Farmer's Market Week 2, May 22 - Grilled Pizza

Lonesome Mill is one of the new vendors at the Greenway Station market and they have a lovely selection of milled grains. The pancake mix is incredible - not even I can screw them up! They also have a cornmeal-rye pancake that is great with pork instead of cornbread (although they have cornbread mix, too). I saw a package of whole wheat bread flour that I had to have. I wasn't sure what to do with it, but I knew I needed it.

I have a recipe I found on Jamie Oliver's website for pizza crust and I've been making pizza on the grill ever since. It is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. And if you don't have access to a grill or the weather is too miserable you can cook the crust on the stove top in a skillet.

I looked at crust recipe and I looked at the whole wheat bread flour and decided to give it a try.

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust for the Grill
(adapted from Jamie Oliver)

• 2 lbs whole wheat bread flour - about 6-7 cups (can be combined with white bread flour if you discover you're a little short of the whole wheat - oops!) 
  2 T wheat gluten, optional, but good for getting a crust that stretches nicely
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 2 T instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar or honey
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 - 3 1/2 c lukewarm water
  
  
  
  
  Put the flour, gluten, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. In a bowl, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes. Add the yeast mixture a little bit at a time until a dough forms. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough, add water if the mixture seems dry and crumbly, add a tablespoon of flour if the dough seems too sticky.
  
  Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.
  
  Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called knocking back the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in plastic wrap , in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straight away, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas. The recipe says 6-8 pizzas, I got 16 individual-sized rounds.
  
  Timing-wise, it's a good idea to roll the pizzas out about 15 to 20 minutes before you want to cook them. Don't roll them out and leave them hanging around for a few hours, though – if you are working in advance like this it's better to leave your dough, covered with clingfilm, in the fridge. However, if you want to get them rolled out so there's one less thing to do when your guests are round, simply roll the dough out into rough circles, about 0.5cm thick, and place them on slightly larger pieces of olive-oil-rubbed and flour-dusted tinfoil. You can then stack the pizzas, cover them with clingfilm, and pop them into the fridge. 
  
  
  Heat a grill on highest heat or a skillet on high until smoking. Place a dough round on the oiled surface and flip after about 45 seconds. Cook for another 45-60 seconds, then remove from the heat. Add toppings of your choice and return to the grill until the cheese melts. I have found that keeping the red sauce to the side instead of trying to cook the pizza with the sauce on makes for a crispier crust. I tend not to put too many toppings on so the pizza doesn't fall apart while it's cooking.
  
  

Farmer's Market Meal - 1st Week, May 15

I love the Farmer's Market. Not just like it a lot, or enjoy it, but I LOVE it. Our local little market is on Thursdays and they are usually the highlight of my week. I love talking to people, seeing all of the produce, thinking about meals, eating my favorite foods, enjoying the weather. The last market of the year makes me want to cry and the first market makes me so excited I bounce out of bed without hitting snooze - impressive for a mother of 3.

I like to make up new recipes and tweak existing recipes. I play my own version of the Food Network show Chopped, but without the insane ingredients.

The first week is a little tough since May in Wisconsin is rarely conducive to growing much produce. Especially this May! And the first week of Market was freezing and rainy, but darn it, I'd waited 6 months for this day! Many vendors decided they wouldn't even break even if they came, so it was a small market. Tom Murphy, who had organized the Market at Greenway Station from the beginning, decided to take a well-earned retirement and has turned his table over to his grandson. Tom's wife also has decided to cut back on her baking, so the bars, cookies, and little breads are only available at the larger markets. I'm sad about this, but we've got a new bakery this summer and they also have lovely selections of goods. Cheryl Heck has now taken over organizing the Market and there are many new vendors as well as most of the reliable standbys.

I was able to get asparagus, morel mushrooms, butter, and maple syrup at the first week of Market. This gave me the idea for a couple of recipes, but of course I didn't think to take pictures when I made them.

Morels with Asparagus and Orzo

2 T Butter
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb asparagus with ends snapped off and cut into bite sized pieces
morels - as many as you can get! - soaked to get the dirt out and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup orzo

Cook orzo according to package directions. You can do more or less orzo depending on your taste or if you're trying to stretch out the meal.

