Sunday, December 20, 2015

Winter Week Five: Christmas Time is Here Again

The snow came!!!

It's 6:30 at night in December, so it is too dark for me to take a picture of it, but I bet you've all seen it by now anyway.

We were enjoying the fall weather, but it felt wrong. I'm glad the world is right now. I really do like to have a white Christmas.

For your share this week you can expect the following:

Half share: 1 lb Onions, 2 lbs Carrots, One Acorn Squash, One Squash Choice, Cabbage, Dry Beans (a baking variety).

Full share: All the half share items plus more Carrots, One Long Pie Pumpkin, Kohlrabi, Kale Chips, and Daikon Radishes.

I've braided together some of the smaller red onions we harvested this year into one pound braids.We're distributing them with this week's share as a sort of Christmas decoration. You can hang them up if you'd like to, just cut onions from the top down so the braids hold together while you use them up.

The change in weather has not only put me in the mood for Christmas. It's also put me in the mood for stew, which is what I made for the share recipe this week.

I used lamb because we trade vegetables for meat with one of our neighbors (which is the sweetest deal ever!) and usually get a lot of lamb, but you can feel free to swap in beef or venison if that is what you have on hand. This is a super simple stew, in which the vegetables play the starring role, so put in your favorites. I've written the recipe with the vegetables I used (many of which are, of course, in this week's share) but you can change it however you like. Other ideas include potatoes, sweet potatoes, daikon radishes, rutabaga, turnip, or mushrooms.

Stew for a Snowy Day
  • 1 pound cubed stew meat (lamb, beef, or venison)
  • 4 small onions (such as those in your braid) peeled and halved
  • 2 Tablespoons flour
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • 4 cups stock or water
  • 1 storage kohlrabi, peeled really well and cut into one inch cubes
  • 1 pound carrots, cut into large chunks
  • 1 acorn squash, peeled and cut into one inch cubes

Place the meat, onions, flour, salt and pepper into a large pot over medium heat. Stir to coat the meat with flour.

Cook, stirring frequently, until the meat is lightly browned and the flour is toasted. Watch carefully, turning down the heat if needed, do that the flour doesn't burn.

When the meat is browned, add the stock and remaining chopped vegetables. Don't worry if your vegetables are not quite covered with liquid at this point, they will release a lot of liquid as they cook and cover themselves.

Bring the stew to a boil, turn down to low, cover, and simmer until everything is as tender as you'd like it to be. This will take at least an hour of simmering.

When the stew is done, put it in a bowl and pose with it.

Seda likes to be in the blog. She also likes to decorate the table
with tangerine stickers. 

2 comments:

  1. Hey Andrea great article.!!
    Thanks for sharing.
    happy holidays!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It looks delicious, definitely worth trying. Glad that you shared the complete recipe with us, going to ask my wife to make it and hope that it will be good in taste

    ReplyDelete