Local food served up Southern style...

Yum! We had an awesome dinner! Cora helped so much and....as a result...ate it ALL GONE! Which is not what I would have expected if she had not had such a big part in preparing it! She washed the Crossroads Garden's new potatoes, helped make the Cajun walnut cakes (she formed her own cakes too), and she mixed the coleslaw up! She learned about where the food came from, and how to cook it. She also learned about dill as we made the dill sauce for the cakes.

We had....
Roasted LOCAL broccoli, LOCAL baked new potatoes, Local napa cabbage and carrot slaw, and Cajun Walnut cakes with LOCAL fresh dill sauce. The walnut cakes were an experiment that turned out wonderful! yay!

Cajun Walnut Cakes (makes 6-8  1-1 1/2" cakes)

1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup cooked brown rice
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon flax meal with 1 tablespoon water
1 tsp gumbo file (I know! It's not how file is traditionally used, but it worked!)
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh parsley

Add all ingredients to a food processor, and process into a dough. Form into cakes, and pan fry!

Good Morning Mountain Home's Farmer's Market!

Or, I guess, it's the Baxter county Market. Either way, I found some AWESOME greens! And, at a GREAT PRICE!!! No, seriously, I should have told the farmer he was under selling himself! I bought over 3 pounds of broccoli for.....$2.00. It's LOCAL, and all natural. (it's organic, but he can't say that for 'legal' reasons, sheesh.) AND, a HUGE head of Romaine lettuce....for $1.00

I also got a pound of asparagus....it was $5.00 but, I couldn't resist. It's was just shining yumminess at me!

So, the good news is IT'S FARMER'S MARKET TIME!!!! The bad news is....I bought the last of the broccoli! But, look for it again on Saturday! Along with some of the Farmer's Market All Stars like Crossroads Gardens and Jersey Knolls Farms!

What will I do with all this broccoli?

A simple and colorful dinner worth sharing...

Tonight we had 'Garden Hand Rolls' inspired by Koriente a Korean restaurant in Austin, Texas. Anyone can make this! All you need is.....

Full color spectrum of vegetables such as:
Red Cabbage
Red Bell Pepper
Yellow Bell pepper
 Avocado
Cucumber
Carrots

and, homemade hummus. Tonight we had chipotle hummus!

Cut the vegetables into thin matchsticks, and assemble on a plate.
Next, take one package of nori sheets and cut each sheet into 4 squares.

Make a simple dipping sauce of equal parts shoyu, lime or lemon juice, and water.

Serve! You eat these by taking one of the small squares of nori and adding a spoon of hummus, a couple of carrot sticks, a few bell peppers, some shredded cabbage, and a slice of avocado. Hold it like a taco, and dip in the shoyu/citrus dip. You will be surprised at how tasty and satisfying these are. Not to mention, you are eating all the colors of the rainbow!

If you're kid is weird enough...they will love them too!