Black Raspberry & Goat Cheese Crostini

This sweet and savory appetizer combines black raspberries with goat cheese and a vinaigrette, served on a red leaf lettuce-topped round of hearty bread, and sprinkled with pistachios for crunch.

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I need other women in my life. Women nurture me (and I hope I nurture them in return) via online interactions and in person. While I love my spouse and my kids, the support I get from my friends bolsters me in other, very necessary, ways.


So to my female readers of all ages: keep supportive friends in your life. Call to deliver birthday greetings to your college buddy when she turns 85. Have lunch with your sidekick who's moving back home after a job/relationship didn't work out. Chat online with your alter ego who needs a listening ear and some motivation. Take a walk with your pal who's having trouble figuring out the chemistry homework.

This appetizer is one that I brought to a gathering of women who nourish me: my book group. We meet once a month and discuss a wide variety of books as well as an even wider variety of other topics. Unlike other groups I've been in, there's not typically a food component to our meetings. If no one feels like hosting, we meet at a local coffee shop. No pressure to produce an elaborate spread--we just want to get together.

A typical Spring farm share box--plenty of greens and cool weather crops.

I liked the taste of the Black Raspberry, Goat Cheese and Pistachio Salad I made with the Spring Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share lettuces, and decided I wanted to use that combination in a handheld appetizer. My daughter harvested plenty of black raspberries from our patch so I didn't need to skimp. The pistachios provided a nice crunchy contrast to the creamy goat cheese, and the pink color was perfect for a ladies' gathering.

For more recipes using raspberries, please see my Raspberry Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.

I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Black Raspberry & Goat Cheese Crostini (makes a platter of appetizers)

Ingredients

• ½ cup goat cheese (I sliced off a log, but you could pack in some crumbles)
• ½ cup black raspberries (use red if that's what you've got)
• 1 Tablespoon salad dressing (any sweet vinaigrette type will do)
• freshly ground pepper
• a bit of butter, maybe 2 Tablespoons total
• hearty bread sliced thinly into individual rounds (a baguette works well)
• red leaf lettuce
• chopped salted pistachios

Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, combine goat cheese and raspberries until raspberries are mashed.
2. Mix in salad dressing and a couple of grinds of fresh pepper. Set aside.
3. Toast the bread if you like. I did not, but if you are--preheat an oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and lay the bread in a rimmed baking sheet to toast for 5 minutes on one side.
4. To serve, spread a bit of butter onto rounds of bread. Top with a piece of lettuce, a teaspoon or two of raspberry mixture, a hit of freshly ground pepper, and a sprinkle of pistachios.

Strawberry Vanilla Muffins {Muffin Monday}

A tender muffin enriched with vanilla yogurt and local strawberries, sweetened with a touch of vanilla sugar on top.

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"Military spouses plant annuals for themselves and perennials for those who come after them."

 Author Unknown

From Intrepid Gardener to Constant Gardener to Humble Gardener

I am learning that, just because I think a location is ideal for a strawberry patch, it doesn't mean Mother Nature agrees with me.

When we moved to Ohio, bought a house(!), planted blueberry bushes and peach trees and raspberry canes and a strawberry patch in our small back yard, the only fruit I'd had experience growing was strawberries. We planted a strawberry patch on the side of the rented townhouse in Virginia. We planted a strawberry patch in the front of the duplex on base in northern Japan. I figured I knew from strawberries. I was wrong.

My strawberry patch, on the North side of the house, isn't happy. I've amended the soil each year with compost, shredded leaves, coffee grounds, and aged manure. I don't think it's poor soil. I think it's location. Interestingly, this year what appear to be raspberry canes--they look identical to the ones across the yard in the Official Raspberry Patch--have appeared amidst the few struggling strawberries.

Fish Taco Naan Pizza

A fast and easy fresh tasting pizza this simple naan crust is topped with mahi mahi, sautéed Napa cabbage, avocados, watermelon radishes, and crumbled queso.

