Locavore

As I mentioned in my previous post, my husband has gone totally vegetarian.  I'm not quite there yet, but I'm darn close, usually only eating meat once a week, and at this point it's only at a restaurant or at my parents' house. 

One area where I have pretty much committed is eating local as much as possible.  Yup, I'm a locavore.

Here's this past weekend's farmer's market haul:

I wound up roasting a lot of those veggies for dinner on Tuesday and served them with some gnocchi.  There were basically no leftovers.  I think I need to make more time for those kinds of meals, because they are easy to prepare (I was able to quickly clean and chop up the veggies while Amelia amused herself in her high chair), and they are actually quite inexpensive. 

That's the neat thing about shopping at the farmer's market:  When you're buying produce, it's often both fresher and cheaper than the grocery store stuff, and quite frequently it's organically grown as well. 

The budget busters at the farmers market tend to be the pre-made foods.  $6 for jam, $4 for black bean hummus... I could certainly get those things cheaper at the grocery store, but the truth is that the local stuff truly tastes better.  Those are our splurges, which we justify because overall we're still saving money.  And when I get the chance, I make my own hummus, which is even cheaper than buying it at the grocery store.

Have you seen the USDA Food Plan charts?  They're updated monthly.  For June, the "thrifty plan" for 2 adults aged 19-50 is $378.90/month.  I'm pretty sure we did go over that a bit this month, but most of the time our food budget is in the $350-ish range.  That includes non-food groceries and my extra 500 calories a day.  As long as you don't live in a food desert, it's definitely possible to eat well on a budget.  And for the record, we found ourselves relying on convenience foods more than usual this month, in part because I went back to work full-time and was working off-site a bunch.  We went over budget by something like $100.  Time to start menu planning!

So, which plan do you fall under on the USDA charts?  Is it just me or do those numbers seem kind of high?  Or do I just have our farmers market and mostly cooking from scratch to thank for our comparatively low budget? 


And here's some fun stuff that's been going on with Amelia lately:

Not even 6 months old and the kid can already stand while supporting herself on furniture!  Time to start baby-proofing??

Elvis was kind of wary of this new little person at first, but yesterday he jumped up on our bed and laid down next to her.  He was letting her hold his paws and touch his face, and it was adorable.

Here's a picture Glen took of the two of them:

Amelia's face in that picture is pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen!  

Maternity...Tuesday(?): This Produce Thing Is Getting Weird

Yesterday was crazy busy, but I have belly pictures AND recipe pictures to share.  The strange part is that the two are actually related.

Yesterday was the start of 27 weeks (third trimester, when did that happen?!?!), and last week we took 26 week belly pictures.  Technically, baby is the size of a head of lettuce, but we decided to substitute with a head of cabbage instead:

I think Stormageddon had a growth spurt these past couple of weeks! :-)

...Buuuut most of my maternity clothes are still too big.  Still usually wearing my regular clothes with a belly band. ;-)

Cabbage patch kid??

Here's where the produce thing gets weird though:

See, it seems wasteful to buy produce for the sole purpose of taking pictures, so every other week we end up eating our "baby."  It somehow seemed less odd when baby was avocado sized and we'd just buy a few of them, take a picture, return it to the produce basket and not know whether the avocado we'd just eaten was our "baby" from the pictures.

But it's not like we can just buy a bunch of cabbages and eat one as a snack.  So our cabbage baby got cooked into two delicious meals after those pictures were taken.

I used the first half of the cabbage to make creamy Thai sweet potatoes and lentils for dinner on Sunday night:

If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend you follow the link above and make it.  SO yummy!

Tonight I used the remainder of the cabbage in a halupki casserole:

The casserole is my mom's recipe, so I don't have a link (I tried to find an identical recipe online, but no luck, and I don't know offhand whether she got this recipe online or elsewhere), but if you want to give it a try, feel free to send me an email and I'd be more than happy to share the recipe!

UPDATE:  My mom saw this post and forwarded the link for the halupki casserole to me!  Our slow cooker is too small to fit the whole recipe, so I usually make it in the oven - 30 minutes at 375 degrees usually does the trick.

Late Night Snack

I love zucchini, but more frequently than I'd like to admit I will buy it at the farmers market and then forget to use it all week.  This usually results in zucchini bread, and 9:00 on Wednesday night was no exception.

