CSA - Some veggies for the week

Out latest visit to our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm was very exciting. As the season continues, the quality and quantity of produce both increase.

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This week we got some cabbage, peas, carrots, brocoli, cucumbers, kholbi, spinach, swiss chard, green onions, kale, musclun greens and our regular assortment of fresh herbs and fresh cut flowers.

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This great assortment of fresh, organic and locally-grown produce comes as a great inspiration for our week's menu.

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If you are interested in learning more abour our CSA Farm, visit their blog:

http://www.orchardhillblog.blogspot.com/

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~Jen-Luc

Crispy Chicken w/ Organic spinach-mandarin salad

We didn't think we'd be the "menu planning" type of people. But we tried a menu plan system and it has been working very well for us. We are trying to be creative with our dishes, but we usually leave the creative side for weekend. Weekdays are getting busy and we still want to enjoy homemade food so this was a "compromise" that has proven very convenient so far.

The feature of this recipe is the organic spinach we received from our CSA shares. The leaves were tender and tasty, almost too good to be spinach!

~Luc

Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam

After a long time without entering culinary news in our blog, we are back! It's been busy but we didn't forget about good eating and the pleasure of cooking homemade foods.


Summer is almost here! As part of our membership to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Project, we have been getting organic rhubarb from a local farm (We'll write more about CSA in a new entry soon).



In the begining it didn't seem we had many choices for rhubarb but it was only a matter of time until we started coming with ideas. One classic idea is the rhubarb-strawberry jam. Unfortunately, we couldn't use local strawberries yet but the ones we got were decent enough to try this recipe.



While we made homemade jams before, we had a new challenge this time: we wanted to preserve our jam in jars. If properly done, it can keep up to 12 months! We couldn't wait to try and even though we didn't have all the proper equipment for canning, things turned out to be perfect. We thought it would be so exciting to have this jam in the fall.



There are many ideas on how to use this jam best: jam on our homemade rhubarb muffins, filling for a torte (following European baking traditions), or in crepes.



~Luc