It was a busy month in my kitchen. Winter is usually my best time for cooking, as the cold weather keeps me inside more. Here's a bit of what was going on last month:
Breakfasts:
- Huevos Rancheros, of a sort: Eggs poached with lemon vinegar, served with salsa, avocado, cheese, bacon, sliced tomatoes, and sour cream.
- Fruit salad (above) and French toast
- Pancakes with our home-canned strawberry syrup
- Fried eggs on English muffins, with avocado, sliced tomato, ham and sour cream. I learned this month that avocado can be frozen, so I now have some in my freezer that will make future meals easier.
- Oatmeal with West Virginia maple syrup.
- Homemade granola with fruit.
Our favorite dinners this month:
- Lentil-Sweet Potato Soup. Sounds strange but it was fantastic!
- Hearty penne pasta bake. I made a large batch of this and froze 4 8x8 aluminum pansful for days I have little time to cook.
- Pan-fried fresh trout, which was a gift from a friend who is a great fisherman, butternut squash I prepared and froze last month and a tossed salad. The squash was from last year's garden, and we had it stored in a cool dry place. We had a bushel and a half, and I knew it would go bad before we could use it all. A trick I learned online was to prick the squash skin with a fork and microwave it for 5 minutes or so. This softens it enough to make peeling easy. If you have ever peeled a butternut, you know how hard that is!
- Catfish fingers that were given to us, which I served with roasted red potatoes, and an apple, cranberry, celery and lettuce salad.
- Sloppy Joes: I froze this last fall when I needed to use up some ground venison. Served on toasted buns, with potato salad. I use my vintage chopper to make this salad so easy.
Other things from the cellar: grape juice, tomato juice, and apple cider; zucchini "pineapple" and canned pears for fruit salads, jams and jellies, pickles, pasta sauce, and salsa.
Baking: I didn't do much baking in March. I only made 2 quick breads: banana chocolate chip, and butternut chocolate chip with Hickory nuts (the last of these nuts sadly). Note to self: wait for the bread to cool before slicing, or the chocolate will smear!
Our chickens are laying well, 6 eggs a day from 8 hens. Our eggs probably cost more than even the expensive store ones if we figured up the cost of feed! But no matter, I like having my own eggs..
Garden: I planted peas, chard, spinach, potatoes and carrots. Lettuce, radishes and onions are up and growing well. Leeks are mulched and thriving.
A local high school show choir does an annual strawberry fundraiser, so I bought a flat of beautiful berries. I froze them, some for jam later on and some to eat in fruit salads, etc.
Foraging: my husband has been out looking for mollymoochers (morels to the rest of the world) and has been pretty lucky. We have had a couple meals with them, along with the dandelion greens I picked.
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Such deliciousness. You can read about how I fixed both of these Spring treats in yesterday's post.
Linking to Sherry's Pickings. Go see what other folks have been cooking up!
That's about it for March, I think. I wonder what April will bring?
