Mindful Plate

Posted by Sheila

St. Patrick’s Day came and went with Irish Pork Chops braised with stout and leeks, served with roasted cabbage, turnips, and more leeks (leeks, leeks, leeks…our winter staple which we are still enjoying even as we size up the Walla Wallas as they work their way towards spring harvests).  We also had this gluten-free Irish soda bread, ours made with sweet sorghum rather than teff flour.  Our gluten free baking is usually reserved for just such special occasions, and the littlies in the house revel in the treat–we had the leftover bread as French toast the following morning, it was as if they had woken up in heaven.  Dessert was rice flour shamrock shortbread drizzled with mint chocolate and for the adults,  Irish Cream Coffee with the whiskey but not the Creme de Menthe, just another drizzle of the mint chocolate on the top of the whipped cream.

With the passing of this holiday that we love and feel a bit akin to having our own fair share of Irish blood between the two of us and vested in our kids, we invoke a celebratory mood that we keep with us to mark the coming of Spring (and our son’s birthday) just a few days later.  As we make the move from winter to spring, we also begin to shift from winter to spring eating.  The changes have already begun on our table with a handful of lovely baby lettuce salads for a few dinner parties and to round out some weeknight meals for the first time since early December!  We have also begun harvesting our kale, adding  it either lightly sauteed or just tossed and rubbed in oil and vinegar  with just about every meal we can because it is beyond delicious harvested now, after the winter’s cold has sweetened it more than you can imagine when you try to recall summer’s more biting kale and even when compared to the fall’s first frosted leaves.

The mustards and Asian greens have begun to flower, sending up tender rapinisthat we eat out of hand for snacks or saute just a moment to toss with pasta or to top a simple olive oil/aged cheese pizza (we are using Willamete Valley Cheese Co.’s Borenkaas, a raw cow milk aged gouda), this replacing our regular winter pizza of arugula and sun dried tomatoes or sauce tomatoes from the freezer.  The arugula, too, now budding, no longer the base of our simple, winter side salads.

We are only three years into our lives on this farm, two years into eating really seasonally, and just one year into growing vegetables through the winter.  Still, more than ever, we mark the circle around the sun in vegetables.  The trees, leaves or not, flowers here or gone, birds, bees, rain or sun…these things we feel and keep time by with great enthusiasm, even more so since we began to farm; but as we see the dishes on our table wax and wane the varying season’s bounty, we feel even more deeply connected to this cycle. And so we march forth towards the equinox with bellies full of winter and ready to be filled with spring.