Gluten Free Grilled Pizza

My friend Thom is an amazing cook and we have been meaning to get together and do so for a long time. It finally happened a couple weeks ago. We invited my best friend Hadley, who happens to be one a dem Gluten-Free peeps. Thom and I took that on as a challenge and grilled up some stuff on my back deck to satisfy all of Hadley’s wheat-hating needs.
Margherita pizza. The gluten-free dough stuck to the grill, so on our second attempt we really oiled that baby up and we got this nice lookin’ pie.
Simple salad of swiss chard and radishes from the Slow Food URI garden.
 Tomatoes and fresh chives from the Slow Food URI Garden
Eggplant grilling with what looks like the national pizza of Australia.
And ‘course, its not a mid day cook out without sangria and fresh mint.
Happy summer!

AS220

SoRRY sorry. I know I have not posted in….well its been almost two months. I apologize to all of you millions of viewers out there. I know you have all been waiting anxiously and in the previous months  have found yourself at a loss due to the absence. I know, its ok. We’re back.
Anyways, this is the second restaurant post we have done on here, because a great part about great food is eating great food at great restaurants!
AS220 is definitely one of my favorite spots in RI. I lo0o0o0ove this place. First off, they are always holding concerts (Deer Tick anyone?) and cool art is always on display. There is something always going on there. Even just going to the bathroom there is fun because you get to read all the little blurbs and haikus people write on the walls. They have a fun little restaurant and bar, where the food is local and delicious but best of all SUPER CHEAP.
So I have been working as a SNAP outreach worker this summer, which means I go around to different sites in RI and help people apply for food stamps if they qualify. I often find myself around the Providence area with about an hour to spare. So where do I go for lunch?
On this particular May day it was GORGEOUS outside so I sat out on Empire street people watching.
My SEVEN DOLLAR sandwich and herbal iced tea (and THE CAVE by Jose Saramago, a great book if you are looking to read one).
Marinated chicken, sauteed kale, red onion, marmalade and smoked goat cheese on durum wheat.
We went back for dinner last week before a documentary screening at Local 121 down the street. He ordered said sandwich and I ordered a tofu coconut curry dish that was delish. Then we were off to The Greenhorns an awesome and inspiring documentary about young farmers in America.
“We are committed to bringing you food that is affordable (really), seasonal, simple and creative. I know, it’s wacky. But hear me out: buying and eating locally means reducing your carbon footprint. It means you can high-five the people who grow and cook your food. It means that your afternoon snack hasn’t been on a truck for eight days, and that when you eat it, it will have actual flavor not fabricated in a factory. Your food spends less time traveling and you spend less time wondering what went into that burger. You know what that means: me time to make art, more time to enjoy music and more time to relax and soak up all your little state has to offer.”
-Guy Michaud, manager, AS220
HeLL to thA yeA

Maybe we are Neanderthals

On Easter Sunday my dad and I were hanging out in our yard shootin’ the breeze when suddenly we remembered that Sheep’s Sorrel (Scientific name: Rumex acetosella) grows in our yard. My father has a degree in botany and a master’s in soil chemistry, and he has taught me all I know about edible plants.  Sheep’s sorrel was always my favorite. When I was younger, I would hunt for it with my friends on the playground.
Sheep sorrel has a delicious sour, lemony taste that you wouldn’t expect from a common weed. I expect it would be quite good as a garnish or in a salad. It also has a high level of antioxidants. Where I live (in Rhode Island) it usually grows wherever grass does, primarily on the edge. Look for oblong leaves with short projections on the end, right above the stem. They always grow in bunches. Try some next time you spot them growing.
sheep sorrel
My father and I never did find any that Easter Sunday (I think it was too early in the spring) but what we did find were wild chives and dandelions, both of which are edible. We had also just bought some Narragnasett Bay quahogs and mussels  from our friend Mason at the Costal Grower’s farmer’s market, so we were ready to concoct a meal.
First we took the heads of dandelion flowers and fried them by dipping them in a simple milk,egg and flour batter, frying them in vegetable oil and salting them. I first tried dandelions prepared this way by an awesome lady named Wendy Rappaport, a wild foods enthusiast who teaches foraging classes, at a local food festival last year. They are delicious and again, something you would NOT expect from a common weed.
Next we made a dandelion leaf salad with crumbled goat cheese, toasted pecans, wild chives and apples, tossed with balsamic vinaigrette. The dandelion leaves can be rather bitter (think a strong arugula) so you usually want something fruity or creamy to balance them out. Bread is the Rustic Italian Loaf from Village Hearth up the street.
We made an awesome butter-garlic sauce for the mussels and quahogs and they were the best part of the meal. I think next time we get a craving for them we are going to try to find some ourselves.
We desire a culture in our food, a connectedness to it. A connectedness and culture that we usually lose a sense of in this so very modern world.  I guess that’s what real food is folks. Food that grows in your very own backyard.

