10/11/08 - Farmers' Market Update

02/09/08 - Eggs At The Market

The final good news is that Dry Creek Farm is selling stewing hens again. For more on the glories of stewing hens and our coq au vin recipe, see our Stewing Hen Page. You can call Harley and arrange to pick up a frozen bird or two at 360 457 2943. These might be tough old birds, but they are delicious stewed.

10/30/07 - Tuna Dan Is Now Selling Salmon

08/17/07 - Farmers' Market Update

• The Family Farm - Along with the usual vegetables, they have oriental green beans, broad flat romano beans, and New Zealand spinach.
• Rick's Organic Produce - They have great looking romaine, beets, garlic and more is coming.
• Elwha Apiary - Wonderful honey and honey based products.

05/17/07 - Peashoot Season at Johnston Farm

The peashoots aren't much to look at. The plants are still pretty small, but the flowers are blooming, and the shoots are still tender. We didn't even know that peashoots were edible until we had them in dumplings at Yank Sing in San Francisco. Pea vines seemed too fibrous for easy eating, and it seemed a shame to eat the shoots and then not have any peas. Now, we know that the young tendrils and leaves are delicious sauteed in sesame oil or olive oil, or just steamed. We add garlic or asian chives or soy sauce for a bit more flavor, but they are very simple to cook.

We can wait for the peas, but the peashoots are here now. They'll be at the Farmers' Market very soon, so keep your eyes open, or drop by The Johnston Farm.

05/05/07 - Peashoots and Asparagus at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market

We are just back from the Farmers' Market, and we have to report that spring is moving along.

Westwind Farm has the most amazing asparagus. We've never tasted any this good before. Go for the big fat ones, if there are any left when you get their. When you get them home, peel them and steam them, or boil them. Also, this may be the last week they have their nettles, so hurry up if you want to dry making nettle soup or ravioli.

The Johnston Farm is selling pea shoots, a sure sign of the season. They also have their baby potatoes, lots of herbs, carrots and coriander.

Harley at Dry Creek Farm says that his salad greens are doing nothing, but he does have his eggs. His organic oats are also doing well, but the cold weather has slowed things.

Nash Huber has great looking Swiss chard and lots of little cauliflowers. We bought three bunches of the stuff, so we'll be making our Swiss chard and tuna spaghetti again real soon.

11/01/06 - Dry Creek Farm: The Chicken AND The Egg!

We had not been seeing Harley at the Farmers' Market so we dropped by the farm and checked out the farmstand. We didn't see Harley, but the farmstand was there, and someone was gathering the eggs, greens and other goodies. The eggs were as good as ever, and having loaded up on these wonderful certified organic eggs, we decided it was time to take one of our Dry Creek Farm stewing hens out of the freezer and cook Moroccan.

The dish you see on the right does not look like much. Yes, that is a later of eggs and herbs on top. The black things sticking out of it are kalamatas olives, and the yellow things are bits of pickled lemon. Underneath it all lies the savory cooked hen. We use the recipe in Paula Wolfert's immortal Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco, but in some ways ours is more farm house authentic. After all, what sensible Moroccan house wife would serve up a hen who was still laying eggs. Sure, the local emir might serve up some spring chickens, but the real home recipe was probably a version adapted for stewing hens.

The secret is simple. Just ignore Paula Wolfert's timing and cook the hen until the meat is tender, about two hours in our case. We've adapted her recipe for Djej Masquid Bil Beid:

We rub our stewing hen with garlic and salt then put it in a big pot with 1 cup chopped parsley, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 cup grated onion, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp black pepper, 1/4 cup of butter, a pinch of saffron, and 3 cinnamon sticks. We fill with water to cover the bird and then bring it to a boil and simmer it forever, maybe two hours, maybe longer. The meat should be tender, taste it.

Then, we put the chicken in a deep baking dish, tossing any loose skin, bones and the cinnamon sticks and we cook down the boiling liquid while we crack and beat a dozen eggs and add two dozen split, pitted kalamatas olives, a couple of salt cured lemons and 1/2 cup of chopped parsley. When the liquid has cooked down perhaps by a factor of two, maybe a bit more, we pour it over the chicken and then pour on the egg mixture which will comprise the upper layer.

To finish, we put the casserole covered in a 350F oven with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Then we take off the lid and let the eggs brown, raising the oven temperature if we are in a hurry.

10/01/06 - Goodbye To All That

We were so busy eating tomatoes, we haven't been updating our website. This picture is of some prize winners at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. Needless to say, we went crazy.

08/23/06 - Summer Harvest - Johnston Farms

We were out at Johnston Farms today and decided to grab a few items that don't even make it as far as the Farmers' Market. To start with, we grabbed some pumpkin flowers, and we plan to fry them tempura style. We also grabbed their entire basket of Costoluto tomatoes, fresh from the greenhouse. These are a relatively dry, firm tomato, with an incredibly rich, summery flavor. We just had to fire up the grill and make pizza with minced garlic, olive oil, basil, Costoluto tomato slices and grated parmesan cheese. If you have never had a grilled pizza, you don't know the heights to which pizza, nature's perfect food, can ascend. We'd do an entire web page on these pizzas, but the fire is hot, and our hands are full grilling them. We couldn't resist. Check out our grilled pizza guide.

