Raised on the Farm

Provence Style Asparagus Soup

Seasonal…

Farm to table…

Funny how upscale restaurants use farm concepts to sell people on a nostalgic experience they have probably never known. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first one in line when it’s announced that plans are afoot for a great restaurant dinner. The upscale chef probably has ideas for preparing that fresh produce that I will love, but would never think of, much less want to mess with.

Seasonal, farm to table food was what you ate on the farm from necessity; assuming you wished to eat on a given day meant that you would be eating what was ripe, whether you wanted it or not. But even if you didn’t, it would be the freshest I-don’t-want-that dish on your plate!

Lucky for me, when that dish was just picked asparagus, it was all good. Mom planted a huge asparagus bed, (undoubtedly with my dad’s labor) when they moved to the farm. She was a bit of an asparagus connoisseur, cutting the firm, thick stalks just slightly below ground level; only the stalks of perfect thickness. If they were too thin, you let them go to grow into the huge feathery plants that she said would feed the garden.

I no longer have the luxury of an asparagus bed outside the door, but I still love celebrating spring with the freshest asparagus I can find at the market. I have to laugh when I see some of the bundles of the thinnest stalks imaginable-these would have been my mother’s rejects. I stir-fry it just like she did, and also use it often for Thai inspired stir-fries and curries. There’s just one problem: I am always tossing out the woody lower stalks that break crisply off the stem. We didn’t have these on the farm, because we picked it at its peak. I’ve been throwing out these darn stalks for years, and suddenly that has begun to bother me…

Enter my Provencal Style Asparagus Vegetable Soup. I make a number of these easy soups, which are basically just vegetable purees, seasoned and thinned to the proper consistency. They are delicious hot, but when chilled, this one hits the spot on a hot summer day. And yes, perhaps peeling asparagus stalks is one of those upscale chef-fy practices, but this soup is totally worth it!

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Provence Style Asparagus Soup

Prep Time15

Cook Time20

Total Time35

Course: Soup

Servings: 4 cups

Ingredients

1 bunch lower asparagus stalks
1 3- oz or so potato peeled and roughly chopped
½ cup roughly chopped onion
¾ cup roughly chopped fennel
1 bay leaf
1- teaspoon herbs de Provence
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 ½ cups broth I use chicken, but vegetable would work well too
1- cup coconut milk lite or full fat

Instructions

Use a vegetable peeler to thinly peel the asparagus stalks. Trim off the bottom if woody. Combine these in a medium saucepan with the potato, onion, fennel, seasonings and broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender. Cool slightly, remove the bay leaf, and then transfer to a blender. Blend to a smooth puree, then add and blend the coconut milk. Thin with additional broth if too thick. Taste for seasoning and correct if necessary. Serve warm or chill. Soup is nice when garnished with a scoop of sour cream or Greek yogurt and a sprinkle of herbs.

Hazelnut Cherry Granola

I wonder if you ever really know your parents?

My childhood self took living on a small family farm as the norm. Yet even then, it wasn’t. Having known my parents for decades, I have to wonder why I never asked them about their choice to buy and move to the farm. Two people couldn’t have been raised in more different circumstances; I would describe my mother as “cool jazz,” while my father was “a little bit country.” She had grown up in a comfortable urban home and attended a year of college, which she left to attempt a career in her beloved dancing. He had been raised poor on a family farm with many siblings, and at the first opportunity, exited the farm of his youth for city lights. It was the early fifties, and they were living the good life in a hip urban neighborhood when they flew the coop for life in the country. I suspect that my father’s memories of a farm childhood along with the birth of my older brother spurred the decision. While my mother would not strike one as the farm type, she truly bloomed where she was planted. She loved the farm and lived there for the majority of her life. Gardening, cooking, and preserving became her primary activities for a number of years while raising my brother and me.

When you think of farm meals, do you think of hearty, home-style comfort food? Well, there was a bit of that on occasion. But somehow my mother turned out to be a royal health food queen at the very moment that most people were discovering cake mix and biscuits in a tube. Two popular cookbooks of the time dominated our family’s diet, one from Carlton Fredericks and the other by Adele Davis. Somehow Mr. Fredericks parlayed an English degree into being a “nutrition consultant,” while Ms. Davis actually did have nutrition background, and is honored to this day. Both were into whole wheat, dried milk, wheat germ and low sugar, along with pushing vitamin and mineral supplements. Oh yes, we took our nasty horse pill vitamins on the farm! (Well, most of us-as I remember my dad escaped to work each day before the dosing occurred.) Both food writers also championed some questionable ideas as well, but my mother lived (and we ate) by their words.

I don’t even know how she obtained some of her ingredients, but I do remember trips to a local grain mill for stone ground whole-wheat flour. Yogurt had yet to hit the grocery aisles, so she made her own in a small warming oven adjacent to the baking oven. Our “popsicles” were home frozen from yogurt and juice concentrate. Most baked goods were the recipients of a whole-wheat makeover, and the rare item not baked from scratch got wheat germ plastered on the top. I was a kid trying to fit in; living on a farm and eating “weird” food didn’t earn my support, but in the long haul my mama’s healthful approach to cooking was pretty influential. I probably shouldn’t mention that I gave up the vitamins the day I left for college though…

In honor of my mom’s and Adele’s approach to diet, I’m making granola this morning. Here in the desert southwest, the heat is ramping up and I am in need of hot weather whole grain breakfasts. While researching Adele Davis, I noted from the Adele Davis Foundation that she was the developer of granola as we know it today, that crisp mixture of oats, seeds, sweetener and nuts. Her recipe is on the foundation website should you wish to check it out. My mother would have embraced it for its use of soy flour and dried milk. Having eaten my share of soy flour and dried milk, I’m going with my own recipe! Simultaneously crisp and chewy, this granola is not too sweet, allowing the rich flavors of the nuts and fruit to shine. That said, if you like your granola on the sweeter side, you may wish to add brown sugar to taste along with the syrup mixture.

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Hazelnut Cherry Granola

Prep Time15

Cook Time30

Total Time45

Course: Cereal

Servings: 16 servings

Ingredients

3 cups whole old-fashioned oats
½ cup golden flax meal
1 cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts
½ cup dried unsweetened coconut
½ cup pumpkin seeds
1/3- cup sorghum or maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/3 –cup neutral vegetable oil I use avocado, but coconut would be delicious
1 beaten egg white
½ cup cacao nibs
½ cup dried cherries

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 300° F. Spray a large sheet pan lightly with pan spray and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the oats, flax meal, nuts, coconut and pumpkin seeds.
Combine the syrup, oil and extract in a small saucepan and warm over low heat. Stir this mixture into the oats thoroughly, making sure the grains are coated. Add the beaten egg white and again mix thoroughly. Turn the mixture onto the prepared sheet pan and spread into a thin layer. Bake, turning the mixture several for 30-45 minutes, until it is the brownness you like.
Allow for thorough cooling, as the granola will crisp as it cools. Then, gently break into clusters with a pancake turner, and stir in the cacao nibs and cherries.

*Gluten-free if made with certified gluten-free oats

Sweet Biscuit Shortcake

strawberry shortcake — Strawberry Shortcake

Okay. Y’know how you hate to admit that maybe, even quite possibly, you were wrong about something? Particularly to your parents? Even when you are considerably older and it shouldn’t matter?

So, perhaps I was incorrect as a child, when I whined incessantly about living on a small family farm. This is tough to admit, even though my parents have both ascended to the big farm in the sky. I can see them smirking all the way down on Earth as I concede this. Turns out, given today’s miniscule number of family farms, that I actually had a privileged childhood full of relative freedom and abandon. Roaming the fields with the family dog, pretending to prepare meals from the seeds and blooms of the orchard, riding my bike on relaxed country routes. And when I requested a sandbox, my dad simply had a large truck full of sand delivered, dumped into a huge pile in the back yard. What’s not to like?

Mostly, I had no peers near enough with which to play. My closest friend lived a mile away. So I had to make do with entertaining myself much of the time. There was also a great deal of work to be done, even on a small farm. My father planted a garden large enough to feed the county. While I loved dropping seeds into the beautifully plowed furrows in the spring, keeping the rows of plants weed free through the hot and humid summer was a never-ending task. And picking, podding, shucking, peeling-well, you get the idea. My dad worked in a large factory in the city, so he left us a daily list of such tasks, and there was no argument.

Ultimately though, the quality of the food I grew up eating spoiled me for life. There is nothing quite like sweet corn prepared within ten minutes of picking, freshly cut asparagus, new green beans simmered with bacon, just picked strawberries. And my mother was a great cook. I spent many days in the kitchen with her, preparing meals and preserving the bounty for winter’s feasting. In retrospect, life on the farm built the foundation on which I’ve lived my adult life, even though I haven’t lived on the farm now for many years. Having retired in the desert Southwest, I’m now exploring how to maintain those farm values, while prepping fresh meals in the Sonoran Desert. There’s much in common between those two experiences, as well as much to learn. Adapting to a completely different seasonal calendar of local food production is still a work in progress… However, it didn’t take me long to grab the locally grown strawberries that appeared at the farmer’s market in March.

My mother would have made these beauties using 100% all-purpose flour, one of her few indulgences, as you’ll see in future posts. She would butter the biscuit, drown it in fresh berries, and then pour whipping cream on top. My version updates her shortcake recipe with some spelt flour and is served with a yogurt whipped cream. I usually serve it for breakfast…never too early in the day for strawberry shortcake! No matter how you serve it, it’s spring on the farm, wherever you might be.

Print Recipe

Sweet Biscuit Shortcake

Prep Time30

Cook Time20

Total Time50

Course: Quick Bread

Servings: 6 to 8 cakes

Ingredients

1 cup whole grain spelt flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. sugar
½ cup cold butter
1 egg beaten
about 1/3 cup milk

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 425° F. Coat a baking sheet or layer pan with non-stick baking spray, and set aside.
Place flours, salt and sugar in work bowl of food processor. Pulse briefly to mix. Add the butter, cut into small bits. Pulse the mixture until the butter is evenly distributed, and about the size of small peas. Alternately, the dry ingredients can be mixed in a bowl and the butter cut in with a pastry blender. Add the milk gradually, stirring gently to make soft dough; if additional is needed, add by the tablespoon until the consistency is right. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and pat into a ½-inch thick circle. Cut into rounds of desired size (Mom’s were always substantial…) Bake in preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until golden.
Top with sliced strawberries or other fruit of choice. Whip together 1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt, 2 tablespoons of heavy cream and ½ teaspoon of vanilla to top the shortcakes.