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If you're cooking, you will organically move to a healthier diet . . . and support farmers--Michael Pollan, last night during his talk at the University of Dayton. I'm paraphrasing the end a bit.

I'm sure I sound like a broken record at times, or maybe a scratched disc, but if you're going to the trouble of cooking you may as well cook more than you'll eat during that sitting and plan to repurpose the leftovers into a new meal. It's a great way to plan to use the produce from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. When the Spring weather is so conducive to being outside--someone I know calls it "productivity poison"--meals that you can throw together from previously prepared ingredients are just the best.

This pizza is one example, and a terrific way to enjoy long-storing farm share ingredients. As a matter of fact, since my photos are date stamped, I know I made this pizza 3 weeks after I picked up the last farm share of the Fall season. Cabbages and radishes store for many weeks in the crisper, and can be used into the winter for fresh crunch in your meals.

When I say many weeks, I will be honest. I polished off THE LAST WATERMELON RADISH OF 2015 on April 17th, 2016. We're talking 4 months in my crisper. Four months!

Low Carb Swiss Chard and Sausage with Burrata

A low carb meal of sausage sautéed with Swiss chard and topped with creamy burrata cheese.

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It's good to have some simple cooking concepts in your back pocket for when you don't have a particular plan in mind for dinner, but you've got ingredients courtesy of you Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. This is another simple cooking concept.

Mentally [or print it out and physically] file it alongside Fast Greens and Pasta, a Concept Recipe and Fried Rice with Greens and Chicken. These are 3 different ways to get a bunch of cooking greens out of your refrigerator and into your belly. And my family liked them all.

Fish Tacos with Bok Choy and Peppers

Flakes of seasoned fish nestled against sautéed bok choy and peppers in a warm tortilla, topped with avocado slices and crumbled queso. Use the farm share in unexpected ways with these tacos.

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One of the ways I use less familiar produce in our farm share boxes is to tuck it in alongside other, more familiar to my family, foods. This tip the first one of my Five Tips to Feed Your Family From the Farm Share. When I picked up some marked down pre-seasoned mahi mahi, I thought it would go nicely with the dark purple bok choy from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share in a fish taco.

A typical late Fall farm share box.

Bok choy is a pretty terrific workhorse in a typical cool season [late Spring or Fall, like the photo above shows] farm share box. The mild flavor of this dark leafy green is great in Asian-inspired meals (like this Fried Rice with Greens and Chicken), it's quick in a pasta dish (like this Fast & Easy Greens & Pasta concept recipe), and can usually be substituted for spinach or Swiss chard just about anywhere.

Chive Blossom Potato Salad with Egg

A fresh and pretty side dish for a Spring table, this potato salad combines chive blossoms and hard cooked eggs with red skin potatoes and tangy mustard.

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This chive blossom potato salad is as pretty as it is flavorful. When I made my Chive Blossom Focaccia I was a bit bummed that the pretty purple color of the blossoms baked into a more bread-like brown. I figured that adding chive blossoms to a potato salad would look pretty and fresh for Spring, and add that delicate chive flavor to the dish.

We eat a lot of potatoes, so I've shared a lot of potato salads on the blog. I started off with my family's summertime favorite, Confetti Potato Salad. I shared a tangy Roasted Potato Salad with Creme Fraiche. And I got some green beans in on the potato salad action with my Hot French Potato Salad. Add our wintertime favorite Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole, and a Colorful Roasted Squash and Potatoes side dish, and I think I've just plotted out my daughter's dream menu plan. She loves her spuds.


Being a seasonal eater, when the weather turns warm I want to eat cool dishes, not heavy baked casseroles. This potato salad fills that need while looking pretty on the table. It's terrific on those Spring days where it's cool in the morning then warm and sunny during the day, making you rethink your dinner plans to something cooler and lighter. Add a salad of fresh greens, maybe some bread and cheese, and you've got a nice Spring meal.

