Picked up our first box of CSA veggies yesterday. Here’s the unboxing!
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Naturally Raw
…honey that is!
While walking through the Farmers’ Market today we decided to purchase some local honey (thanks for the suggestion Carolyn!) And found Two Gander Farm’s stand, they produce honey nearby in Fleetwood, PA and they had a ton of different honey options!
After hearing the different options we chose to go with their Naturally Raw batch. This type of honey is what you get before you heat and boil the honey which then turns into the more translucent kind you find in the grocery store. The translucent kinds are good for having tea with and adding sweetness to food, but ironically enough these do NOT help with allergies. If you boil honey, you are essentially boiling out any of the natural pollen that you can ingest to actually help calm down your allergies. The raw kind actually still contains bits of beeswax as well and it is more of a milky color and a little thicker in consistency.
Lesson Learned from Two Gander Farm: if you want to buy local honey that actually helps allergies, buy the raw form
We got home and each tried a bit, definitely has those little bits of beeswax (I had to spit out some because I just couldn’t figure out how to chew it down enough to swallow!) and a little grittier due to the natural sugar crystals that formed in the honeycomb. You can still cook/eat the honey but again, as the Two Gander Farm’s guy told us, if you even put it in the tea any heat would kill off the allergens in the honey. At least we know we can use it in multiple ways!
Will keep you posted how this stuff works. I had to upgrade from Claritin to Zyrtec today which helped but if this honey helps also, I can downgrade again to my batch of Claritin and stop taking from Eric’s batch of Zyrtec 
Community Supported Agriculture, or “CSA”
For us, having fresh fruits and vegetables as part of our diet is important and recently we found buying vegetables from the local farmers market just taste so much better!
While talking to one of my friends the other day she mentioned how she was signing her family up for this summer and it got me thinking, “if we like farmers markets and it makes sense financially, why not just convert and try it out?” So this summer we are going to be participating in our first CSA. It actually comes out to ~$25/week for fresh fruits and vegetables for 25 weeks and all you have to do is just go pick it up at a nearby location. Ours is actually about 7 blocks away, not bad!
We like to cook together so it will be a really cool experience receiving a box of vegetables and having to figure out new recipes based on whatever comes in it! I’m hoping for fennel and radishes, love radishes and have always wanted to figure out what the heck to make with fresh fennel! We recently began roasting brussels sprouts, they are awesome, especially from our local farmers market.
Stay tuned for more information including pictures of our first box and what we wind-up making with it!!
To learn more check out:
Farm To City
Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (this is the CSA we are participating in)
ossobuco!
Ossobuco or (osso buco) is my absolute hands down favorite italian dish. The tender meat, the rich marrow, how can you not love this dish? It’s funny that we’ve never attempted to make it before. So after looking around for a proper recipe, I found one posted at Nook & Pantry. And not just any recipe, but the ossobuco recipe from one of, if not the authority on italian cooking, Marcella Hazan. Verdict? Transcendent. Absolutely delicious!
So here’s that recipe. Remember with ossobuco, a little bit of love goes a long way in developing the flavors. Give the dish enough time to cook and the shanks will come out incredibly juicy and tender.
cooking in thailand
Those who know Jennilee and I know that we love food. We love tasting new things and we love cooking new dishes. Cooking is something we both enjoy, and we’ve found that cooking together is a great way to spend time with each other, especially during the busy work week. I mentioned in a previous post that before going to Thailand, Jennilee and I put together a list of things that we had to do while over there, sort of like a Thailand bucket list. In Bangkok, we crossed watching a live muay thai match off the list. Next up, taking a cooking class in Thailand!
