Pickles Potatoes Pintos – Winter Farm Share Week 10

Pickles Potatoes Pintos sounds like a ditty and sometimes I feel like dancing when we pick up our farm share! First idea for the menu this week from our Vegetarian Pilot share from Fresh Fork Market is a beef rump roast with carrots and potatoes.

One look at those lovely small potatoes and the ginormous carrots and I had to buy a roast. We haven’t had one in a very long time and those potatoes and carrots just called for it. It’s the perfect meal to throw in the slow cooker to be ready for guests on a Saturday night after a day of shopping. Sometimes it’s more fun to share the bounty with guests and the roast idea was a hit. We luckily have leftovers and possibly enough to go into the freezer for another day.

As for the Pintos, I think I really need to concentrate on a bean day where I freeze several batches. We love Pinto Beans with Green Beans, as well as love them in Zesty Salsa Bean Salad, plus in Chili and Soups so I’ll want plenty available. A great source of protein, they’re one of the ways we keep our grocery costs low. I never feel guilty about using less meat in recipes when I’m also adding beans. Personally, I really love the taste of Pinto beans. Check out some great how-to on cooking beans at The Kitchn. Looking at those pictures, I’m ready to pull out the ham bone I have in the freezer for a pot of beans!

Week 10 our small Vegetarian farm share included (featured photo at the top of this post is full vegetarian share)…

Bok Choi
Carrots – 2 lbs.
Potatoes – Yukon Gold – 3 lbs.
Frozen Green Beans – 1 quart
Frozen Tomatoes – 1 quart
Frozen Corn – 1 pint
Turnips – 3 lbs.
Apple Cider – 1/2 gallon
Salsa – 1 pint
Garlic Dill Fermented Pickles – 1 pint sliced or whole
Pinto Beans – 2 lbs.
Eggs – 1 dozen
Apples – 5  (to make up for the Kale missing last week)
Onions – 2 (one to make up for missing one last week)

Added…

One jar of Pickles for my parents to make up for the Broccoli Soup we ate without sharing! HA

My half of the Vegetarian small share Week 10 (above photo) and what’s left since Wednesday, February 24, 2016…

Bok Choi
Carrots – 1 lb. – stored because we finished off the stash from week 8 in the slow cooker roast.
Potatoes – Yukon Gold – 1.5 lbs. –  these were fantastic in the slow cooker roast. We left the skins on too.
Frozen Green Beans – 1 quart
Frozen Tomatoes – 1 quart – went to my parents for their half
Frozen Corn – 1 pint
Turnips – 1.5 lbs.
Apple Cider – 1 quart – most of this is gone – dad and I enjoyed this with dinner Friday night
Salsa – 1 pint – went to my parents for their half
Garlic Dill Fermented Pickles – 1 pint whole
Pinto Beans – 1 lb.
Eggs – 1/2 dozen
Apples – 3 – 2 left – these are good but the apples in week 9 were sweeter.
Onion – 1 – half gone in the slow cooker roast recipe.

Added…

I added some Cauliflower found on sale for 99 cents a head at our local veggie market. Who can resist that? I also added a head of Broccoli because I’m down to my last bag of frozen.

I grabbed a few more items that I found at another fresh market such as fresh Dill and Rosemary, Cilantro, Kale, plus a couple apples and tangerines for my Citrus Salad. I want to post this on the blog so I need to do a photo shoot. I grabbed some more onions because I used half of my last one in Saturday’s pot full of yumminess. And I had to have a loaf of the Harvest bread full of raisins, dates and other goodness for breakfast. Finally, I added some celery and spinach, which I’ve been out of for several weeks. I was really tempted by the Mesclun Mix and Arugula, but they’re still too pricey at this time of year. I won’t use them fast enough and they’ll wilt, then I’ll be mad that I spent that just to throw them away.

RESULTS…

The first thing I did this week after getting the haul put away was to reorganize our chest freezer. I dig around in there all week long and really mess up my system. So much so that I really don’t know what I have in there. I should probably make a list and scratch things off as I take them out, but then that wouldn’t be as much fun as digging into the deep freeze to see what’s hiding at the bottom.

