Be Our Guest

I love love love to host parties at our house. I love the frenetic cleaning, preparing, baking, chopping, and watering. I also love to serve people. Since we're not close to finishing our bathroom (let's be honest, I haven't lifted a finger), I don't think we'll be doing as much entertaining this year. So, I want to make sure I'm a good guest so people don't feel like we are always mooching off of their hospitality. I'll be posting some cooking for pitch ins or potlucks...whatever you call them. Until then, check out Smitten Kitchen's 30 Ways to be a good guest post.

A Fresh Start

We ate lots of stir fry last summer, lots. So, one of my goals this summer is to get a bit more creative with the way I use our produce. Meal #1: stir fry It's actually a yummy, easy recipe for making just about any vegetable. Here goes:

Ingredients:

1 T chicken bouillon granules

1 C warm water

1 T garlic powder (I prefer fresh garlic but I didn't have any)

1 T ginger

1 handful baby carrots

1 handful snow peas

4-5 handfuls of mixed greens (I used radish greens, kale, and collared greens)

4-5 small radishes

1 handful basil chopped finely

1 handful flat leaf parsley chopped finely

1 handful cilantro chopped finely

1 thinly sliced green pepper

Directions: Dilute granules in warm water and bring to a boil in a wok. Add garlic and ginger. Add mixed greens and denser veggies (carrots and radishes in this case...in other cases potatoes or broccoli). Boil for several minutes allowing the water to evaporate before adding the seasonings. Continue to cook over medium heat until carrots and radishes are tender. Serve over pasta or rice.

The verdict. It was a great first try. I added the snow peas at the very end and we enjoyed them el dente. Nothing too exotic about this meal. LOVE this rice pilaf. I could tell there was a lot of salt in the bouillon. I might try to find one that was lower in sodium. Just because.

Week One: Hollar if you hear me, collared greens are all the rave!

Each Sunday, I'll drive to our designated pick up to retrieve our veggies from Farmer Mike. I'll post pictures of the veggies here. The reason for this is twofold: 1) These gorgeous locally and organically grown veggies deserve some time in the spot light. Anyone who is nervous about veggies should see the colors in these fresh beauties. 2) I want you to see them in all of their raw glory...I think random veggies can be intimidating if we don't know what to do with them.

My experience with fresh vegetables last year was mildly successful. We have a really amazing compost pile to show for some of the things I couldn't figure out how to cook. We did a good job cooking the things we were familiar with (corn, spinach, beans) and a not so good job with things that we were unfamiliar with.

So here is what we have this week.

(left to right)asparagus, green onion, collared greens, kale, snow peas, and radishes.

I also want to show your what I have to work with from my own backyard.

This will be my "team" for the summer. I'm hoping they will help me to spice things up in the kitchen. Let me introduce you to strawberry, chives, basil, cilantro, rosemary, flat leaf parsley, more basil, and mint.

Stay tuned for this week's recipes. Also, check out some recipe blogs on the side bar. Smitten Kitchen rocks my world.

Farm Fresh Challenge

I Stinky Pete do solemnly swear to cook with, munch on, or share the veggies from my CSA this year from Martin Hill Farm. If you don't know much about CSAs, check out the farm here. My pledge to you, my readers, and really to the Pete family is to be more efficient with the produce we bought this summer. That means lots of recipe posting, pictures of fresh produce, and griping about yet another meal of stir fry.

I really can't complain since the veggies are super fresh and local. It's just difficult to use up a whole head of fresh spinach before it goes bad. I'm looking forward to canning, freezing, and steaming a bunch of it too.

My challenge to you is to buy more local produce. I'll be featuring recipes and uses for a lot of produce that you can get at your local farmers' market. Hopefully watching me struggle through the produce will encourage you to shop for and cook your own fresh and local produce.

Here goes nothing...

PS: Our first share arrives this weekend.

Recipe Review

I've been doing some cooking...man I've been doing some cooking. I love this new blog (new to me) called Smitten Kitchen. She has some pretty amazing recipes AND she takes beautiful pictures of the food she prepares. Note: not all of these recipes are from Smitten Kitchen. Here are some of my favorite recipes to date:

Huevos Rancheros

OK so these incorporate pretty much every ingredient I love except for dark chocolate. Black beans, eggs, garlic, tomatoes. This is a weeknight meal at the very least and a crowd pleaser any other night. The salsa fresca along is amazing. Great for chips, tacos, anything really. I'm making the chicken tacos tonight. More on those later.

Elvis Preseley's Favorite Pound Cake

So I was inspired by this post by Smitten Kitchen. Mr. Pete has an aversion to anything with a funny texture...ketchup, cream cheese, etc. So I couldn't make the pound cake with cream cheese and I found this Elvis recipe instead. Wow...talk about velvety, buttery, vanillay goodness...it might be the seven eggs the recipe calls for. Be sure to spring for the cake flour. We had some left over from our Gingerbread people during the holidays. Mr. Pete learned on NPR that it was the best for Gingerbread. The cake flour is smooth and light and helps the whole pound cake to be just moist and delicious.

Monkey Bread

I think this is an old familiar favorite for most people. I just love that Pillsbury Grands are often on sale and this is a great recipe for an easy brunchy snack. By the way, my grandmother's coffee cake is better BUT this comes in a close second and it's easier to make.

Lentil Edamame Stew

Another week night meal that is easy and has relatively few ingredients. Mr. Pete liked it so...it must be good.

Tweeting

I'm learning to Twitter. Head cold + spring break= time on the computer to do useless things like join Twitter

They Tried to Make Me Comb Out My Rats Nest But I Said "No No No"

According to the Bumpit website "flat hair is so last year." Anyone who knows me knows that I love me a big pony tail. We're talking teasing, spraying, ratting, smoothing and securing. Bobby pins, layers of spray, and a fresh black hair tie make the best pony tail ever. Who knew that there were actual tools and a how to video to go along with this big hair madness. Have you seen the Bumpit? You have to check out the actual website here. They are these plastic pieces that you put in your hair to give you that Amy-Winehouse-bottle-o-hairspray-beehive look.

This is one of my favorite go to hair styles and I can't believe that there is equipment to go with it! In other news, one of my favorite bloggers gives you a step by step tutorial since I my own instructions would lead to devastating results.