Lisa gets ready to serve up Jambalaya

Well hello, crew! We’re back again this week with a special two-weeks-in-a-row edition of the Extender Season.  Basically, we had to figure out how to squeeze six weeks between the end of March and the beginning of June, so here we are.

It’s been a good week, if a busy one.  Last Friday in the Kitchen we had a big crew, including two volunteers who might be working with us all summer! It made for a fun day and we got a lot of work done, listened to good music, and of course, made lots of tasty food.  Enjoy these pictures from our happy cooking crew.  On Monday and Tuesday Michelle and I continued to work on promoting our summer season.  Once again, there are still shares available, so sign up today if you’re interested in having amazing prepared food every week from June to November.

Ed puts the quiche together

This week I’ve been out at the Farm again.  We got 2 inches of much-needed rain over the weekend and everything is popping out: the fields are full of green and growingthings.  Today we spent much of the day thinning the beets–it looks like one of the best beet crops we’ve ever had.  Anne tells me that the barn swallows have returned–a sure sign that spring is here.

So, this week in the Kitchen we’ll be making:

Buffalo Florentine – a vehicle for some of our delicious preserved greens from Locavorious and Calder Dairy’s heavy cream.

Chicken Pot Pie – this was one of the most popular things we made last season.

Brigitte enjoys working at the stove

Featuring our homemade pastry crust and of course Old Pine Farm’s heritage chickens.

Mustard Short Ribs – a 24-hour marinade with locally-made jelly and mustard brings out all the flavors in Old Pine Farm short ribs!

Hamburger Cheese Bake – another crowd pleaser with plenty of Calder Dairy products. Yum!

Hope you’re looking forward to it!

Good night,

Mary

Our Breakfast Specials at SELMA

As you can tell from the lateness of this post, it’s been an incredibly busy two weeks.  Since I last wrote, Michelle and I have finished up our grant proposal and sent it off, in a cloud of good wishes.  Now we just have to wait–and work our hardest on everything else.  We were also the guest chefs at Friday Mornings @ SELMA last Friday.  That was a lot of fun: we had a great crew of

Melanie and Michelle working at SELMA

volunteers helping us and everyone seemed to love the food, which was very gratifying.

I’ve begun to work two days a week at the Community Farm.  Those of you who are planning to sign up for our summer season, whether vegetarian or omnivore, should be excited–everything is looking amazing out there.  We could do with some rain, but for now the beets have germinated and are looking amazing, as are the peas and first round of

Weeding the Garlic patch

carrots.  We spent time yesterday weeding the garlic which was full of wheat grass, due to the fact that it was mulched with straw that had some wheat grain still in it (ack!).  Fortunately, it was an easy job and went quickly in good company.  We’ve also been enjoying a visit from Doug, the father of a former apprentice, who put his handyman skills to work fixing up all the broken stuff around the farm.

We’ve got another menu of faves on board this week for the extender season.  Read more after the jump.

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Mary pulls quiche from the oven

We’ve been having a very busy week here at the Harvest Kitchen.  Last week a friend found a grant opportunity that we’re excited to apply for–it could give us the chance to do some much-needed upgrades to our kitchen equipment. Unfortunately, applying for a grant is a lot of work, and Michelle and I have been working hard to get everything together.  Keep your fingers crossed for us!

In other news, regular work has finally started at the Community Farm.  I was out there on Saturday (sorry to those who looked for me at the Farmer’s Market–I’d escaped into the fields!).  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we had a great team of workers.  I’m excited about the crew this year.  Together we got a bunch of big jobs done, including cleaning out the goats’ stalls and

Peter and Veronica tubbing the Pasta Fagioli

weeding the strawberries.  Those who follow the twitter feed probably also saw my picture of some gorgeous compost we sifted–ready for seeding new plants.  I was also at the Farm on Wednesday, which was a much colder, grayer day than Saturday.  Still there was good work to be done, including cleaning out the refrigerator in the barn (hey, not all farm jobs are glamorous!).

We’re excited about this week’s menu for the extender season.  It’s hard for me to believe we’re still enjoying the potatoes from Our Family Farm–they’ve lasted really well since last fall!  Click “read more” to see what we’re going to do with all this amazing beef and pork!

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Last week was the final pick up for our Long Winter Kitchen pilot. This week, though, we’re cooking again with our “extender” season. The LWK was such a success that we’re offering a one-time-only extender season to bridge the gap between the end of the LWK pilot and the beginning of our Harvest Kitchen summer. However, everyone should know that NOW is the time to sign up for the summer season! Click on the Share Info link to read about the share options for that.

