Rabbit Food

Fresh from the Farm

The majority of my food now a'days has centered around the incredible produce I receive from volunteering at Spring Creek Farm.  Along with an overflowing fridge of some of my favorite veggies, I've noticed a really interesting change in the way I think about meal preparation.

 Local Gazpacho

I believe that when one begins taking an interest in cooking, one (and I'm really talking about me here) may be seduced by foreign ingredients and complicated recipes.  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, I think the allure of exotic flavors is a wonderful way to learn about foreign ingredients, their histories, and the way they are used in current cooking trends.  Not only is one's palate able to experience a whole new world of flavors, but one may learn a bit about the cultures from which the ingredients and recipes hail.  After experimenting with many kinds of cooking styles and flavor combinations, one usually ends up becoming a pretty decent cook too.

 

A rainbow of a garden salad made with local ingredients!

Having said this, I'm really enjoying my recent shift toward utilizing local ingredients.  The local food movement is an idea I've been interested in for a long time.  It's an interesting challenge.  Rather than thinking, "Okay, I want to make this recipe, so I'm going to run to the store and buy this-and-this-and-this," my musing now falls along the lines of  "Here are the ingredients I have available to me right now, how can I combine them to make something delicious?"  It has been an entirely new outlet in which to be creative.  Finally, I have an incredible sense of pride in knowing that I helped grow the food that I'm eating, or -in the case of the food I buy at our local farmers' market- that I'm supporting the livelihoods of local growers.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Crisp

Juda, another volunteer that works on Spring Creek Farm, shared this awesome recipe for a rhubarb crisp in our CSA newsletter.  I substituted half of the rhubarb with strawberries and it was spectacular.

Here is her recipe (with slight variations to make it vegan):

6 c. raw rhubarb * Large pieces will have to be peeled first* cut into 1/2” slices (I substituted half of the rhubarb with strawberries) 

3/4 c. sugar

3 T. flour

Mix well, and pour into a buttered or margarine-d (or not) 9” X 12” baking pan.  

Combine 1/2 c. walnuts or almonds or both

1 c. oats

1 c. flour

1/3 c. packed light brown sugar (or equivalent of agave nectar, stevia, etc.)

1/3 c. margarine

1/2 t. cinnamon

pinch salt

Sprinkle crumble mixture on top of fruit slurry mixture. Bake in preheated oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. 

   

I served it à la mode with Good Karma Rice Divine vanilla ice cream.

Yum!

Spring Creek Farm

Over the past three months, I've been volunteering at a really wonderful organic vegetable farm called Spring Creek Farm.   Spring Creek is located just outside Baldwin City, Kansas and is run by an incredible couple, Stephanie Thomas and Tom Maiorana.  The two started the farm in 2005 and specialize in heirloom melons, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes.  They sell to local restaurants, at the Downtown Lawrence Farmers' Market, and host an 18 week CSA, Community Supported Agriculture program.  

If you don't already know about CSA programs, read up on them!  I'm enamored with the idea of directly supporting local food and farmers, cutting out the middlemen, and receiving fresh, seasonal produce weekly.  Perhaps you have a program in your area.

A view of hoop house one.  Stephanie and Tom have two hoop houses that shield crops from strong winds, heavy rain, and raise temperatures 5-10 degrees!  These nice protective nests create a cozy space where romaine, buttercrunch, arugula, swiss chard, radishes, carrots, turnips, beets, tomatoes, celery root and other tasties flourish.  I find it really difficult to work in the hoop houses without wanting to eat up half of what I'm suppose to be watering or weeding!

 

Big, beautiful heads of buttercrunch lettuce.  

 

  Carrots and more buttercrunch growing like crazy.  Stephanie keeps improving my knowledge of different type of greens.  My favorites are komatsuna (I like to call it "the sexy plant," since it sounds like kama sutra,)  her arugula (spicer, and more delicious than any other kind I've tried,) and lamb's quarter (usually thought of as a weed, but really delicious and higher in vitamin A than spinach!)

 

 A field of delicious onions, almost ready to harvest.

 

The gorgeous herb and flower garden.  Fellow volunteer Juda works on the plot every Tuesday morning.  We swear, Juda hides some serious fairy dust up her sleeve.   Her pixie ways make chocolate mint sprout out of the woodwork, beautiful strawberries ripen, and the chives, oregano, and lemon balm taste a little extra special.

 

Here is half of the power-couple that makes all this happen.  The day I brought my camera out to photograph the farm, Steph and Tom seemed too hard at work to be bothered with a photograph.  This photo is borrowed from the Growing Growers website, a great program that connects apprentices with host farms, holds monthly workshops, and inspires the local food movement to grow.  Stephanie was both an apprentice of the program and is now a host farmer. Pretty nifty, huh?

What else can I say?  Even more amazing than their dedication to growing organically and with environmentally-friendly, sustainable methods, even more incredible than their involvement in their community, Stephanie and Tom are just really great people.  They are kind, generous, and infuse their farm with the same happy, inspiring energy.