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the minced garlic. (I like to use a fine hole grater to shred the garlic since my knife skills are awful.) Let it get a little soft, but watch so the garlic doesn't burn. Add the asparagus and saute until starting to get bright green. Then add the morels and cook them all together until they reach the texture you like. There may be a lot of liquid left as the mushrooms cook down and you can either drain it or keep it as sort of a sauce when you add the cooked orzo.

This would have been good with some Parmesan-style cheese shredded on top, but I didn't have any. It was pretty delicious without it, if you ask me!


Maple Rhubarb Sauce for Waffles

2 cups of rhubarb - chopped
1/4 cup maple syrup
1-3 T water
Pinch of salt

Combine the rhubarb, maple syrup, and salt into a medium sauce pan and watch carefully as you bring it to a boil, then turn down to simmer, simmer often. Add water, one tablespoon at a time, if needed. Simmer until the rhubarb begins to break down. You can add more maple syrup to taste.

The Waffles (adapted from King Arthur Flour's Maple-Bacon Yeast Waffles recipe)

• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
• 6 tablespoons melted butter or canola oil
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 to 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon maple flavor, optional, for enhanced maple taste
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1) Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, leaving room for expansion. Stir to combine; the mixture won't be perfectly smooth.

2) Cover with plastic wrap, and let rest at room temperature for 1 hour; the mixture will begin to bubble. You can cook the waffles at this point, or refrigerate the batter overnight to cook waffles the next day.

3) Preheat your waffle iron, and spray it with non-stick vegetable oil spray.

4) Pour 2/3 to 3/4 cup batter (or the amount recommended by the manufacturer) onto the center of the iron. Close the lid, and bake for the recommended amount of time, until the waffle is golden brown.

5) Serve immediately, or keep warm in a 200°F oven while you cook the remaining waffles. Serve with butter and Maple Rhubarb sauce.

Pizza Minestrone

Our local elementary school does a neat program called "Farm to School". It gives the students a chance to taste fresh produce grown on local farms. Peer pressure works in a positive way to encourage the children to try the produce and I witnessed some kids - mostly boys - competing with each other to see who could eat the most samples before the end of lunch. Hey, whatever it takes!

I got a note from one of the volunteers telling me that my daughter, Bug, absolutely loved the fresh vegetable minestrone soup. She went up for seconds and possibly thirds and said that the soup was so good it should be called Pizza Minestrone and the school should sell it. So the volunteer sent me the recipe and I made it the next week, where it was again met with positive results. Any time Bug is willing to eat any vegetarian meal is a good time since Bug would like to be vegetarian, or at least a flexitarian (basically someone who is mostly vegetarian, but sometimes eats meat). I have no problems with her becoming a vegetarian, but she knows she must eat a wide variety of vegetables, paying careful attention to being sure she gets enough protein and iron from vegetables and fruits. So far she's not eating enough of a variety, but this soup is a good step toward that.

(Adapted from the MCPASD School Nutrition Services recipe)

- 1.5 quarts of broth (I used chicken, but any should work)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 cup onions
- 2-3 cups carrots, scrubbed and diced (don't bother peeling them - it's a waste of time and carrot)
- 2 cups shredded green cabbage
- 2 cups diced celery
- 2 cans diced tomatoes - fire roasted if you can get them
- 3 Tbsp tomato paste
- 2 cans cannelloni beans (these seem to be the most inoffensive beans to my kids)
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 3/4 tsp dried oregano
- 3/4 tsp dried basil or 3 Tbsp pesto
- 3/4 tsp dried parsley
- 1 1/2 tsp garlic granules or 3 cloves fresh garlic, chopped
- salt to taste
- 4 oz whole grain pasta (I like the little shells when I can find them)
- Parmesan cheese to taste



Heat olive oil in a large stock pot and saute onions, carrots, and celery until softened.

Add all remaining ingredients, except for the pasta and cheese. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes until veggies are soft.

While veggies cook, prepare pasta according to package directions.

Add cooked pasta to soup after 20-30 minutes and simmer for another 5 minutes.


*** You can use fresh herbs if you'd like, but I'm not good about using up fresh herbs in the winter when I'm most likely to make soup. Or if you have any Wildtree spaghetti sauce spice mix, you can put 2 generous tablespoons in the soup instead of the individual dried spices. I also used the bones from the previous night's rotisserie chicken to make chicken stock for the soup. I just covered the bones with about 3 quarts of water and cooked in a crock pot all night.

Pie!

