BBQ Chicken Wings, Plus Haul-Type Stuff

I’ve been buying rotisserie chickens a lot lately, but have grown tired of them. With today’s nice weather, I decided to buy chicken to cook myself on the grill. I settled on this recipe for barbecue chicken. I made the sauce per the recipe, but did everything else differently. I bought a bone-in chicken breast at the Amish market, which I had them split for me. I also bought 1.5 pounds of wings.

Maggie was very attentive during the whole grilling process.

I sprinkled the meat with a seasoning mix from Penzey’s and grilled them per this recipe instead of the indirect heat suggested in the recipe above. I brushed half of the sauce over the meat towards the end of cooking it. I was glad I had bought the wings because they cooked much faster. I was able to enjoy them while I waited for the breasts to finish cooking. Those I’m saving for meals later this week.

Here’s a photo of the wings before I demolished them. I removed the skins before eating them.

Recent Hauls

Earlier in the day, I visited the farmer’s market with Maggie. We bought:

• Strawberries
• Carrots
• Potted basil plant
• Bulk bison burger (I’m thinking of making chili tomorrow)
• Bison short ribs
• A gluten-free cinnamon bun and gluten-free lemon pound cake

The cinnamon bun was okay — it wasn’t everything I’d built up in my head. Wishing I had those calories back. The pound cake I had after dinner with a sauce I made out of frozen raspberries and fresh strawberries simmered together. I drizzled some chocolate vincotto (I keep forgetting I have this) over the whole shebang. That was really good.

Thursday night, I picked up a small box from Eating Out of the Box. It contained lettuce, kale and two types of Chinese cabbage.

Garden Update

Today, I used up the rest of my landscape fabric to cover the ground around my raspberry and blackberry canes, and under my Vegtrug. Fingers crossed this makes weed control in those areas easier this season. I’m not planning to mulch the entire area, though I may eventually mulch around the base of the berry bushes. I’m also hoping the barrier fabric really does allow moisture through, as promised. Otherwise, watering those berry plants is going to be a pain.

I also planted some seeds I bought last summer at Monticello. The flowers are meant to attract butterflies. I sprinkled them in a bed by my garage where I threw down wildflower seed bombs last year. Some of those seeds and plants have returned this year. Hopefully the new seeds take too. Tomorrow, I’m hoping to plant some of my remaining vegetable seeds. I also need to devise a trellis system for the berry bushes and amend my compost mixture. Oh yeah. And mow the lawn.

The Haul: Busy Day Edition

Meet Maggie!

The Easton Farmer’s Market returned today and what a perfect day for it too! My haul was kind of small because I already had a lot of fresh produce at home:

• Lettuce
• Yellow onions
• Honey
• Bison brisquet
• Bison bulk burger
• Bison chew sticks
• Chamomile tea
• Dog cookies

What’s with the dog treats you ask? Maggie is my new garden companion! Here she is enjoying one of the chew sticks.

Maggie really enjoyed meeting all of the other dogs at the market.

When we got home, we spent most of the day in the garden. I planted four raspberry canes and set up my Nourishmat. This is a really cool idea that originated at the University of Maryland. It’s a complete system for planting vegetables, herbs and flowers in your yard.

This photo was taken in the middle of using the incorporated drip system to water the mat. It doesn’t look like it, but this area gets plenty of sun during the day. I planted seed balls for a number of items — from chard to cilantro to dill. It will be interesting to see how this does. I put it in an area of my lawn that I hate to mow due to its shape. I tried raking away as much of the grass and weeds as I could, but there was still quite a bit left. My hope is the mat will smother what was left behind — we’ll see.

Last weekend, I set up another garden area using a very large grow bag. I haven’t planted anything in it yet — it is reserved for warmer weather produce like squash. Today, I set up the chicken-wire fence around it to prevent cats from using it as a litter box (there was evidence of that happening already).

Also last weekend, I planted lettuce, carrots, kale, arugula and onions in my Vegtrug. I spied a few seedlings peeking out today. A couple of weeks ago, I planted blackberry canes and I noticed new growth on those today. Neither the blackberry nor raspberry plants will produce much this year, if at all, but here’s hoping for a few to snack on.

Last, but not least, I picked up 15 bags of mulch today and will probably need to go back for more. I’m going to start putting down newsprint and layering mulch on top in my flower beds tomorrow. Fingers crossed that the newsprint keeps down the worst of the weeds.

Needless to say, Maggie is exhausted from all of her adventures today. She’s snoring away as I type up this post.

Meaty Butternut Chili

After my trip to the bison farm yesterday, I thawed a pound of the ground bison for tonight’s dinner. But I’m still not in the mood to grill burgers (too cold out) or make tacos (not eating tortillas at the moment). Then I had a brain wave. I haven’t made chili yet this season! It was already 2 p.m. when I had this thought, so I raced to get out my crockpot and start thawing some of the frozen ingredients.

I’m not eating grains right now, so no rice or cornbread for this chili. To make the chili hearty enough to eat on its own, I decided to add butternut squash to the pot. But the huge squash I had dwarfed the quart of tomatoes and pound of bison I started out with. I ended up adding another quart of tomatoes and a pound of ground pork as well. The crockpot is filled to the brim as I type this!

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground bison
• 1 lb ground pork
• 1.5 onions, chopped
• 2 quarts diced tomatoes and juice*
• 1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 heaping tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 chopped unseeded jalapeno
• several drops Tabasco
• other seasoning, including salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp ketchup
• 2 tbsp Thai sweet chili sauce
• Lime wedges

*My tomatoes held enough juice to give this chili a nice broth, but you could add beer, stock or water if needed. You also could add any number of things to the ingredient list above, like beans, etc.

