eat make read

It’s that happy time of year when each time I visit the market a new berry or fruit is there to welcome me. The sucker I am, I scoop up little bundles left and right, not sure what to do, just sure that they’re pretty and I’ll figure something out. This week’s big score was sweet cherries. I brought them home, popped a few in my mouth then started thinking about what they might become. Weekends in our apartment usually include one fancy breakfast, and by that I mean something requires me to turn on the stove or oven, so I immediately started thinking about muffins. I found a recipe that sounded different than the usual muffin recipe because it included jam, so I was sold. Only one problem, I didn’t have any jam.

I got resourceful though and used a handful of raspberries I had tucked away from last weeks fruit spree, combined them with about a third of my cherries and cooked them down to get a sort of compote. Perfecto! Oh, and here’s a hot tip. I don’t have a cherry pitter, so instead I used these reusable plastic straws to poke the pit out. It worked like a charm and kept my cherries in tact.

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Last year I did a little experiment that I called market week where I bought all my groceries including milk, cheese, meat, vegetables and bread at the greenmarket. It was really fun and I’ve found that in the year since, I do about 75% of my shopping at the market, which makes me really happy. I love seeing the farmers and people who make the food that I put in my body and knowing how much they care about what they’re doing.

This year I wanted to do market week again, but there needed to be something bigger and better about it. That’s where YOU come in. Please join me in market week 2009, a week where we buy everything from the farmer’s market, a farm stand, a local CSA or even grow it in our own gardens and create delicious meals. Maybe you can’t do a whole week, maybe you can just commit a day, whatever it is, I’d love to have you participate.

I realize this is quite a heads up, but I’m hoping to get people excited and thinking about what they’d like to do for market week. We all love delicious, fresh food and hopefully this little experiment will allow everyone share their goods and see what’s in season across the country (and hopefully around the world).

How it works:
Buy your groceries
Make a list and visit your local farmers market to buy your groceries for the week.

Photograph your goods and upload to our flickr group:
Whether it’s at the market or in your kitchen, photograph what you’ve purchased and upload the photos to out market week flickr group right here. I can’t wait to see what’s in season around the country.

Make delicious meals and upload to our flickr group:
Now here’s the fun part. Create a week’s worth of meals and upload your photos to the flickr group.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at kelly(at)carambula.com or ask questions in the comments section.

Please let me introduce you to my favorite cookie ever. This, my friends, is my mom’s recipe for the sugar-coated, molasses based ginger cookies that rock my world. I’ve been sneaking seconds of these ginger cookies since I was a little girl. Until recently, they actually contained no ginger at all, but you know me, I found a way to sneak some in and might I say, actually improve them! I’m still not sure what it is about this exact recipe that is so good, but as someone who jumps at the chance to eat a ginger cookie, these are most definitely the best I’ve ever had. Read more

Get your tote bags ready because market week is coming soon! I’m super excited about this year’s challenge and I’m hoping to get YOU involved. So start thinking of tasty seasonal recipes and I’ll start getting my act together so I can tell you more. More information to come next week! Woohoo!

Check out last years market week here.

Oh how I love Fridays. It’s such a relief to have a week behind you and free days to do fun stuff ahead. This week’s happy hour is a simple one that uses fresh raspberries (the first of the season) from the market. A few muddled berries, a little simple syrup and some gin are mixed up and topped off with a little seltzer. It’s fresh and refreshing, the perfect way to start off the first official full weekend of summer.

Cheers to you my friends!

raspberry gin fizz
makes 1 cocktail

6 raspberries
1 oz simple syrup
1 1/2 oz gin
ice
seltzer

1
In a cocktail shaker, muddle raspberries, simple syrup and gin. Add ice and shake.
2
Pour everything into a glass and top off with seltzer.
3
Cheers!

Well, I’m just going to say it. These meatballs aren’t going to win any beauty pageants. They are ugly little suckers, but man oh man are they tasty. I’m a big fan of ground turkey because it has nice flavor but also lends itself to other flavors so well. When I saw this recipe for chipotle meatballs in Simply Organic I was instantly intrigued and ready to whip up a batch.

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If you missed it the first time here on eatmakeread, please check out my guest post for black rice with edamame over on The Kitchn. Thank you to Faith and the folks at Apartment Therapy & the Kitchn!

On our recent trip to San Francisco one of the places I just had to visit was Omnivore Books on Food. I’ve been wanting to visit ever since Lisa gave me a head’s up about this dreamy cookbook shop last year. Omnivore not only carries an amazing assortment of new cookbook titles, but also a fabulous array of vintage cookbooks not only from the US but the UK as well. Unfortunately I happened to visit on a day when they were randomly closed. Wah, wah. Lucky for me, my lovely husband Aaron made an extra trip to scout it out for me. He came through in a major way when he surprised me with a lovely assortment of vintage cookbooks from the shop.

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Growing up, cooked carrots were one of my least favorite vegetables, and quite frankly, until I saw these beautiful carrots at the market this weekend I haven’t thought about trying them since. I was innocently perusing my favorite vendor’s booth at the market when I spotted two bundles of carrots, one yellow, one orange, and well, the yellow ones looked so lovely and tempting that I just snapped them up without knowing exactly what they were or what to do with them. I came home and found a recipe that sounded too good to be true, sauteed carrots with honey and rosemary. I mean come on, honey and rosemary make everything better, even cooked carrots.

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Rhubarb has a special place in my heart. Not only is it the first “red thing” (red things are my favorite) to arrive at the market each spring, but it’s also a family favorite. Aaron and I went on a road trip a few months after we started dating and spent a few days with his grandparents up in Northern Minnesota. Rhubarb is one of the few things you can grow up in those parts, but it’s something I’d never even heard of before that trip. Well, lucky for me Grandma Cooky has one heck of a rhubarb recipe that instantly won me over. It took a few more trips up to Minnesota, but on the last one I was handed down the 150 year old family recipe for Rhubarb Johnny.

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