Ultimate Summer Salad and Grilled Pizza

I. Am. Not. A. Purist.  Not with this salad, anyway.  While I might be incurring some form of slight guilt, I say to hell with purity and exploit the living daylights out of your farmers' market for this super simple Greek salad.  It took less than ten minutes to prepare this bowl of crunchy, sweet and briny goodness.

Chicken Mushroom ...in Risotto with Fresh Artichoke Hearts

Note to self: never make mushroom risotto any other way ever again, add those NH Mushroom Company guys to my Christmas card list, and find out the name of that artichoke farmer I ran into at the Tamworth farmers' market a couple weeks ago.

Here you have the 'chicken' mushroom, aka Chicken of the Woods, aka L. cinncinatus.  Use it like you would, well, chicken!

Visit the NH Mushroom Co.'s website to learn about the tremendous health benefits associated with mushrooms, and to see a few of those they grow.

This large, gnarly-looking oak tree fungus is really fun to work with.  The fans can be pulled apart much the same way you would cooked chicken meat, making it versatile for stew, chowder, risotto, enchilades....  The thicker ends can be

Chicken Fiddle Alfredo with Pappardelle

Roasted chicken meets wild fiddleheads and Terra Cotta Pasta in a mutually agreed upon parmesan cream sauce.  This is why my midriff is... ...nevermind!

My mum brought me down another chicken (she's a good mummy) from her local farmers' market in Tamworth.  A good-sized bird, it was roasted up on Sunday with thoughts of sandwiches and other quick concoctions throughout the week.  Then I got surprised with a bag of fiddleheads yesterday, plucked by the very

Braised Short Ribs

While my posts may contradict my words, we really don't eat a lot of meat.  But, whereas I don't have a picture of any of my recent vegetarian goodies, and only have a picture of braised short ribs that I cooked up a couple of weeks ago, a post on meat it is!

Top o' the Hill to ye! Steak tips, frizzled onions and kelp slaw

  Tender, tasty, off-the-stick sirloin tips, teriyaki style.  Beef from Alan Fredrickson's 'Top of the Hill Farm', Wolfeboro, NH.  Teriyaki sauce is, um, my 1-of-5 nonlocal vices (soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil...).  

Beef.  Beef, beef, beef, beef, beef.  My sister and I begged like dogs...tongues out, hands and knees, forearms pulled in with bent wrists-begged like dogs...for the pan drippings of my mother's Sunday roast when we were kids.  Salty, savory, meaty pan drippings....  To think that some people wash it all down the drain.  They should be prosecuted.

Breakfast fit for a farmers' market queen

I don't know that I need to say more.  Okay, I will.  'Many Raisin' toast from Sunnyfield Ovens that we picked up yesterday at the market, slathered with Brookford Farm brie (also purchased yesterday) and my buddy Marie's homemade jellies (left: orange-mint; right: red pepper-raspberry; not shown: quince-vanilla).  All her jellies are made with her own garden's produce and herbs!

Wait till I unwrap the blue from Brookford's.

Okay, nevermind, I shouldn't make you wait.  I'm very likely going to add it to a mesclun greens & apple salad with lots of spiced nuts (buddy Marie is a keeper!)  It's so creamy, though, that I might very well have to slightly melt it over grilled beach Pea ciabatta, with crushed spiced nuts and drizzled with Victory Bees honey.  Haha, I'll try to remember pictures.

'New Hampshire' Fried Chicken Dinner

My mother procures 6 or 7 chickens every year from her local farmer in Tamworth, one of which found its way to my freezer recently.  Upon thawing, I promptly broke it down into pieces, oven-fried 'em, and served 'em up with all the rest of the usual KY-style suspects (what can I say, I'm a child of the 70's), the difference being my sides came from within 3-25 miles!

Red and green cabbage-carrot slaw, thank you Heron Pond; corn, blanched and frozen from last summer's awesome harvest, thank you Barker's; mashed potatoes, thank you Riverside Farm; gravy, with homemade chicken stock, thank you Brookford Farm for the awesome flour; and, herbed cream cheese biscuits, thank you Gagne Foods, Bath, ME. 

Chicken Pot Pie - Valentine's Dinner Ideas

What better way to weatha a massive stawm (24"??) than over a bowl of homemade chicken pot pie?!  New Roots bird, Meadow's Mirth carrots, Brookford's whole wheat flour (crust), and Wild Miller's spuds...the only way to fly, er, eat, er love the one you're with!