Broccoli, Celery- gotta be

I was a vegetarian for a long time. I’m not anymore, but I don’t buy meat much and I rarely cook it. Probably, mostly, because I don’t know how. But I know a once in a life time opportunity when I see it.

I processed (yes killed) my own Thanksgiving turkey. That turkey had a sweet life- living on Pat’s Pastured Farm in Jamestown just roaming the fields as it should, and was killed humanely in a quick, painless instant.  I will let you in on a little secret- it was the best turkey I had ever eaten in my life.

Alive turkeys.
 Dead turkeys ready to be sold.
More photos on Slow Food URI.
So, in the mean time, enjoy my meatless posts.
Here is a dinner:
Appetizer:
A recreation of The Garlic‘s garlic cheese spread mentioned in previous post. We went crazy for this, wondering if we could make a  buttload of batches of it and save it in our fridge. Technically you could but I feel like it will always be better fresh. Bread is the 8-grain loaf from the Village Hearth Bakery in Jamestown where I work.
2nd appetizer/first coursey kind of thing:
Goat cheese filled dates, try these fo real they are SO GOOD
Salad:
Swiss Chard and avocado with parmesan and roasted garlic dressing. Simple and delicious.
Main Course: Sopa/Zuppa/Soup
A split pea and barley soup I concocted the night before. Pureed with leeks, onions, carrots and vegetable broth.  I decided to add sauteed onions because we had one in the fridge. Topped with a dollop of creme fraiche, cilantro and a sprinkle of hot red pepper flakes.
Dessert:
Vanilla bean ice cream with dark chocolate shavings. thrown in were some of the goat cheese filled dates. If I were to recommend any of these one dishes it would be this one. So, so good.
What a great meal. Probably one of our last soups too, because its SPRING and we don’t need to eat soul-warming foods anymore. Daffodils!!

Gahlic

Killington Vermont.  My best friend Kelsey and I embarked on the journey in her father’s Subaru wagon packed with snacks, skis and CDs. We were staying about 2 miles down the road from the mountain in a little place called the Butternut Pancake Inn (yes it was just as cute as it sounds). Each day as we drove up the long and winding road leading to the mountain, we would pass by a restaurant called “The Garlic”. After our first view, each time we passed  for the rest of the trip, we would both exclaim in unison “Da gahhhhhlic. Mmmmmm”.

Pardon the bad breath and you’ve got yourself one of the most simple and refined but yet most widely used and delicious flavorings of all time. I am a huge fan of the bulb and so is Kels. We had to give this place a try.

I wish I took more photos of this spot. Better yet, I wish I could have captured the smell and somehow shared it with you internet people. The place reeked of garlic, in a good way. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING on the menu had garlic in it. Instead of the usual bread and butter/olive oil, it was bread and a crushed garlic clove topped with Parmesan cheese, oil and vinegar. Genius. Kelsey and I both ordered the creamy garlic soup and we were in heaven. I know I promised no more crappy pictures but all I had was my phone. I followed with a salad with garlic vinaigrette and garlic butter roasted vegetables. Kels got garlic chicken with sauteed spinach and tomatoes.

Awful, awful picture. You will just need to go yourself to understand.

Here we had an entire restaurant devoted to this one ingredient, worshiping and savoring it and honoring it as though it was a food of the gods. Maybe this is how we should look at all we eat. We so often take food for granted, shoving it down our esophagus in cars on our way to work- or maybe reducing ourselves to eating food that can’t even really be identified as “food” (hello cheese puff and Twinkies).

Jump into your food. Savor it. Smell it. Talk about it with your friends. Have fun cooking it. Grow it. Save some for your neighbor. Worship garlic, or whatever food you love.

“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.” – Alice May Brock

A Real Rhody Breakfast

You know what I love to do? Wake up inappropriately late, saunter around in my snowflake jammies, yell at my cats who are sitting on the counter when they are not supposed to be and make an insanely delicious breakfast. Since I am a student at URI and I live on campus, (which means a tiny room and no kitchen) I rarely get to do this. Yet alas! It is spring break and I have the luxury of using my mother’s kitchen. I have only been home for three days, (I was skiing in VT for 4) but you better believe I’ve been cookin’ up a storm.

Sunday while I was making breakfast, I realized everything I was using was local. This just proves to people (like my skeptical parents) there IS INDEED local food you can eat in the winter and it is NOT HARD. Check out the Farm Fresh RI website for a winter market near you.  I hit up the Costal Grower’s market at the mills in North Kingstown. I try to go every Saturday- I always come home with treasures.

Anywhoodle. Lets cut to the chase.

Did I mention I found a food setting on my Nikon camera? Its like they knew. I will try to not post anymore lousy pictures (refer to post one).

Bread is multi-grain from Olga’s cup and saucer based out of Providence RI. Jam is from a jar that my friend Alyssa gave me over Christmas, made last summer from grapes she picked right near her home in South Kingstown, RI. The greens are greens I bought at the market (sorry not to give credit to the farm, I can’t remember the name) and the eggs are from my best friend’s cattle farm right here on the island of Jamestown, Windmist.