Bacon and Parmesan Turnip Fritters

Shredded turnips flavored with freshly grated parmesan cheese and crispy bacon, bound up in these savory fritters, make an excellent dinner side dish or brunch entree.

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Folks, I've got to level with you. Turnips are something I used to endure about a farm share. I've found that some oil and some cheese make them actually quite delightful, and if you throw bacon into that mix my family gets on board, too.

It's funny how eating seasonally from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share broadens your palate. Over the years I've gone from tolerating beet greens to friskily anticipating my first Sautéed Beet Greens with fried egg brunch plate. I've gone from scratching my head at garlic scapes to popping cubes of garlic scape pesto into all sorts of savory dishes like Shrimp and Garlic Scape Scampi.

Turnips have remained a stubborn nut for me to crack, so to speak. I've had plenty of failures (never made it to the blog, occasionally featured on my FB page) trying to find ways to love these frequently-appearing beasts. I may never crave them, but I'm pretty comfortable with getting turnips in the box now. I've got plenty of options in my toolkit (shared on my Turnip Recipes Collection) and am willing to try new things. My latest, not ready for blog time recipe, is using farm share turnips in a homemade Branston Pickle spread. My son loves it, and it's a meatless sandwich spread for him while he works to lower his bad cholesterol and boost his good cholesterol.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Butter Muffins #MuffinMonday

Whole grain oatmeal muffins sweetened with cookie butter and studded with raisins. It tastes like a treat, and yet it's reasonably wholesome at the same time.  Try these for a super afternoon snack!

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It's no secret I'm a fan of whole grain baked treats for a snack. From my Banana Peanut Butter Cake to an upcoming Really Just As Good For You As A Bowl of Oatmeal Breakfast Cookie (yeah, the name is a work in progress) I just don't see why I can't boost the nutrition of a snack by making it a wee bit more wholesome some of the time. I won't mess with the classics--My Scottish Grandma's Shortbread will not be made with whole wheat flour in my kitchen--but for an after school snack for the kids, why not?

Deep Dish Pizza with Artichokes, Kalamata Olives, and Garlic Scape Pesto

This pizza is layered with mozzarella cheese, marinated artichoke hearts, and kalamata olives tucked under an Italian sausage blanket spread with garlic scape pesto.

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I'm working on refining my "elevator speech", a way to describe what it is I do to people I meet.

In the 30 second version, I'll touch on the flavor of a freshly picked tomato or strawberry vs their store bought counterparts and comment that it's easy to choose to eat locally for the flavor. In the longer version, I'll bring up garlic scapes--one of the more unusual, you've never seen this before therefore it must be locally grown, items in a Spring farm share basket. I specify Spring because, even though you'll only find garlic scapes right after they are harvested in the early part of the growing season--you can put up garlic scapes to enjoy year round.

I'll be giving a talk about local eating at my neighborhood community center in May, and I'm hoping for a couple of garlic scapes to harvest as props. Conveniently I missed a few bulbs of garlic when I harvested last June, and those older established bulbs have a jump on the garlic I planted last October so it's possible I'll have my 'visual aids'. If you're puzzled by what a garlic scape is--it's just what would be the flowering portion of garlic. You can see some gorgeous shots of a scape here on my Garlic Scape Recipe Round Up. I plant my garlic cloves, just like my daddy plants daffodils, in the Fall. Instead of enjoying the pretty flowers, though, I cut off the curly scape while the blossom is still a tight bud, and pulverize those stems for their mild garlic flavor.  With no energy needed to go for a showy floral display, the resulting garlic bulb is bigger--my end goal.

Now, I'll rave about garlic scapes to anyone who will listen, but the way I love them most is in pesto. I will freeze scoops of pesto (I make it thick so it stays in a clump when freezing) for up to a year. Initially I'm hoarding my garlic scape pesto stash, but this time of year I'm seeing the garlic pop up (and sharing it on my Instagram feed) and knowing that scape season is approaching so I can be free and easy with my stash.

