’re back!  And HOLY CRAP…IT BEGINS!  So far we’ve been able to easily manage the amount of food we’ve received from our CSA.  We knew we were going to get to a point where we would start freaking out (with our mouths full) and wondering whether or not we’d be able to use up everything we got in a single week.  I think we can manage, but this officially begins the testing of our resourcefulness, culinary skills and the capacity of our bellies.

This week, we will be eating:

Young Onions
Green Peppers
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Cucumber!
Summer Squash (Romanesco Zucchini)
Yellow Wax Beans
Sweet Corms
Yukon Gold Potatoes

Oh you don’t see the potatoes? It’s because I forgot to take a picture of them with their friends.  Whoops.

I’ve got something cooking RIGHT NOW using some of the potatoes & zucchini.  Tomorrow we’ll be making elotes with the corn.  We’re going up north for the weekend so I’m sure a lot of other things will be hitting the grill.

I’ll also be posting a guest post from our CSA partner in crime, Kevin.  He took our share of the CSA last week while we were on vacation.

I must go, my lovely potato, squash & goat cheese gratin is almost ready.  I need to help it find its way to my trap.

Maple Creek Farm CSA Week 5

Week 5 is here.  Hooray!  At first I was like, naw – I’m not going to take a picture of the lettuce.  But then I was like FINE.  I’ll take a picture of the lettuce:

The green beans, roma tomatoes, onions & zucchini are pictured in the basket of our salad spinner.  Believe the hype, a salad spinner is a must for any CSAee.

The lettuce is pictured in our lettuce keeper thing. This was an impulse buy, but I’m so glad I got it.  Yeah, it’s big – and we’re lucky enough to have a fridge that allows us to keep such a thing.  A little water rests in the bottom lid and that helps keep the lettuce crisp & fresh much longer than a produce bag shoved in your vegetable drawer.

So we made some food with this food – you wanna see?

On the left we have an amazing summer salad made with zucchini, green beans & onions from the CSA.  When we picked up this week’s share, we still had onions from last week.  “BARF onions – I hate onions – what am I going to do with all of these dumb onions?” I thought to myself while crying tears that I blamed on the onions.  This salad suggested that I carmelize them for maximum noms – and jesus – this salad was right.

The mini onions were perfect for french cutting – and my sweet, dear lord – is it possible that I’ve never had a carmelized onion before?? Because these were AWESOME.  Every onion I get from the CSA henceforth shall be carmelized.  They really made the salad quite delicious, which is GREAT because there is a literal VAT of it leftover.  I look forward to devouring all of it.

The salmon was noms too.  No CSA relation, but it was wild salmon, glazed in garlic jelly.

Yes, garlic jelly.

This was procured at Detroit’s Eastern Market and is made by Vickie’s Jelly Jar.  Sounds strange, but it is AWESOME.  It’s slightly sweet & slightly garlicky & MEGA-AWESOME.  Great marinade.  A little of that & some salt & pepper – thrown on the grill, then thrown in my belly.

So, next week – Mr. Gunt & myself will be heading south to Tennessee for a week – any food/drink recommendations are appreciated.  Friends will guest blogging in my absence.  I plan on coming back and sharing wild tales of eating BBQ, eating tacos, drinking beer, drinking whiskey, eating hot chicken and trying to lose the 15-20 pounds I’ll likely gain while gone.

Bad at Blogging, Good at Eating

We ate this on Tuesday?  I’m pretty sure it was Tuesday.  I am writing about it on…Sunday?  What day is it?

Anyway – this was good.  One thing that I’m definitely getting better at is making up or adapting recipes.  When I first started cooking, I was a slave to the recipe.  This time, I took Mark Bittman’s Zucchini with Tomatoes and Chorizo and made it into a Gunt Original™.

Original Recipe from Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express (Thanks again to my wonderful friend Candi for getting me this book):

Cut zucchini into quarter-inch disks; cook crumbled (Mexican) chorizo in olive oil for about three minutes or beginning to brown, then add diced shallot or onion and minced garlic; continue cooking until the shallot is translucent, a couple of minutes more.  Add the zucchini and some chopped tomatoes; cover and cook until the zucchini is tender, about five more minutes.  Add some lemon zest and juice, season with salt and pepper, serve.

I basically used this as a guide, which i mostly ignored – like I do with most things in my life.  We swapped summer squash for zucchini since that’s what we got in our CSA and turkey for chorizo because we hate Mexicans – OMG KIDDING.  WE LOVE MEXICANS AND THEIR CUISINE.  We did not have chorizo, but we had turkey, so we used that.