After digging through the chest freezer a third time this week, I realize I need to do a better job of organizing. Mel suggested some crates which is a good idea. I do use ziplock baggies to store bags of similar veggies or meats, but they slip around and get buried. I need something that stacks like these white baskets from Sterlite. But they need to be deeper.

I found some lovely broccoli that I froze, so I added it to green beans and some leftover mushrooms for a stir fry to put over a quinoa/basamati rice mixture that I steamed in our rice cooker Friday night. A rice cooker/steamer is an essential appliance in my household ever since I tried the Aroma that we bought. Nothing cooks rice or broccoli better. It’s also so simple to just throw in pre-rinsed rice with some water and let the cooker do the work while I’m stir frying or baking something else. No more sticky pans or burnt rice. It comes out perfect every time. So much so that Mr. Carnivore asks every time that I fix rice if it’s the “good” rice. My dad had dinner with us and he went back for seconds, even though it was an unusual combination of red quinoa in with the rice.

The other advantage of a rice cooker/steamer is that it can be used for a variety of grains such as spelt berries and buckwheat. Throw in a little butter or olive oil, plus some salt and pepper after it’s cooked and it’s quite delicious with any meal. The Aroma also has a very easy cleanup since the pan for the rice has a non-stick coating. We have the 8 cup steamer similar to this one but if I had to do it again, I’d get the smaller version just for the two of us, which would take up less room. The only advantage of the larger unit is the ability to steam a larger amount of vegetables. We’ll never make a full pot of rice that would feed a crowd bigger than I can fit in my house. That said, I haven’t explored making full meals in the cooker yet, so the jury is out until I do that. Two books that look good on that subject are MY AROMA RICE COOKER COOKBOOK by Amy Bradshaw and THE AROMA RICE COOKER COOKBOOK by Timothy Warren which is only $2.99 on Kindle. I think I’ll have to get that one for myself.

In addition to the Slow Cooker Roast (recipe coming soon), we had another scramble on Saturday. It was my favorite mix of cherry tomatoes, onions, olives and feta, seasoned with some dill, salt and pepper. Fixing a roast always brings back fond memories of my grandfather. He always served candied carrots or sweet potatoes, in addition to mashed potatoes with his roasts. I happen to love adding red wine and tomatoes to my concoction and letting the potatoes and carrots seep up the au jus goodness. Sometimes I add mushrooms and sometimes I don’t. It just really depends on what I have available. This time I fixed the enormous sweet potato we got in week 9 in the microwave. That thing was so huge that it seemed like we each got our own individual sweet potato with our one fourth piece! The Yukon Gold potatoes from this week were especially good with a roast.

As for what I’m going to try next, I think I really need to experiment with Turnips. I don’t know much about them but they’re a very pretty vegetable if you like a dusting of purple, which I do. Dad told us a story about sneaking into a neighbor’s garden when he was a kid and eating Turnips straight out of the ground. We’re both still wondering if he was really hungry or if it was a dare from his friends. 🙂

I’d also like to experiment with some creamed soups. I fell in love with creamed soups in Ireland. I think I had one every day that I was there. Ireland has mastered the blended soup. The only blended soup I knew before going to Ireland was Tomato. It’s so different here in the states where there are chunks of something in almost every soup. In Ireland, I never had a soup that wasn’t blended smooth and that wasn’t absolutely delicious. I want to come up with some blends of my own.

I’m going to have to search the garage for the food processor or invest in a food mill to play with some of the recipes that intrigue me. Yes, that’s right, my food processor has been in a box in the garage for eons. I use a knife to cut things up and avoid all blending. I’d like to get an immersion blender because I think I’d use that more than a food processor. If you have a favorite immersion blender that works well for you, please let me know.

So that’s where I’m at for Week 10 of the Farm Share – ready to experiment with something new.

What about you? What type of food adventure intrigues you enough to try something new?

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