Category Archives: farms

farms, locavore, recipes

Crown Lamb Roast

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While everyone else is posting pictures of fabulous Memorial Day barbecues and parades, I give you Easter!

My family celebrated Easter late this year (no, not this late!) so that we could all be together at the table. They usually let me have one course of local fare if I’m not hosting (and I only host Thanksgiving).

Since it was such a hit last year, I made a crown lamb roast again, this time from Saugatuck Craft Butchery. This American Dorsett lamb was raised and processed by Meiller Farms in Pine Plains, NY.

Paul did a fabulous job Frenching the racks and preparing the crown.

Paul SCB

I rubbed it down with some olive oil and pressed in an herb mix of rosemary (from a potted Gilbertie’s I kept alive from last year on my windowsill), garlic (from Sport Hill Farm, dehydrated into slices and ground into powder), thyme (also (from Sport Hill Farm), and salt. I wrapped the bones in foil to protect them from burning.

Cooking method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roast bones down on a roasting pan for half the time (allow 8-10 minutes per pound), then turn it over to”right side up” for the second half until the internal temp is 130 degrees. Let it sit, covered with foil for 15-20 minutes. Voila:

lets_eat

Seriously delicious and tender.

[Apologies that the pictures were taken with a phone and not a camera.]

farmer's markets, farms, locavore, recipes, Slow Food

Local St. Paddy’s

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While I know that real Irish people (in Ireland) don’t eat corned beef, I have these culinary adventures on my list and today seemed like the right day to make my As-Local-As-It-Could-Be Reuben Sandwich.

rueben

The corned beef began as a brisket from Eagle Wood Farms. I followed Alton Brown’s recipe for corning, except instead of his spice list from faraway places, I got a pre-made mix of faraway spices from Penzey’s in Norwalk. I added salt and potassium nitrate (yes), not local. I brined it for 10 days, turning it every morning and evening. I cooked it with:

corned_beef

The sauerkraut began as cabbage from Sport Hill Farm, fermented per Sandor Katz‘s instructions. This would have been a great entry in the Westport Market’s cabbage contest, but there wasn’t enough time for the fermentation. It’s been fermenting for several weeks now. This is not my first attempt, but it is my first attempt that worked!

fermenting_sauerkraut

I made the rye bread following Martha Stewart’s recipe (mostly).

  • bread flour – red hard spring wheat from Wild Hive
  • rye flour from Wild Hive
  • honey from Swords and Plowshares
  • butter from Smyth’s Trinity Farm
  • yeast and salt: not local. I didn’t use caraway seeds.

Color me delightfully surprised when the loaf really did “tip out” of the loaf pan!

rye_bread

The Swiss cheese is Cry Baby from Arethusa Farm Dairy. (Thank you, Lisa from New Morning! I owe you big time.)

The dressing. Sigh. Should it be Thousand Island or Russian? What constitutes an authentic recipe of either? Here’s what I made:

dressing

Served with a dill pickle, fermented right here. Original cucumbers from Daffodil Hill Growers.

And that’s my sandwich. I hope you had a happy St. Paddy’s Day!

 

farms, growing, locavore, organic

Peas be with you

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The cooperative event between Debra Tyler’s Motherhouse and Bluestone Farm Living Arts Center was billed as such:

Women’s Wisdom: Sacred Agriculture

Mar 16,2013  –  Time:  9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Motherhouse and Bluestone Farm invite all women to join in a full day celebration of our connection to the earth through sacred agriculture. We’ll share our farming herstories, rituals, pea planting, pot-luck lunch, earth blessing way of the council, drumming circle and more.

In case you’ve never thought of sacred and agriculture together, here’s a good short read on the spirituality of farming. In case you don’t readily picture women when you think of farming, consider that the first farmers some 8-10,000 years ago were likely women and that the fastest growing group of those entering farming today are women.

My apologies for the pictures below. I used a phone (which is not a camera, despite what they say) and I was so caught up in the event, I forgot all about an illustrative progression. There are much better shots over at the Bluestone Farm Fans Facebook page and at Motherhouse’s blog.

We began with a fire and some food, mostly homemade from scratch. When I say from scratch, I mean the cheese spread was made from cream from their own cows. From scratch.

We blessed and sorted the dry peas, which are both food and seeds. These peas are not your garden variety peas, but a pea that’s more like a bean (whose name I should have written down but didn’t). Although much smaller, they have culinary attributes similar to a garbanzo, yet thrive in our climes. We were sorting through them to find the best specimens to plant—those that would produce the best plants. We prepared the beds, put up fences for the plants to climb, and planted the pea seeds in the still-frozen Earth.

planting_2 planting_1

We visited with the cows.

cows_1 cows_2

We ate a fabulous pot luck lunch.

eating

We smudged with sage, we drummed, we spoke.

drumming_2 drumming_1

While I left exhausted, it was a most excellent day. This was the inaugural event of the space that had previously been a school, which is now something new. It was a pleasure to be part of the energy transfer.

Connecticut, farmer's markets, farms, locavore

Cabbage Forage

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In honor of the Westport Farmers Market‘s Cabbage Recipe contest, I adapted this Crock Pot Cabbage and Pork Soup recipe with a cabbage head from Sport Hill Farm.

cabbage_pork_soup

I changed it up to keep it local and also used a Dutch oven instead of a crock pot.

Food Sources:

I cooked it in the oven in a covered Dutch oven for one hour at 325ºF and six more hours at 200ºF.

The sweet and heat give it a unique flavor depth, but you can still taste the individual ingredients. Even if I don’t win the contest, I still win because this is a healthy soup made from excellent ingredients from exceptional farms.