The Brass Paperclip Project

Farmer's Market Fresh: No. 1

Happy Monday!  I hope everyone had a nice weekend...ours went by too quickly, as usual.  No oyster picking adventures this week, but my husband made some good progress on our chicken coop and I enjoyed my weekly shopping adventure at the farmer's market.  Eating local has become very important to me over the past few years, so I've really fallen in love with Seattle's farmer's markets. I love shopping there, supporting our local farmers and building relationships with the people who grow, catch, harvest and produce my food. 

One of my favorite things about shopping at the farmer's market is finding unusual ingredients and then asking the vendors about their favorite ways to prepare them.  This week I scored a pile of fresh, local, spring edibles that I've never cooked with before and had a blast planning my menus for the week.

My go-to sources for recipes online are usually Pinterest, Foodgawker and All Recipes. I'm a sucker for the food porn photos on Pinterest and Foodgawker, but I really like the ratings system and comments on All Recipes.  Between those three sites, I came up with this amazing menu plan for the week featuring all the farmer's market goodies I picked up:

 

MONDAY :: spot prawn | rainbow radish | fiddlehead fern

Spot Prawns on Rainbow Radish Fiddlehead Potato Salad

This gorgeous recipe comes from Gourmet Fury and features three of the ingredients I picked up at the market: Hama Hama spot prawns, rainbow radishes and foraged fiddlehead ferns.  (I was lucky to get the prawns from Dan The Oyster Man at the Hama Hama Oyster Co. booth...he had sold almost his entire allotment for the weekend and it was only Saturay morning.)  The fiddleheads came from one of my favorite booths...Foraged and Found Edibles.  Even their signage is amazing!

As an added bonus, I'm going to toss in a few sauteed morel mushrooms we found growing in our back yard.  I know!  Lucky us!

 

TUESDAY :: wood sorrel

Sorrel and Yukon Gold Potato Soup

One of my favorite farmer's market treasures this week was a gorgeous bag of wood sorrel that I picked up from Foraged and Found Edibles.  It looks like shamrocks and has a bright lemony flavor.  I was excited when I found this recipe from The Vintage Mixer because it uses a fair amount of sorrel. Many wood sorrel recipes I've found only call for a handful of leaves, but I've got a whole bag to use up. I believe she's using a different variety of sorrel than what I have, but I'm going to try it anyway.  I picked up a nice bag of local organic Yukon Gold potatoes this morning and will serve this with warm crusty bread and butter.

WEDNESDAY :: mizuna

Orechiette with Mizuna Pesto

I've been hearing a lot about mizuna lately, but have never used it in my cooking.  I found a few bunches of both regular and red mizuna at the market, so I bought one of each.  This recipe from Burp! looks so simple and fresh.  Look at that green! My husband and I both love traditional pesto, but haven't spread our wings to try any new variations...looking forward to this one!

Instead of orechiette, I'll be using a gorgeous Girella pasta I picked up at a cooking class at ChefShop last week. (More about that cooking class in a separate post this week.)

THURSDAY :: salmon | rhubarb

Sauteed Salmon and Rhubarb Marmalade

I love Strawberry-Rhubarb pie as much as the next person, but there's only so much pie a gal can eat.  (Full disclosure: I once ate an entire strawberry-rhubarb pie by myself during a rare break in my morning sickness while pregnant with my daughter!)  But back to the story...I bought some rhubarb from Stony Plains this week hoping to find a way to work it into a sweet and savory entree. 

The recipe I found from Food & Wine fit the bill perfectly...especially since I had also purchsed a nice piece of salmon from Seattle's own Loki Fish Co.  My only regret is that my own peas aren't big enough to sacrifice a few shoots for the topping.  Guess I'll have to make this again later in the spring.  (wink.) As a side to this dish, I'll be sauteeing up some rapini that I also picked up at the market.  I love it in quiche, but this week it shall stand alone. 

 

FRIDAY :: take-out

Friday night is not usually a cooking night for me.  Happy hour happens with our friends down the street and we take turns springing for take-out.  Gotta love Fridays!

 

WEEKEND :: stinging nettles | red mizuna

Weekends are tricky for meal planning around here.  We never seem to know what we'll be doing and with weather as flaky as it is in the northwest, we jump on the sun whenever it shines...leaving no desire to be in the kitchen.  As a result, I've been trying to plan ahead to make quiches, casseroles, etc. that can just be popped in the over for a quick and easy weekend meal. This plan also helps me extend the life of tender greens from the market and is giving me lots of ideas for how to use up all the eggs our chicks will soon be laying!

