Green Options

Give me a piece of paper and pencil and I might choke out a few stick figure drawings for you. I’m not much of an artist in the traditional sense. But give me a chunk of cheddar, some beer, fresh veggies and other local ingredients from my home state of Wisconsin, and I transform into the artistic ninja of my kitchen here at Inn Serendipity Farm and B&B. Give me a palette of local, homegrown flavors and I can channel my inner culinary muse.

Case in point: Wisconsin Melting Pot Cheese Soup, my recent entry into the Wisconsin State Fair’s “Cornucopia Challenge” culinary contest, featuring ten different Wisconsin-produced ingredients. This recipe below garnered a third place white ribbon in this culinary contest category sponsored by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation’s “Ag in the Classroom” efforts to promote Wisconsin products.

Ready to take on your own private “Cornucopia Challenge,” creating your own signature dish featuring your local fare? Here are four tips to get you thinking creatively about combining your area’s flavors into a state fair ribbon worthy dish:

According to legend, miso was a gift from the gods to ensure humanity’s health, longevity, and happiness.

It may do just that.

Miso is a traditional fermented Japanese food with amazing health benefits.  This creamy salty paste is commonly made with soybeans, but other beans and or grains such as rice and barley are often used as well.  After being inoculated with a vitamin B12 synthesizing fungus, the mixture of ingredients is allowed to ferment from as little as five days to as long as several years.  The result is a versatile food that contains protein and vitamins such as  B12, along with trace minerals such as zinc, manganese, and copper.

According to a study appearing in this month’s issue of Chest, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, products such as Vicks VapoRub may stimulate mucus production and airway inflammation, which can have serious negative effects on infants and young children.

The ingredients in Vicks can be irritants which cause the body to produce more mucus in order to protect the airway.  In children, whose airways are much more narrower than adults, this could lead to severe respiratory distress.

According to the American National Eating Disorders Association 91% of women surveyed on a college campus had previously or continually attempted to control their weight through dieting, 22% of them said they dieted often or always. It’s not just women: 25% of men in the U.S. are said to be on a diet at any given time.

When I was growing up, the silky sounds of Nat King Cole crooning, ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire…’ was the hallmark of the holidays for me.  Every time I would hear it, I’d get that rush of childlike exuberance that encapsulates the magic of the season, and makes you feel like anything is possible.  

Yet, despite the fact that inordinate amounts of food were also synonymous with the holidays in my family (6 courses and 3 hours worth of dishes to be exact, by hand), we never had one dish with a chestnut in it.  Not a one.  For shame.

So, as I got older, and began to nurture my inner chef, I decided to remedy that travesty by starting a new tradition of savory chestnut soup to begin the descent into our annual colossal feast, much to my Grandmother’s chagrin who quite religiously served Italian Escarole soup.  (And by religiously, I mean had served Escarole for 30+ years prior to my first course usurping; or usouping, as it were. OK, bad joke.)

But my soup was a big hit, and each year I’d add or change the ingredients, perfecting my chestnut prowess with new and interesting pairings.  Needless to say, some years were better than others.  The addition of raisins, for example.  Disaster.  Cranberries, however.  Surprisingly delicious.  And those tart little buggers are still the perfect complement to the soup.  The cranberries, that is — not my family!

And now for the first time ever outside the hallowed halls of the Snowfield residence, I am sharing my coveted recipe for you to share, which now includes honey glazed grilled salmon, making it a hearty first — or even second — course for your own foray into holiday gorging and merriment.

Seasonal food is plentiful right now, much of it in the shape of squashes and gourds. Last night I took a page (literally) out of Barbara Kingsolver’s recent book, Animal, Vegetable Miracle. Ever since I read the chapter on smashing pumpkins, I knew I had to try the pumpkin soup experiment.

For the uninitiated, she took on the task of making pumpkin soup in the actual pumpkin. She describes the culinary feat in detail, including the collapse of the shell when she attempted to serve the soup!

Although fall means the end of summer’s abundance of produce, the end-of-season crops are nothing to sneeze at.  Butternut squash, with its earthy sweetness and versatility, can be used in both sweet and savory dishes.  I whipped up this simple, hearty soup from local squash, then froze the extra for quick lunches throughout the season.

What makes this soup extra special is its creamy sweetness and vanilla flavor; it’s practically a dessert soup.  You can alter the sugar to taste, but I like the hint of sweetness that the small amount listed here provides.  Roasting the squash imparts a deeper, richer flavor as well.  The recipe, after the jump…

One of the fall harvest’s most overlooked and under appreciated vegetables is the tumshie.

I mean the neep.

Umm… the snadgie?

The swede?

A cross between a turnip and a cabbage, this root was carved into a jack-o-lantern for Samhain…

It’s high in vitamin C, beta carotene, potassium and magnesium…

There’s an international curling championship with this vegetable in Ithaca, NY…

You can store them in the fridge for a month, maybe longer…

Guessed yet?

You’re right, it’s the humble yet magnificent rutabaga!

After reading Robin’s post last week on easy weeknight meals, I was craving that comfort food classic, tomato soup and grilled cheese.  I’ve been eating it in various incantations since I was tiny, and I wanted a refined, yet simple version of soup.  I looked through several cookbooks for a filling soup that only required ingredients I had on hand, and when I saw Deborah Madison’s Summer Tomato Soup, I knew I would try something similar.  I literally made and enjoyed this dish today and wanted to pass it along.

Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes designed to showcase produce gathered from local farms or grown in my own garden.

It’s almost here and I thought I’d better prepare all of you for it.  It’s the ying to the yang of vegetable gardening.  Those of you that are fortunate enough to have a little piece of ground to grow your own food will be very familiar with it.  And those of you that visit farmers markets and can’t resist the siren song of all those amazing late summer vegetables know it too.  Perhaps you shudder a bit just to think about it.  Or, if you’re like me, you lie in bed, eyes wide open, conjuring up ways to creatively sidestep it.  

“It” is that deluge of fresh produce that starts to haunt every corner of your kitchen, entryway, and basement, taunting you as it slowly deteriorates while you fret over and hunt out ways to use it up.  By late summer, you’ve grown a tad tired of zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, peppers, and even tomatoes.  Actually, I never tire of tomatoes, but I do get full before I can finish each new batch that comes off my prolific vines.  That’s where this recipe, appropriately named Use ‘Em Up Cold Summer Soup, comes into play.  How full of promise is that title?  Question is, does it live up to the hype?

The calendar says May, but where I live in San Francisco, it’s been feeling like the dead of summer lately. My thermometer says 85, which is unseasonably hot for my otherwise moderate city. Usually, my lunchtime staple is soup, however a warm bowl full of chili may be great in November, but none too appealing today.

I decided instead to concoct a cooling summertime soup. I’m a sucker for Gazpacho, but I wanted something a little lighter today. I also needed to use up all the dill from my herb garden that’s been withering away in the heat.

Here’s my recipe for Cucumber Dill Soup that as refreshing as it is delicious (and not to mention, healthy and quick to prepare!)