June on our Wisconsin farm and B&B, Inn Serendipity, ushers in a few weeks of chaos. Tending everything from gardens to B&B guests, June packs in a cornucopia of duties that take time away from the kitchen and savoring the abundance of the early summer season.
Don’t get me wrong as I truly relish this time of year, when both the days and work lists are long but satisfying. Which is why we need quality fuel, good food to provide energy for the day. This Spring Spinach and Asparagus Pasta ranks our new seasonal favorite, as it blends the tender seasonal flavors of asparagus and spinach with a filling dose of pasta, nuts and cheese, seasoned up with a unique, savory soy sauce-based dressing. Plus it makes a sizeable batch, perfect for easy leftovers throughout the week.
My kids and I are crazy about green smoothies. We make them a couple times daily usually. Never before has it been so easy to get my kids to eat plenty of those all important leafy greens! Just check out my daughter’s green smoothie moustache (left).
You may be wondering what a green smoothie is exactly. Or maybe not, they seem to be getting really popular in healthier living circles everywhere lately. A green smoothie does not refer to being “green” in the eco sense of the word. Although they can be that too. The green in a green smoothie refers to what is in the smoothie and usually the color as well. Quite simply, green smoothies are blended beverages that combine fresh or frozen fruit and leafy greens like Kale, collard, spinach, or wild edibles. Veggies like carrots may make a cameo appearance in green smoothies as well. The genius of a green smoothie is that they are jam packed with nutritional goodness, usually in its raw life living form, and they taste absolutely fantastic! When was the last time your kids begged you for fresh spinach? Well, mine ask me daily for some.
Winter veggies usually get short shrift, but there are many reasons to savor them. They add loads of vitamins and nutrients to our diets, do wonders for our immunity, and are wonderfully versatile. Plus, eating seasonally is eating green: as it takes us back to the old days of eating only the freshest available products, it’s a more sustainable eating model and it’s better for reducing our carbon footprints.
Here’s my guide to making the most of these five fabulous winter veggies:
1. Play Squash
I actually look forward to winter just for its squash varieties. Acorn, banana, butternut, spaghetti, delicata, hubbard, sweet dumpling, buttercup, and turban squashes—not to mention pumpkin—add a colorful and sweet accent to your plate. Plus, they are among the healthiest types of complex carbohydrates (the best kind of carbs), with high fiber, vitamin A, and vitamin C content. Roast ‘em, mash ‘em, or slow cook ‘em into a heaping bowl of soupy goodness for the perfect warm winter meal.
My CSA box this week contained sweet potatoes…lots of sweet potatoes. The ugliest sweet potatoes you’ve ever seen.
This is what a sweet potato looks like when it’s been damaged by voles. Pretty ugly, eh? But other than the obvious cosmetic damage, there’s no harm to the sweet potato — you can trim off the damaged parts and use it as usual. Vole-damaged sweet potatoes even store just as well as perfect specimens. But of course a lot of people would be put off by the visual and pass these up in favor of more perfect-appearing sweets. So when you’re hitting the farmers’ markets at the end of the season, if you see some ugly sweet potatoes cheap, snap ‘em up! They’re a bargain, and you’re rewarding a farmer for using organic methods.
I also had some excellent-looking young spinach in this week’s CSA box, and a few onions. I’d picked up some wonderful linguica from a local sausagemaker a few weeks earlier, and I always keep chicken stock in my freezer. It’s a blustery day here in Southwest Ohio, with the first sleet of the season. Soup seemed like the perfect choice. So I made one of my favorite rustic autumn soups: Linguica, Sweet Potato, and Spinach Chowder.
From our friends at ZapRoot: Farmers take it to the extreme to protect their crops. The Auto Alliance has jump on the green bandwagon. These Guys are Full of **it returns.
This week from our friends at ZapRoot: The FDA needs to have their heads examined. We respond to the numerous Chinese comments. Explore the world through Google Earth’s Environment section.
Irradiated spinach and lettuce are coming soon to a store near you!
In the name of food safety, the Food and Drug Administration will now allow producers of fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce to irradiate their products to kill germs.
Following in the wake of the recent E. coli and salmonella outbreaks from fresh produce, the FDA is announcing a new regulation that permits producers to use radiation to reduce bacteria content in spinach and lettuce.
Opah! The Greek God of Spanakopita smiled down favorably this week here in Wisconsin, providing tender green spinach along with the first of our dill — which means it’s spinach pie time. The Greeks sure know how to pack in the healthy, iron punch with an abundance of greens alongside poignant feta cheese. And while spinach pie can be made just fine with frozen spinach, you just can’t beat the tender flavor of fresh.
Like other mainstay international dishes, this Greek dish has various versions — and spellings: “Spanakopita” for “spinach pie” and “spanakotyropita” for the more detailed “spinach and cheese pie.” But the short gist is an abundant bowl of cooked spinach and herbs mixed with feta and eggs, nestled in between buttered layers of phyllo. By accident once, we bought puff pastry sheets instead of phylo dough which worked surprisingly well. Combinations of spinach and Swiss chard work equally well.
June on our Wisconsin farm and B&B, Inn Serendipity, ushers in a few weeks of chaos. Tending everything from gardens to B&B guests, June packs in a cornucopia of duties that take time away from the kitchen and savoring the abundance of the early summer season.
—add a colorful and sweet accent to your plate. Plus, they are among the healthiest types of complex carbohydrates (the best kind of carbs), with high fiber, vitamin A, and vitamin C content. Roast ‘em, mash ‘em, or slow cook ‘em into a heaping bowl of soupy goodness for the perfect warm winter meal.