March 14, for those of you who are not math nerds or who love a math nerd, is also known as "Pi Day", because the date 3.14 is the same as the number called pi, which is used to calculate the measurements of a circle. (Please don't ask me for more in depth information than that! My geometry class is merely a distant trauma.)  In order to encourage an interest in my children for math - and to eat pie - I have vowed to honor this day by making my family a pie.

I asked my girls what kind of pie they wanted. First they wanted cherry, then blueberry, then cherry-blueberry. Then I decided to only use stuff that I had at home and asked if any berry pie would be acceptable. They agreed.

Spring is a tough time of year for me for some reason. I think my body figures if the weather can't make up its mind, I should just hibernate until things smooth out. And while this is a lovely idea, it's not going to happen. So I drag my tired self all around trying to do the whole living and momming thing. But this also means that I was in no mood to fight with pie crust. The funny thing is that I can do just about any baking with yeast, do ok with meringues and biscuits, bake cookies and bars without a problem, and enjoy making cakes from scratch. But pie crust eludes me. My mother makes the most wonderful pie crust and I cannot manage to copy it. I've tried other crust recipes and I wind up frustrated. Fortunately I remembered my friend made us hazelnut chocolate tarts the other day and she used a shortbread crust. I'd never heard of such a thing, but it turns out to be a wonderful creation. You don't have to roll it, which makes me super happy. You mix it, pat it into the pan, and boom - you're done.

So I looked at my beloved Pinterest and found this recipe Easy Shortbread Pie Crust So many times something says "Easy" and it's absolutely not my definition of easy. This was. I mixed it - adding a bit of almond extract for fun - patted it and baked it for 9 minutes before putting the filling in. I don't know if I needed to prebake, but I figured better safe than sorry. And the crust didn't shrink or bubble up much at all.

Then I found this recipe for the filling. Almond Crumble Blueberry Pie I didn't want a double crust pie and I'm not sure it would be possible with a shortbread crust. But I'm a sucker for anything with a crumble, so this looked like it would work. BUT...I have major issues with making a recipe as written. I always have to mess around with it. It's a compulsion with me. Crazy, but it usually works.

I didn't have blueberries, but I did have mixed berries (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries). For the crumble topping, I absolutely love oatmeal, so I reduced the flour to 1/4 cup and added 1/4 of oatmeal. It worked. I also omitted the cinnamon because cinnamon has it's place, just not in every baked good under the sun. I upped the citrus and everything was just fine flavor-wise. And a useful tip I came across - you can freeze citrus fruits to use later for zest and juice. So I pulled out a lemon and an orange, ran my zester over each one several times, then popped them back into the freezer.

This is my filling and crumble based on the Pillsbury Almond Crumble Blueberry Pie:

FILLING

• 3 cups fresh or frozen mixed berries, thawed and drained
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel (or more)
• 1/2 teaspoon grated tangerine or orange peel (or more)

TOPPING

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup chopped almonds

(I apologize for the quality or lack of quality of my photo. I hadn't planned on blogging this, but I had to get the recipe written down somewhere because it turned out well enough that I want to eat this again!)

Mixing Foods

A friend and I recently met to walk through beautiful Olbrich Botatnical Gardens with our children. Her baby is about 4 months younger than Sprout and they're just starting to think about solid food. Since my kids are pretty decent eaters, she asked me what I do.

One of the things I told her about was blending the less palatable foods - like beans and broccoli - with more accepted foods like apples and sweet potatoes. It really helped Sprout have a positive feeling about broccoli which many children don't care for. My friend told me in her online research she's encountered many people saying that you should never mix foods so children get the chance to taste and appreciate foods individually.

Well, first of all, I have an issue with absolutes - always, never, etc. I can definitely see the benefit in getting a child to know that this is what broccoli tastes like on its own, why not make the first experience a good one? I think about my dad, a great guy, but kind of a picky eater. Seriously, if I had to deal with cooking for some of his food issues I'd have gone crazy long ago. (Then again, it's been long established that I don't have anywhere near the saintly levels of patience my mom has.) I think part of Dad's problem is that vegetables weren't always prepared in the most flavorful way and that he had to eat it, as is, no matter what.

I've decided that I would rather have my children eat food paired up with other foods if that's what it will take to get them to eat. I don't mean frying the heck out of it or smothering it in cheese sauce (although those are good, too), but what's wrong with combining one healthy food with another healthy food? Then when you present the broccoli or green beans or whatever to the child on it's own you can say "remember, you like it when it's with applesauce or pears" or whatever else you've mixed with it.