I typically use this recipe, sans walnuts.  The first time I made it, I didn't have any nutmeg on hand, so I substituted pumpkin pie spice (I still don't know why I had pumpkin pie spice but not nutmeg!), and it was so good that I never bothered to make it any other way.  It's especially delicious with maple spiced pumpkin butter from Dutch Hill Preserves or apple butter from Beechwood Orchards!

Oddly enough, as much as I love pumpkin everything, I've never made pumpkin bread before, so I think that may be my next adventure in late-night bread making.  Now the question is: do I finally go out and buy nutmeg for this recipe or substitute pumpkin pie spice again??? ;-)

What are your favorite recipes for the fall?

Grizzly Pear

One of my absolute favorite restaurants in downtown Easton is the Third Street Cafe, and tonight I decided to attempt to recreate one of my favorite sandwiches: The Grizzly Pear.

I had to tweak it a bit, but it was still quite tasty. 

At the restaurant they put the sandwich on a Portuguese roll, but they were out of those at the grocery store, so I substituted with bolillo rolls instead.  I also opted to make my version of the sandwich open-faced.

After cutting the rolls in half, I sliced up some brie and a peeled Bartlett pear and arranged the cheese and pears on the rolls.  Then I drizzled a little honey on top and added just a tiny bit of ground pepper.  Then I put the sandwiches in the oven heated to 350 degrees for about 7 minutes.

Next time I make these, I'll leave them in the oven for a bit longer, maybe 10-12 minutes.  And there will definitely be a next time. :-)

Of course, this isn't going to stop me from going to the Third Street Cafe on a fairly regular basis.  The Grizzly Pear was easy to replicate, but I'm not even going to attempt to touch their sweet potato cake, because I know none of my efforts will even begin to measure up.  Seriously, if you ever eat at the Third Street Cafe, do yourself a favor and leave room for a slive of that cake. ;-)

In the Kitchen

What happens when I have an overabundance of mushrooms and spinach and I just bought a bunch of eggs from Klein Farms??

I make quiche, of course!!


This is this first quiche I've ever made, which is odd considering it's one of my favorite foods. It actually came out really well, except for the bits of spinach that were sticking up and wound up rather crispy.

On another culinary note, later tonight I'll probably be picking up a new cookware set! We've had a hard anodized aluminum set for about 5 years, but it's looking pretty worn out lately, to the point that I've started to question the safety of cooking with them. We decided we would gradually start replacing the set. But during lunch today I found this:

Hello, there, KitchenAid Gourmet Distinctions 10-piece cookware set that is currently 50% off at Kohls. :-)

I checked out some reviews, which were overwhelmingly positive, so tonight I'm off to check them out in person and probably buy them.

Very excited, but I definitely need to make sure that is ALL I buy. Does spring make anyone else out there want to buy lots of pretty new things for your home???

Happy Birthday, Frank!

Last night, Glen and I threw a party to celebrate Frank Sinatra's birthday.

Glen came up with the idea back in 2003, our junior year of college, and it quickly became a tradition.

Now every year, on or about December 12, we invite our friends over for drinks, food and music. And since this year the party was the day before the big day, it included a midnight champagne toast in honor of Frank's birthday.

We made sure our bar was fully stocked.


We served some delicious food, including an appetizer wreath...


...and baked brie with walnuts, dried cranberries and cherries, and apricot syrup.


We dressed Elvis in a bow tie and cape...


...and partied the night away. :-)


Now I'm off to finish some laundry, then watch a movie and relax for the rest of the night before another busy work week.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! :-)

When the Husband's Away...

The wife will make delicious eggplant parmigiana!

He normally won't touch anything with eggplant, but I love it, so the bright side to Glen being away on a road trip with Eric is that I can make eggplant parm for dinner (and lunch tomorrow... and probably dinner again) without feeling guilty.

Seriously though, I do miss him. And not just because our dog keeps trying to wrestle with me in his absence. It'll be nice to have him back soon, even if it means I won't be able to make anything that involves eggplant for awhile. ;-)

Oh, and he sent me this tonight. It made me smile and I thought I'd share:



Seriously, the new season of Mad Men can't come soon enough!!