Living Local
In support of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day, we have launched a week long campaign in support of Island Grown Schools. We are on a mission to raise 1,000 supporters of IGS by next Saturday. For every new ‘like’ IGS receives on Facebook there will be a seedling donated for a school garden. Island Grown Schools began with a community meeting in 2007. It is time to celebrate all of their hard work. In a few short years, we have seen the amazing impact of IGS: gardens at each of the elementary schools, MVRHS and even some of the preschools. Most recently, IGS along with parents and faculty helped the West Tisbury School and the Chilmark School break away from their corporate food contracts. Let’s show our appreciation for their investment in our children’s future by helping IGS get 1,000 fans this week.
The Vineyard Gazette and Martha’s Vineyard Patch caught wind of the movement. Our friends at Edible Vineyard, The Right Fork Diner, State Road Restaurant, The Scottish Bakehouse, Heather Gardens, and Whippoorwill Farm will be posting all week on Facebook and Twitter to gain support. Join the revolution!!!
Scholl Lunch
I went to pick watercress today and ran into Cathy Walthers who had an armful of knotweed. Cathy reminded me that Russ Cohen had pointed it out to us as an invasive edible plant that tastes very much like rhubarb.
I was making an Indian meal and had not made a chutney yet and there was an enormous amount of knotweed.
I cut the top 2-3 feet off the smaller, thinner plants I spotted. I gathered an armload and took it back to the kitchen where I pulled off the leaves. I chopped it into 3” pieces and I had about 10 cups of the fruit. I added about 2 cups of orange juice, 1 cup of sugar, ½ cup of rice wine vinegar and cooked it down for about ½ hour. As soon as the fruit was cooked through, I could tell many were cooked but many were still stringy. I placed it all in a blender and blended it until it was a puree. To that I added 2 chopped apples (skin on) and 1 cup of raisins (any dry fruit would do). I chopped a few pieces of candied ginger and returned it all to the pot where I cooked it for another 20 minutes or so. I removed it and allowed it to cool and served it with a chicken curry!
Knotweed Chutney – delicious!
Kitchen Porch April 2012 Newsletter
The first of the season: our own tomatoes!
Pictured is a delicious Tomato & Eggplant Tart. If you have too many tomatoes, here is a favorite simple recipe for Tomato Confit. This simple recipe allows you to preserve the best flavors of the season now to save for later by canning. It’s the height of the season and it is easy to make a large batch so you can enjoy them all year round. I love tomato confit on a lobster roll with bacon! You can also use them in Tomato Confit & Onion Tart.
And yes, these are photos taken last August when the abundance of tomatoes overflows and yes tomatoes are not in season (unless you are in Australia).
April Fools!
But Seriously
Tomatoes are listed number 34 on the dirty dozen list for the EWG Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides which means caution!
I keep it simple. I don’t buy tomatoes unless they are from here, until recently that is. My son Oren insisted that we buy some tomatoes in February! We examined our choices and found some organic ones from Mexico and we found some little heirloom from Holland (I wasn’t buying!). And then we found these Backyard Farms tomatoes from Maine. That’s right from Maine – in February! We bought them and we liked them.
I looked them up on the internet. Here is clip of what’s going on in Maine:
These tomatoes are not organic, but they are grown close to home. Also, I know I am supporting a company that is keeping loads of folks employed. Backyard Tomatoes appears to be doing all the right things.
I did stop in at Morning Glory Farm this week and they have filled a green house full of tomato plants. The fans are on and blowing and the temperature is a constant balmy 70 degrees. The tomato plants are one foot tall and this is what Jim Athearn reported when I asked him about them:
Today Andrew did a beautiful job of hoeing out the extreme blush of weeds that had emerged since the tomatoes were planted. He finished with a flourish of raking smooth, straight lines through the entire house; an extra touch that shows he has graduated from laborer to farmer. We expect to pick tomatoes by Memorial Day. We took a soil test for that house, it is our “morganic” house and gets compost every year since 1999. The soil test was as close to perfect as I have ever seen.