Local AND tasty.

Happy eatings.

Taste the Rainbow

I was first introduced to rainbow carrots by my good friend Alyssa. She is a food obsessed girl such as myself. Check out her blog Absolute Ambrosia for some fantastic recipes.

Anywho.

For our club Slow Food URI we decided to have a local foods thanksgiving dinner, complete with local donated vegetables and a turkey we “processed” ourselves from Pat’s Pastured Poultry Farm in Jamestown, RI.

Along with Rhody Fresh milk and cream, Windmist Farm cider and eggs, Sonowski Farm potatoes, Watson Farm beef and Moonstone Garden buttercup squash were oodles of carrots courtesy of the URI Agronomy farm- and they were purple. I had never seen purple carrots before, so I was a bit shocked. Alyssa informed me that there are actually many varieties of carrots- some purple, violet or even a reddish color. These are heirloom breeds, and are usually not sold at your local Stop&Shop. These carrots are delicious. I concocted a vat of carrot soup with them of which went down very well at the  Thanksgiving Dinner. Valen was eating the leftovers for weeks and said he was glum when he ate his last bowl.

These carrots are hard to come by. The only other time I stumbled across them was through a roasted vegetable dish at Local 121, but they always have amazing local food.

So when I saw them at the farmer’s market in North Kingstown, I grabbed a whole bunch. MmmmmM!

Aaaaaand you guessed it. I made carrot cake- one of my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE desserts. Whenever I am out to eat and carrot cake is on the dessert menu I can guarantee you I will be trying it. Along with olives and those really, really addicting sweet potato chip things, it is one of our top foods. Anyways, I am a huge fan.

The Last Supper

He was leaving for San Francisco.
I was leaving for Vermont.
How do we celebrate our last evening together?
By eating lots and lots of food.

I’m going to use this post to give my my little speech on how important I believe local food is. After this I won’t bother you with it again (I could go on and on).

In a nutshell- local food rules. It is good for the environment because it uses way less petroleum than shipping produce halfway around the world (ahem greens grown in South America that can be grown right here in Little Rhody). It is an economically sound practice as well because it keeps your dollar in the state and supports the dwindling population of small farmers (30+ years ago we had about 70 dairy farmers in the state- now we have 11). Local food is fresher, and often grown organically. Most importantly however, IT IS THE MOST DELICIOUS FOOD YOU WILL EVER EAT. I am a huge, huge advocate of it. If you want to know more about local food, visit my other blog at Slow Food URI or just leave a comment and ask.
Our dinner contained 2 local ingredients: Rainbow Carrots (again) and Rainbow Chard.

The photo is oven roasted leeks, carrots and parsnips over wild rice. The two little guys on the side are goat cheese filled dates. The were not part of the original dinner plan but Valen was fooling around with some odds and ends while cooking and came up with the combo. Delicious.

For some more veggies and protein we made a salad with local Rainbow Chard, fried chick peas, sprouts, tomatoes and some yummy Briana’s brand dressing (they make the best).

This supper was vegetarian, local and really, really healthy. Jesus and his apostles would approve. Amen.

Sushi and Beginnings

 If sushi is made in the forest and there is no one around to eat it, does it still make a sound?
Note: picture is taken by a lame cell phone camera. Expect better quality pictures in posts to come.

A text I received one cold December afternoon:

“How do you feel about making sushi tonight?”

Make our own sushi? Don’t you have to be a famous sushi chef to do that, one who can fillet a fish in one second? Seems complicated. Yet as it turned out, he had already bought the fish, not to mention those special bamboo rolling mats. Sushi it was and honestly, I was a bit apprehensive.

But you know what? Its not as hard as it sounds. And once we were done (after a few sushi rice mishaps) well, we were proud. It looked good, really good.

An epiphany was born that very night.

No two people would make 40+ sushi rolls and just act like that was a thing all people do on Tuesday nights. And might I add- its not just sushi either. I am a broke college student but whenever I do round up some funds, where do they go? Straight down my esophagus- a splurge on a winter squash perhaps, or a trip to Diego’s restaurant in Newport. Maybe some lentils for soup, or possibly eating the best flan ever known to man. Herbs at the farmer’s market? Taco night? Or, coconut macaroons anyone? What’s that? I’ve been to almost every restaurant on Thames street? I admit: I am a food lover, okay, food obsessor.

A food blog will be the answer to my undocumented madness.  Here I shall pour my heart out about the food I already can’t stop talking about. Maybe I can give some good restaurant reviews or share a tasty recipe (I do make up our own a lot). Not only that, but maybe I can give you reason to cook with local, healthy, organic ingredients- something very important to me. Whatever I post though, we can promise you this: great food. I hope you dig it. ‘Cause I certainly do.