03-21-2014

Eat Local Month

In case you can’t tell from my web address, I’m a local loving gal! Locally grown veggies, mom & pop stores, unique one of a kind events…those are the things that make my heart go pitter patter.

So how exciting is it that here in Charleston, April is EAT LOCAL MONTH! Lowcountry Local First encourages all of us lowcountry residers to put our $ where our mouth is. If you want access to locally grown food, then get out there and support our farmers and locally owned restaurants that source ingredients locally.

The overarching goal for the month is to take the Eat Local Challenge where you shift $10/week of your food budget to the local food system. That may not seem like much but when combined together we can make a huge influence to the Charleston food scene.

So go pick your own strawberries to make jam with, buy kale at the farmer’s market and make a kale smoothie, or get your cup o’ joe from the cooler coffee shop around the corner. 

Here are all the fun events that Lowcountry Local First is putting on ~

Tuesday, April 1 ~ SHOP AT WHOLE FOODS
5% of WF sales this day will go to LLF’s Sustainable Agriculture program

Tuesday, April 8 ~ Mt. Pleasant Farmer’s Market kicks off
My kids are literally counting down the hours until this awesome day. Their strategic line of attack for the Farmer’s Market…King of Pops first, kettle corn second…

Saturday, April 12 ~ Downtown Farmer’s Market  kicks off
Check out the LLF tent at a “PLOW TO CHOW” special event…and in case you’re scratching your head…a plow is what breaks the ground so you can plant seeds, work the land, break your back.

Saturday, April 19 ~ Lowcountry Farm Tours
Meander along dirt roads, breathe in the fresh air, snack on just picked strawberries, chat with the guys & gals operating the plows responsible for your chow.

Sunday, April 27 ~ Chef’s Potluck
Among the beautiful oaks at Middleton Place, nosh & sip on some of the finest ingredients the lowcountry has to offer, prepared by some of the best chef’s in the area.

And if you don’t live in Charleston, here is information on how to move to the coolest foodie town ever….

Ha ha! What I meant to say was…here is information on how to find a Live Local organization in your area.

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10-16-2013

A Canning Party

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Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes…Is there anything as glorious as homegrown tomatoes?

Back in August when the tomato vines were so heavily laden with ripening fruit I hosted a canning party. It was fun, glorious, and wonderful. And I passed on canning knowledge to 3 more people. I think my grandma’s would have been proud.

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I enjoy the process of canning and producing a tangible something. There is nothing like making spaghetti sauce, taco dip, or some shrimp scampi with your very own canned tomatoes. And I want to pass this enjoyment on to others. I want people to realize that canning and preserving isn’t as hard as you think it is. That it IS doable.

Take Lindsey (on the right) for example…I taught her how to pickle okra last summer and then last month she had a party and showed her daughter’s teacher how to pickle okra. I think that is so cool! We have to spread the wealth of knowledge that we have in our heads. My grandmothers, mom, sister-in-law…they shared it with me and now I’m simply passing it on.

SO GO CAN!!! And if you ever have a canning question or just need canning encouragement…let me know. I’m here to help.

Love,

Jessica

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11-06-2012

Take your child to vote today

Hello long lost friends….I really am out here in this world. I’ve just been taking a sabbatical from blogging to spend more time with the kids. And its been nice. But I do miss blogging and my head is often thinking “Oh, that would be a cool blog post”…

So today is the day. YAY!!!

Or actually, tomorrow is the day. You see, tonight while we are sleeping in sweet slumber a magical fairy will descend upon our twisting roads and picks up ALL those pesky VOTE FOR ME signs.

Obviously, I’m in la la land. But if you are feeling in the mood to remove a sign or two or even more, and you live in the Lowcountry, you can actually receive money to an awesome local restaurant….Triangle Char & Bar. How cool is this….for each political sign you bring in for recycling, they give you a $1 credit to be used there.

I’m not a very political person and lately have been questioning if voting even matters. Who knows?  But it is a really neat experience to share with my school age child and I do firmly believe that some votes really do matter…like your school board vote or if you live in California, voting for GMO labeling.

So get out there and exercise your right to vote today! And if it isn’t too much of a challenge, take your child with you so they can learn about the democratic process. And if you live in California….PLEASE vote for GMO labeling!

