zucchini

One of my earliest food memories is of eating soup with my dad. Both of my parents were medical residents and although I don't remember feeling juggled, I know that caring for me with two punishing call schedules was an elaborate dance. It must have been on those bleary-eyed nights when my mom was on call, that my dad would pull out the Campbell's Alphabet Soup. He would serve it in one big bowl and float big chunks of Meunster cheese in it which would melt into long gooey strings. Together we would eat, our heads touching, our spoons crossing - giggling, looking for letters and trying to get that cheese. 

In the summer, we see local vegetables everywhere: at the grocery store, in a backyard garden, the farmers' market, or our CSA (community supported agriculture) box.  Sometimes there are so many vegetables, it's overwhelming to find uses for them all. (How do I prepare kohrabi? Can I eat carrot tops? Is there anything I can do with all this zucchini?) Plus, if you're like me, you have the additional challenge of living without air conditioning; so people like us want to avoid cooking and baking as much as possible. This video shows me demonstrating a few recipes for the less familiar veggies, prepared using little to no heat -- including carrot-top pesto. (No need to ever throw them into the compost again!) Enjoy!

On Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, a common complaint about eating healthfully was that people didn't want to eat “rabbit food” all the time. But, as Oliver demonstrated on the series, there's more to eating well than munching on lettuce and carrots. So with the ingredients from this week's CSA (community supported agriculture) box, I will showcase salads made without lettuce.

Quentin and Rebecca Irey"We want to change people's lives," Quentin Irey tells me, "we want to bring raw food to the masses." I'm trying to listen while eating a plate of food on which nothing is what it sounds like. Quentin and his wife Rebecca, the Twin Cities entrepreneurs who recently founded Pure Market Express, have just served me samples of four raw foods, and they won't say any more until I've tried what they're calling a bacon jalapeno popper. What concerns me is that the "bacon" they're serving is made from eggplant, and the "cheese" is a mixture of pine nuts, chives, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Here goes - words and picture straight from the Harmony Valley Farm newsletter: