Chickpea and Kale Stew with Herb Dumplings

The thing that's made me a bit sad about the mild winter is that I haven't made nearly enough soups or stews. But this Sunday I returned to my fall/winter Sunday night soup-making and made a big batch of stew with dumplings. Dumplings--not the filled variety found in a variety of Asian cuisines or gnocchi or perogies--the kind I thought were lost to me when I gave up meat-eating. Doughy, delicious dumplings like I thought could only be found atop chicken stew.

Potato, European Soldier Bean, and Spinach Ragout

My boyfriend doesn’t understand beans. Don’t get me wrong, he’s an extremely smart man. If you need a computer fixed, if you need something rewired, if you need to figure out how dopamine affects people’s economic decision making, he’s your guy. Anything about food not related to store-bought cookies or sourdough bread....eh...not so much. Which is why when I was standing in front of the Brooklyn Bean Co counter at the Flea on Saturday and trying to decide which of the five varieties of beans I had never heard of I was going to try this week, he thought I was finding lunch.

An Apple Cake for Connie

Apples are a fundamental part of the New York food experience. Not just New York City--“The Big Apple”--but the entire state. I would argue New York State more so than the City. Every fall there’s apple picking, apple festivals--with pies and cakes and ice creams and every dish imaginable made from apples. We preserve apple sauces, apple butters, and apple chutneys. We make pies and cakes and crisps. Apples, to me, mean home.

Gastronomical Sovereignty--How Lo-cal Can You Go?: Vancouver Island Mac & Cheese

Hooray for blog swaps! Enjoy Kristy's post and recipe below and check mine out over on her blog.

Good morning lovely readers of Cooking My Way Through My CSA! 

I'm Kristy of Gastronomical Sovereignty, a food blog where I contemplate the ethical dilemmas of culinary deliciousness... With wine, of course. When Sam asked me if I wanted to swap posts over our love of happy food and mac and cheese, I jumped at the chance. Why wouldn't I want to eat local, organic, seasonal, happy cheesy goodness?? I'd have to be insane to say no. And while I do go a 'lil crazy from time to time, I'm certainly lucid enough to know I want macaroni and cheese. Anytime, anywhere.

The actual mission? Make a mac & cheese dish that is as local as possible to demonstrate what is locally available in the middle of February on both the East and West coasts. Heck yeah!

A Sourdough Journal

I've been baking with yeast doughs for quite a while. But recently I've really wanted to try baking with wild yeasts. I tried making a sourdough starter before and had little luck, but then my friend Bari got me the book The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. I absolutely love this book--information on container gardening (which I may try out on the roof this spring), information about canning and preserving, composting, home brewing, homemade eco-friendly cleaners, and sourdough bread. Spurred by our trip to San Francisco, the fact that Hot Bread Kitchen has stopped making Black Pepper-Cheddar Sourdough (which we pretty much lived off of for the month of December), and some inspiration from the book, I decided to give it a shot.