The first farmers market of the year

Well, not the first, but our first visit to the farmers market this year.  Not much in season.  But, there were these 1.5" diameter mandarins!

Some slightly green tinged, all fresh and wonderful.

Also, I made more muffins for a party.  Pumpkin muffins from VwaV.

And some oatmeal-apple butter muffins.  They're still waiting for their recipe.  It's in-progress.

I packed them in a soda box.  They fit quite well.  :D

Also, my Freund sent me this that she made out of clay...

Badass, no?

It's a raptor claw.  Yes.

Plum Cobbler

Small, tangy, not too sweet plums were in everywhere at the farmers market about two weeks ago.

We had people over for Dungeons and Dragons; it was too hot to make something nice for them.  The morning following, however, was cool enough to use the oven.

It began with these:

A pan full of plums...

The topping was ad hoc, just a basic biscuit with a half cup of oats thrown in and some turbinado sugar sprinkled on top for that crispy sparkle

These tangy plums taste tart like rhubarb, which is a rare find around here.

Plum Coffee Cake

The parents sent me another cinnamon coffee cake mix from The Cravings Place.  I had some farmers market plums.  I introduced them, and they seemed to get along.

I find that the suggested amount of butter mixed with the streusel topping is not enough, so I usually add more or add some veggie oil.

There hasn't been much going on in the cohabitat kitchen these days but the ho-hum of bread and the duh of garlicky long beans.  More soon.

Cherry Tomatoes

The sprawling cherry tomato plant is producing handfuls of these every day:

They're so sweet and flavorful - way better than the weeks-old refrigerated tomatoes found in grocery stores. We've been neglectful, but the plant is still producing lots of fruit.

We also have nectarines from the farmers market...

Still not sure what cherry tomatoes are good for except salads and snacking...

Peach-Pluot Pastry Braid

This is a riff on gifflar.  It's the same recipe, except the filling is a mix of peaches and pluots.

First, I made the gifflar pastry dough as usual, then let it rise.

I put some pluots, a white peach, and chopped walnuts in a pan with a good 1/4 cup or so of agave nectar, some cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, a pinch of salt, and the tiniest bit of pepper.

Cooked it down into a chunky saucey filling.  I divided the pastry dough into two balls, rolled each one into a rectangle, added the filling, then braided the dough.  Alas, I don't have pictures from this process.  The result is a streudel-like pastry that has a crust slightly flulffier than a pie.

A slice to share...

The filling up close.  I love the tart pink pluots.  We got them from the farmer's market.

Barbecue sauce on seitan and some other random things

I'm at the boy's office as they debate approaches to electromagnetics problems, so I was sorting through photos from the past week.  Here's a quick thing we had: seitan with store-bought barbecue sauce.  Tasty things don't have to be gourmet, but it wasn't the most impressive thing:

Fancy.

But!  We made it to the farmer's market today and got some pea greens.  Can't wait to figure out something to make with them.  I also can't wait to escape this office.  The air conditioner has been on "Deafening" for the past hour despite the relative chilliness of the room.  I like how the admin of this place whines about saving money but maintains 24-hour Ice Blast Ann Coulter's Breast Cold levels.  And by "like" I mean, "I dislike," because it causes the boy to whine and crank.

Unfortunately, we also stopped at Trader Joe's and got some maple leaf cookies.  I say unfortunately because I've already had a couple.  SUGAR LEVELS CRITICAL.

Verdant Mush

Green was the mood.  33 cent avocado from the farmer's market.

We stuck an onion in some water to grow a couple weeks ago.  It was trimmed down a couple inches from the bulb, but as you can see, it is growing nicely.  But the green didn't stop there.

Split pea soup!  It may look like otherworldly vomit, but this stuff is so, so good and so easy.  Just toss tons of fresh veggies and some potatoes in a giant pot.  The bigger the pot, the better, because that means you can make more soup.  The boy's grandmother has a soup pot of titanic dimensions; we make do with this average stainless steel soup pot.

Add a ton of water and some bouillon, boil, then add 2.25 lbs of bulk split peas.  I only used a little oil to cook the onions, so this soup is not too calorific but still hearty and creamy and best served with a slice of toasted homemade bread.

Soup is the best thing.  I don't know what we'll do when it becomes too hot to stand over a warm stove.  Giant batches of ice cream, probably.

Sourdough

Last weekend (and again this week, and again) I made Alton Brown's "sourdough" recipe.  You bake it in a dutch oven...or a pot with a lid.  Then you remove the lid and let the crust get crispy!

Out of the pot...

It crackled as it cooled, its crust settling.  Sliced open, it revealed its moist, pocketed texture:

This week (unphotographed, it was late!) I also made a whole wheat version of this recipe...doubled and cooked in a much larger steel pot.  It was much softer than its AP flour cousin, and it was also VERY salty...nearly too salty.  This recipe is a step in the right direction when it comes to crusty, artisan loaves...but I think it still needs a bit of something...and less salt.

I also made some seitan cutlets ala Bryanna Clark Grogan's seitan turkey roast recipe.  I decided to make them into little cutlets, however, to make it a bit easier to freeze.  The texture wasn't as fabulous as it was on the full size roast, but this could have been to my lazy kneading as much as to the size of the cutlets.

Mmm wheat meat.

At the farmer's market, we bought some big ol' onions.  The tops of the onions were too pretty to toss, so I chopped up a couple.

And threw them in a stirfry with seitan, butternut squash, a bit of bok choy...

And put in too much sauce for my boy's taste.  I like mushroom sauce, okay?!

He's also not a fan of sweet + savory, which the butternut and soy/mushroom sauce does with gusto.  But my point is that onion tops are super tasty.

Anyhow, looking forward to another weekend of cooking.  Tomorrow I'll post about the tasty beefy seitan and barley soup the boy made this week... so good!