It’s finally starting to feel like spring with cucumbers and peppers in your bags this week!
On the Menu this Week:
Fruit:
Frozen Blueberries–Nude Fruit–Delicious Ontario Frozen blueberries! These are great for muffins, pancakes, oatmeal and smoothies! see Apple and Blueberry Crisp recipe below
Apples–Lincoln Line Orchards
Veggies:
Cioggia Beets–Hillside Garden Farms–use a mandolin or a very sharp knife to thinly slice these gorgeous beets and toss them raw into your favorite green salad!
Golden Beets–Hillside Garden Farms
Multi Coloured Carrots–Hillside Garden Farms
Cucumbers–Always Fresh Greenhouses. Yay to Ontario Cucumbers! the first ones of the season!!
Mushrooms–Sharon Mushroom Farm
Red Onions–Hillside Garden Farms
Red Pepper–St. David’s Hydro
Orange Pepper–St. David’s Hydro
Lettuce Greens–Sleger’s Greenhouses
Baby Beet greens–Sleger’s Greenhouses–these tender greens are great in salads!
Pantry:
Pearl Barley from K2 Milling –see recipes below!
Cheese:
Waltzing Matilda water buffalo milk cheese from Monforte Dairy.
Important info about the cheese: This cheese has a bloomy rind, like brie, and a layer of vegetable ash below it–this is black-ish coloured ash, not mold! so it’s perfectly safe and delicious to eat! You should also eat this cheese sooner than later, because it does become very soft and oozy over time. Best to eat it this weekend!
See feature below.
Here’s a picture of the Waltzing Matilda ash ripened water buffalo cheese.
Meat:
Chorizo from Select Fine Foods. We all love the products we receive from Select Fine Foods! This chorizo is best cooked on the bbq or in a fry pan.
Meet the Maker: Monforte Dairy
Monforte Dairy is an artisanal dairy which launched in the spring of 2004 in Stratford. Ruth Klahsen is a chef and Monforte’s owner and its head cheesemaker. She is a chef who is known throughout the restaurants in the Stratford area. She believes that small pleasures, which include things like delicious, sustainably made cheeses, make a difference.
Monforte specializes in Sheep’s and Goat’s milk cheese, but they do make other cheeses, like this week’s cheese which is made from water buffalo milk. They produce both fresh and aged sheep’s and goat’s milk cheeses as well as a few aged cow’s milk cheeses. Her milk is sourced from local farms–this is a picture of the milk truck arriving with sheeps milk!
Monforte gets their Water Buffalo milk from Sunnivue Organic Farm near London Ontario. With a thousand litres of milk flowing into the dairy every week, they have been making many new and interesting cheeses.
This week’s cheese, Waltzing Matilda, is a delicious ash-ripened Camembert.
Rolled in Balsam Ash, the cheese develops the same bloomy rind you find on a brie or camembert. The slightly bitter, thick white rind overlying the clean black ash rind is edible. The texture of the paste is like chevre, though the cheese itself is quite buttery and almost sweet as it melts on your tongue. We hope you enjoy this unique and exciting cheese!
The photos above came from Monforte’s Blog–check out more photos and read more about Monforte Dairy here!
Barley recipes!
Mushroom and Barley Soup
This is a simple soup where you can use your mushrooms and onion from this week’s bag. Don’t have parsley on hand? try using your beet greens instead!
Moroccan Chickpeas and Roasted Vegetables with Barley
If you have root veggies from weeks past (like parsnips, celery root, beets or radishes) try using them up in this dish!
Buttery Barley Risotto with Parmesan Cheese
Feel free to add your white mushrooms to this dish for a more subtle flavour.
Barley, Celery Root and Mushroom salad
When I saw this recipe a few weeks ago, I thought it looked delicious!
More recipes
Onion Tart with Bacon or Olives
If you don’t feel like making the dough, you can buy pre-made fresh pizza dough at the grocery store.
Apple and Blueberry Crisp recipe
Put your apples and blueberries to use with this yummy crisp!
Vegetable song video
Just a fun 45 second video I came across while searching for recipes! Nothing like singing British veggies!