I can’t say I have a particular affinity for lima beans, but I’ve never feared them the way so many people (my mother included) do. Call it more a casual indifference. But when I saw the pretty little pale-green beans, pre-shelled, in a basket at Alexandria’s West End market recently, I couldn’t resist. This simple preparation brought out the beans’ natural creaminess without obscuring their mild flavor. Next time, I might use more garlic instead of onion, but otherwise it was pretty good. And, the husband didn’t hate them, so I’ll count that in the Meatless Monday win column. (The boy is adamant about eating his green veggies frozen at the moment, so he opted for frozen string beans instead.) I also made a stir-fry of squash and peppers from our CSA and served both over basmati rice, making for a pretty hearty fall supper.

Recipe: Creamy Lima Beans

Ingredients:

• 1 pint lima beans, shelled
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tablespoons butter
• salt and pepper

Instructions: Place lima beans, onion, garlic and bay leaf in a medium saucepan and cover with water to about an inch over the beans. Bring to a boil over high heat. Boil gently for 15-20 minutes, until beans are fork tender. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop them from cooking. Melt butter in the saucepan and return beans (remove bay leaf) to the pan, stirring to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Makes 4 servings.

Fall may be my favorite season, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hoard the summer produce just as long as possible. Sweet summer corn in particular, and this year my favorite has been the white corn from Three Way Farm at the Del Ray Farmers Market.

Pancakes and kids are pretty much a sure thing, and the boy was eager to help me whisk together this quick and easy batter. It’s adapted from a classic puffy apple pancake recipe that I’ve always enjoyed, turned savory to serve as a side dish to our first maple-glazed pork chops and apples of the fall. (Oh yes, we went apple picking recently too, at the ecoganic-ish Crooked Run Orchard in Purcellville, Va. … they spray their apples (I’m unaware of any u-pick orchards in the region that don’t) but have a lengthy explanation of their practices on their website.) Anyway, corn and apples makes the perfect crossover pairing to mark the autumnal equinox, I’d say.

RECIPE: Puffy Sweet Corn Pancake
Adapted from Betty Crocker Puffy Oven Pancake

Ingredients:

• 1 cup corn kernels (from 2 ears of corn)
• 1 small yellow onion or spring onion, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3/8 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/8 cup corn meal
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• fresh parsley to garnish

Instructions: Place butter in 9-inch pie pan and allow to melt while preheating oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour, corn meal and salt in one bowl. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs and whisk in the milk. Add the flour mixture, stirring until just combined, then fold in corn and onion. Remove the pie pan from the oven and brush the butter around the pan, including the sides. Pour batter into pan and return to oven. Bake 25-30 minutes, until puffy and lightly browned. Remove from oven and run a knife around the edges to loosen the pancake. Place a large dinner plate over the pan and flip quickly. Garnish with parsley and enjoy! Makes 6 servings.

Note: If you’re in the area, Crooked Run will be making apple butter on the farm this weekend, Sept. 19 and 20. Elsewhere, visit pickyourown.org to locate an apple orchard near you. And if you have any favorite apple recipes, please share!

Farms of Origin:

• corn, Three Way Farm (VA)
• corn meal, Wye Mill (MD)
• milk & butter, South Mountain Creamery (MD)
• parsley & onions, Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA (VA)
• pork chops, Smith Meadows (VA)
• apples, Crooked Run Orchard (VA)

Shared with Real Food Wednesday — visit for round-up at Cheeseslave for more real food recipes and inspiration!

Our Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA bag was full of ripe summer tomatoes last week, after a slow and soggy start to tomato season here in Virginia. Unfortunately, we were leaving town the day after our pick-up. Of course, that was also the day we got the notice that the boxes of surplus canning tomatoes were available, and I was feeling panicked at the thought of not putting up tomatoes this year and faced with a pile of tomatoes we certainly wouldn’t be able to finish before leaving. I had recently seen a recipe for tomato jam and decided that was the perfect project for the night as it mainly involves simmering on the stove for a couple hours, giving me time to pack. A huge thunderstorm kept the boy awake so I put him to work slicing up the excess cherry tomatoes we also needed to use up. (Using a kid-safe knife, of course.)

I made slight alterations, using turbinado sugar and a touch of honey and a splash of Virginia’s North Gate Petit Verdot that was also in need of using up. (Not that I couldn’t have used a glass or two, but it would’ve made it even less likely that I would get all our luggage packed that night.)

For the recipe, see: Tomato Onion Jam by Jennifer Perillo/Tasty Kitchen. My alterations: 1 1/2 cup raw (turbinado sugar) and 1/4 cup raw honey, omit the brown sugar. Add 2 tablespoons red wine in lieu of lemon juice.

This weekend was the Canvolution kick-off — a nationwide effort to restore the art of preserving food, launched by former Washington Post blogger Kim O’Donnel and a host of other food writers and bloggers. Visit the Canning Across America website for a host of canning resources and advice, particularly this great article on canning with kids.

The highlight of my first mother-son canning experiment was seeing the pride in my son’s eyes as he handed his aunt and grandma their jar of jam, declaring, “I made this myself!”

What have you canned lately?

