Tuna and Bean Salad

Colby and I just started back up with a CSA.  This time we chose Johnson's Backyard Garden.  We decided to go with them because it allowed us to have a bit more control over the vegetables we get (no more yucky eggplant!) and, more importantly, everything is organic.  I know that there's been a study indicating that organic produce is not more nutritious than conventionally grown produce, but that's not really the point.  Ramona has started eating solid foods and everything she's had has been organic thus far and we plan on keeping that true for as long as possible.  In a lot of ways, she's been the impetus for getting the CSA.  Now we have fresh-seasonal-organic-sustainable-local vegetables to give her year round and we can also start to clean up our meals, so to speak, in order to set a good example for her.

Today we got our first share and the first order of business was to make dinner.  We roasted the okra that we got with some spices and olive oil and it was amazing.  When you're eating crazy fresh food, it doesn't really need much to be fantastic.  We also had a highly adapted Tuscan bean and tuna salad with some JBG arugula.  In addition to trying to clean up our eating, we also need fast meals and nothing is faster than this salad.

seasoned, roasted okra

Bean and tuna salad

2 cans tuna in olive oil, drain one can and save the oil and use the oil from the other can with the tuna
2 cans cannellini (or other white) beans, drained
juice of one lemon (zest too, if you're not in a hurry)
1 small shallot, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely minced
2 T fresh dill, chopped
salt + pepper to taste

Okay, this is going to be the most complicated recipe ever:

mix everything together
season to taste

My favorite thing to do with the oil is to brush it on bread and toast it in the oven.  If I'm feeling particularly lazy, I just brush the oil on toast.  Either way, eating this with a slice of really tasty bread is highly advised.  I've also used that oil to make a vinaigrette (combine oil with some lemon juice, dill, salt, pepper, and dijon mustard in a jar; shake) to go over greens to eat with the salad.  This time I added a handful of arugula from the share in my bowl (Colby abstained) and it was GOOD.  But I think that arugula is the most delicious stuff ever, so that is something easily omitted if you don't love your taste buds.

Ends and odds

So... it's been busy.  I'm like a good solid day's worth of work away from being able to say that I have a 99.9% complete first draft of my paper.  There's still one problem that I won't be able to solve, but I think it'll be good enough to call a First Draft to send to my committee.    I've also had other things going on, but suffice it to say, I owe Community Supported Home Cooking about four posts now and I owe Lewis a post as well.  I'm hoping that I'll get to those over the weekend.

Anywho, last Sunday we went to Urban an American Grill for brunch as part of Austin Restaurant Week.  It was really good.  I'm pretty sure that adding brunch to Restaurant Week was one of their most brilliant ideas yet.  Who doesn't love brunch!? *Anywho* Colby got a bloody mary, Branch Ranch steak with fries, and strawberry shortcake bread pudding.  I got a tulip (cava+cranberry juice), salmon eggs benedict, and a trio of sorbets (olive oil, mint, and grapefruit).  I didn't have my phone on me at that point because it was dead, but everything was pretty and delicious.  My favorite part was definitely dessert.  The mint sorbet was alright, but the grapefruit sorbet was phenomenal.  It was really delicate and delicious.  The best part, though, was definitely the olive oil sorbet.  We went on the first day of ARW, so apparently the sorbet hadn't properly set yet, but that wasn't a problem.  It had a really velvety mouth feel and a creamy, balanced flavor.  I'd love to try it again when it's properly set.  The only reason I know any of this was because the chef came out to talk to us, which was totally cool.  We'll definitely head back there at some point to try other parts of the menu.

There's still another weekend for restaurant week and it's a really great way to try different restaurants that are prohibitively expensive.  Bonus!  Some of the participating restaurants donate part of their proceeds to charity.  You can find these restaurants here and a list of ALL participating restaurants here.  The last restaurant week, we went to Sullivan's Steak House and the one before, we found ourselves at Fogo de Chao.  They were both really tasty, but no longer an option for us... which brings me to why I really decided to post.

I just made pasta and meatballs for my weekly meal sharing project.  I had some grassfed ground beef in the freezer, as well as some ground pork.  The recipe I use is criminally easy and makes the most delicious meatballs I've ever had.  The only problem is that I have no idea where the pork originated.  I bought it from Central Market awhile back, but I honestly haven't put a lot of effort into sourcing where they get their meat.  This has become a priority for me after reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I'm not about to go vegan, but Colby and I have made the decision to enter into the realm of "ethical omnivorism".  For us, this means that we're going to be getting our meats from local farms that have higher standards than just claiming to be "all natural".  And this also means that we're likely done with chicken.

