Friday, August 31, 2018

Fresh local produce and fresh bread


August has been a quiet month. Most of our meals have been eaten at home, with all the local produce that we could easily find: peppers (red, yellow, green and the purple one above), tomatoes, peaches, melons, herbs, corn, squash, and more. Along with the produce, we've been enjoying Len's fresh-baked loaves of rye, whole wheat, and white bread. In my kitchen this month, there are thus two themes: Len's bread baking and fresh produce.

Two New Items for Baking Bread

New items: a book and a dough tub for Len's more and more successful bread:


The new bread book is The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. We can't imagine what is meant by the title's "5 minutes," as the instructions are clear in requiring far longer times to form, rise, and bake the bread!

Besides the book we have a new, bigger dough tub with a lid:


The recipe for this bread comes from one of the books we purchased earlier: The Bread-Baker's Apprentice.

Fresh, Local Produce Won't Be Available for Long!

We've purchased our produce at the Farmers Market, the Argus Farm Stop, the Produce Station, and even Whole Foods. While Whole Foods in past years managed to find good local suppliers, this year it's had very little local produce. Most disappointing: the new Amazon regime at Whole Foods offers only hard, tasteless, industrially grown tomatoes, while in former years they bought vine-ripened ones from local farmers. Sad!

So... in my kitchen this month, here are some of the local foods (well, mostly local foods) we've eaten:
Watermelon with feta. Garnish: mint from the garden.
Local tomatoes with chives. The feta is from France.
Gazpacho made in my big pyrex measuring cup from fresh tomatoes.
Peach crisp. Or you can call it crumble.
From the farmers market: a locally-made curry sauce, fantastically fresh eggs, and Michigan tomatoes.
The freshest and most beautiful eggs are definitely the ones I buy directly from the farmer.
A bowl of vegetable curry with eggs and tomatoes.
Dinner: roasted eggplant with feta cheese, fresh vegetables (including farm tomatoes), and grilled steak.
The eggplant was flavored with zatar and olive oil.
More Michigan peaches. My favorite summer flavor!
Delicata squash, patty pan squash, and onions, with rosemary from our garden.
Roasting squash and onions in the grill basket.
Grill-roasted squash and onions.
Grilled peaches and lamb chops for the two of us. (Sorry but the lamb is from Costco!) The roasted squash was the side dish.
From a previous post: corn with salad and Michigan peaches.
We've had corn several times. And peaches all the time!
And one meal from a restaurant kitchen: a poke bowl from Slurping Turtle.
There were plenty of sushi-tuna cubes under the veggies! 
To see what other bloggers have in their kitchens this month, check out the In My Kitchen post at Sherry's Pickings HERE.

10 comments:

Jeanie said...

This all looks fabulous, Mae. Our up-north market has had great produce this year. Seeing your gazpacho reminds me I haven't made any yet so maybe tomorrow I'll get tomatoes. Wonder if they'd hold till Tuesday. Probably. I did a nice caprese with local tomatoes, my basil and fresh mozz. Some wonderful salads and peach crisp like you.

I got that same bread book for Rick's birthday (the artisan one, not the five minutes) and the breads of France on you wrote about earlier too. He's made some good things from the latter; not sure about the first yet!

Sherry's Pickings said...

that bread looks delicious Mae. clever Len. I've never seen a purple capsicum (pepper) before. isn't it beautiful? looks like you've had plenty of wonderful fresh produce in your kitchen this past month. thanks for joining in and being number 1 again:=) cheers sherry

Beth F said...

I'm always sad when the farmers markets start to wind down. We have at least 8 weeks to go around here.

I didn't have good luck with that artisan bread book, though I'm a really good and experienced bread bakers. Not sure why it didn't really work in my kitchen.

Deb in Hawaii said...

Your bread looks delicious and I love all of the wonderful dishes you have been making with your fresh produce. I'd like two servings of the peach crisp/crumble, please--yum! ;-)

francesca said...

Hi Mae, All your food this month looks tempting, fresh and delicious. Yes, a funny title for a sourdough bread book- hard to imagine what the 5 minutes a day was referring to.

Karen (Back Road Journal) said...

Eating local looks absolutely delicious...you are certainly lucky to have so much good produce to choose from.

Tina said...

I like the looks of the bread book and those grilled peaches are calling my name! I always forget about grilling fruit. Pineapple is great too off the grill.

Farmer's markets are fun to shop and I always come away with way more produce than I need.

Debra Eliotseats said...

From the bread to those amazing looking local meals---everything looks so delicious. Can I invite myself over?

Jen Rose said...

Your bread baking is to be envied. That grilled lamb and peaches looks so delicious. Waiting for our late dinner to arrive and my mouth is watering. Wonder if it would work as well with apricots?

Mae Travels said...

@Jen Rose -- I always read your kitchen posts, but your software never allows me to comment (it says FORBIDDEN !!!) -- but I enjoyed your post about how much you love peanut butter, and I've written about it once or twice on this blog too... best, mae