06/17/06 - Dry Creek Farm Stewing Hens

While we were buying eggs at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market, Harley informed us that Dry Creek Farm will be selling stewing hens this coming Friday, June 23rd Monday, June 26th, after 3PM at the farm on Rife Road. These are tough old birds, literally, but properly braised they are amazingly flavorful. They also make wonderful chicken stock, so get one while you can.

04/29/06 - The Kaleberg Recipe Collection

We were asked about a recipe for herb jam at the Farmers' Market today, so we decided to post our entire recipe dump, that is, our list of recipes adopted and stolen from a variety of cookbooks and magazine articles. It is a rather uneven batch, but one of our favorites is Paula Wolfert's herb jam as reprinted in the Los Angeles Times.

04/01/06 - Farmers' Market Nettle Soup

We were pleased to see more farmers and more spring vegetables at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. As one might expect, things were slow this winter, especially with the market moving from downtown back to the Clallam County Courthouse parking lot. As usual, we went to town, buying carrots, salad greens, flowering arugula, blue hubbard squash and farm fresh eggs. As we always say, "Round up the usual vegetables". (You can tell we are big Casablanca fans).

One big surprise was a bunch of plastic bags marked with a big sign saying DO NOT TOUCH. Needless to say, we did not touch. What was in the bags? Nettles!

One of the local farmers has been gathering the nettles that bloom in the spring and are the despair of all too many gardeners. It is a very good idea not to touch nettles, at least not without a pair of good gloves. Of course, cooked nettles are another matter entirely.

We bought a bag and boiled up some heritage breed turkey stock. Using a pair of ultra sturdy, bright blue silicone rubber gloves, we washed the nettles and popped them into the boiling broth. We also cut up and added some potatoes, and some salt and cracked pepper. A half an hour later, we were in heaven.

Nettles taste somewhere between artichokes and snails. They taste little like kale or collards. Their flavor is much deeper and darker, with a little musty, minty twang. Needless to say, we won't get to have a soup like this very often, but it was rich and hearty, and a definite harbinger of spring.

03/18/06 - First Salad Greens of the Year

We've tasted our first salad greens of the year from the Port Angeles Farmers' Market. We'll keep you posted as the season progresses.

03/07/06 - The Farmer's Market Has Left Downtown, Peace and Quiet Return To Our Dying City Center

We've been putting off posting this, since it is kind of a downer. We've been big fans of the Port Angeles Farmers' Market for years, even before it moved downtown. Then, we were even bigger fans after it moved downtown, since we almost never got downtown, except to have dinner at Bella Italia, visit Port Book and News, or see a movie at the Lincoln Theatre. Now we had an excuse to shop downtown, and we did.

Let's face it, downtown Port Angeles is dying, what with a Walmart a bit to the east, Sequim, even further east, turning into a down market mega-mall, and the changes in the lumber and fishing industries, the traditional mainstays of the town. There are some great 19th and early 20th century buildings downtown, but all too many empty lots and closed stores. The Farmers' Market brought us, and many other shoppers into town. There were even a few businesses that chose their locations to take advantage of the market, and now we'll see how well they do.

While we may have liked the Farmers' Market, it apparently bothered a small group of local merchants, even though there were many merchants in favor of it, and others who didn't care one way or the other. These anti-market merchants seem to have gotten stuck back in 1952, but it's not 1952 anymore. The big timber is gone, and one man with a chain saw and a self-loader can do the work of an entire team back then. Rural downtowns have to compete with their own suburbs, and everyone owns a car. If they don't find what they need in town, they can drive to Sequim, or Silverdale, or Seattle, or whatever. Some will even shop on the internet. Rather than embracing the Farmers' Market and the foot traffic it brought, these merchants felt that it interfered with their ability to park in front of their own stores, that it interfered with what little traffic flowed along the truck route through downtown Port Angeles, and quite possibly that having spent their money on a head of cabbage, few people would still be able to afford any further shopping.

In any event, there was some politicking. There was the Port Angeles Planning Commission meeting that ran into the wee hours. There was the shutdown, more politicking, a reprieve, and then the market was moved back to its old location at the Courthouse, as shown on the map above. We like this location too, and we'll be there most Saturdays. There is lots of parking near the Courthouse, and it's a bit closer to our house. We often walk down the block to the big Safeway on Lincoln Street to buy what we can't get at the Farmers' Market. But, we don't get downtown as often, and we don't spend as much money there.

04/22/05 - Recipe for Spinach, Pine Nuts and Currants

04/16/05 - Lacinato Kale Obsession

• from Too Many Oysters
• from Lacinato Kale at the Port Angeles Farmers' Market

03/01/05 - Stewing Hen