A Shingle with a Shimmy and a Shake

Yummy!

Picked up my first CSA share on Tuesday.  Plus some strawberries!  I wish I could share how wonderful the box smelled!  So fresh.  And looks so beautiful.  I told the woman from whom I bought the strawberries that I doubted they would last the evening.  Well, I was wrong – they did last til after dinner on Wednesday – a whole 24 hours!  They were delicious!!  The buttercrunch lettuce was also wonderful!

Now that spring is here in full force (NC is now dealing with the annual pine pollen onslaught), and my CSAs both start this week, I decided to challenge myself to feed my family with as much local food as possible.  This could be really fun – especially if I can get the  family involved.  We have great resources in our town for eating locally. 

We live very close to the Carrboro, NC farmers market.  It’s a wonderland every Saturday morning!  Veggies, dairy, meat, flowers, handmade breads, jams and wool!!  All organic and local.  Love to just wander around and see what’s there.  Always make one trip around before I buy anything!  

Our CSA with Brinkley Farms is great!!  This is our second year with them.  We receive an email each week so we can customize our orders to our preference.  That is a great feature!  And, the people are really great.  This year we are trying a CSA with fisheries on the NC coast.  They will bring in fresh fish once a week.  I’m really looking forward to this. 

So I will try to keep it local as much as possible and post the delicious meals!!

PS  What the heck happened to the barefoot bloggers?  The website hasn’t been update in months.  Kind of miss it.

In my last post I incorrectly attributed the curried butternut squash soup to Ina!!  It was really a recipe from Ellie Krieger!!  So good . . . wish I had some right now!

WOW!  I have been absent from this blog for a long time!  I have been cooking though.  Am super behind on the Barefoot Bloggers recipes.   I did make the Lemon Chicken recipe last month though.  It was very, very good.  I forgot to get a photo though!!  I think my husband took a picture, but am not sure that he still has it.  Very easy and yummy.  A super combination.! 

I’m starting back to work full time tomorrow.  It’s been five years since I worked full-time.  There are good and bad things about it . . . but I’m hoping that I will be able to be more organized and be able to continue to crank out the BB recipes!

My Curry Experiment has continued.  I made one of Ina’s soups — a curried butternut squash soup.  Yummy.  I got to use my immersion blender for the first time.  I think I bought it last spring with the intention of making soups, but this is the first one I’ve done that needed it!  So it was fun to use, and the soup came out well. I bought the squash at Trader Joe’s already cut up.  That saved a lot of time.  Trader Joe’s is good for that sort of thing. Here it is in all of its glory!

I didn’t do quite as much holiday baking as I would have liked.  So busy.  Lots of family visiting.  I did have Thomas and Kallie over and along with Nick they decorated quite a few sugar cookies.  They had lots of fun.  I tried the Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix and was pretty impressed with how they tasted.  The dough was very easy to work with.  Here are some pictures . . .

Here are some pictures of the end result:

Happy New Year to all!  Will be writing again very soon!

It’s true — they don’t make things like they used to.  On Thanksgiving Day, Michelle borrowed this roaster from her Mom.  We had hoped to cook the turkey in it, but the turkey was a bit too big!  Her mom got this roaster as a wedding present 61 years ago!!  It still works great!

I was disappointed that the turkey didn’t fit.  I really wanted to try it out!  Well, it comes with glass cookware you can use to make just about anything that you would in an oven.

I had purchased a banana bread mix (Pillsbury . . . I know it’s cheating!) that I decided to try in the roaster.  It did take a little bit longer to cook . . .

But it tasted delicious.  Actually, I couldn’t believe the number of compliments I got on it.  I may start using this instead of making it from scratch!

It was really fun using this roaster.  I’m glad I got the chance to try it out.  It’s not everyday you get cook in something as cool as this!1

So behind on my blogging.  My apologies.  I do plan to post tonight. 

Did anyone see Ms. Ina on the Today this morning?  She made the Lemon Chicken Breasts that the Barefoot Bloggers are cooking this month.  Looks good.  Just happens to be on my menu for either tonight or tomorrow.

A couple of years ago, when Thomas was in Kindergarten or 1st grade, his class created a cookbook.  Each child developed their own recipes.  He gave me a copy of his recipe.  I think he’ll be happy to know that I am publishing it here!

“The Most Amazing Recipe” by Thomas

4 quarts of pasta

1 cup of potatoes

9 chickens

2 cups of onions

1 cup of hot sauce

Mix all of these ingredients together.  Put them in a pan.  Put the pan on the stove.  Cook for  20 minutes.

He has been wanting to make this recipe with me for years.  So we set a date in early October.  I told him that I thought we’d need to make a few adjustments.  I found a Rachael Ray recipe on her website called Chicken Pasta.  So from Thomas’s recipe, we omitted the potatoes.  We added garlic, some olive oil, frozen peas, cheddar cheese and parmesan.  It was delicious!!!  It was a big hit.  We served it to my Mom, Nicki, Nick, Kallie, Anna and Joe.  All loved it.  I’ve since made it without chicken and it was still great.

Thomas's first recipe

After dinner, we all watched Psycho.  Great movie.  I remember going up to the University of Vermont to watch it when I was in high school.  The kids liked it.  Fun evening.  Why this is all in blue and underline now . . . I have no clue.  Am just going with it!

It’s been awhile since my last post.  I have been cooking, just not photographing or blogging!!  I made a wonderful pork tenderloin tonight a al Ina’s Parties! cookbook.  Big hit with the whole family.  That is always a nice surprise!  I even had it ready before Anna had to leave for dance class.  That made her happy!  I made mashed butternut squash a la Ina last weekend.  So yummy.  That is definitely a make again.

I’ve done some baking.  One apple pie and two pumpkin pies so far.  These are always a treat for the family.  I am generally not a pie person, so I’m not tempted to indulge!!  And pumpkin pie is too easy to pull together!

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie

I have started my curry project.   I made yellow curry with veggies.  It was good.  I plan to make it again soon and will post photos.  Need to investigate some more curry recipes.

I did not make the barefoot blogger recipes this month. I am not a fan of clam chowder, and just wasn’t motivated to make it!  I do plan to try the popovers soon though!!  I received my copy of Ina’s newest cookbook and have been enjoying reading through it and picking out the recipes I plan to make.

Time to get back on the band wagon and cooking.  Now that the weather is cooling down, it’s more enjoyable to crank up the oven and cook, cook, cook!

I LOVE curry.  I could eat every day.  On Friday night Joe and I had dinner at the Twisted Noodle.  Had my favorite:  yellow curry with veggies.  It was SOOO good. 

And so my inspiration to take on a curry project this fall.  The plan is to experiment with curry and have some really yummy meals! 

Can’t wait!

Joe and I went to Savannah earlier this month to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.  I have wanted to go there for ages.  The only bad thing I can say about it is that it was hotter than hell!!  It made getting out and about a bit uncomfortable.  But we had such a good time, that didn’t matter too much!

We really wanted to eat at the Lady and Sons.  Joe went to get in line at the designated time (9:30 am) to sign up for a reservation.  He got us a lunch seating for 1:15pm.  So exciting!!  I had hoped to see Paula, but alas, she wasn’t there. First things first . . . a nice cool glass of sweet tea (so delicious!) .   Then we hit the buffet:

So good.  They delivered the biscuits and hoe cakes to our table while we were at the buffet.  Everything was so great.  I did love those green beans.  I don’t know how she does it, but they were awesome.   When we had finished, it was time for dessert.  Our waiter brought over a tray with a few selections on it (the service was great by the way.  everyone was really, really nice).

I went for the chocolate of course!!