This week I'll be making two:

Stinging Nettle Quiche

This quiche from Babyccino Kids is super easy and sounds d'lish.  I'll be skipping the puffed pastry and using whole wheat pie shells from my freezer.  I've never cooked with stinging nettles, but have been told that with gloves or tongs, I should be able to escape the stinging part...once they are cooked, they are harmless.  We'll see...

Bacon Mizuna Frittata

We're pretty much obsessed with bacon around here, so I'm very excited to try this recipe from The Paelo Periodical.  I'll be using the red mizuna I picked up at the market, so I'm hoping it will add a nice splash of color to the dish.

So that's the week.  What do you think?  Got a favorite recipe for spring edibles?  I'd love to hear about it, so please feel free to leave some comments.  I'll shoot out some photos and recipe feedback throughout the week, so feel free to follow me on Facebook or Twitter for the extras.  :) 

Seattle Flash Mob...and a Marriage Proposal

Hot Damn!  This is how to get engaged...

 

Here is the flash mob I chickend out of joining last week.  It's one of my bucket list "things to do", but for some reason, I was scared to join the rehearsals...next time for sure!  Turned out to be a HUGE event...800+ people at Westlake Park...right smack in the heart of downtown Seattle.  Kicking myself now for not being braver.  If you live in Seattle and want to get involved with a flash mob, check out Mob The World for more info.  Let me know if you're going and maybe you can hold my hand...pretty please?  And congrats to the happy couple! 

Adventures in Oyster Picking

Wow!  What a gorgeous weekend we had in Seattle.  I'm still reeling from all the sun and fun.  What does one do when the sun shines in Seattle, you ask?  Well...we had a really unique opportunity on Saturday to visit Hama Hama Oyster Co. for a U-pick oyster event.  I had never done that before, but I am now officially hooked!

Hama Hama Oyster Co. is a commercial oyster farm based in Lilliwaup, WA at the mouth of the Hama Hama River.  At low tide, the banks extend almost a mile into the Hood Canal.  They are quite well known for their amazing oysters, so it was exciting to step out onto their oyster flats at low tide and literally pluck our dinner from the sand.  Added bonus: The company has been family run since it started in 1922, so we had a chance to meet a few family members...never a bad thing to know your local oyster farmers!

Our wonderful guide took us out to the flats and taught us a lot about oysters, how they grow, what to look for when picking along with lots of other interesting facts about the ecology and other creatures living and feasting on the bounty of the Hama Hama and Hood Canal waters.

One of the first things our guide pointed out on the flats were bags of shells that had been inocculated with baby oysters...see all the tiny dots on the shell below?  Baby oysters.  The shells will be spread out all over the flats to grow the next generation of oysters for the farm.

We also got a quick lesson in how to spot a healthy oyster based on it's new growth.  These are Pacific oysters which were brought to the west coast from Japan.  Their new growth appears as a frill around the edge of the shell and has a gorgeous purple-pink iridescent sheen to it.  So pretty!You can easily spot a Pacific oyster by it's ruffles and frills.  (Washington's native oyster, the Olympia, is smaller and has nearly been replaced by Pacifics. It is only found in a handful of bays along the coast.)

In addition to oysters, there were plenty of other creatures to see...most of which were trying to eat the oysters too!  We saw several kinds of sea stars, snails and even a pile of eggs resting on some seaweed.

By the end of our visit, we had given up counting how many oysters we had picked...the basket got heavy so we figured we had plenty.  As it turned out, we had picked over five dozen oysters, a couple of butter clams and a few random mussels (mostly attached to our oysters!)  To round out our purchase, we also picked up 3 kinds of smoked oysters, 3 crab cakes (made on-site by mom) and a jar of locally made pickled herring from their seafood shop.  The smoked oysters didn't even make it to the car...we gobbled them all up in the parking lot.

The farm has a few picnic shelters with BBQs you can use to cook your oysters on the spot, but we opted to put ours on ice and take them home for dinner.  I was so proud of myself for shucking my first oysters...not an easy task!  After opening a bottle of champagne to go with them, we decided to invite some friends over to share.  We shucked all the raw ones we could open and eat and put the rest on the grill.  I had never done that before, but wow, were they great!  We threw that last of the cooked oysters into a stew the next day.  Yum!

The trick to successfully grilling the oysters, so they don't dry out, is to put them bowl side down over very low heat and close the lid on the grill.  It takes about 8-10 minutes for the first oyster to open and that's when you take them all off.  If the oysters are sputtering and sizzling, but not opening, the heat is too high.  Another good tip is to put them on the grill with their hinges facing towards you, so that when they open, they shoot any liquid towards the back of the grill instead of on you.  (Tips were courtesy of our oyster guide at Hama Hama.)

The remaining shells are now drying out in the sun...to be pulverized later as a calcium supplement for our chickens.

 

Hama Hama is having another U-pick day in May, so we are planning to go again.  If you live in the Seattle area and like oysters, I highly recommend checking it out and making a day of it.  They are also hosting an Oyster Rama on May 5th that sounds like a great time with oyster and wine tastings, seminars and a chance to dig for wild geoduck.  Be sure to check out their blog for ticket info and more details.

Now that we are oyster picking pros, we're looking forward to many more shellfish picking excursions and are looking into getting a WA shellfish license, so we can forage our public beaches.  The main difference with picking from public beaches is that you have to shuck them on the beach and leave the shells because baby oysters like to attach themselves to larger oyster shells.  Leaving the shells allows the population to continue growing. 

Have you ever picked your own oysters?  Have a favorite recipe for fresh oysters?  Hope you'll share some tips if you have them! 

Welcome Tooth Fairy!

Easter morning held more than just the excitement of an egg hunt at our house this year.  Our little girl discovered her very first loose tooth!  By dinner, the tooth was out and I was totally unprepared for Tooth Fairy duty. 

I had been planning to design a Tooth Fairy journal for her.  (A friend of mine made one for her son, which I happened to think was adorable.)  The idea was that when she discovered her first loose tooth, the Tooth Fairy would make a preliminary visit to drop off the journal...along with plenty of fairy dust.  Then when the tooth fell out, we'd be ready to record all the action in the journal.  Problem was, I hadn't even started one.

Luckily, I was feeling creative, so this is what I whipped up after she went to bed.  There are places to record all the details from how it felt to lose her first tooth to what the tooth fairy brought her with places for photos and even a pocket to hold her first tooth.  I tied it all together with a ribbon and also created a sweet little note from the Tooth Fairy herself.  The next day we took it to the office store to be spiral bound. The little box was a gift she received when she was born and the $2 bill was one I had been saving for 30+ years.  

Going forward, I'm planning to leave gold $1 coins, along with more notes from the Tooth Fairy.  (My friend who came up with the journal idea leaves her son interesting foreign coins from her years of world travel...also a very cool idea!)  I may also put together a little "magic wand" pen for her to use with the journal...would have been better to drop that off with the journal, but I was working on a time crunch.  I'm also toying with the idea of having the Tooth Fairy deliver a very fancy and special tooth brush for taking care of all those new adult teeth.

Several people have already asked for copies of this, so I'm going to fine tune the design and may put a printable up on my blog.  If you'd like to stay updated, feel free to subscribe or follow me on BlogLovin,  Facebook or Twitter for a heads-up when the PDF is available.

Has the Tooth Fairy been to your house yet?  What did you do to make it special?  I'd love to hear your creative ideas for future Tooth Fairy deliveries, so please leave your comments and ideas below. 

Ain't No One Here But Us Chickens

Woo hoo for chickens!  We finally started our own backyard flock and are super excited about it.  Our chicken odyssey has been going on for a few years now.  I've been wanting them...my husband, not so much.  After a some close friends recently decided to go for it with their own backyard chickens, I was finally able to convince my hubby to take the plunge.  While my husband was home starting our coop, my daughter and I paid a visit to Seattle's Portage Bay Grange to pick out our babies.  We are now the proud parents of these little cuties! 

All four hens should be good egg layers, so we're looking forward to collecting up to 2 dozen eggs per week starting at the end of this summer.  Three of the hens will produce light brown eggs, but Nugget, our Barnvelder will give us dark brown eggs like these...

Photo Source

We've been constantly surprised by the fact that these birds are so charming and fun to watch.  Each one has her own distinct personality.  Tucker, the Rhode Island Red, is our love bird.  She loves to be held and will fly up to sit on us any chance she gets. Here she is roosting on top of my daughter's head!

Watching them eat is hilarious...they all crowd around their feeder, sometimes stepping on each other, jockeying for the best position.  I get a kick out of seeing all four lined up with their little heads in the feeder and their tiny little rear ends sticking out.

Getting a good family photo of all four proved to be pretty tricky...I guess 3 out of 4 facing the camera isn't too bad!
Hope you enjoyed this intro to our flock.  I will share more information about our experiences with getting set up and the progress of our coop in future posts.  In the meantime, you may want to check out this post I did last year about the 2011 Seattle Tilth Chicken Coop Tour.  Do you have or plan on starting a flock of your own?  I'd love to hear about your experiences, so feel free to leave comments below! 

 

Well, it's been a while....going on, oh, I guess about 6 months now. But I'm back! Life has been busy and I have a lot to share...stay tuned!