I tossed the frozen tomatoes into the crockpot unthawed and turned it up to high. While I had it working on the tomatoes, I browned the bison with half of the onion and then added that to the crockpot. Then I did the same with the remaining onion and ground pork. I added the squash to the pot and then the remaining ingredients (except the lime). I added a bit of Penzey’s 33rd & Galena spice mix to the pot as well as each meat mixture as it was browning.

After a few hours on high, the chili was ready to eat! I squeezed a bit of lime juice over my first bowlful and it was quite tasty. It would be really good with some sharp cheddar grated on top.

I’m letting the chili simmer for another hour on low before I cool it down for the night. Looking forward to taking leftovers to work for lunch this week!

The Haul: Field Trip Edition

I used up the rest of my bison meat a couple of weeks ago, so I ventured out to SB Farms in Hurlock today to pick up some more. I bought ground bison, a chuck roast and some jerky–enough to get me through until the open-air Easton Farmer’s Market reopens on April 13. Farmer Bill Edwards was kind enought to give me a little booklet with recipes, including one for bison bbq, which I intend to make out of the chuck roast. I took some photos while I was out there:

The resident greeter at the farm.

Two bald eagles have a nest on the farm as well.

In other haul news, Eating Out of the Box has started up again in Easton and they now offer a la carte options! This week, I ordered baby carrots and two kinds of breakfast sausage. I supplemented this with kale, lettuce and salad turnips that I bought earlier this morning from Provident Organic Farm’s stand in front of Rise Up Coffee.

The Pineapple Plan

I’m allergic to raw pineapple, so I can only eat it once it’s processed in some way (canned, dried, or cooked in a dish).

Store-bought dried pineapple rings are my weakness. You think you are being healthy when you eat them because they’re deceptively in the shape of the pineapple rings they once were. In reality, they’re basically pure sugar. Hence, I love them.

I need to cut back on my sugar consumption, however. I decided to dry my own pineapple rings, now that I have a dehydrator. Pineapples can be intimidating for the uninitiated though. So spiky.

Enter the Internet. After purchasing my organically grown pineapple earlier this week, I watched a video on what the heck to do with it to get to those juicy yellow rings. Here’s the video I watched.

I learned a lot, including how to pick a good pineapple. Fortunately, I just happened to purchase a good one:

The scales are all the same size and still green.

I cut off the ends and the scales, as instructed by the girl in the video. I wanted to cut the pineapple into rings, because that’s more fun.

Now, to get the core out of each slice. I didn’t have a little circular cookie cutter like the girl in the video. I dug through the supply of cookie cutters I’ve inherited — plenty of gingerbread men, even a cactus. I eventually settled on a little heart that was the exact right size. I also experimented with using a paring knife to core some of the slices. Neither was all that easy because the slices were so slippery with juice.

Cute!

Once all of the slices were cored, I put them into the dehydrator and it’s been cranking all day. One of the slices fell apart when I cored it and I’ve been using it to test the done-ness of the pieces every few hours. They’re super yummy. They’re holding onto their moisture a little too well, so I think I’m going to need to refrigerate the slices when I take them out of the dehydrator.

Each of my dehydrated slices contains about half of the sugar of the off-the-shelf dried pineapple rings. They’re just as tasty too. The only bummer is that I got just a handful of slices out of the one pineapple.

Gluten-Free, Egg-Free Meatballs: Version 2

Yes, Virginia, you can make cocktail meatballs without breadcrumbs or eggs. (Note: Okay, I lied. I said in my last post that this post would be about pineapple. That’s the next post, I promise).

I started out with this recipe, written by my grandma:

I of course had to tweak it. I used powdered egg substitute for the eggs. I bought blackberry “fruit spread” in place of the grape jelly (lower in sugar and I *love* blackberries). I couldn’t find traditional chili sauce at my organic grocery, but happened upon some Thai sweet chili sauce instead. I was dubious about it, but it worked out in the end.

I halved this recipe because I only had one pound of ground beef (yes, actual ground beef this time; not bison). Since the original recipe didn’t call for much cornflakes to begin with, I wasn’t worried about omitting them entirely. I was worried about the chili sauce. I didn’t think it was the same consistency as that called for originally. I ended up adding a tablespoon of tomato paste and 1/4 c. of water to the sauce before simmering everything together. I probably could have halved that amount of water and been fine, but I’m glad that I added both.

I was a bit concerned that the recipe didn’t advise to brown the meatballs before simmering, but that ended up being unnecessary. They soaked up the color of the rich sauce. Per the recipe, it was definitely necessary to spoon off the fat from the sauce.

The result was spot-on taste-wise! I’m thrilled and can’t wait to make this again. That’s two successful meatball recipes without gluten or egg. The sky’s the limit from here.

The Haul: Yes-Even-in-February Edition

That’s right, all through winter, I’ve been able to get fresh, local produce thanks to a couple local farms and a CSA. This morning, I went to a small farmer’s market that’s open every Saturday morning starting at 10 in front of Rise Up Coffee here in Easton. I stocked up on a lot of greens as that’s what’s available this time of year. I’m on a mission to get back to my pre-holidays self and so I’m back to basically eating meat, veggies and a little bit of fruit. I have a huge pile of greens with almost every meal.

This week, I bought:

• Chard (I really wanted spinach, but this was the next closest thing)
• 2 kinds of lettuce
• Kale
• Carrots
• Sweet Potatoes

In the upper-right corner, you may have spied the topic of my next blog post. I didn’t get it at the farmer’s market this morning — those aren’t grown locally, of course.