Journal

Week 19 Cooking Results

Reichert's Dairy's new cheese called Robiola di mia Nonna is very good. Shannon and I actually bought more yesterday at the farmers market. I would call it something like cream cheese, except tarter...but it's good. I would pick Robiola over cream cheese any day.

Eden Farms Berkshire Pork hot dogs, were very very good. I'm a big big fan. Normally I avoid hot dogs like the plague, since most of them just taste like...well...that their taste testers don't actually care about their jobs or their product, but these were fantastic.

So far the farmers market for me, has been meat, cheeses...and well more cheese. For the most part the fresh things at the market include asparagus (neither of us really like), rhubarb (Shannon doesn't like) and other things I don't generally use in my cooking. I have really enjoyed my mornings there...

After game night last night I discovered I had 12 kinds of cheese in my fridge (Dave had brought over some parmesan) and between all of them, including their packaging, it weighed 4.5 pounds. About half of the cheese, both by weight and number are Iowan made.

In picking up some things for game night, there were a few more items from Lewright Meats at the Dahls, plus some duroc pork sausage from Vande Rose Farms. More Iowa pork...num num num

This week I also made Chipotle and tomato paste Turkey burger with feta, red onions and wickles spicy relish, which was very good and also included some leftover beef from the Moroccan Meatballs.

Moroccan Meatballs in Tomato Sauce (Splendid Table's Cheap Eats)

A little spice, a nice sauce and some meat. Easy to make and quite good, what can be better?

Baked Ziti (Cook's Illustrated March/April 2009)

This was down right delicious...though I guess I have to call it Baked Penne, since well apparently nobody carries ziti noodles

Brown Rice with Black Beans and Cilantro (Cook's Illustrated March/April 2009)

When I made this I realized that a lot of the things this week were vegetarian. The Ziti and the Soffritto were also veggie... This was decent. It was more of a side dish, then a main, but well, I made it as a main and it was filling.

Soffritto of Tomatoes and Fresh Herbs with Penne (Splendid Table's Cheap Eats)

Veggies veggies and more veggies! But it was still quite tasty. Tomatoes do add quite a bit to taste.