Buying Local - A trip to the farmers markets

A day well spent - locally grown SC produce and products

The past several weeks of work have been unbelievably busy.  A client visit, audits, a job fair, catering for the client visit, our annual fund raiser wrap up, the company picnic - all in addition to my regular work load.  It's left me with less coherent thoughts than I'd like at the end of any given day, and many attempts at blog posts lately seem more like sleep deprived ramblings.  This weekend was the first weekend I had 2 days off in a row in what feels like forever.  

Much as the bed called to me sweetly and sang siren songs of snug little naps, Bear and I headed out to the farmer's market in Florence, SC.  Sweet potatoes are in season and there's nothing better than fresh sweet potatoes straight from the local farms...blame it on those adorable baskets they come in, but one basket sitting by its lonesome just seemed sad so we got two.  Which equals 20 very generous pounds of sweet potatoes - one guess as to what I'm canning as I type.  The Collard Greens looked glorious, big, leafy, just the right shade of green and we'd just gone through our first frost (which improves their taste, oddly enough) so I grabbed a bunch of those for Thanksgiving dinner.  Then the apples beckoned with their shiny colorful skins and you can't say no to fresh apples that look so beautiful.  Especially not when Bear and my Mama have both requested my Caramel Apple Pie for dessert.  They deserve farm fresh, just picked apples for their pie so that's what they got.  Pounds and pounds of them.  About 7 apples will end up in the actual pie, the rest will be turned into pie filling, canned, and stashed away in our food storage along with the many, many jars of sweet potatoes.  Currently we have 20 pint jars and 7 quart jars and there's still many more waiting to be canned.  I think I may have a produce problem.  Is there a support group for that?  How do you tell when someone is produce drunk and needs to be cut off?  We also ended up with a lovely ornamental cabbage plant with stunning shades of purple in it for only $2.00.  In hindsight, we should have gotten several more. 

After the farmers market we headed south and stopped off at Abbott Farms where they have some of the absolute best fruit ciders anywhere in the history of mankind.  The white peach cider is to die for, the blueberry is delightful, and then there's the apple pie cider.  We haven't tried it yet, but we needed it in our lives.  I also needed a small bottle of the strawberry cider because...well, just because.  In addition to their ciders, they carry homemade ice creams, sodas, breads, preserves, canned produce, sauces, salsas, handmade soaps - it's like one stop shopping for every foodie on your holiday gift list.  Plus, they have samples that change daily, so we got to sample two new ciders, blueberry preserves, peach salsa and I forget what else, but it was all really, really good. The peach soap they make smells just like a ripe peach and looked too pretty to leave sitting by the register so we got a bar of that too.  Looking back, it might not have been such a bad idea to get a few more bars...   

After loading our box of goodies from Abbott Farms we admired our haul nestled happily in the back of the SUV.  We rode contentedly back towards home, high from our food sampling and the promise of more good food to come until Bear, my voice of reason, piped up with, "Do we have enough mason jars to can all this food with?"  Off to the local restaurant supply we went, where we  scouted for prepper essentials and ended up with 4 cases of mason jars, and a few miscellaneous odds and ends we needed for our preps.  Now that I see how many sweet potatoes are left, all the apples, and the collard greens (the remainder of which will be canned) I'm thinking maybe we could have gotten another case or two of jars...

In upcoming posts I'll be sharing how I can sweet potatoes (slightly different from other methods) and my caramel apple pie and bacon-bacon bourbon pecan pie recipes, providing we can get a picture of them before they disappear.  I hope you were able to spend your weekend enjoying all the delights of this season and finding some new things to be thankful for.  As for me, I'm thankful for my (always hectic, often stressful) job that allows me to support local businesses and farms, and for my family, who always appreciates the fruits of my labor...as evidenced by how fast food disappears around here.  
Till next time, y'all!  Oh - and if you happen to go to a farmers market in the near future, could you pick me up just a few pounds of apples?  I forgot to grab some for making applesauce.  Just 10 pounds or so ought to do it.    