Every year our family celebrates Passover and Easter, but it is a rare year to celebrate both on the same weekend. Passover or Easter – whole lamb or brisket - check below for a slew of delicious holiday recipes to get you through the tomato season… I mean April!
*RECIPES*
Passover:
Lamb with Tabil and Preserved Lemons
Every year our family celebrates Passover and Easter, but it is a rare year to celebrate both on the same weekend.
My first exposure to Passover was as a 4th grader at a catholic grade school when my teacher, a nun, took us to her convent where we had Passover. It was the first time I had matzoh. Since a young child, I have been fascinated with the Jewish religion.
Imagining life without Christmas – this was my first intrigue of the seemingly odd practice of the Jewish religion. I didn’t get it. If Jesus was Jewish, why did the Jews not celebrate his birthday? It wasn’t until my adult life that I came to know where the old testament and new testament separated the beliefs.
In college I dated a med student just because he was Jewish and I was more interested in his religion than him. I did marry a Jewish man and both our sons have become Bar Mitzvah, and so we have celebrated both Easter and Passover for the past 25 years. Both holidays connect our many friends and family and create wonderful traditions.
One year ,we had all of the Passover Props from my dear friend Adrianna’s aunt Thelma’s treasures. (My dear friend Adrianna, whose Aunt Thelma, a Wampanoag, married a rabbi). The hand stitched, perfectly dry cleaned and pressed linens, the silver Passover seder plate and all of the stories brought awe and wonder to the Passover celebration. Adriana and Thelma are from the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah and we imagined how it must have been for her in the 60s to marry a Rabbi and convert to Judaism. Over the years so many wonderful stories have been collected and I wish that I had the same lamb shank frozen in the freezer to use year after year just as my friend Joan Nathan’s 98-year-old mother does every Passover.
Easter has been less of a religious holiday for us and more of a celebration of Spring. When the kids were little we always had an egg hunt followed by a brunch of ham and asparagus and eggs!
This year, with Easter and Passover on the same weekend, it will make for an interesting challenge to compliment and not duplicate the menus. Last Easter we roasted a whole lamb over a pit. Passover begins on Friday so we couldn’t possible have any pork for Easter since it will be during Passover, even if it is from our own pigs.
Any and all of my favorite Passover and Easter menus are sure to make our celebration this year special and help to create more of our own stories to be shared year after year…
RECIPES:
Passover:
Haroset
Matzoh Ball Soup
Horseradish
Tzimmes
Spinach Souffle
Macaroons
Easter:
Sticky Buns
Lamb with Tabil and Preserved Lemons
LINK to PUBLISHED ARTICLE in BA50 Better After 50
Image Credit: joshbousel
We had a farmer friend, Sean Stanton from Blue Hill Farm in Western Massachusetts visiting last night.
We invited a few farmers and neighbors, pulled out a whole leg of pig, picked some wild watercress, and made this sweet potato dish. For dessert I made a batch of ginger cookies and the kids rolled out the balls and a jolly time was had by all – 17 adults, one 15 year old, and three kids a jolly time for sure!
A Simple Lovely Sunday Supper
This is super easy and bursting with flavor and great for a do ahead dinner for a crowd.
2 large onions cut in half and sliced into thin half circles
2 large sweet potatoes
5 cloves of garlic minced
2 tablespoon each of sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano chopped fine
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter (substitute 3 tablespoons of olive oil for Passover)
Preheat oven to 375 F.
Heat ¼ cup of olive oil in a skillet and sauté the onions for 5 minutes on medium heat. After 5 minutes turn down the heat and allow to caramelize for another 15 minutes until golden brown.
Slice the sweet potato into thin slices approximately ¼ inch thick. Add the garlic to the onions and toss. Add the butter and allow it to melt. Stir in herbs. Place sweet potatoes in a baking dish and pour onion garlic herb mixture over them. Coat all sides well and evenly. Cover with foil. (At this point, sweet potatoes can be made up to five hours ahead and kept covered at room temperature).
Bake in oven for approximately 30 minutes until cooked through*. Serve warm.
*I’ve left this in the oven for an hour and a half and it was still delicious! All gets caramelized even further and it was like candy.