Right now, we have about 3 lbs of frozen chicken breasts, a half a pack of jalapeno sausage, and a brick of tempeh in the freezer.  I'll let you guess which one we bought most recently.  I am vehemently opposed to throwing away food, so we're getting through it, but we're done buying any more meat products that we haven't first properly researched and sourced.  The end goal is to stop eating food that has anything to do with factory farms, but we're doing this one step at a time and our first step is to stop eating animals that were abused, tortured, or generally mistreated on their way to a terrible slaughter.  I have so many more thoughts about this, but I'm sure I'll explore this topic in later posts.

Tomatoes

Local organic tomatoes from Gundermann Acres, oil, vinegar, fresh oregano, sea salt, and freshly cracked pepper.  Need I say more?

Working lunch

Just a quick post on my lunch break.  We got fennel, butternut squash, and apples in our CSA.  It turns out that I don't actually like fennel because it tastes like licorice (you know, the gross kind, not the strawberry Twizzler version), so I needed a recipe that masked the anise-y flavor.  Enter: another version of butternut squash soup.  This one is super easy and it's just a chop and dump job, requiring a knife+cutting board, a pan, and a stick blender.


Butternut squash soup with fennel and apples
2 T extra virgin olive oil

1 2-2.5 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 in cubes
1 fennel bulb+ stems, diced
3-4 smallish apples, diced
3-4 c chicken stock
0.5 t nutmeg

0.5 t cayenne pepper (or more if you really like it spicy)
1 t smoked sweet paprika

s+p to taste


Heat up evoo in a large saucepan/stockpot.  Add fennel, butternut squash, and apples and sautee until the butternut squash can be easily pierced with a fork and everything is a little bit browned. 


Add in nutmeg, cayenne, and smoked sweet paprika, and stir to coat.  Cook for ~1 minute to let the spices toast a bit.


Add in chicken stock.  The amount sort of depends on how big your squash is, but make sure that there's enough liquid to stick blender it without it being too thin.


Season with salt and pepper to taste.

P.S. Check out Randi's post at Community Supported Home Cooking! :)

CSA bounties

At some point in October, I convinced myself that Colby and I wouldn't go out to eat for the month of November. This lasted all of one day because I forgot to bring a lunch on November 2nd. Then, I decided that we wouldn't go out to eat for *dinner* during all of November. This lasted until last Saturday, because there was a pizza place that I just *had* to try. (It was good, not great, but I prefer Chicago-style pizza to thin crust.) Yesterday we resumed our Central-Market-Cafe-dinner-with-grocery-shopping-Sunday ritual and I disabused myself of all notions that this "no eating out in November" thing had any traction left.

Part of the reason I even wanted to try this was because we joined a community supported agriculture (CSA) and it seemed like a really great way to support local farms, eat fresh foods, and try new foods that we never even thought about buying at the grocery store. The first delivery included green beans, green peppers, spring mix, cabbage, zucchini, green onions, butternut squash, sweet corn, turnip greens, oranges, and a grapefruit that looked like the Freakonomics apple/orange.

The first meal we ate with the CSA goodies was grilled steak with sauteed turnip greens, mashed butternut squash, and roasted corn. It was terribly delicious and everything was super fresh. I've never cooked turnip greens, but found them to be incredibly bitter. I sauteed them in bacon drippings, with spring onions, garlic, and some tomato and those helped to cut the bitterness, though not completetly. The corn was great and the butternut squash was awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to future CSA bushels. The head of napa cabbage we got was so green that I didn't recognize it as such, so I treated it like normal green cabbage and cooked up a really awesome side dish for dinner last night.

Really Awesome Cabbage Side Dish for Dinner Last Night

1 head napa cabbage, washed of all grit and roughly chopped

2 jalapeños, seeded and minced

1/2 small onion, diced

3-4 cloves garlic, crushed or finely minced

1 c chicken stock

2 T extra virgin olive oil (or some other fat, I actually used chicken schmaltz)

s+p, to taste

Bring a pot of salted water to boil in a large stock pot. Boil cabbage leaves for ~6 minutes or so and then drain cabbage.

In a sauté pan, heat up evoo (or whatever fat you're using), add a pinch of salt and cook the onion and jalapeño until the onion is translucent and soft, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the garlic for about 30 seconds or until fragrant, careful not to burn.

Add in the cabbage and stock and cook until most of the liquid has boiled away.

Taste and season with salt and pepper.

This is awesome and garlicky and even better the second day. I think it'd be really good served atop polenta.