Have a great day!
Jess

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08-02-2012

Pesto Pesto Pesto

Let’s see if this equation is correct…

French fries and pizza sauce can count as a serving of vegetables, rightttttttt?

So then, pesto can count as a veggie too? I hope so, because right about now (with the heat & the humidity) there isn’t a whole lot of cooking being done in the Paulsen house.

We’ve been eating our way through such massive amounts of pesto that I need to find a way to get my basil to grow faster. Even with 8 basil plants, I have to supplement the recipe with other herbs besides the most common ingredient. Luckily, the kids don’t care…so we’ve added arugula, mint, oregano, and even rosemary. My most favorite addition is the arugula. Probably because I can get a huge bag of it at the Farmer’s Market and produce a lot of pesto that way.


Here is my favorite way to make pesto. It is super flexible, so feel free to add more herbs, skip the nuts to watch calories, or play around with the olive oil portion until you get a consistency you like. The biggest difference in my pesto recipe is that I recommend sauteing the garlic for a few minutes to reduce the heartburn/acid reflux (getting old, aren’t I?) that raw garlic seems to bring about.

Ingredients

5 cups green herbs, arugula, and/or spinach
1/2 cup hard nuts (be adventuresome, try something besides pine nuts)
6 garlic cloves
1 cup olive oil
3/4 cup freshly grated top quality Parmesan cheese (but guess what…any ‘hard’ cheese will work. I tried cheddar (make sure you use real white cheddar) the other day and it was pretty good)
kosher salt & fresh ground black pepper

Preparation

Place peeled garlic cloves in a food processor and chop slightly. (Or chop by hand. I use my processor to chop so that I don’t have to dirty up a cutting board. Oh, lazy me.) On medium heat, saute the minced garlic for 2 to 3 minutes. Place garlic back into food processor.

Add nuts to the garlic, and chop/blend/puree in your processor until finely chopped. Add herbs, a teaspoon or so of kosher salt, and grind the pepper until you get tired of grinding. Next, start your food processor, and add the olive oil through the side spout. Or, you can do as I sometimes lazily do, and just dump the olive oil on top of the herbs and puree/blend. But if you want to watch how much olive oil you are adding, the side spout should do the trick nicely.

Now, add in the cheese and blend/puree again until you reach your desired consistency. Hmmm…at this point you taste and  think, God…how thankful I am that you made basil or arugula or anything green. (On another note, what do you think God’s favorite color is? I think green for sure. But blue is a top contender with all that sky above the basil plants!) Okay, so back to pesto!!!

You can totally make this in a blender, but I have to say, the blender I used to own was crap. Crap with a capital C. I couldn’t do anything with that blender. But some people say they love their blender. I happen to have a NINJA that I adore. It works extremely hard all summer longer blending together pesto for my family. Thank God for NINJAs and basil!

Oh, this recipe makes about 2 to 3 cups of pesto…so half the recipe if you aren’t into eating pesto as much as we are! You can freeze extra pesto in ice cube trays and just place in a resealable bag once the ‘pesto cubes’ are frozen.

Our favorite pesto dishes are obviously over pasta, but its even pretty tasty over a nice juicy steak.

Have a great Friday and stay cool!

Jess

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07-09-2012

Tomato, Caramelized Onions, and Gorgonzola Pie

Happy (late!) 4th of July!! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and indulged in lots of food, laughter, and relaxation. Fisherman was on vacation and we had a wonderful Staycation. I feel like it was Christmas in July considering the copious amounts of food I ate over the last week.

So what have I been eating??? I’m so glad you asked! Fresh mahi mahi, roasted corn salad, pasta salad, BBQ, hmmmm….there isn’t a lot I haven’t consumed this past week. But my favorite dish was a Tomato Gorgonzola Pie that I adapted from a Gourmet Magazine Cookbook.

I probably shouldn’t admit this, since I am so proud to be Southern, but up until I made this tomato pie, I had never eaten one in my life. Crazy, isn’t it! And there’s no holding me back now.

The best part was that it took me no more than 45 minutes, start to finish. That includes the lets find where I hid the gorogonzola in the fridge and let me go pick some tomatoes and get side tracked into watering the garden. Sorry, this may be a long blog post….its just been a while since I’ve posted and I have all these thoughts I want to share with ya’ll, but I get distracted with kids and life and blah blah, okay back to the pie…

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So to start, you’ll need a pie crust, Gorgonzola cheese, onions, and tomatoes….pretty simple, right!