Autumnal Stuffed Squash

Nights like this I really enjoy, because the house is quiet and dinner can be a slow, unhurried affair.  Bear won’t be home until much later in the evening, and I can take my time to prepare dinner and experiment with a new recipe I found, or one I decided to make up.  I picked up an acorn squash while grocery shopping even though I had never prepared one before and couldn’t recall eating one.  A quick Google search pointed me towards butter and brown sugar.  That seemed like a good starting point and so off to the pantry to see what else might be lurking.  Raisins, dried cranberries, where are those pecans?  Oh yeah, they went into the bacon bourbon pecan pie and praline chicken.  Walnuts it is then!  

My Gram taught me a lot about cooking, and she never really measured anything (unless she was baking) – it was always an approximate guess as to how much of any given thing we were throwing into the pot.  Since we can’t be in my kitchen together, I did a pictorial step by step instead.  Because I love you that much, but not enough to show you pictures of my ancient oven, which I preheated at 400 degrees. 

Carving Acorn squash is a lot like carving a pumpkin – use the tip of your knife and push in to start it.  

Then bring the rest of the knife down and around the whole she-bang.

 

Use a spoon to scoop out the pulp and seeds.  If you love acorn squash, consider saving some of those seeds to dry out & plant.  

Score the squash with the tip of your knife taking care not to cut all the way through the skin.

 

Now it’s ready for some really good stuff!  Meet our co-conspirators: raisins, cranberries, and walnuts.  They heard it was a party, so they brought their good friends sea salt cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger (she was camera shy) brown sugar, and black pepper.  I like to pre-soak the raisins in hot water so they plump up and don’t dry out during baking.   About 10-15 minutes will do it.  They’re relaxing in their hot bath in this picture.

Drain the raisins, and add about 2 healthy tablespoons of butter, and melt in the microwave.  Obviously, by healthy tablespoons I mean heaping.  Butter’s not healthy, but it’s oh so good. 

While the butter is melting, I like to mix about 1/3 of a cup of brown sugar with my spices to ensure they’re all evenly distributed.  Reserve about a quarter of the brown sugar and spice mixture, and add in the rest of your sugar to the melted butter and raisins, then add the cranberries and walnuts.

How yummy does that look?  Seriously, look at all that goodness swimming in butter and brown sugar!

Fill the squash with the mixture.  It's OK if you get some syrup on the squash, it likes that.  

Pour a 1/4 cup of water into the bottom of the pan, and liberally sprinkle the flesh of the squash with the remaining sugar and spice.  

Loosely cover pan with foil and pop into the oven for about an hour, or until you're able to pierce the flesh easily with a fork.  

Now would be about the time would be admiring a picture of the cooked and ready to eat squash, except my camera decided to eat that picture.  Guess it got a little hungry taking all those photos.  

The stuffing turned out delicious, and I'll be using it again to top home made mashed sweet potatoes in individual ramekins and as a stuffing for butternut squash.  All of which are wonderful sides for Thanksgiving, or with praline chicken or cranberry pork loin (recipes to follow in future posts). 

Enjoy!  Till next time y'all! 

Food, Glorious Food...I'm anxious to try - what is that SMELL???

My Mom will be the first to tell you that as a child, I was a notoriously picky eater.  Anything new was immediately disliked before even being tasted, and I seem to recall my Gram and Mom both having to come up with terribly creative stories in order to get me to try something, IE egg drop soup: "These are dinosaur eggs - I had to climb into the Pterodactyl nest and steal them while it was out hunting for prey."  (One of my favorite shows was "Land of the Lost" as a kid...the sleestaks alternately fascinated and terrified me, and dinosaurs were always cool in my book.)  Fast forward 10 years and I'd become a far more adventurous eater.  By the time I'd met Bear, I had broadened my culinary horizons quite considerably - Indian food was a favorite, sushi was a delight, calamari, well OK, I always ate calamari (because Gram said they were "rubber bands") but you get the idea.  I'd branched out, grown up, new food wasn't this horribly daunting thing to me anymore...till I came face to face with Collard Greens.  No sir.  Not gonna happen.  Nope.    

