Sunday Cooking: Farmer's Market Fresh

As promised, here is what I made this week. But first, here is what I bought at the farmer's market this week:





The mushroom guy has amazing sausages and raviolis. I had to pick up the vidalia onion brats to try, and then once I committed to buying frozen foods at the farmer's market adding a package of ravioli didn't seem like a leap. We still have baggies of tomato and green sauce in the freezer to use with it.

The blackberry jam was a replenishment of a staple; for years I ate that sugar-free all-fruit preserves from the grocery store, but I bought a jar of real raspberry jam a few weeks ago, and I realized what I had been missing all this time. I'm never going back to the fake stuff. (Nor am I ready to make my own. Let's not get ahead of ourselves!)



Of course, the star of the show were the berries. Oh, how I love fresh berries. One vendor had pints of late-summer strawberries so I got those along with blackberries and raspberries.



They were a little tart and my husband likes them sweeter, so I sprinkled a teaspoon or two of sugar over them so they would get juicier and sweeter. Works like a charm!

Besides the fruit, I only made two dishes this week: frittata and soup. The rest we can pull from the freezer as the week progresses.

I had most of the ingredients for the frittata already in the fridge, so all I added from the market was the onion.



I wanted to change things up from my usual frittata mix, thus the pepper jack cheese. It definitely gave it a nice kick! The tomatoes are from Lady Moon Farms, one of the few farms that had a positive chapter in Tomatoland (just finished it, Dad! Great rec, thank you.).



This is the kale, onions and tomatoes wilting and carmelizing in the skillet. I like to cook them a bit before putting them into any egg dish.  Gives it a chance to soften up a bit, and gives me a chance to add seasonings to the veggies.

Once it was done, I put it in a ceramic oven dish.





Mixed up the eggs and cheese, poured it over the veggies, and stirred it all together with a fork, Baked at 375 for 40 minutes, and done!



Next I made a simple corn chowder from Mark Bittman. He recommended scraping the kernels off the cobs, then boiling the cobs in water for 30 minutes to get more flavor out of the cob and to give the liquid a richer corn flavor.



It looked weird, but it worked!



There is a LOT of corn on six ears. But it is so, so good. Nothing is as good as fresh summer corn. I don't even bother to eat it the rest of the year, even the frozen stuff.



The rest of the chowder was butter, skim milk, cheddar cheese and some flour. I love Bittman, but he does not skimp on the heavy stuff. I will look around and find a lighter version for next time. But this was pretty dang tasty.

Then it was time for dessert. Hubby covered his with gobs of whipped cream, but I am a purist and kept it to the sugared berries and a sponge cake dessert shell. (Look at that glaze they produced so quickly! Yum.)




I think I did so well at the farmer's market because I kept it down to what I truly needed. I tend to go crazy there, buying up all kinds of foods we don't eat in time. This time I practiced restraint, and it looks like it worked.