After placing crust into your pie pan, place pie weights…or dry beans…onto the pie with aluminum foil to keep the middle of the pie from rising while you pre-bake the crust. You need to bake the crust beforehand since you only put it under a broiler once the ingredients are added.

Add some olive oil and your onions into a heavy pan and start the caramelizing process. I just LOOOVE caramelized onions! Even Fisherman loves & appreciates them and he isn’t the biggest foodie on the block.

Also, don’t be afraid to try caramelizing red onions. I did half white & half red the second time I made this and they tasted great. (And yes, I did make & eat this pie TWICE in the past week! Shows you how good it is!)

Good advice for caramelizing onions is to turn your back to them. Find something else to do, you don’t need to stir constantly, just every few minutes.

Now see all those brown bits of good onion residue? Scrape those bad boys up and stir in with the onions. They have all sorts of good flavor! And yep, this picture was from Pie #1 when I only used white onions.

Your piecrust should now be finished baking, so place caramelized onions in first…

…then your cheese, tomato, cheese layers…

…broil for a few minutes until cheese slightly browns, garnish with fresh basil and…

…Voila…Eat that pie up!!!

I hope you like as much as I did!!!

Jessica

Tomato, Caramelized Onions, and Gorgonzola Pie

Ingredients
1 9″ prepared pie crust
2 large onions (yellow or red), very thinly sliced
1 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
5 medium sized ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced
Handful of fresh basil for garnishing

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Place pie crust into a glass pie pan. Line pie pan with aluminum foil and fill with pie weights/dried beans/or raw rice. Bake approximately 20 minutes until pasty is pale golden brown around rim. Remove weights and bake another 8 minutes until golden brown all over. If edge of crust looks to dark, place tin foil around the edges for remaining bake time.

While crust is baking, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat and cook onions for approximately 20-25 minutes until they are caramelized in color. Sprinkle the onions with kosher salt a few times while cooking and stir every few minutes. As the onions begin to soften and brown, there will be residue at the bottom of the pan; stir these brown goodie bits into the onions.

Preheat oven broiler.

Spread caramelized onions over bottom of pie shell and top with 3/4 cup of the cheese. Arrange tomatoes, slightly overlapping, in circles over the cheese. Sprinkle tomatoes with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup of cheese over the tomatoes and drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil over the top.

Broil the pie until the cheese slightly browns, approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Garnish with fresh basil if desired.

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04-19-2012

Do you CSA?

Hello Father,

I have a confession. I love gardening, I love farmers, I love dirt. But I just can’t imagine joining a CSA. I want freedom of choice, to pick my veggies just the way I want, when I want. You see, God, signing up for a CSA requires commitment. And, I have come to realize that I don’t necessarily enjoy commitments. (I can’t even keep up with once a week pilates.) I do go to the Farmer’s Market faithfully and I shop at the local grocer each week. But I still feel unfaithful to the farmer by not participating in a CSA. Does my selfishness of wanting to choose my veggies each week mean I’m not really supporting the farmer? That rain or shine, drought or flood, he’ll have money to keep his farm afloat no matter how the produce turns out?

Help me out,

Jessica

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I really am serious. Even though I encourage all my friends to participate in one, I have a huge commitment issue with CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture). And until this past Tuesday I kept telling myself that if there was a farm that had a pick-your-own veggie CSA that I would participate. But then you find that ‘answer’ and realize, you’re still hesitant.

You see, I love going to the different vendors at the market and choosing a tomato here, a carrot bunch there, and a pile of lettuce greens at the next one. And my worry is this, if I commit to spending my $20/week with only one vendor – will I regret it? I definitely won’t regret the quality – its the best there is, but will I regret not getting to spend my $ with lots of vendors in lieu of spending it with one?

What do you think? Do you like your CSA? Do you have one where you choose your veggies or do you get an exciting surprise bag each week? Should I just go for it and try it out? And if you are a farmer…I’d love to know your thoughts on CSA participants versus farmer’s market buyers? Do you get as much $ from going to the Farmer’s Market or would you rather have it all in CSA participants?

Thanks for helping me with my dilemma! Jessica

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