They cooked the most amazing meal: antipasti on fresh bread, chicken risotto {the original recipe of Nonna Tonia- my dad’s grandmother and my namesake}, salad, a browned-butter-hazelnut-pear cake with an orange-cranberry filling, and espresso poured over vanilla ice cream with dark chocolate shavings on top. Holy-moly it was all so good!

Cake, candles, and singing…because we’re never too old for that.

Games, laughter, winners and losers…

Birthday kisses from my favorite little peanut…

And the next morning, a big breakfast made by my handsome husband…how does he get the pancakes so perfect like that?

Thanks for the great birthday, family! I am so blessed!!…And my belly is very full and happy. ♥

These are the sorts of things that have been coming out of our garden recently. They have inspired a bunch of great meals.

I’m afraid we’re getting really, really spoiled with all these fresh-from-the-ground tastes, and it’s about to be a long, hard winter without them.

I already made and froze a bunch of pesto from our basil, and we’re going to have enough tomatoes to preserve as well, but there’s nothing like just-picked basil garnishing raw tomatoes on a slice of grainy bread.

And the peas. Crunchy, sweet, delightful peas! I spent an hour the other day plucking them off the vine, cracking them open and alternating popping them in my mouth and tossing them to the chickens; one for me, one for you, one for me, one for…

Those red peppers might look like harmless sweet little bell peppers, but holycow no they are not. They’re spicy little Italian peppers!! They pack just the right amount of punch to liven up sauces, soups, stir fries, and more.

Blueberries- not from our own garden but from one nearby- that burst in your mouth with a flavor that can only be described as sunshine in berry form.

I will miss them like this: fresh, with maple syrup and Greek yogurt on our hot-cereal every morning. This is how we always start the day.

But at least we are prepared with bags of frozen ones already piled high in our freezer for the winter. Bleeeehck! Let’s not say the W-word again for a long while! It’s still summer, it’s still summer, it’s still summer.

Every night is a new culinary adventure- usually enjoyed on the porch with the stars overhead and the owls hooting through the trees. After a long day of work, food tastes so good.

Last night I had a craving for something savory and nutty to pair with our sweet tomatoes. I found a generic tarte crust recipe and substituted regular flour for almond flour, and added diced rosemary to it.

I blended up some quick pesto, sliced up the tomatoes, and loaded the tarte crust up with both. It got topped off with chunks of fresh mozzarella before going in the oven {I broiled it at the end to get the mozz bubbly and brown}. The extra pesto got frozen along with the rest of my stash.

Mmmmmm! It was perfect- exactly what I wanted. We gobbled it down before I could snap a photo of it, so you’ll just have to trust me that it was a handsome meal and very flavorful. Here’s what I did for the crust:

1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp minced fresh rosemary
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1 tbsp water

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine the almond flour, salt, and rosemary in a bowl. Whisk together the grapeseed oil and water in another bowl. Stir the wet ingredients into the almond flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Press the dough into a 9-inch tarte pan.

Bake for 15 min or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 30 minutes. Place in the fridge for about 45 minutes {this helps them come out of the tarte pans easier, without crumbling}. Remove tarte crust fridge, top with pesto, tomatoes or whatever your heart desires. Bake under the broiler until golden- watch the edges of the crust so it doesn’t get too brown. You can cover the edges with tinfoil if necessary. Serve warm with a salad of fresh greens.

What’s on your summer menu?

“For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Happy New Year!  We got the party started this year by surrounding ourselves with friends and family.  The farm has been full of visitors all month long, and it has been wonderful!  I absolutely love having company in our home.  During the summer months, everyone seems too busy to visit each other for any length of time…but there’s something about the winter that promotes long conversations, long sits by the stove, and long meals together.

So, please excuse the spotty blogging while I:

 1) Cook meals with friends

2) Eat meals with friends

3) Play pond hockey with friends

4) Jam with friends

5) Sauna with friends {no picture of this for obvious reasons}

6) Go out to see this play with friends.

Regular posting will resume shortly…and speaking of that, I’d love to know what you all would like to see on this blog in 2011.  Last year I started doing a mixture of more personal posts, like the wedding series, and the tutorial posts that focus on implementing eco-habits into our lives.  Do you like this mixture?  Do you wish the blog was heavier on tutorials, or heavier on the personal details?

Thank you to everyone who reads Itty Bitty…I’m constantly finding out about new readers, and am suprised at how many of you there actually are.  It means so much to me to have you along on this journey with me, and I want to continue writing useful posts for you all.  I’m always open for suggestions on how to make the blog a more valuable part of your day!  Drop me a note anytime.  toniasimeone {at} gmail {dot} com

And what strong suits will I be bringing to the marriage?  Well, while Mike does the taxes, I will take care of the cooking. I come from a long line of humans who live for one thing alone:  to eat good food.  We’re Italian, and we know what good cookin’ tastes like!

Through cooking, I’ve become more aware of where our food comes from, and I feel strongly that one of the most important itty-bitty changes we can make in our lives is to eat as close to home as possible, meaning buying the strawberries from the neighboring town verses the ones from two states away.

Sustainable Table is a website with some great information about why it is so important to buy locally grown food.  One of the statistics on their site especially hit home for me:

Between production and transportation, growing 10% more produce for local consumption would result in an annual savings ranging from 280,000 to 346,000 gallons of fuel.”

The tough part is that Duluth’s long winters make buying locally grown food possible for only about four months per year.  But there are some great CSA options in the area, so please check them out if you don’t already know about them.

We are lucky enough to have enough dirt around us to grow a little food ourselves.  Mike and I planted a little garden in our backyard last spring, and our tiny patch of dirt exploded with peppers, peas, lettuce, herbs, rhubarb, and more.  It was really fun to walk outside and pick ourselves a salad every night.

Recently, the arrival of cold weather meant we had to watch our beautiful crops whither away.  We had eaten almost everything, except for the herbs.  Large patches of basil and parsley still remained, and we wondered how we could preserve these plants for cooking with all winter long.

This is where having a “foodie” family comes in handy-  My mom came up with a great way to preserve herbs, so I thank her for the following tutorial.

Preserving Fresh Herbs:

1: Harvest the herbs (in this case, parsley).  Wash them, and remove the stems.

2: Tear the herbs into pieces.  I did this by hand instead of using a knife, because I wanted the pieces to stay relatively large.

3: Fill the cells of an empty ice tray with the pieces.  I really crammed the parsley in there, to get the most out of each cell.

4&5: Slowly fill each cell with water until the herbs are submerged.  If they start to float up, push them down with your finger.  Now that they are wet, the leaves will stick together and stay put.  When finished, put the tray in the freezer.

These beautiful little herb-cubes can be popped into any sauce or stew and the ice will melt to reveal perfectly fresh tasting parsley!  For basil, use the same technique but fill the cells with olive oil instead of water (water makes basil turn black.)

Happy cooking everyone!