Ironically, Sprout would rather eat small bits of steamed broccoli on their own than when the pureed broccoli is mixed in with other food. She will eat it when it's mixed, but it's not the voracious "I can't get enough!" that she has when it's little trees. Whether it's because she's eating big girl food like her sister or she really likes the taste/texture/whatever more in whole broccoli, I don't care. She's eating a healthy vegetable prepared in a healthy way and she knows what it is she's eating.

Yum Watermelon!

Bug loves watermelon, or as she called it all last summer, waterlemon. It was with great joy and excitement that the first watermelon of the season was spotted at the farmer's market. They were the cute little personal sized ones and Bug wanted to get two of them. Since neither my husband nor I are really crazy about watermelon, I only got one. BIG mistake!

I cut a thick slice for Bug and decided to send another slice through the food mill to see what would happen. I chose the food mill because most of the seeds would get trapped in the grate, which would save me from having to pick every last one out. I did cut it off the rind - I'm not *that* lazy!

When you send a watermelon through the food mill an interesting thing happens. There is only juice coming out on the other side. Well, there was a little bit of pulp and a few ground seeds, but mostly it was water. (Go figure!) While it's hard to spoon liquid into your kid's mouth - at least my kid - it is great to mix with cereal.

Sprout really loves watermelon cereal. It's one of the few things she'll eat cold with minimal fussing, which is good because I just can't bring myself to heat up watermelon. It defeats the whole purpose of eating it. The little bit of ground up seed I figure are just some extra roughage and easily masked by the texture of the cereal.

Since watermelon cereal was so popular, I cut tiny pieces off of my leftover rind to give to Sprout while I finished my lunch. It pretty much dissolved in her hand, so I popped a bit in her mouth. Actual pieces of watermelon are not one of Sprout's favorite things. In fact, I think she spit out every piece I fed her. I know she's a bit sensitive to texture and I guess watermelon is one of those textures she just doesn't care for. I can understand that because I think it's one of my problems with the fruit, too.

So I'll keep buying personal sized watermelons as long as they're in season and keep some cut up for Bug. The rest I'll juice up for cereal to enjoy during the winter. (It's easy to get into the ice cube tray!) I am going to try the same thing with cantaloupe and cucumbers to see how those go down.

No more pureed meat?

I bought a beef chuck roast at the farmer's market last week for baby food. I can't bring myself to buy the jars of meat. For one thing it's heinously expensive. For another, it smells worse than cat food and I thought canned cat food was one of the worst "food" scents ever.

The first meat I processed for Sprout was a chicken I'd made in the crock pot. I put the frozen chicken in the bottom of the pot, covered it with chicken broth, and set it on high for several hours. When the meat fell off the bones I figured it was ready and I ran some of the dark meat through the food processor with some of the broth. There was probably more broth than chicken, but it was a fairly smooth consistency. A little sandy, but not too bad. I made sure to mix it with the fruit and a little bit of cereal to smooth it all out and we had success.

I'd read something that said veal was a good early meat choice because of it's mild flavor. So I went to Whole Foods and bought the humanely raised veal. It was ground and I wanted it to be tender, so I boiled it. Probably not a good choice. Then I decided to try pureeing the veal in a blender instead of the food processor. The texture was pretty nasty, but I was hopeful. I again mixed it with some fruit and a little bit of cereal, but it wasn't enough. Sprout will eat veal if she's really hungry, but if she's not, she spits it.

So back to the chuck roast. I once again made it in the crock pot with beef bouillon paste, water, and onions. It was extremely tender - the bigger eaters had it with mushroom gravy (or it would have been gravy if I could make it, but it was more au jus than anything) - and Sprout just devoured it. I also served chunks of sauteed zucchini and canned peaches and she started out liking those, but at the end only wanted small shreds of chuck roast. It's truly amazing how strong that little tongue can be when she's launching food out of her mouth.

I was going to puree the chuck roast, but since she likes the pieces so much and she seems to handle them ok, I think I'm just going to freeze 1/2 ounce portions in ice cube trays.

What was frustrating for me was feeding her roast while I was eating more zucchini. I'd devoured my portion of beef and since I'm trying to reduce my meat consumption and increase the veggies, I finished off the zucchini. It was ok, but it wasn't beef roast!