Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: April, Week 19

The Breakfast Challenge, Appalachian Mountain Style

What am I gonna make for breakfast?

Biscuits.  Biscuits are a must.  Flour from Big Spring Mill, Homestead Creamery milk, a bit of lard I rendered and saved.

But what more?

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: March, Week 18

Phoning it in.

Michael is doing one of his long days at work.  He's out of here by 6 am and probably won't be home until after midnight.  That leaves me to be catch as catch can about meals.  I spent all day in both gardens planting peas, onion sets, chard, and romaine lettuce, doing some tilling and lots of raking.  The chickies kept me company while I was down at the lower 40 and Marley, Megan's half grown kitten, was practicing stalking them.  Either Mabrey, Megan's full grown cat, has warned Marley that the girls can beat the snot out of him or he's figured it out watching Mabrey turn tail and run.  Either way, it's amusing.

I don't remember what lunch was, I pretty much just raided the fridge and then headed back out.  Supper was using up bits and pieces.  There was a little free-range turkey stock left and in that I poached about 10 cloves of our homegrown garlic, Asian greens from the Harvest Moon, and two of our eggs.  The cilantro that's been growing all winter still is growing so I ran out and cut some of that.  Some lime juice and some sriracha, a few rice noodles and I ended up with a faux pho.

A couple of aspirin for spring gardening aches, a steamy shower, a steamy, comforting bowl of soup to eat with a movie, and I'm ready to call it a day.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: March, Week 17

We've been experiencing summer temperatures and spring rains all at the same time here in Floyd.  I've been desperate to get the cool season crops in but the rains have been spaced just far enough apart to ensure that the ground is too wet to till and the weather is warming up fast, almost too fast for cole crops and peas, and some greens.  Michael's weather station has been telling us night time temps have been ranging between 45F-55F.  That's nearly warm enough at night for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants!

But I have been getting some things in and yesterday the weed wacker and I set to work reclaiming the herb beds.  Days when I'm running full out I rely on last summer's preserves for our evening meal.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: March, Week 16

What Michael and I learned from the DDC (and other sources) about what we grow, what we eat, and how it's affecting our future plans and choices.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: March, Week 15

This week is a double Dark Days Challenge: The Vegetarian Challenge.

I was able to score some really nice baby bok choy at the Oasis Market in Blacksburg last week.  That along with some NC potatoes and not local or organic, but sustainable and ethical chick peas and black beans were the players in our vegetarian meal.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: March, Week 14

This week's meal consists of some traditional Southern comfort foods.  I'm a transplanted (damn) Yankee but tasty comfort is universal on a cold damp day.

Take two plump sweet potatoes, white or orange, scrub well and set aside.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Feb. Week 13

Last week Michael planted a tubful of leek seeds and it's time to get the seeds started for our early cole crops.  We try to get those crops, along with peas, onions, spinach, and other early spring greens and veg, into the ground between March 15th and 30th.  Planting the seeds indoors now signals to me that we're sliding down the backside of winter.  We've got a few cellared vegetables left but not much.  We're pretty good for frozen and canned stuff.  But for fresh green stuff I'm now making more frequent trips to Green's Garage where I can find organic if not strictly local stuff and local greenhouse grown things although that's beginning to look pretty rough as well.  So between my stash and theirs, this week's entry (entree) in the DDC is based on the Fall Vegetable Tart from The Roasted Vegetable by Andrea Chesman.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Feb. Week 12

Valentine's Day Dinner Continued

We got to eat Valentine's Day Dinner dessert first with last week's DDC Sweets theme challenge.  While this week is an unthemed challenge, it's main DDC meal fell on Valentine's Day for us.  We've had several meals featuring venison this winter but I've been saving the backstraps for special occasions and V-Day is special.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Feb. Week 11

There are many ways to my guy's heart; garden paths, little twisted alleys, smooth stretches of highway, but one of the most reliable and enduring paths is the one through his stomach.  It doesn't take a special feast on a special day although he loves that.  A simple meal cooked well on any given day can make him feel cared for.

This year because of the Dark Days Challenge, Michael will get his Valentine's Feast in two parts.  And since the challenge within the challenge is Sweets he's getting dessert first!

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Feb. Week 10

This Dark Days Challenge was truly a challenge.  The whole week was challenging.  The day after last week's party I came down with the mother of all sore throats that invaded my ears and nose, and came with chills and fever.  The doctor prescribed some sort of antibiotic that indiscriminately killed everything in it's path.  I was grateful for leftover chicken soup and that, accompanied by some good yogurt in an attempt to balance out the antibiotic's ravages, was pretty much all I could face this past week.  Monday the pain lessened and yesterday it was gone.  Last night was catch as catch can to get a DDC meal in this week.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Jan. Week 9

Mid-Winter Soup Fest

This is the first themed challenge of the DDC - The Soup and One-Pot Meal Challenge.  Coincidentally this weekend was when Michael and I chose to throw our annual Mid-Winter Party and had already decided to do soups! Behind Russ and Mike P. are the 4 soups we served: Tuscan White Bean and Kale, Cassoulet, Curried Butternut Squash, and Chicken Noodle.  During the course of the party we were so busy photographing our guests that we forgot to get shots of the food!  It's in there but incidental.

Russ and Mike P. in front of the soups and behind Lori's foccacia.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Jan. Week 8

Oh! Julia!

