Spinach, Cookbooks and Spinach Ricotta Pie

This is the spinach that grew to enormous proportions, as large as my hand to be exact. What is one  to do with all of this gigantic spinach? Well, I harvested it all into a large paper bag and shoved and shoved it full until no more could fit. Then it was time to process the booty. Rinse, take off the stems, second rinse, steam for five minutes, blanche, squeeze out the extra water and bag for the freezer. It sounds easy, until you realize that your first 3 batches have taken almost an hour to complete and you have barely made a dent in the harvest. Is it possible that it is multiplying in the dark recesses of the bag? I have to take a break, so the whole thing goes into the fridge. In the meantime, anyone who stops by, leaves with a bag of spinach. After sending off our second bag, it hits me. Spinach Ricotta Pie.

Before I get ahead of myself, one of my genius girlfriends came up with the concept of a blog group. Every two months, we choose a cookbook to explore and we blog about it. What recipes were wonderful? Which recipes were wonderful after we tweaked them? How did we tweak them?

At the end, we will gather with a potluck to share the best of our best from the cookbook.  Our blogsite is http://cookbookclubsanjuan.blogspot.com/.

I was given the honor of choosing our very first book. This is a tremendous amount of pressure to start this process, but given the bounty we will see from our gardens in the upcoming months, I had to choose the "Moosewood Cookbook" by Mollie Katzen. I just love it and I am looking forward to exploring the book beyond the Spinach Ricotta Pie (click here for a link to Mollie's website with the recipe). Now that isn't the only recipe I have tried, but in the two years that I have owned this cookbook, it is the recipe I make over and over and over again. It's addictive.

So now, with my large quantities of spinach I will make Spinach Ricotta Pie. I will also turn over my garden to more spinach seeds to grow more delicious spinach for salads and other dishes, but I am on a mission now to make sure I have at least 20 bags of frozen spinach for the winter to insure I can make Mollie's pie.

Share

When the sun is shining...

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are a few things that make me smile. 

I saved the best for last.

Nyagous tomato starts

Seascape strawberries

Radishes

Chive blossoms

Tyee spinach

Orangetti squash seedling popped through despite the cold temps.

Heirloom lettuce mix

Raspberries

Flower garden

Tulips

Yummy tulip

Lilacs

Blue camas

 My favorite little gardener

And probably most of all, that my husband has an asparagus garden.  I am a lucky gal.

Share

First time...

Another great blog: Dig this Chick has a place for Virgin Harvests. If you are planting something in your garden for the first time. Follow along on her page!

Share

Lots of rules

Insomnia has been broadening my reading palate. My latest read was Michael Pollan's "Food Rules". There are a lot of rules to follow in there, but I was minutely proud to find that we were already doing quite a few of them.

• No High Fructose Syrup
• No cereals that make your milk a funny color.
• Avoid foods that make health claims or say "lite" or "lowfat"
• There are no artificial sweetners in this house.
• No white bread.
• Eat food from your garden.

There are 64 rules. That is a lot of rules. Fortunately, one of the rules is to break the rules and that is a good thing. We love Stovetop Stuffing and Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce. Both have HFC and are found in those darn center aisles. But, we don't eat them often and that is his point in Rule #60. My husband would NOT be throwin' the love out if I took those two items completely out of his diet. Once every other month, we are ok.

After I read the #60 loophole, I started to think, "We can do this!" So I am going to work, with my partner, into adding a rule to our house each week. Some of these will be a major leap for us and others are easier in the summer when we have veggies a plenty. Still, no excuses. 

So the rule we are adopting this week is to eat slowly. Doesn't that sound crazy? If you have kids or work 30 hours a day, it will. Stop and chew and savor.  Apparently, the true joy of any particular food all happens in the first couple of bites.  So we shall slow down to bite, chew and savor at the table starting this week. Buen Suerte. 

------side note----

Hail happens!! Strawberries, onions, garlic, lettuce, radishes, peas and spinach received a major dose of hail here last weekend. EGADS! Luckily, we made it through unscathed.

Share

Oh to love good food that comes from great produce

My garden is off to an incredible start. Well, nothing is growing in it yet, or even really planted, except for a  pea cover crop and transplanted onions and garlic. However, there is space and soil. And soil. And soil. 13 yards to be exact. I might be considered a wimp but, to my back and now injured shoulder, that is a lot of soil. We now have 3 raised beds (5x18, 5x12 and 4x8), an asparagus bed, a raspberry bed, an artichoke bed, 5 wine barrels, 15 containers and 3 potato boxes. I think that should do it for complete mental overload. We have seeds. Oh, glorious seeds that appear as little gifts in my mailbox as a result of pouring through catalogs for weeks. We have a garden journal and we are ready. Except for the challenge of keeping my almost 3 year old OUT of the garden beds. That is a story for another day. Back to pleasantries.


Last weekend, as I was lingering over the pages of the seed catalogs and dreaming of the fresh, crisp and flavorful produce to come, I realized that it was time for the Farmer's Market. So I rallied the little garden stomper complete with his boots and headed out to grab some tasty treats for the upcoming week. The usual carrots, parsnips, onions, shallots and rich mixes of greens quickly found their way into my bag and then I saw it. At the end of the first aisle, it stared right back at me and dared me to buy it. A 5 lb   flawless, pearly white cauliflower. This was one impressive specimen. So, I bought it and began considering what I could do with it. 


By the time I arrived home, I was wondering if I could pull multiple days of cauliflower off in my household and there the beauty sat in my refrigerator, occupying all of the space on my third shelf. After a glance through Bon Appetit and searching online, I came up with two incredible winners.


1) Cauliflower, Swiss Chard, and Chicken Soup from Epicurious
I added about 1 tablespoon of minced garlic to the onion and a touch of Garam Masala for a little kick. I thought it would last for a couple of days worth of lunches and then I could freeze the rest, but it was all consumed within 3 days. This was a two bowl soup for my dad. This is a pretty good marker since he isn't big on the vegetable scene. Did I mention that my 2 year old ate it for lunch 2 days in a row?

2) Country Captain with Cauliflower and Peas from Bon Appetit
This one was a serious crowd pleaser. We had guests over and everyone had at least two bowlfuls. I added half a can of coconut milk and a little bit o' curry. The spice portion of this requires a well-supplied spice cabinet or the ability to spend a little time in the bulk spices section. Completely worth the effort.


So when you see that perfect specimen of cauliflower that will take up an entire shelf of your fridge, do not pass it by. There is some seriously good food to follow.