This ^^ is all to say that, in this pizza, I used some of my garlic scape pesto as the sauce. If you don't have a stash in your freezer, use any pesto you feel like using. It will be delicious because you made it with love, and that's what matters the most, right?

Whole Wheat Banana Peanut Butter Cake

Bananas and peanut butter with Reese's pieces and chocolate chips in a whole grain snack cake. This is a terrific way to use up leftover bananas for a sweet treat.

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It is rare in my house that a bunch of bananas get consumed, one at a time, each at their peak (which, for me, is without a tinge of green or a speck of brown to mar that pretty yellow peel). Sometimes I feel like the bunch stays bright green for days, and then a matter of the few hours I'm asleep and out of the kitchen each night, they magically turn a mottled brown.

Don't misunderstand, I love the flavor of an actual ripe banana, and if I want to bake or smoothify when I hit the store I'll look first for marked down "ripe" [NOT OVERRIPE, THEY ARE PERFECTLY RIPE sorry to shout] bananas. But eating out of hand, public banana style, I like my bananas a pure yellow.

I am nattering on about bananas so I can tuck some photos here and there because I've got 2 different photo sessions with this cake. Last summer, at the conclusion of marching band camp, we had probably close to half a case of nicely ripe bananas left. They were too far gone for me to eat. Too far gone on a Friday afternoon to make it to the Foodbank Monday morning for subsequent distribution. Too far gone to act on when the kid needed to be hauled to the next activity. [As an aside, my son had 4 things going on last summer between sports camps and school camps and life forums and college visits, and all 4 of them happened in less than a 3 week stretch. Oy.]

These bananas needed to be used or put up right away, so the other volunteers and I divvied them up and I took home an armful. Did you know you can freeze bananas by opening the freezer door/drawer and chucking the banana inside? Simple as that. No need to wrap or peel or dice or any of that. Nature made the perfect freezer wrap for bananas and I don't mess with nature too much. If you have an organized freezer you may wish to place the banana, but my freezer is usually so full that I open it a tad, hope nothing cascades out, chuck in the bananas and close it up quick.

Chive Blossom and Potato Focaccia

A seasoned and seasonal bread, this chive blossom focaccia is spiced with roasted chiles and chunks of potato. This savory Spring bread is great with a bowl of light soup or along side a simple grilled dinner.

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I am thinking about inheritance today. After touring some lovely homes yesterday and learning about the items my hosts inherited, I got to thinking about what I've inherited. Material things, not values and quirks--that's for another post. I've inherited jewelry. I've inherited furniture. But today, I'm thinking about the plants I've inherited.


While I was stationed overseas, houseplants were one item that I inherited from folks moving on to new duty stations. I enjoyed them during my time, and when I left I passed them on to a new arrival. Houseplants are a quick way to make a new place feel more like a home, and my worms and I nurture more than we kill so our net is positive.


Most of the plants  are ones I have inherited on a more permanent basis. Even though I don't live in Virginia any more, the daffodils and tiger lilies my dad planted are still blooming each year. My dad is to daffodils what John Chapman was to apple trees--he's planted bulbs in 3 states and the District of Columbia. The daffodils Dad planted our first Fall here in Ohio are just starting to bloom.

Yes, I am kicking myself that I didn't raise the camera just a tad more.

My newest plant inheritance is a clump of chives. My folks' most recent downsizing coincided with the beginning of gardening season and their giving up their last community garden plot (after more than 20 years as community gardeners in 2 places). My dad dug up the chives one morning in Maryland, and I plunked them into a hole in my backyard the next day in Ohio. Last Spring was my first year with chive blossoms, and I happily harvested them to make all sorts of recipes.

Here's my first one--a focaccia bread that was terrific as an appetizer when dinner was delayed due to SPRING! Weather and the need to get out and dig. I'd pair this with my Finnish Summer Soup with Kale if I were going to make it soon, as the cool evenings are still soup weather around here.