I've had a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in my cookbook library since I moved out of my parents' house in 1975 but I never made Julia Child's classic Boeuf Bourguignon until yesterday.  Why did I wait so long?

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Jan. Week 7

I noticed that while everybody was on Week 7 of the DDC, I was on Week 6.  That's because I started the challenge the first week of December.  So for the sake of continuity and less confusion I've updated to Week 7.  I didn't miss a week, just a number.

Asparagus Soup
Yesterday I was off all day at a Master Food Volunteer meeting so I came home to a cold stove and little time to kick up a hot meal.  The answer was sitting on my pantry shelf.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Jan. Week 5

Cabbage Rolls and No-Knead Rolls

Most people do their deep housecleaning in the spring when they can open the windows and air out the house or in the fall before they have to close the house up.  In the spring we're busy with tilling, seeds, transplants, and chicks and everything that goes along with that.  In the fall I'm still in the midst of preservation frenzy, and then the holidays happen.  Now that the xmas decorations have been packed away I'm getting a start on that deep house cleaning.  Today's project is scrubbing down the kitchen cabinets and appliances inside and out and degreasing the range hood.  Who doesn't love doing that?  So there will be no cooking going on today.  At least not by me.  I've got the crock pot loaded!

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Dec. Week 4

Kale Pasta

Recently I've been exploring making our pasta.  It took me several tries to be able to produce a consistent nicely textured basic all-purpose flour and egg pasta but once I did I wanted to try making different kinds and flavors of pasta dough.  My first variation was a buckwheat dough for Butternut Squash Raviolis.  (You'll also find a tutorial for making basic pasta on that post.)  This time I wanted to add kale since I had a bagful of kale flakes from kale chips that had turned out too bland for snacking.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Dec. Week 3

The solution to this week's challenge feels like cheating.  It's not, it's exactly the result I was aiming for when I froze them: an effortless meal.  Stuffed Marconi Peppers.

Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Dec. Week 2

A quick glimpse last week at some of the other DDC participating bloggers posts, including mine, reveals that we may winter squash ourselves to death before the challenge is over!  It's just that winter squash is so darn versatile and at the same time so comforting and filling, no matter how you use it.  Next week I will not use squash!  This week I did.

Last night we had a warm butternut squash salad with Boursin-style cheese toasts inspired by Gordon Ramsey's "Warm Pumpkin Salad with Ricotta Toasts" from his cookbook In the Heat of the Kitchen.  I really like Gordon Ramsey's food.  His recipes are well-tested and reproduce well for the home cook. I really dislike the circus he's built around himself.  Same deal with one of my other bad boy chef icons, Marco Pierre White.  The day I saw him touting Knorr products all I could think was "say it ain't so, Marco".  Hopefully this is a momentary lapse.  But I digress.  On to the salad.

Cooking Floyd: The Dark Days Challenge, Dec. Week 1

The more I think about the Dark Days Challenge the more I realize what it entails.  I thought I was doing pretty well already.  What veggies and fruits we don't grow and preserve I buy locally.  But wait!  This means no citrus, no avocados, artichokes, olives, bananas, etc., as well as what happens when I run out of what I have canned, dried, or frozen.  I've been getting flour and cornmeal from a local mill, but I don't know where they get their grains from.  Rice is right out.  Local butter is exorbitantly expensive and cheese, well, don't get me started.  Cheese is expensive anyway, even before going local.  But I can do this.  It's one meal a week.  And I am going to learn so much!

This week's meal is trout from Big Pine Trout Farm dredged in cornmeal from Big Spring Mill (where I also get my flour), tarter sauce, roasted butternut squash bought in bulk from Wade's Orchard (where I also get my apples in bulk), and green beans that we grew and canned.  Dessert is apple dumplings.

Blogging Floyd: 2011: A PC Odyssey plus the Dark Days Challenge

HAL appears to be dying.  A little over a week ago we had some kind of power surge and it took our desk top PC down.  We took it in to Ben Kiser and it turned out to be the power supply.  Everything else was fine.  HAL was back up and running happily.  Then, right before this past weekend, the power went out for several hours.  HAL came back online but without video input.  I keep hearing strains of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" whistling through the eaves of our house and a well-modulated but sad voice saying, "Dave?  Dave? D-a-a-a-v-e?"  So HAL is going back to Ben for a visit and I'm back on the P-O-S laptop which I've discovered has a very crude photo editing program.  All just in time for the beginning of the Dark Days Challenge with my first post due tomorrow.  Of course.

I've been following the Dark Days Challenge for the last couple of years.  This year, with a reminder from Cynthia at Mother's Kitchen, I got my butt over to (not so) Urban Hennery in the nick of time to sign up.  The Dark Days Challenge is to cook a minimum of one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients and write about it.  ..."Traditionally, local food challenges call for a 100 mile radius. Winter time is more difficult in many climates, especially if you’re new to eating locally, so my default winter definition is 150 miles. You can choose to make your radius smaller or slightly larger as you need. Typical exceptions to the local requirement are oils, coffee, chocolate and spices." - (not so) Urban Hennery.

So those are the parameters I'm working within.  My first thoughts on accepting this challenge were, "Am I stuck with only trout since Big Jim's trout farm is within the local circle but Indigo Seafood is a local business and brings fish and seafood to me?" and "Where the hell am I gonna find local blue cheese for my Stuffed Venison Backstrap post?"  Darius, can you help me out?  I can just hear HAL saying....