Watercress!

We went out this morning to a favorite quiet stream and gathered a bucket of our first watercress of the season. It's the earliest we've been out! A January thaw meant we could actually get over the roadside snowbanks to the stream. And a snowstorm predicted for tomorrow means this was the perfect opportunity to grab some greens.

All cleaned and pretty!

The stream is challenging in any month that has an "r" in it (the best time to gather watercress before it gets too buggy). It can be steep, mucky and mighty slippery. One has to keep their wits and wellies about them (once the mucky bottom of the stream sucked the boot right off me!). Today, other than an initial slip, it was easy gathering. Wading in, we quickly and carefully cut the top off the plant just under the surface of the water leaving plenty of leaves and roots on each plant.

With ice cream bucket filled - and mighty cold hands! - we headed home to rinse off sand and check for critters (they love watercress too!). Then into salads and sandwiches!

Celery Root Magic

Tasty soup from a celery root

We love cooking with the seasons. It lets us have a huge variety of food during the year and feel good about indulging ourselves intensely during brief veggie seasons (Ah those ramps! Ah those peas! Ah those tomatoes!).

In Wisconsin, the late fall and early winter vegetables last quite a bit longer. These are the keepers - the long storage vegetables that sustain us into January and, for a few, into February: cabbages, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, onions, beets, onions, garlic. The darkest days of winter are filled with these intensely earthy and intensely sustaining vegetables. I love them for their taste and I love them because they are so abundant locally.

The newest at our table, thanks to our CSA farmers, is celery root or celeriac. It is often a huge and ungainly looking beast of a root. But that flavor! It has a bright and spring-like celery taste that can substitute for celery in recipes or, better yet, shine out on its own. Peeling off the thick skin reveals a creamy, crunchy interior that begs you to make a soup or puree.

Here is one tasty way we have made this root.

Celery Root Soup
 - from Faye Levy's International Vegetable Cookbook (Warner Books, 1993)

This eastern European soup can be adjusted to reflect the weight of your celery root!

3/4# celery root, peeled, quartered and sliced 1/8" thick
3/4# boiling potatoes, peeled, quartered and sliced  14" thick
1 T oil or butter
1 medium onion chopped
2 c. chicken stock or 2 cups water w/ veggie bouillon
Salt and pepper to taste
1.5 c. milk (whole or 2%)

Saute the onion in fat over medium low heat until soft.  Add liquid and celery root, bring to a boil, cover and cook five minutes. Add potatoes and seasoning to taste. Cover and cook 25 minutes or until veggies are soft. Puree with an immersion blender. Add the milk off the heat. To reheat, microwave. Serve with crusty warm bread or a lefse round or two.

Makes 4 cups of soup.

P.S. If you want to add some additional substance, add some cooked wild rice and sauteed leeks to the soup. Heavenly!

The Big Apple

October is always apple crisp making time for us. Although I aspire to be a pie maker, I must admit that is it the quick crisp that draws my knife and time.

My favorite apple variety to use is an old beauty called the Wolf River. You can't much find it in the western part of Wisconsin where we live, but head east along the Wolf River where it originated and still grows, and the apple is readily found at farm markets and a few orchards.

My mom used it on occasion and she said my Grandma Loch did too. We all three liked it for it's fine tartiness in baking. But I suspect we also love it because you don't need to peel many to make that pie or crisp. These babies are huge, running from a half pound up to a pound each. Just three will fill an apple crisp pan and one can fill a pie! Since peeling is my least favorite part of the process, I make sure to get over to my old stomping grounds on the east side of Wisconsin in October to pick up a bag for baking.

For my recipe, I go to an old Betty Crocker cookbook and use this for the topping:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 5 1/3 Tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon.

I mix that up by hand and sprinkle about half over the cut apples in a greased 8x8x2 pan and pop it into a 375F oven for 15 minutes.  I take it out and sprinkle the remaining topping on* and bake for 15 more minutes or until the apples get melty good.

A little ice cream on it while it's still warm and our perfect fall dessert or snack is ready to go!

*I learned this little half-and-half topping trick from the June/July 2002 issue of Fine Cooking Magazine. It keeps the topping from getting dark before your apples are done the way you want!

Watercress Time

The coulee region of Wisconsin is full of bluffs, hills and valleys. Spring-fed streams are everywhere and in many of these streams grow the peppery, piquant watercress. The variety in these streams tastes nothing like the bland product sometimes available in grocery stores.

Cress can be available during fairly cool months if the stream is running and not frozen over. March and April often bring an abundance of this green. Family lore has it that only in months with an "r" in them can it be gathered. In the other months, water bugs find this leaf just as tasty as we do and cleaning becomes a chore as well as a lesson in aquatic zoology.

I've been lucky enough to enjoy it for years from the stream that runs through the farm that is still in the hands of Lloyd's relatives. Sometimes our food co-op has some, sometimes the early farmer's market. We look forward to eating it in spring with a roaring anticipation. The first greens of the season speak to us of the bounty ahead. A quick spread of mayo on Lloyd's homemade wheat bread piled high with the fresh cress makes a sandwich that tells us that spring has really arrived.

Ten Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill While Eating Healthy

I like the common sense approach taken in this post from Food Tank, a "food think tank" webpage. These are all tips we have used to eat economically. Small things can make a difference...especially getting off the corporate food chain.

Image: 'the curse of eleven eleven'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/15732690@N00/3670097230
Found on flickrcc.net