Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here! This week, I’ll be sharing another farmer’s market haul challenge–should be a fun week!!
In my last post, I shared that Mr. Stone Soup and I traveled to Texas to see the solar eclipse. The eclipse was amazing and we got to see lots of family, which was wonderful–we’re so glad we made the trip!
We enjoyed terrific meals at our families’ homes, but the rest of our road food was…not so terrific.
I try hard not to eat fast food, even on the road.
This trip was a little different because we were traveling through large expanses of remote deserts which were starkly and fiercely spectacular:
But these vast and beautiful deserts were also largely food deserts; and when we did pass through the few and far between small towns, often the nicest, (and in some cases the ‘only’) restaurant in town was a Dairy Queen or worse yet, a Sonic. We were forced to eat a certain amount of fast food–but more disappointingly, even the nicer restaurants proved to be pretty bad–and in one case, I even had to send my food back because my steak was inedibly tough.
There was one exception in the great food desert that I’ll share next week after I’ve had time to do a little more research and practice.
Needless to say, by the time we got home last Monday evening, we were really jonesing for some decent food. While supermarket produce is certainly a huge step up from fast food, there is no substitute for fresh, farmer’s market produce–but our market is only open on Saturdays. When Saturday finally rolled around, I pretty much bought one of everything available! Here’s what I came home with:
2 artichokes, 4 bundles of asparagus, 2 bundles of beets, about a pound of sugar snap peas, cucumbers, arugula, romaine and butter lettuce, 2 zucchinis, red and yellow bell peppers, Yukon gold potatoes, 2 russet potatoes, spinach, about a pound of fava beans, 2 fennel bulbs, green garlic, thyme, rosemary, 1 celery root, 2 bundles of carrots, shallots, mint, onions, a few tomatoes and strawberries:
The proteins I brought home are a chicken, a pound and a half of local halibut, a pound of local salmon, a pound of shrimp and a couple of filets. In the freezer, I have some pancetta, a top sirloin steak, some ham hocks and a pork tenderloin available in case I need them.
So let’s get cooking!
The first thing I usually do each week is to mix up a batch of vinaigrette, just so I’ll have it ready to go when I need it–this week, I made it with green garlic and shallots:
I also put together a batch of mayonnaise, using pecan oil, also so I’d have it ready for use during the week:
Our first “real” meal at home was seared salmon. I served it with soba noodles and stir-fried vegetables (red and yellow bell peppers and sugar snap peas), and a nice, big side of steamed asparagus:
I prepared the chopped vegetables very simply in a hot wok with pecan oil and a little soy sauce. I cooked the soba noodles according to the package directions and tossed them into the wok when they were finished cooking to coat them with some of the sauce created from the oil, soy sauce and vegetable liquids. I mixed a little of the vinaigrette with the mayo to make a quick dipping sauce for the asparagus.
Tomorrow, I’ll be featuring the local halibut, which was a little trickier than expected, but still turned out pretty good.
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
