Sprout & Pea

Sum­mer has arrived! Almost. There are still a few cool days that keep rear­ing their heads but that is quite alright with me. Those ever so slightly cool evenings make for a per­fect night to have friends over for a meal and some red wine. My friend and I have spent this past week tag-​​teaming inven­tive recipes using our giant box of Lan­caster Farms CSA veg­gies. Fri­day night after work, she and I and a few other friends gath­ered in my kitchen and “impromptued” a per­fect fall-​​into-​​summer dinner.

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After a win­ter of very heavy meals and far too much eat­ing out, I am look­ing for­ward to a cre­ative sum­mer in my kitchen. With the cool tem­per­a­tures drag­ging on, I’ve been in a bit of an inspi­ra­tion lull over the past few months, but that all changed last night when my first CSA deliv­ery from Lan­caster Farms arrived.  This is my first time join­ing a CSA. My reser­va­tions have always lied in the excess of food that would come along with a weekly deliv­ery that feeds a fam­ily of four. So, when two of my friends showed their inter­est in split­ting a half share and we cal­cu­lated the cost to work out to about $3 per week for each of us, all of my hes­i­ta­tion went out the win­dow and we signed up that day. Read more:

I love farro for its tex­ture, specif­i­cally the nut­ti­ness it adds to a dish, but I don’t love it for its price tag. It’s also not exactly gluten-​​free, so it has become an ingre­di­ent that I enjoy once in a blue moon when the mood really strikes. Well, the other night the mood struck. As I was walk­ing through the isles of my local mar­ket with arugula in my bas­ket, crav­ing some­thing refresh­ing for din­ner, I hap­pened to notice a bag of farro on the shelf. It’s rare that my local mar­ket has this delec­table grain in stock, so after a bit of brain churn­ing, and a lit­tle drool­ing over fresh herbs that I spot­ted in a nearby isle, I tossed the farro into my bas­ket. Read more:

I love any excuse to have all of my friends over for a big meal and Thanks­giv­ing is just about the per­fect excuse!  Sun­day night, we hosted a pre-​​Thanksgiving potluck at our place and boy did our tal­ented friends deliver!  We had every­thing from quinoa to red beet salad with cit­rus and nuts to veg­gie potato pan­cakes to bacon wrapped dates to pineap­ple apple pud­ding to fried choco­late chip cookie dough.  That’s right, I said fried choco­late chip cookie dough.
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