Stork Food

Storkbite has now reached her 1/2 year, so I have put her on the 100 mile diet. Her protein is very local since we are infrequently separated, I would say that the milk maid (me) is never more than 100 yards away at all times. However, before I started the dreaded solids, I was very concerned by ingredients and processing. So concerned that I thought about it for all of 10 minutes and just started steaming up the vegetables from our CSA farm box and fruits from the Saturday market outside our front door. The fruit men assured me their peaches were from a low spray orchard and then Storkbite’s grandma made her a whole load of organic applesauce. I think she is all set – and super lucky to eat local, organic and minimally processed food at the tender age of 6 months.

Peaches, Plums, Zucchini and Carrots

I thought that making baby food was much more complicated and time consuming than it actually is. In fact, it’s so easy and it’s so delicious that I find myself eating the leftover purees. If you have a steaming basket, simply cube whatever it is you wish to make and steam it on the stove top until it’s very tender. I then let the food cool and run it through a potato ricer – any food mill will do. If the fruit is very fibrous like peaches for example you may wish to puree it even further with a food processor. Storkbite seems fine to eat the lumpy food, so I do nothing more than freeze it in ice cube trays then defrost when she is ready to eat. I had no idea how delighted she would be by the flavor of something other than the boring old milk maid.

Lox, Buckle and Scallops

What to do with lox, buckle and scallops? See below. We had a busy week, but some of the highlights were bagel and lox salad which I made up out of desperation one night after a hard day of Storkbite wrangling. The pièce de résistance of the week was the ceviche, which I made with fresh scallops and calamari from our local fisher at the farmer’s market. In addition to the ceviche, I made a fresh blueberry buckle with the leftover ingredients from this morning’s buttermilk blueberry pancakes. It’s basically the reincarnation of breakfast for dessert.

Bagel and Lox Salad

This was another variation of breakfast for dinner. It was chopped red onion and capers added to a regular plain old vinaigrette dressing over greens. Then on top, toasted bagel pieces, smoked salmon, and crumbled hard boiled egg.

This was a very quick meal which I threw together in minutes while singing to Storkbite in her high chair. Papa ran in from work, ate his salad and promptly left for a meeting. Yep, that’s what our week was like. Good thing we splurged on scallops for our Saturday night feast.

Ceviche

OK, so this was so damn good. Storkbite’s papa told me that he felt like he was sitting on a beach in Mexico. I took that as a compliment. The best part about this is that I had all the ingredients except the scallops and cherry tomatoes which were purchased steps from our front door at the farmer’s market. I had never made ceviche before and I think I’ve only eaten it once. This was a 100% intuitive recipe that actually worked out! I used about 1 lb. of very fresh scallops, 3 calamari, a hand full of tomatoes, 1 avocado, 5 limes, 1 orange, 1 small white onion, 1/2 a small zucchini, 1 long skinny light green pepper, 1 handful of rough chopped cilantro, salt, pepper and olive oil. I just chopped everything really nicely and mixed in together in a bowl. I let all the flavors marry together in the refrigerator for the afternoon and then we took the entire bowl to the park to watch Twelfth Night. The ceviche, a loaf of semolina bread, a bottle of wine and comedic Shakespeare made for an excellent Saturday evening. Wow – I can’t get over hot summery and delicious a bowl of fresh ceviche is – YUM!

Blueberry Buckle

This dessert started when I ran out of our apartment at 8 AM in my PJs to the farmer’s market to get some blueberries. I woke up wanting buttermilk blueberry pancakes real bad. Instead of making tons of pancakes to save for the week, I dumped the remainder of my homemade batter into a baking dish, threw in a layer of fresh blueberries and topped it with the crumble (or buckle) part of this dessert. It’s simply 3 tbs. butter mixed up with 1/4 c. flour, 1/4 c. brown sugar, 2 tbs. white sugar, pinch of salt and a big fist full of almonds. Mix that up until it’s crumbly and put it all over the top. I baked this for 30 mins. at 350 and it looked nice and brown. I don’t think you can really go wrong with having blueberry buttermilk pancakes twice in one day. I don’t think Storkbite will mind.

Striper and Piyaz

The last two nights have been hot as hell here in the City.  If you live here then you know that you might as well take all your clothes off and try and cook a meal if you absolutely need to cook yourself a hot meal.  Last night I was unable to bring myself to turn on the gas, but tonight I was much more brave.  I paid for it tonight and everyone was in a bad mood because of it.  Storkbite nearly expired.  She had to be excused, took a cool shower and went to bed.  I, on the other hand, was able to chill out with a crisp glass of rosé avec an ice cube.

Piyaz

This bean salad is something that I learned from our local Turkish restaurant and it suddenly became a favorite hot day food at our house.  It’s so simple, just combine one can of white beans with chopped red onion, garlic, basil, parsley, salt, pepper and olive oil.  Mix it up and you have a delicious antipasti called Piyaz that can be eaten with olives, feta, and toasted bread.  This is a perfect meal for a hot day, no heating or cooking required.

Striper Filets and Zucchini

Tonight’s dinner required the kitchen to get heated up and it was unpleasant – I’ll warn you.  However, it was well worth it to taste the fresh zucchini and butterstick squash cooked down in butter, cipollini onions and olive oil.  All of those fresh vegetables were compliments of our CSA.  I simply thawed and grilled some white striper filets on my grill pan.  Standing over the grill plan was not my most brilliant idea of the day, but fish cooks in a few seconds so it was painful for only a moment.  Delicious combination and seriously fresh.