Mama Mia!

It's been an interesting week for kitchen projects this week.  We officially have local whole wheat flour that Four Star Farms has been growing, milling and selling at our Co-op and favorite farm stand, Hager's.  Because of this luck, I started figuring out all the things made from wheat that get shipped hundreds of miles to us, and have been researching how to make these things myself instead.  Essentially saving barrels of fossil fuels and being healthier for us.  With that said, the first 2 things I wanted to try was bread (obviously) and pasta.

The first one started off as what was suppose to be the easiest bread recipe, "No Knead Bread".   I followed the directions and in the morning went to check on the dough and it was a watery gross mess, I thought it might have resembled sour dough starter if I had ever seen it before.  Not being discouraged I decided to add some more of our local flour and give it a go anyways.  But I am not a masochist, so I decided to make a mini loaf and use the rest of the messed up dough for home made naan.

We cooked this stuff on the grill because it was 85 degrees out, and the naan tastes better that way.  As you can see the naan was a success.  (It's pretty hard to screw up unleavened bread)

We cooked the mini loaf in a casserole pot on the grill as well (casserole pot recommended in recipe: grill was not).

It came out great!  What a relief to not have wasted all that flour and effort!

Tasted great with our homegrown cucumbers for lunch.

Now onto Project #2: Homemade Ravioli.  I just got a pasta maker and ravioli press.  They are awesome.  

So I figured I would whip up some raviolis with homemade filling...

Ironically making the homemade Ricotta was actually the easiest part.  Yikes!

I then proceeded to make a double batch of pasta dough, (why double you ask?  because I am an idiot!) and attempted to make thin sheets for the ravioli press.  This was a little frustrating...  I figured out that the local whole wheat flour wasn't the best flour to be trying this set-up with for the first time.  The dough just kept crumbling and I couldn't get any sheets that were bigger then 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch.  So, an HOUR and a HALF later, I finally started getting bigger sheets.  No, they were not big enough to cover the entire ravioli press, just big enough to make 3 (the press makes 12 at a time).

  

So, after I got a few with cracks in them from the excess filling (nowhere in the directions did it say anything about how much to fill these little guys with) I decided I should probably try some of these Olive Ricotta Whole Wheat Raviolis before I spent the next hour making more...

They were actually pretty good!  THANK GOD!  So I made a few more or I should say enough to have one dinner of them and froze the rest of the filling and dough.  

LESSON: Don't double a recipe until you know it will work!

In a moment of despair I made a Bow Tie pasta, just in case the Raviolis were destined for failure.

And the best part was the clean up....Yikes!

I will put a little more time into some research on this homemade pasta situation.  But I can't give up on the Four Star Farm's local wheat possibilities.

Thanks to the Peas

Today was the last day for our peas in the garden.  They were one of the best veggies this spring, and ended up in almost every one of our dinners.  But, it was time to pull them to make room for some other veggies.

They weren't looking that good anyways.  So I pulled them out, along with the spinach, mustard and leaf lettuce that had been growing under the pea trellis.  All of the greens had gotten unruly, so I was happy to pull them out.  I managed to salvage the netting and sticks for another pea trellis at another point.

Once they were all pulled, a little compost added and potatoes went in.  Although a little late for these guys, they should be ready to go in September.  

From the rest of the pea stalks we were still able to harvest a pretty good amount of peas that we froze tonight for meals in the future when we are missing these little guys.

And more things still growing all the time!  

Our first Dahlia

Our first Black Eyed  Susan (started from seed)

Jacob's Cattle Beans flourishing

And a look at the garden with peas...

...and a garden without, but soon to be potatoes

Pictorial Update

Another update on how our garden grows...

Bolseno Tomatoes

Eggplant Blossom

Broccoli

Our one Gladiola

Jalepenos

Calendula

Bell Peppers

The beginnings of Brussel Sprouts

Zucchini Blossom

Nasturtium hiding among the cucumbers.

And because I can't get enough of them, I picked up some more garlic scapes at Hager's Farm Market.  Then spent some of the afternoon making some pestos.

Scape pesto with almonds.

Scape Radish pesto with cashews.

Sage Parsley pesto with walnuts.

Another little bouquet because it has become one of my favorite things to do in the morning.

Over Ambitious Veggies

When we returned from our vacation, the garden had grown/overtaken certain areas.  Mainly the walkways.  This I feel is a pretty good problem to have...except I am still trying to come up with some more trellising ideas.

For now, I have put in some little fences to help keep the cucumber vines and vigorous tomatoes our of the danger of stomping feet.

Some harvesting notes from when we got home.

We are pretty flush with peas.  It is almost the end of these early season peas, so we have been eating them almost every day and freezing the excess.  Nothing more beautiful then these little guys though.

 We also had a little mix up in the seed packet I bought.  There was a snow pea seed in there, so after finally trying one of these odd shaped peas, I realized what it actually was!  Lucky us!

Here is the rest of our bounty.

 

We made some fresh basil pesto and had the rainbow chard last night with home made tofu and noodles.

View from our porch.

Back from Sunny Island

We made it back from our little vacation on Sunny Island.  It was warm, perfect weather and relaxing.  When we got home there was some gardening that needed to be attended, but more importantly, tons of produce and flowers.  I won't bore you too much with that stuff yet...

But there was one big surprise waiting for us when we got home!  A cucumber!

First of the season, with probably a million more to come based on the blossoms.  We had a delicious cucumber sandwich for lunch today.  I will post more on this later.  But I want to do a quick recap of our delicious food while out on the island.

A usual stand-by for us here is tortellini, sausage, broccoli and brussel sprouts.  But, our broccoli isn't ready yet, and we didn't get any at the farmers market, so I had to come up with something else.  And what was ready in our garden was Dinosaur Kale and Peas.  So we changed up the veggies in the original, and brought it to Sunny Island.

Cooking up the Kale with garlic on our camp stove.

Final product and better then the original recipe!  

We made bruschetta with the white bean and scallion dip I made and local Parmesan and tomatoes.

And our favorite dinner was the steak tips (local of course).

Getting the mushrooms and onions ready for grilling.

Marc cooking up steak tips and veggies on the fire pit.

Final product with home grown salad greens, homemade pasta salad (with our fresh peas) and Marc's family recipe for tomato salad.   Perfect summer meal.

And just a couple shots of the garden when we got home, growing strong.