For more recipes using herbs, please see my Recipes Using Herbs Collection. For more recipes using potatoes, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. For more recipes using roasted Hatch chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, and inherited plants in the back yard.

Kale and Sausage Burrata Pasta with Caramelized Onions

A skillet meal of Italian sausage, fresh kale, and caramelized onions tossed with pasta shells and bound together with creamy burrata cheese.

One of my go-to ways to cook a pile of produce from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share is a stir fry. It's pretty fast to throw together once all the vegetables are prepped, and you can customize the flavors as simple or as complex as you like. I've shared a handful of stir fry recipes in the Recipe Index by Category on the right sidebar, but it's often just a quickly thrown together, very little planning, dish.

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This dish is the pasta equivalent of a stir fry. I started off like usually I do for a stir fry, by cooking the meat and vegetables in a skillet. Instead of firing up the rice cooker (or delegating that to a kid), I'd boiled some water in my pretty purple pot. Once the pasta, meat, and vegetables are cooked it's a simple matter to toss everything together with the burrata and you're ready to eat.

Cheesy Roasted Potato and Egg Pizza

This grilled pizza recipe combines fresh eggs with roasted potatoes and a thick layer of creamy gouda cheese.

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In addition to the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, potatoes are one of the longest-storing vegetables from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. During the late winter I've got a few carrots in the crisper, lots of vegetables put up in the freezer, as well as potatoes and winter squash in the basement Strategic Winter Squash Reserve. One of the ways I'm feeding my family locally-grown produce year round, even while we live in an Ohio that doesn't know if it's winter or Spring this week.


When I roast potatoes I always roast a bunch more than I think we'll eat. It's part of the whole 'cook once eat twice' routine. My daughter will eat leftover roasted potatoes for breakfast or snack (sometimes after checking to see if I planned to use them for a dish, sometimes not bothering to check). When I put leftover roasted potatoes on a pizza I want to make sure I'm cooking the pizza fast so the potatoes don't dry out. Tossing the potatoes with olive oil and covering them with cheese helps. Heck, covering many things with cheese helps. Perhaps not the dust & dog hair bunnies . . .

I chose to share this pizza now because the eggs made me think of Easter. I like seeing photos of Facebook of my friend's new chicks--they are so interesting and cute and varied looking, it's no wonder their eggs will all end up varied and interesting looking as well.


For more recipes using potatoes, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally (and no, that doesn't mean just Cadbury Creme Eggs) from the farm share, the farmer's market, garden & grocery abundance. I'm sharing more pizzas on my Visual Pizza Recipe Index, and this will go in the Vegetarian Pizzas category. If you're into Pinterest, I pin interesting pizzas to 2 boards, so follow me on Pinterest. I'm sharing articles and recipes on my FB page, follow me there. And I just learned of the hashtag #dailypizza so I may try that out on Instagram, but for behind the scenes photos follow me on IG. Want to know How To Use This Blog?

Swiss Chard with Bacon and Roasted Potatoes

Fill your plate with vegetables--this dish consists of a heaping helping of sautéed Swiss chard and a side of roasted potatoes. A bit of bacon for flavor and you're ready to eat.

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I did not choose the name Farm Fresh Feasts for this blog because I create fancy feasts out of the farm share box each week. Instead, I felt that even a simple meal, prepared with fresh goodies from local farms, can be a feast.

I've long viewed Swiss chard as a comfort food simply because I grew up eating the chard grown in our suburban backyard garden. [This makes me curious what my kids will grow up to view as a comfort food, actually. Not any beet preparations, except maybe Chocolate Cherry Beet Brownies. Perhaps turnips in Pasties. Possibly kohlrabi in Chirashi Sushi. Certainly Yakisoba and homemade farm share Spaghetti sauce.]

This meal could be seen as comfort food by my family--they sure devoured it and I was glad to have snapped some photos before we ate. Something as simple as chard and potatoes can't be seen as high falutin' food but it sure does hit the spot.

Maple Peanut Butter Bacon Waffles

A hearty whole grain waffle flavored with maple syrup and peanut butter. These also have a bonus crunch from crumbled bits of crisply cooked bacon baked right into the waffle.

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When the weather turns to warm days with cold nights my thoughts run like sap straight to maple syrup. I get my jugs of locally-harvested maple syrup at the farmer's market and, to paraphrase the little old lady in the hot sauce commercial, I put that $%^! on everything.

I've shared muffins made using maple syrup, like my Healthy Morning Glory Muffins,  Winter Squash and Banana Muffins,  and {No Sugar} Carrot Cake Muffins.  I've used maple syrup in desserts, like my Pumpkin Cranberry Maple Kugel (although this makes an awesome breakfast) and Maple Doodle Cookies. I've even used maple syrup to sweeten up savory dishes like Maple Teriyaki Salmon Sushi and my Red Cabbage, Leek, Brat and Beet Skillet Supper (aka Hot Pink Mess) and in my morning Orange and Beet Smoothie. I'm a big fan of real maple syrup from local producers.

Three different stores for these ingredients--the local grocery, the farmer's market, and The Christmas Tree Shops (because where else do you buy peanut butter but The Christmas Tree Shops?).

When the maple syrup jug is brand new I tend to be quite free and easy with my syrup. Only towards the end of the jug do I get a bit stingy, but I am fortunate to enjoy a year round farmer's market so a new jug is just a Saturday morning trip away.


I didn't intend for this to be my second Friday Waffles with Meat post in a row, but I guess it turned out this way. At the beginning of the year I looked thorough the previous year's unblogged photos and jotted down recipes that would be suitable on each page of my monthly editorial calendar. [Sounds fancy, but I just printed off some calendar pages with boxes big enough to write in.] When I sat down yesterday to plot out my March recipes, these waffle photos spoke to me the loudest. Always listen to the waffles. I put them down first. Only after I looked at my recent posts did I realize that a mere week ago I posted my Corned Beef Hash Brown Waffles.

Other waffle recipes I feel like pointing out on the blog are my Butternut Squash Waffles, Overnight Yeasted Carrot Waffles, Eggnog Sourdough Waffles, Banana Blender Waffles, and Chocolate Zucchini Waffles. Yes, we eat a fair amount of waffles around here (and leftovers become school day breakfasts) because it's easy to make a few rounds and then call everyone to the table so we can sit together and enjoy breakfast.

Though that doesn't always happen when you have sleeping-in teens and a hungry, early-rising spouse, so sometimes we eat in shifts.

That doesn't mean we eat alone.


Often a crowd appears.

Berry Mango Swirl Muffins

A multicolored muffin swirled with blueberry, mango, raspberry, and strawberry purees. This whole grain treat makes a large batch, great for bake sales and sharing.

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I was sitting in a Tim Hortons enjoying a blue and yellow swirled lemon blueberry muffin when I got the idea for these muffins. My folks have been visiting this month, which means I've been out and about much more than usual (and have tried a number of interesting breakfast and lunch places--stay tuned for more inspired recipes). Looking at the muffin, I tried to figure out how to simultaneously 'lightly mix together' the batter, as one does for the Muffin Method, while still getting the blueberry puree fully incorporated into the mix.


Clearly I didn't make lemon blueberry muffins for today's Leap of Faith Muffin Monday with the #MuffinMonday bakers. I didn't even master a swirl technique that I could share on the blog. I did, however, make a whole mess of muffins. Enough to give a plate to the office staff of both the junior high and the high schools, some to take to the shop, and the most photogenic ones saved for the dogs.


That's right, apparently Vincent got up to shenanigans while I was at the shop and ate the pretty muffins, not a crumb or paper left. I love that old wiener dog, and while I have no concrete proof (my daughter saw him on the dining room table though), instead of making a bazillion more muffins I've just taken photos of what's left. They were fruity and fun to make, though, so I hope you'll consider trying these when you want to make a bunch of muffins that stand out a bit.

Corned Beef Hash Waffles

Leftover corned beef waffled with shredded potatoes for a savory treat for a post-St Patrick's day breakfast or brunch.

"You're making meat waffles?"

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I suppose at this point very little I do in the kitchen surprises my spouse, but this one sure did. See, I had leftover corned beef. My daughter loves hash for breakfast. I wanted to find a way to actually get good hash browns--crispy brown on the outside and cooked all the way though. This recipe is a fun combination of all of the above.

I see stylized photos on websites, and I make the assumption that behind the camera, and surrounding the beautifully garnished plate of food, are equally stylized spaces and people.  I'm here to blow up any ideas that I'm a stylized person by sharing, because my spouse took them, photos of me making these waffles.

Fried Egg, Lettuce, and Tomato Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Grilled cheese meets a fried egg then mashes up with a BLT. This colorful sandwich rocks three classics in one delightfully messy handful.

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February in the Midwest is NOT the time for ripe tomatoes and fresh lettuce. Why am I sharing a recipe calling for these ingredients on my blog that celebrates locally-sourced foods? Simple. This is the time to lock down YOUR local source for the upcoming season's fresh fare.

If you're local to the Dayton area, there will be a Community Supported Agriculture Fair at the 2nd Street Market on Thursday, February 25th from 5:30-7:30pm where you can meet farmers, learn cooking tips from a local chef, and hang with like-minded folks. Look around your community for a similar even this time of year, or try Barn2Door or LocalHarvest to find food near you.

If you read this blog often you realize that these photos were not taken last week because they feature ripe tomatoes. I do not buy tomatoes at the grocery store. Period. Even a plain Jane eater knows that tomatoes grown locally and picked when ripe--not picked prematurely and shipped across many wintery states--just taste better. LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO EAT FOOD THAT DOESN'T TASTE GOOD. So, I eat my fresh tomatoes in the summer and Fall. I eat so many that at times I'm sick of fresh tomatoes and welcome any simple tips for putting them up for winter (like this freezer-friendly Fresh Tomato Pesto), but in October I know I'm facing at least 7 months with fresh tomatoes, so I gorge while I can.

I'm not a Foodie, though. I couldn't tell you the difference between one Fancy Name Chocolate and Another Fancy Named Chocolate. You don't have to be a Foodie to eat local, though. Even a little kid can tell you that a local strawberry, picked during your area's strawberry season, beats anything you can pull out of a plastic clamshell for sweetness and flavor. That's one reason why I eat locally. Keeping my dollars in my local economy is another.

Whatever your reasons, this is the time to research your options for a More Local 2016. You'll need to fortify yourself, so I suggest a sandwich. For more grilled cheese sandwiches, please check out my Clickable Collage of Recipe Suggestions--I've got a whole photo collage devoted to Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup, showcasing locally foraged, grown, and sourced produce. But wait there's more recipe ideas! For more recipes using tomatoes, please see my Red & Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection. For more recipes using Salad Greens, please see my Lettuce & Salad Greens Recipes Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me wondering how to make the most of the farm share. I'm pinning recipes from all over the web to my Pinterest boards, follow me there. I'm sharing new finds on my Facebook page, follow me there. And I've discovered how fun it is  share quick photos on Instagram, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Deep Dish Meatball Pizza

A pizza you can really sink your teeth into--this is filled with meatballs and vegetables sandwiched between two layers of cheese in a hearty deep dish pizza.

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Sometimes I just don't have much to say other than this:

"This pizza was good. You should try making one like it. Here's what I did."

So instead of waiting further to post until I have something worth reading, or something worth getting off my chest, I'm giving you the recipe and stepping aside. With some photos, because we eat with our eyes first and it was a really tasty pizza. Very forkable (it's kinda heavy to lift up to your face with your hand).