Ways to Use Taters

** NOTE: I adjusted the recipe I posted below. I think 3/4 or 1 tsp of salt is sufficient, since the butter and chicken stock I use is salted and 1 1/2 tsp seemed way too salty. I recommend starting off with 3/4 tsp of salt then gradually add more salt to taste.

I'm still cooking from the car load of goodies that we brought back from the family farm. Among one of the delicious produce the in-laws gave us were leeks. I've never cooked leeks before so I was excited with experimenting with it. My mother-in-law told me the one of her favorite things to make using leeks is a potato and leek soup. Oooh, I have to try it!

They also generously gave us at least 75 pounds of potatoes. Here is just one shelf of potatoes drying out. Not shown in the picture is half of a burlap bag of potatoes that I need to find room to lay out to dry a bit for storing.  We got a mixture of red and russet potatoes.

I looked at several different potato and leek recipes and decided on a combination of Emeril and Robert Irvine's recipe from the Food Network. In a dutch oven pot, melt 2 tablespoons of butter.  Then add 3 pieces of bacon, cut into small pieces and rendered out the fat.  Then I took 6 leeks, using only the white parts, cut into small pieces and added it to the pot.  For more onion taste, I minced a medium onion and added it.  Cook over medium heat until the onions are translucent. 

Once the onions are cooked, mix in 2 tablespoons of flour, this makes a nice roux.  Next, I added in 5 cups of chicken broth, 6 medium sized potatoes diced, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 tsp of pepper and 1 bay leaf. Cook until the potatoes are done. When the potatoes are fully cooked, fish out the bay leaf.  Then the fun part, I used my immersion blender to puree the soup. You can also scoop the soup into a blender to blend. I rather use my immersion blender because it's less clean up.   If you don't have an immersion blender, I highly recommend spending $30 to get it. I use it for blending everything and worth every penny!

After you've puree'd everything, add in 1 cup of heavy cream and puree together.  The soup should be smooth now, if it's too thick, add more chicken stock until it becomes the right consistency of soup. 

I added snipped chives from the garden before eating.  This was my first time making this soup and "oh my goodness" this is my new favorite!  My first spoonful was just heavenly!  It's far from "healthy", I mean, bacon + butter + heavy cream, (oh my) but a nice treat for this fall cool crisp weather.

Check out more garden to table challenges at Greenish Thumb.

What do you do with a bushel of tomatoes?

A lot of the produce that is grown on my in-laws farm is sold at two local farmers markets in their area. Upon speaking with his dad, the hubs said to me that we could go out to the fields and harvest some Roma tomatoes because they were too ripe to sell at the market. Since there were more tomatoes than the family could use, he said we could take as much as we wanted because it was going to turn into compost. Nice!  Out to the fields we went and picked a bushel of tomatoes. 

What does one do with a bushel of really ripe tomatoes? Sauce here we come! I took half of the tomatoes, washed and removed all the skin by putting them in scalding water. This took a very long time to remove the skin. I do like my sauce without skin, but this was a long process. I think it took me 2 hours to wash the tomatoes and remove the skin off of half a bushel. I have to re-think whether or not I want to do that in the future. Maybe I can learn to like tomato peel in my sauce.

Half of a bushel filled two large stockpots, along with oregano, basil herbs grown from our garden.  I simmered the sauce for about 3 hours. 

This was my first time ever canning sauce so I was dreaming of lots and lots of cans that this would produce, however I forgot how reduced sauce gets when you cook it down.  In the end, all that work made only 5 quarts of sauce.  I laughed out loud, but it was a "All that work, and I can't believe I made only 5 quarts" laugh.  Haha.  My husband laughed and said, "It's so much easier to buy a jar from the supermarket".  He's right, but I think my sauce tastes better.  And it's 100% organic!

The following day, I took the other half a bushel and decided to make oven roasted tomatoes. I've read on many blogs about how incredibly tasty oven roasted tomatoes were.  I followed the recipe on Smitten Kitchen. Wash all the tomatoes and slice in half in a large mixing bowl, mix with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and fresh herbs.  This smelled amazing, I could eat it just like this!!

I lined the tomatoes on baking cookie trays lined with aluminum foil. Foil makes cleaning so much faster!

To maximize on oven space, I put a filled tray on each oven rack. Roast baby roast.

I guess my tomatoes were too large because it didn't take 3 hours for this babies to roast like it says in the recipe. It took mine 7 hours! LOL. I really don't think it's a good use of the energy it takes to run the oven.  I need to invest in a dehydrator!  Look how much the tomato shrunk?  I packed those tomatoes in, where they practically touched each other.  I love how much it shrunk.

I transferred the tomatoes onto plates to let them cool down to room temperature. I popped one in my mouth, and yes, the flavor is like an intense tomato.

All that work and it only made one quart jar of oven roasted tomatoes. (sigh) Maybe I should have stuck to making sauce! hahahahaha

A Storm Blew In

I've been posting a lot about our visit to the farm, and even though I have a lot more to post about our visit, I had to share these photos first. I went outside to check on the garden today and feared for the worst. We had a really windy and rainy storm last night. The wind was howling! When I got to the garden, I saw that the hubs homemade trellis was completely knocked over!

Oh NO!! The snow pea plants!! I had 3 snow peas growing on this trellis, and they were all pulled from the roots. ARGH! Even more annoying this one plant had a snow pea beginning to grow on it. I'm so sad...

I'm in Love

When we were up at the family farm, they had to make a delivery of produce to one of their client's.  I tagged along because they told me that there was a good farmer's market along the way. Upstate New York is renowned for many things, among them is Maple Syrup.  I had to get my hands on some good New York Maple Syrup to bring home.  At the farmer's market, there were two vendors that were selling syrup.  Note to self, scan the tables before buying because I ended up buying syrup that was more expensive at one vendor than the other one was selling.  Oh well.

The other thing that I was looking to buy was some local honey.  Luckily, there was a vendor also selling honey, so I picked up a big jar of amber colored honey.  Oooh, I can't wait to try it in my mint tea.

When you are in NY State, you can't be in a farmer's market without at least one vendor selling NY Apples!  I didn't buy any because we recently had gone apple picking.

At the farmer's market, there was a vendor selling garden markers.  Aren't these cool?  I'm so cheap frugal, so I couldn't justify spending $3-$6 on one marker.  I would have needed a whole bunch of these for the garden, so the cost would totally add up.  Maybe I can make my own?

My mother-in-law saw another farmer vendor there she knew and we went up to her booth to talk to her.  She is a cattle farmer, and was selling cuts of packaged beef.  She had with her these two Labrador Retrievers and I instantly FELL IN LOVE.  They were so adorable!  Look at that paw!

Completely sweet and soft.  She said they were for sale for $50 each.  Do you think my husband would find out if I tried to sneak her home?  Awwww.