Field Peas A' La Provencal

Tonight I got back on track and cooked the next recipe in my cook book. I cooked Field Peas A' La Provencal, which I will tell you was simply yummy. I am a good southern boy and love almost any vegetables, but field peas are not one of the vegetables that I normally have cravings for. After tonight I think that might change.

This is an easy recipe where you cook your fresh field peas and then set them aside. You then cook a sauce of tomatoes and garlic and add in the peas and Chard. Once cooked you top this off with a nice cheese.

With this recipe I did a few substitutions that ended up being just fine. I was out of honey so I just added sugar and I could not find any chard so I decided to settle on cabbage. The end result was really good. When I find some chard I will try this recipe again.

The next time I go home to visit my parents I will make this recipe for my parents. I think my Mother will really love this one. My Mother purchased a bushel of field peas and butter beans for me for my birthday, so my supply of beans is currently plentiful. I am sure to have this recipe many more times to come.

Now to decide what to cook next. I will take the cook book with me to bed and read over it and make my choice.

k

Behind schedule

Well I really just started my cooking challenge and I am already behind schedule, imagine that. The flu got in my way and slowed my cooking and most everything else down to a crawl. I felt like I had been hit by a bus this past Monday. Seven days latter I am just starting to get back on my feet. It has been a long time since I have been this sick from a flu.

The doctor informed me I was in "that age group" where I really need to start getting flu shots and making sure I get my annual check ups and such. "That age group?" What is he talking about? I am still just a baby in my eyes.

anyway back to the cooking challenge for me. I will start up again this weekend. The cucumber soup really turned out well. I served it for dinner to a small group of friends and they all seemed to enjoy it. This recipe will be a keeper for sure. I have my next recipe picked out and I am ready to try it out this weekend.

Making Soup

I just finishing making Cool Dill and Curry-Spiked Cucumber Soup. This was a fast and easy recipe. It really took no time to through this together. The hardest part of the recipe was peeling and grating the cucumber and that is not hard at all.

If this turns out well, I really see myself eating this a lot. I love cucumber soup and I eat a bowl of it every time I go out to eat at G & M(Fast and French) on Broad Street. I hope this recipe holds up to that one.

The soup is currently is the refrigerator waiting for me to try it. I can not wait.

Butter Bean and Tomato Salad

I love the Butter Bean and Tomato Salad recipe. This recipe is a keeper and one that I will make many times in the future. It is full of strong flavors and smells. I can still smell the onion in my kitchen and I love the smell of freshly chopped basil. I think basil is my favorite smell right now.

I had the salad for dinner last night and I liked it well enough to make another salad to server with pita chips at this month's book club meeting tonight. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it and I just got an email from someone saying that it was a keeper. Yea for me, I got a gold star on the first try.

I was right about cutting back on the salt in this recipe. I cut it in half and thought it tasted just fine. Three tablespoons of salt is a lot of salt if you ask me.

One recipe down and many more to go. I picked out my recipe for next time and I decided to make curry cucumber soup. I should be good with the farmers market on this one. I know I can get cucumbers without any problems.

One thing I am figuring out fast is that you need certain staples in your kitchen to really be a good cook. I think by the time this project of mine is over I will have figured most everything out of what I should be stocking at all times. Let's hope any way.


Keller
9/15/09

In the Kitchen

A couple of lessons I need to learn when it comes to cooking is to slow down and pay attention to what I are doing. Right off the bat I started off on the wrong foot. I did not pay attention to the recipe and chopped way to much onions. Then I found myself rushing through the recipe which caused me to begin to stress out. I stepped away from the kitchen for a a few minutes, took a few deep breathes turned on some music and started over again. That was all it took for me to get it together.

The first recipe I decided to cook was Butter Bean and Tomato Salad. The recipe actually calls for the salad to be a topping for bruschetta but I decided I wanted just the salad. My only concern for the salad is the amount of salt it called for. I cut the salt in half feeling it was way to much. I hope I made the right decision. Time will tell.

The Salad has to marinate for four hours before eating. I am going out tonight to eat with friends so I will bring this salad with me to eat for lunch tomorrow. It smells fantastic. The smells from the onion, garlic, basil, parsley, and lemon have filled my kitchen. I can not wait to try it.

keller
9/13/09

My first set back

Today is Thursday which means Farmer's Market day for me. I was excited about today and my shopping opportunity for my cook book challenge. I picked out the recipe I plan on cooking this weekend and made a small list of all the things I would need to purchase to cook the recipe.

All the ingredients I need are in season and the cookbook is a southern cookbook with recipes from South Carolina so I figured I would be set. I grabbed my canvas shopping bag from the trunk of my car and headed over to the tents of the Park Circle Farmer's Market. To my disappointment I found nothing I needed on my list. I left completely empty handed.

This is just a small set back. I will head over to the grocery store this weekend and get what I need. When not shopping from a list of needed items for a certain recipes farmer's markets are not the best thing, I still love my farmer's market thought.

Keller
9/10/09

The Challenge

I will be the first to admit that I am a little odd. If something comes easy then it really bores me. I love a challenge. I like to be pushed and I like to push myself to achieve my goals in life. And I do normally achieve these goals with out any problems.

I have always been this way. It is a way of reinventing myself. Often, I put myself in a situation where I am forced to learn new things and ideas. This blog is my new challenge.

Let me explain. I just recently watched the movie Julie & Julia. It was a very good movie. I really enjoyed it a lot. If you are not familiar with the movie then I will give you an idea of what it is all about. Julie Powell loves Julia Child, so much so that she decides to take her cook book and cook all 500 plus recipes in the book and blog about it. That is the movie in a nut shell, doesn't sound like it would be a good movie but trust me it was.

Here is where the challenges comes in. I have decided I want to learn to be a better cook. I can cook, but just not on any great level. So I decided to follow in the footsteps of Julie Powell and take a cook book and cook each recipe in the book. I have really lowered the bar and chosen a shorter and easier cook book than Julia Child's book. It would take me forever to make my way through 500 plus recipes, and there is no way I could do it in a year.

The book I have chosen to cook my way through is "Southern Farmers Market Cookbook" by Holly Herrick. The book was just given to me by my friend Janice. She knows I shop at farmers markets and have joined a farm share so she thought it would be a great gift. And it was.

As for the rules and details, well I am going to try to finish the book in a years time but the world will not come to an end if I extend it a little. At 160 pages, I really don't see why I can not finish this book before the year is out. The book is sectioned out by the seasons, so I am going to start with the Fall recipes and start cooking. I am also going to do most of my cooking on the weekends so I will have plenty of time to get it done and hopefully blog about it on the way.

So wish me luck. Hopefully there is plenty of good eating coming my way.

Keller
9/9/09