In the mean time, it’s been a busy week. Also, I totally forgot to take any pictures last week during cooking, which is sad because we made some gorgeous chicken pot pies. Ah well. Fortunately I have a few nice shots of our cook up from earlier in March to share. Spring is here! I’m looking forward to our first work day out at the Community Farm next Saturday–things are already sprouting in the green house and Anne and Paul are working hard to get ready for this coming summer. I’m excited about getting my hands back in the dirt and working with all my CFAA apprentice friends. And, of course, sharing farm news on the blog and twitter. with my new blackberry phone (yikes!).

Michelle and I just got back from a meeting with Kris, the farmer who raises our meat. We had a lovely long chat about getting everything set for the summer season, but we also got to hear some stories about life at the farm. Today she was receiving a shipment of organic feed for her hogs. Kris also told us that she is excited about building a “chicken tractor” to use at her farm this summer–basically it’s a mobile unit that will allow her chickens to explore a new patch of ground every day. One thing definitely shines through in every conversation with Kris: she is passionate about the welfare of her animals and she does everything she can to give them a good life.
This week’s “extender” share menu is after the jump.

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Well, this is the last week of the original 8 weeks (in 4 months) of the Long Winter Kitchen pilot. Michelle and I have been delighted with the results: the food has been great, the members have been happy, and we’ve learned a lot. As most of you know, we’re going to be offering a March-May Long Winter Kitchen season (Long Spring Kitchen?) to fill in the gap between the end of the original LWK and the start of our summer season in June. We’ve still got some great local produce in the freezer and Kris at Old Pine Farm is going to hook us up with meat for the next few months. We think the real testament to the success of this pilot is just how many of our members from the first round are returning for the second. All of which is to say, while this may be the finale of LWK pt 1, we don’t really have to say good bye!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks around here. The sun is shining and spring seems to be in the air. Out at Community Farm we’ve seeded the first crops in the greenhouse. I was happy to note that on the first day, the farmers seeded parsley, a crop that will be harvested all summer until we finally get the last cutting at the end of the season in November. Thinking about how the parsley grow all summer gives such a good sense of the continuity of things out at the farm. On the kitchen front, Michelle and I have been doing a lot of planning, including hiring cooks for the season, dreaming for the future, and drooling over restaurant equipment online. Plus, of course, we’ve been thinking about how to promote the Harvest Kitchen’s summer season and recruit new members. If you’re thinking about joining, be sure to look through the blog archives to see past menus.

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Hello crew,

Well, as you can see, we’re up and running with the new website.  Thanks more than I can possibly say to Kenny King for the gorgeous graphic design and to Jeff Tenza for his work bringing it to life and working out the bugs.  And to both of them for the infinite amount of work and dedication they’ve put into the project. Michelle and I are truly delighted and we hope that you, our customers, members, readers, and friends, will enjoy the new version of the site as much as we do! Hooray for Jeff and Kenny, our personal Wizards of the Web!

So, it’s been a busy two weeks pulling this together! Since we last cooked, we’ve been running around trying to make everything perfect for the new site. Obviously, there are still some wrinkles to work out and we hope everyone will have some patience with us as we get it together. Also, please let us know if there’s something specific that isn’t working or is confusing to you.  There’s a lot of change going on right now and it’s easy for us to miss some details.

In spite of the busy-ness, there’s also been a lot of good things happening too.  Earlier this week Michelle and I attended the second annual Local Food Summit–an incredibly energizing day of workshops, group sessions, networking, and celebrating that brought together of 200 folks from the Movement.  In truth, the high points of the day were really the connections we got to make on the sidelines–during lunch and between sessions and at the after party.

Now we turn back into the kitchen with renewed energy.  Here’s this week’s share and a menu of deliciousness that will (I trust) rock you into these spring-like March days…!

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I can’t believe we’re already at week 6 of this adventure! Only two weeks to go. Fortunately, we’re offering another three months (6 weeks) of LWK in a special one-time-only March-May share. Sign up now if you haven’t already–shares are limited!

Last week I had a fun adventure being the Guest Chef for the Friday Mornings @ SELMA local foods breakfast salon. (read more about it here!) The pictures on today’s blog post are highlights of that experience.  We made some tasty quiche and warm apple-spice waffles. I was thrilled to have so many Community Farm Kitchen cooks join me in the kitchen to bring off a triumphant morning!

So, on the LWK front, I’m excited about all the tasty local treats we have to offer this time. I just discovered that Calder Dairy offers sour cream and cottage cheese (thank goodness for home delivery meaning I don’t have to lug pounds of dairy products all around town.) Once again we’re also featuring incredible noodles from Pasta e Pasta–lasagna this time. Read on!

