Revelry Reverie

I went to visit a local farm last weekend. The farm, Sojourner Farms, has chickens, eggs, turkeys, cows, and pigs. The farmer, Pierre Dionne, who is also a doctor, gave my parents and I a very informative tour. The animals are all pastured. We first saw the laying hens (his broilers are all in the…

I made Bob New England Clam Chowder today. It’s a comfort food for him. I’ve never made it before, so I went super simple. Here’s what I made. Two cans of Campbell’s cream of celery soup. Two 6 oz (approximately) cans of minced clams. A bit of milk. A soup can of water. About a…

A classic basil, mozzarella, and tomato on Portuguese saloio bread. The basil was organic, the tomato was from the farm, and the bread was baked fresh that day (at the bakery). The cheese only had three ingredients, a number I can accept for cheese. I put a pan with a little butter over a low…

So, I might have found a perfect (for us) farm with pastured meat (steers, pigs) and poultry (chickens, turkeys). Obviously I’ll have to rely on my parents’ and husband’s assessment of taste (for another 7 1/2 months), but I’m setting up a visit so I can tour the farm and see all the delicious cuddly…

This morning I made beer bread. The recipe I used can be found here: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/whole-wheat-beer-bread/Detail.aspx. A photo journey… I like to start baking by assembling all my ingredients on a tray, so I know where everything is. If everything else goes wrong, I won’t have to scramble for ingredients. I get my tools ready (not…

I got an email from a reader who sent me some additional resources to check out – so I added them to the resources page for us all to use. Check them out, and let me know what you think (or if you have some resources you prefer).

Fresh honey wheat bread from the oven!

If you make the honey wheat bread from the last post, toast it. Don’t ask any questions about it. Just make the bread, slice it, toast it (either on a grill – as my moms did today, or in a toaster) and then snack away! I had a grilled cheese, and the cheddar was really…

So one of my on-going battles is finding bread that doesn’t have high-fructose corn syrup OR soybean oil OR anything that includes “hydrogenated.” I can usually find something at the grocery store (particularly our little corner store), but then I’m limited to whatever was made that week. And sometimes I don’t feel like onion bread…

So I tried two new things today. I’ve never cooked littleneck clams, and I’ve neither cooked nor eaten polenta before. The steamed clams were very easy – much easier than I thought. We bought them from the fish monger (and according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium safe watch list – which I downloaded to my…