This Wednesday was the first day of our summer share with Sunny Hill Farm.  Wow!  What an abundance!  We received broccoli, spring onions, romaine lettuce, spinach, cabbage, asparagus, eggs and a potted herb.  So much delicious food but planning meals based on your basket can be a challenge. I have several goals with each meal: to utilize the stores of food that I already have, to create a healthy well balanced meal, to provide a meal my family will enjoy.

As much as I wanted to do strawberry picking earlier this season, especially since they came in early this year, life just wouldn’t allow it.   So today, I literally had an hour and a half to squeeze a memorable moment of picking in.  I grabbed my two oldest helpers and headed over to Brad’s Produce.  Strawberries are coming to an end at Brad’s but we were still able to pick 5 quarts for $1.75 a pound in about an

I love that fantastic, healthy food does not have to be complex.  On a recent grocery store trip my littlest one had the choice between cookies and bananas.  She chose bananas.  We have them infrequently and they are treat.  Mostly, we don’t keep them in the house because they are so coveted that my little one can plow through three large bananas in 1 day.  But what a wonderful testament to fantastic, healthy food when a young child chooses it over cookies

This might just be a perfect moment.  The kids are outside playing.  It is a wet but not raining afternoon.  I have a pot of milk coming to a boil on the stove from Kilby Cream in Rising Sun and another pot with American Organic Brown Basmati Rice cooking.  I am planning to make Palek Paneer with the spinach I acquired today during the second week of our spring csa from Brad’s Produce.  Many of the markets are already opened and

Haford County is ripe with local wineries and growers.  I don’t know but maybe we’ll become the next Napa Valley 🙂   We visited Harford Vineyard and Winery last weekend and had a wine tasting with pairings.  It was delicious.  I had LOTS of favorites and we of course came home with a few bottles.  The Cab Franc was the perfect addition to my Valentine’s meal: porterhouse, scalloped potatoes, steamed green beans and for dessert chocolate truffles. This weekend, we hit Mt.

Cabbage for me is an unexpectadly wonderful food. http://www.cheriestihler.com/recipes/soups.html

In an effort to make all around better food choices, we have been eating more sustainable seafood.  The tragedy of fishing our oceans is just too profound to start a post on tonight but one simple switch we have made is to eating …. sardines.  Yes they get a bad rap sometimes but I have found that if you use the boneless skinless kind you can pretty much substitute them for canned tuna. So in planning our meals this week

My thoughts today kept finding their way to a class I had in college on business ethics.  I minored in entrepreneurship and management.  In the class we read case studies and examined the choices that businesses made.  One case was for a major car manufacturer.  Do not quote me here because I am going from memory on this topic but the bottom line was that the car had problems and the fuel tank could explode causing an accident or potentially

Studies are showing that apple juice concentrate found in many foods is extremely high in arsenic.  Mostly, the problematic concentrate is from China but labeling makes it unclear where most juice concentrate is from.  Buying organic is apparently not a safe bet as some of the highest levels were found in organic juice.  Even small amounts of arsenic build up over time causing problems similar to lead poisoning especially in children. I just threw out the juice that we have

I picked up my first turkey of the season from Sunny Hill Farm on Sunday along with sweet potatoes, cheese, honey, butternut squash and a few other things.  I am mourning the end of the season with very little opportunity, because of our kitchen remodel, to preserve food for the winter.  I did manage applesauce and a batch of of salsa along with freezing some of the extras that we received.  Sometimes you just have to rely on the grocery