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Michelle and I are so excited to be back with another fabulous (if we do say so!) selection of dishes. Last week I had an incredible meeting with Kris, the farmer who is raising our meat. We talked about a lot of things (including the future of the Long Winter Kitchen–stay tuned for further developments!). She told me about the challenges of being a female rancher, what her son thought when he went to work at a conventional meat processing plant (imagine a 19-yr-old boy reduced to showing emotion and horror!), and what she’s learned from the other farmers she works with to source this incredible meat. There were a few stories I thought you’d find interesting: did you think last week’s cuts of lamb were small? Well, it’s not your imagination. Kris is raising a heritage breed of lamb that doesn’t get as large as modern breeds. But, I hope you’ll agree, that these animals who were bred for flavor deliver. Another interesting factor that you haven’t seen because we’ve been taking your chickens apart: the chickens we get in your shares are all different sizes–not standardized. Kris points out that this is because she doesn’t cull the smaller birds from her flock as they do in traditional chicken farming. She says “This is the real world–I’m not going to waste a chicken because it’s a little smaller than the others!” She’s also raising some heritage chickens along with modern breeds, so that accounts for some of the variability too. I’m learning so much from being part of this meat CSA… as with any CSA, you learn to live with uncertainty and variety!

SO, This week’s menu:
Corn and Kielbasa Chowder –a small portion of kielbasa lends a punch to this creamy chowder with summer’s sweetest corn preserved by Locavorious and our own homemade chicken stock.
Chicken Chili – a white chili–just the thing to warm these snowy days.
Pasta Fagioli – bursting with flavor from our summer harvest of tomatoes and Old Pine Farm’s ground beef
Vegetable Rich Pot Roast – We’re going to the freezer and throwing the whole summer into the pot for this one! Eat it and read seed catalogs and think of summer.

And, Michelle and I are working hard to get the details nailed down for CFK 2.0. Stay tuned, as I said. We’re excited about what’s coming next……..
peace
Mary
Photos: 1. Steamed Lamb with Thyme and garlic 2. The Breakfast Dish 3. Steak with roasted pepper sauce.

It’s that time again! The cooks are rolling up their sleeves for another cooking adventure. I (Mary) am happy to report that I returned from my trip to the east coast safe and sound (and temporarily phone-less, but my phone is back now, phew!). It was great to dive right back into cooking the day after my return. Not only did we get to work with the terrific meat from Old Pine Farm as usual, your Steak Diane featured the most beautiful mushrooms from my friends at Michigan Mushrooms (their webpage seems to be down right now, but look for them at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market). Chef-extraordinaire Veronica made those delicious dumplings in the Chicken and Dumplings and I’m sure everyone has been warming up with the veggie-rich Bad Bob’s Spaghetti Sauce. Yum! You might be interested to learn that Bad Bob is actually Michelle’s dad.

This week we’re going to be using Michigan-made noodles from Pasta e Pasta, another Farmer’s Market friend.

This weeks menu:

Rosemary Pork — another amazing recipe from Veronica

Lamb Steamed with Thyme — one of my Christmas books this year was Wild Cooking by Richard Mabey. I read the book and couldn’t wait to try out this recipe.

Momma Janet’s Chicken Noodle Soup–The only thing to keep you warm and healthy on these cold winter days. Featuring noodles from Pasta e Pasta. Yum!

Is your mouth watering yet? I, for one, can’t wait. See you Friday!

peace

Mary

Photo explanations: 1. Beef Shortribs from December…too pretty to ignore. 2. MUSHROOMS from Michigan Mushrooms–also far too pretty. 3. Michelle holds up the world’s largest steak. 4. Chicken Marsala featuring lesser mushrooms, but still delicious.

While Mary is busy with her traveling adventures to New York and Boston, I decided to take a stab at writing our LWK blog. Whew! That is how I feel having survived the onslaught of our kids and grandson from Florida over the holidays. 5 adults, one- 3 year old and 4 dogs ranging from 100 lbs down to 3 lbs, all in a 1910 farm house with one shower. Great food and cozy surroundings made for a very memorable holiday. Our last cook up feels so long ago and I have cooked a dozens of family meals in between. I must say, as a person who loves to cook, I continue to be amazed at the quality of the food Mary and I are working with at the LWK. Knowing where our food comes from and how it gets processed is so important. If any of you have seen the movie Food Inc, you completely understand.As we begin week 3, our menu is designed to add comfort as temperatures hit single digits and winter sets in. This weeks yummy dishes include: