This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
At the farmer’s market this weekend, hidden behind the boxes and boxes of strawberries was a small box of miniature cherries. I asked the farmer what variety they were, but she didn’t know. This cherry tree had been growing in her yard for more years than she had lived there. They were not quite as sour as a Montmorency, but not sweet like a Bing, either. The whole eating experience was fun: kind of like someone put a regular cherry in a shrinking machine. The pits were smaller and the stems shorter, too. For size comparison, this photo was taken with my youngest girl holding the bowl – those are 9 year old arms.
In our CSA box, we received a big head of romaine. The cavies loved the tough outer leaves, and we enjoyed the tender inner leaves in several salads. We had the collard greens with bacon and onion one night with dinner. The big old quart-box of strawberries didn’t even make it home, but were slurped up in the car (we have a big sheet and damp towels in the car for easy cleanup on CSA pick-up days.) Half the kale was made into chips for a snack and the other half I added to a big pot of Minestrone. We had the chicken roasted and I used the leftovers to make a little stock. I made two pounds of ground beef into a meatloaf. There’s loads of meat in the freezer, but I need to find something to do with hot ground pork because we usually don’t like spicy food. We’ve been using the pint of honey for all the sweetening we’ve done all week, and the quart of cream I got went half for creme fraiche and half for the ice cream we will have after dinner tonight.
I love not only how fresh everything is, but how long it lasts. The romaine lettuce has a couple remaining leaves that are almost a week old and still crisp as can be. When I pulled off the outer leaves to give to the guinea pigs, my husband caught sight of a fat caterpillar happily munching and FREAKED. I reminded him that it’s probably better for us to eat food that would support such a delicate creature than to eat the kind that’s been sprayed with poisons. I like my produce bug-approved, even if it means occasionally picking a bug off!
One of the happy romaine-fed cavies.
I’ve mentioned Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility before. A few days ago, one of the characters said:
You don’t often get wisdom like that from a video game.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
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May 27, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Kelly the Kitchen Kop
Aren’t you the sleuth, finding those cherries way in the back?! You’re so blessed to have your farm market open already – ours will open in a couple weeks!
Thanks for joining in on Real Food Wednesday! I stumbled your post.
Kelly
May 28, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Alyss
I agree! Bug approved produce is much better than sterile, perfect produce
My produce in my garden is even a little too bug approved… I’m having a rough time with the darn slugs. They like my lettuce better than they like the beer traps I set up for them, darn them 
As for the hot pork… what is it seasoned with besides peppers? Is it hot italian sausage with fennel and peppercorns, or is it just spiced up pork? I recently combined ground pork with sage, honey (would have prefered maple syrup, but didn’t have any) salt and pepper to make little breakfast sausage patties. If it doesn’t already have fennel and peppercorns in it you could try adding some fennel seeds, oregano and a little honey to make an italian sausage. Or you could mix the pork half and half with un-seasoned ground pork to make a sausage. I would use those sausage patties along with some chicken meat to make a pasta sauce. I love the contrast of the bland chicken with the spicy sausage in a tomato based sauce.
The other thought that comes to mind is asian food. Ground pork goes in moo shu (meat and veggies wrapped in flour tortilla) or with eggplant for a thai inspired dish. You could also use the pork to make tiny meat balls to go in a chinese spiced broth (think garlic, ginger, mushrooms and soy sauce plus whatever vegetables you want).
Let me know if you try any of those ideas!
May 29, 2009 at 8:31 am
localnourishment
I think i will try mixing it with unseasoned sausage, just to cut down the heat a little.