The big kitchen excitement from last week was my attempt to make a sourdough starter. I was following the method outlined in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which involves multiple days of feeding and culling the starter, followed by turning it into a more standard starter (called a 'barm'.) Sadly, this didn't go so well. I made it about halfway through the process (just about to barm) and decided that I really wasn't getting any rise at all. I looked online and got some tips to help with the situation, so I started the process again. This time I rode it out all the way to the barm stage, but when that was supposed to have doubled in four hours but showed no rise in eight, I threw in the towel. Instead I made french bread which was more delicious than I remembered. Take that, sourdough!
We are firmly in summer now (despite the lingering cold) which means we are getting hardier fare. Still no corn or tomatoes, but we'll hoping for a good season (and raiding the farmer's market.)We got our first potatoes of the year. It feels a bit early for these, and if we end up with more than ten weeks in a row of getting potatoes then we are in real trouble. These are going into a roasted potato salad that we like.
Two huge bulbs of garlic. I mean, really huge.
More onions.
A very small head of lettuce. After the spring's onslaught, we took a bit of a break from salads, so this guy ended up being a nice, fresh reminder of spring.
Chives will get snuck into pretty much every place we can think to. We always find it a challenge to get through them before they go bad.
This year seems to be the year of Green beans and dill. We made a recipe with the last share's beans using dill and goat cheese, and plan to use this one to make an orzo, dill, and fennel salad.
Portobello mushrooms are not an acceptable substitute for meat no matter what the vegetarians say, but they are tasty marinated and grilled.
And so our nemesis carrots slip into the house silently. Again, if we get two pounds a week for ten weeks we are in trouble.
Two small bulbs of fennel with hugely long fronds. These are slated for the bean and orzo salad. Fennel is an odd duck. It has such a strong scent when I cut it, but it seems to disappear into most dishes we put it in. I do like it, but it befuddles me so.
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