We cooked the turkey using one of the onions & a garlic clove from the CSA.  The onion was awesome – one was the perfect size for a pound of turkey and it was deliciously mild.  The garlic was a MIND FREAK.  When I busted open the bulb, inside there were only 4 GIANT cloves, not a million tiny-ass ones like you get at the store.  It was awesome.  I should have taken a picture.  For reasons why I didn’t please refer to the title of this post.

Anyhoo – we cooked up the turkey with some spices (paprika, salt, pepper, lemon pepper, crushed red pepper – we like pepper).  Then we added the kale.  Then we added a can of diced tomatoes with the juice, two cut up fresh tomatoes from the CSA & an 8oz jar of tomato paste to get it nice and sauce-like.  We threw in the summer squash and put a lid on that bitch and let it cook for like 10 minutes.  We ate it over orecchiette pasta, which is my favorite pasta fyi.  Please retain this knowledge and gift me with some for pasta day.  Which is not a real holiday, but it should be.

You can see more pictures of the foods and stuff at my flickr account.  As for the rest of the CSA this week, we still have a little kale left that we’ll probably make chips with.  I’ve been using the kohlrabi on my salads and it’s pretty good – nice crunch, slightly sweet.  I saved the leaves from the kohlrabi because I found this post that said they were good.  I was going to toss them in with the rest of the kale, so we’ll see what happens OH THE ANTICIPATION.  WHAT WILL SHE DO AND THEN NOT WRITE ABOUT FOR WEEKS?!?!  We have some garlic and an onion left as well.  I trimmed the greens of the onion and froze them.  I’m thinking that I can throw it in a stock someday?  Is that a wise thing to do?  It seemed like the right thing to do but I have no idea.  Please leave any input in the comments.  I promise to maybe listen but mostly ignore.

CSA Week 4 All The Way Oh My God

Guys, we got our CSA Week 4 this week.  This is what was in the goods, left to rightish:

Kale
Young Onions – Ailsa Craigs for those of you who really know a lot about onions and/or are pretentious and like to refer to onions by people names.
Garlic
Kohlrabi – This thing looks totally crazy! Like a double rainbow oh my god.
Summer Squash
Tomatoes

So last week, I neglected to take pictures of our CSA and the meal we made with it.  The meal we made with it was a TOTAL BUST.  I am still in pain from this experience, but let me try to sum it up briefly so we can get to more important matters.

We tried to make skirt steak following Alton Brown’s recipe.  I even watched part 1 & part 2 of the show to make sure we’d do it right.  Despite all of our precautions, it was an EPIC FAIL.  If you’re going to attempt Alton Brown’s skirt steak fajitas, please note the following:

1) Use the proper charcoal – He doesn’t specify this in the show, but make sure you use NATURAL LUMP CHARCOAL.  If you don’t, your steak will be covered in ash & taste like dirt, even if you use his blow dryer method.

2) Use a proper cut of skirt steak – He talks about the difference between inner & outer skirt steak.  i can’t remember exactly, and the memory is still too painful for me to go back and double check the video (note: this blog is really informative & helpful), but I think the inner skirt steak is better than the outer.  If that is true, we probably had the outer.  Because this was tough as nails and tasted like dirty ass.

3) Slice the steak properly – Alton goes through a whole spiel on his show about how to properly cut the steak.  We didn’t do that right either.  Like I said, epic fail all around.

So that was a bummer, but we stir-fried the bok choy with a little cumin separately and that was delicious, so it wasn’t a total loss.  Just mostly.

Anyway, that is in the past – and now we have more food to eat!  I thought we were bad and wasted our lettuce from last week, but I bought a lettuce storage unit thing that has kept the lettuce crisp, so I will eat some salads this week & shred the kohlrabi madness over the top.  We’ll probably make some kind of gumbo with the garlic, onions & tomatoes.  And the plan is to do something moderately fancy with the kale, kohlrabi leaves & summer squash.

If I’m not too distracted by a double rainbow, I’ll be sure to post pictures and tell y’all all about it.

If you liked that, I recommend this & this as well.

CSA Week 3

So, this week we forgot to take a picture of what we got in our CSA.  So, I asked my good friend Nuverre – a MS Paint extraordinaire – to come up with an artistic rendering of what we got.  Above, on the left, is me.  On the right is our CSA share – it consisted of bok choy, 3 tomatoes, fresh garlic that did not look as much like balls as it does in the photo above, and lettuce that did not look as much like a giant vagina as it does in the photo above.

We did ok this week.  More on that later…