Sweet Corn Fritters with Honey Butter

Sweet Corn Fritters with Honey Butter are for everyone. Evv-err-reee-ya-one. Everyone: your kids, duh, these are like puffy little pseudo-donuts. People at campfires. Husbands, or other manly men, like my brother — who just got engaged — yahoo! And just about anyone else on the entire globe who enjoys placing their lips around a pocket of juicy sweet corn (so, so sweet right now!), fried in luscious lard until slightly crisp, but decadently moist and tender on the inside. 

CSA Cooking {Community Supported Agriculture} Week 10

Hello! How are you today? Today Minnesota is having the most gorgeous weather day of the year. Guaranteed. Temperature is right around 72º, slight breeze, bright blue sky, a teensy, weensy chill in the air, alerting all to the certainty fall is right around the corner. In fact, I noticed the leaves of a maple tree turning orange yesterday as I bee-bopped around town. So many things to love about fall. Soup and crock pots, the smell of drying leaves, apple orchards, back to school, crisp days. This fall, my family may be experiencing the season a little differently in Ireland, but we are very excited. Fall is my absolute favorite season. What's yours? 

Roasted Eggplant Rice Bowl

Eggplant was intended for a great love affair with basil. Like Harry and Sally, red wine and chocolate, peanut butter and jelly, blue jeans and T-shirts, some things are meant to be paired together, forever and always. You can smell each individually and sense that somehow, together they are a match made in culinary heaven. This recipe was created impromptu and can (should) be interpreted a million different ways in your own kitchen. My only intention here is to inspire more eggplant eating as a self-proclaimed eggplant hater, I'm here to arouse eggplant conversion because eggplant should be loved, or at the very least, tolerated. 

10th Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival

Cochon King, Thomas Boemer's Festival Masterpiece.

If you are a lover of all things allium sativum the 10th Annual Minnesota Garlic Festival held at the McCleod County Fair Grounds in Hutchinson, MN was the place you wanted to see, taste, hear, and be yesterday. A festival dedicated to all things garlic, garlic-afcionadoas traveled from far and wide to stock pantries for the coming winter months, snatch up garlic seed for the garden, and most definitely, to eat and enjoy all things garlic. 

Festival-goers devoured Wild Rice Burgers, Salumi Baguettes, Pasties, Heirloom Tomato Salads, and other garlic-laden eats from the Great Scape Cafe prepared by an all-star line-up of Minneapolis restaurants while enjoying several traveling bands like Scottish bag-pipers, a lively brass band, and a mysterious group dressed as animals dancing and playing folk music. Local craft beers, cider by Sociable Cider Werks, and wine by Crow River Winery saved people from withering under the hot, humid August day. And if you never thought you'd eat garlic and ice cream in the same bite, you did yesterday at Cranky's Ice Cream Roasted Garlic Ice Cream stand.  

Moving to Ireland // Chef in Training @ Ballymaloe Cookery School

St. Paul's Irish Fair. Fairly certain Irish people will not dress like this. Or will they?

I'm moving to Ireland. To become a chef. That's right folks, I'll be attending culinary school in Ireland at Ballymaloe Cookery School. EEEEEEEK doesn't begin to describe the emotion I'm feeling. The possibility. The everything. There is no more preparation that can be made, I've crossed every T and dotted every I. I've googled and read each and every blog known to man on the subject of the school, I've networked with people in Minneapolis who've attended the school, I've read every Facebook post to see what the school is like, I meandered through Irish Fair in St. Paul last weekend and got a couple snapshots of what life might be like while in Ireland. They say the first two weeks of school will be the hardest. And I'm almost guaranteed to cut a finger, burn an arm, or at the very least, set something on fire.

CSA Cooking {Community Supported Agriculture} Week 9 + Turmeric Refrigerator Pickles

If you're receiving a CSA basket, you may have reached the point of the season when staggering feelings of overwhelming anxiety hit you as you stand in front of the fridge and wonder where the fifty-third beet will fit in. But instead of becoming frozen in terror by a beet, get down to business. Pull all the produce out onto your counter, look it square in the eye, and show those vegetables who's boss. 

One Pan Pork & Korean-Spiced Napa Cabbage {Paleo & Gluten-Free}

The headline of my newest recipe is paleo and gluten-free, but if you're like me and eat one-fourth of the chocolate chip brioche that came home from Aldi yesterday, than you can no longer pretend to adhere to fads like paleo or gluten-free. But we all need something to aspire to, now don't we? 

CSA Cooking {Community Supported Agriculture} Week 8

Oh, my…where does the time go? Already on CSA Cooking Week 8?! I apologize if you've noticed an absence in the Recipe Writing Department this week, but because I've been busy boozing it up and working on the farm (both very important duties) I haven't had time to cook up all my delicious recipe ideas.

CSA Cooking {Community Supported Agriculture} Week 6 & 7

Photo: Mary Sue Stevens

Another week participating as a work-share member at Sweet Beet Farm and I've got some vegetable love to show you! Plus, look at the teamwork in this photo…don't you love? Those bushels of rainbow chard are heavy! Read on for a couple more shots of the farm and the work-share members in the field. Plus, recipes that will inspire from my archives and around the web.