For those of us who live in the South, we're well aware of the gravity of the above statement.  Greens are a staple here, and each family has their own special recipe for how they're cleaned, prepared and cooked it seems.  My husband has his own recipe, and so it happened that he decided to fix me a batch while I was recuperating from being ill.  I awoke from my nap to this strange smell...I couldn't quite put my finger on it, save for the fact that it was unlike anything I'd ever smelled before, and didn't care to be smelling at present.  Giant green leaves adorned my kitchen sink, and on the counter top, an opened package of something I'd never heard of: fatback.  I think the conversation went something like this:
Me: What is that? (pointing to the fatback)
Bear: Fatback.
Me: Yes, but what IS it?
Bear: Exactly what it says it is.
Me: I don't know what fatback is.
Bear: It's salted pork fat that you use to season beans & greens.  
Me: Eeeeew.  Gross!  
I think I may have (oh so maturely) even covered my mouth with both my hands at that point.  You have to understand, I was raised in an Italian family, we didn't use pork fat to cook anything in.  Sausages in the sauce, sure, but plain salted pork fat?  What flavor could that possibly impart?  Grease?  It wasn't even refrigerated!  Surely this would be rancid.  

After our entire apartment thoroughly reeked of cooked Collard Greens, Bear judged them done and delicious.  He gave me a small helping from the serving bowl, and I bravely tasted them.  Oh!  What is this wondrous flavor?  What is this delightfully yummy, perfectly seasoned stuff?  This can't be the same stuff that stinks to high heaven, this is Uh-maz-ing!  I vaguely recall grabbing the serving bowl and eating as much of this green goodness as I possibly could while Bear looked on smugly.  

And so, my introduction to Southern cuisine began.  

Collard Greens are a great source of vitamins A and K, and fiber.  Like I said before, every family has this own way of preparing them, but this is how we do ours, here.  I've tweaked Bear's recipe a bit, but he's given it his stamp of approval, so here it goes:

The Dixie Fried Bride's Collard Greens
1 large bunch collard greens
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 strips salted fat back, cut into 2" pieces
6 strips bacon, cut into 1" pieces
1/4 Tsp Cayenne Pepper (add more if you want a kick to your greens)
1 Tbsp Red Pepper Flakes
1 Tsp White Pepper
1 Tsp Black Pepper
1 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar, optional
Olive Oil - just enough to coat the sides & bottom of the pot, I use my Misto for this
Enough water to just cover the greens

Separate all the leaves, and wash thoroughly until absolutely no grit is left on the leaves.  Let leaves dry a little while you dice the onion and mince the garlic. Coat the sides and bottom of a large, tall sided pot, put in your fat back and cook over medium high heat.  The fat back should become slightly translucent as you cook it, add in your bacon pieces next, and allow to become halfway cooked before adding in your onion.  Add your garlic about a minute after you add in the onion to avoid it from becoming burnt and imparting a bitter taste.  Saute onion and garlic, and add a scant 1 cup of water to the pot, and your peppers, reducing heat to medium low.  This gives your greens a flavorful base to go into once your done with the next step. 

Using kitchen shears, or a very sharp knife, cut out the thickest part of the fibrous stems, and put them aside.  Cut your leaves into about 1 - 2 inch bits.  Next, take the reserved stems and chop those into 1/2 inch bits.  You don't have to use all the stems, and at this point you may already be annoyed at the amount of chopping you've had to do.  You can forgo the stems altogether, but we like them.  

Once your leaves and stems are chopped, add them into the pot.  Add another cup of water, just enough to barely cover your greens, and simmer on medium heat for at least 45 minutes, or until tender.  In the last 5-10 minutes of cooking, I like to add a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar - it just seems to give an extra layer to the flavors of the dish that really compliment it. 

If you're feeling truly wicked, fry up a little extra bacon and crumble it over the greens once you've placed them in the serving bowl.  

Our Thanksgiving table is never without Greens, and here in the South they're also traditional for New Year's - the green symbolizing money for the coming year.  

Enjoy!