This week’s Market Watch features the hunt for local rhubarb, and read on for a recipe for jazzing up greens to appeal to picky kids (or grown ups).

At the Alexandria & District Markets: While strawberries are in abundance at the Del Ray Farmers Market, the first spring peas from Three Way Farm were snatched up within the first hour. I had hoped for rhubarb from the Riva farmers, but they were missing this week, sending the boy and I into the District Sunday for rhubarb and some of my favorite and more exotic fresh herbs available at the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market. I was also thrilled to find pesticide-free (Spring Valley) and organic (Next Step) strawberries at Dupont. Spring Valley had the final ramps of the season, too, and their colorful salad green mix studded with edible flowers which inspired the recipe below.

Next Step Produce, a certified-organic farm in Charles County, MD, is always the source of some interesting new ingredient. This time, I picked up Erba Stella, an Italian herb with a fresh grassy flavor that is full of vitamins A & C. Armed with pretty lavender chive blossoms and crisp Swiss chard from the Farm at Sunnyside (also organic, and my reliable source for rhubarb), I set about to make greens that would appeal to my anti-leafy green toddler. Sometimes, it’s truly amazing the subtle changes that cause a kid to switch from disgust or indifference to devouring a dish — a lesson learned most recently when I sauteed asparagus in butter rather then my usual method of roasting them with olive oil. Suddenly, the boy was devouring the stalks off my plate and demanding seconds! (Nevermind that he called them “string beans,” sometimes taste is more important than terminology.)

For this attempt at jazzing up some colorful Swiss chard, I added a touch of butter to the cooked chard to help counter any bitterness, and let the boy help me sprinkle the “special edible flowers” into the pan. I can’t say this preparation has moved Swiss chard onto his list of favorites, but he did eat two bites before declaring that he needed to save the rest to “share with Daddy.” I’ll call that a success.

Recipe: Swiss Chard with Chive Blossoms

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch Swiss chard
• 1 handful Erba Stella (optional, could add baby spinach or stick to just chard)
• 5 chives with blossoms
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/2 tablespoon butter
• sea salt

Instructions: Warm olive oil in saute pan over medium heat. Rinse chard and shake to remove excess water. (Even if you’ve pre-washed your chard, rinse it again as the water is needed to wilt the greens.) Tear into 1-inch strips. Tear Erba Stella and chive stems into smaller pieces, and pinch the base of the chive blossoms to release the buds. Add all ingredients to the pan, cover, and cook for 2 minutes or until chard has just wilted. Add the butter and salt to taste, tossing gently to combine. Makes 4 servings. Enjoy!

Need more ideas for chive blossoms?
Try Asparagus Chive Quiche or Chive Blossom Baked Eggs

FoodieTots @ the Farmers Market Week continues with some background on why we love the market for teaching healthy habits. This post was originally a guest contribution at Food with Kid Appeal ~ visit Jenna’s blog for more tips to inspire healthy eating with your kids.

This weekend, my son rediscovered his toy shopping cart and insisted on hauling it out for a pre-bedtime grocery shopping trip. He proceeded to entertain us by driving back and forth across the living room and kitchen, visiting the orange juice guy, the ketchup guy, the jam place, and returning his empty milk carton to the door for the milkman to refill. I love that he thinks we have “a guy” for everything!

My son has been shopping our weekly farmers market since he was an infant in a baby carrier. At the time, it was the perfect Saturday morning outing when he woke up at the crack of dawn and nothing else was open. At two and a half now, his tastes are still fairly fickle but he generally will at least try a bite of anything that comes from the market. By engaging my son in the shopping experience, and the sensory wonderland that is available at a farmers market rather than a grocery store, I have found that he is genuinely curious and excited about food.

Shopping at a farmers market or organic grocer provides you with a much wider array of fruits and vegetables than what are generally available at the big box grocery. From heirloom tomatoes in shades of yellow, green, red and purple to orange cauliflower and purple beans, they provide a rainbow of choices that appeal to kids visually. My son was never a huge fan of green beans, but the day we brought home purple beans from the market, he was enthralled. One day this past fall I asked him to bag some beans, giving him the choice of yellow or green. To my surprise, he chose to take some of both, and when we had them for dinner he proudly held them up to his dad and exclaimed, “I picked these yellow and green beans all myself!”

I also find that while my son may look skeptically at a new item placed on his dinner plate, he is almost guaranteed to sample something handed to him by a vendor at the market. Our neighborhood market’s cheese man is his favorite, no doubt due to the generous sample of cave-aged cheddar he receives each week. My son devours it, exclaiming to everyone in sight that, “Tom the Cheese Guy gave me this!” (He now asks at home, “Are those Tom’s eggs? … is that Tom’s cheese?” before determing whether to taste something. Heaven forbid we run out mid-week!) One of our favorite fruit vendors will sometimes slip him a perfectly toddler-sized Seckel pear, which he enjoys with relish. A while back, I was checking out something new to me, sunchokes. When the farmer handed me one to sample, my son demanded a taste as well. He declared it “too spicy,” but I can guarantee that he never would have been interested in trying it had I tried to slip it onto his plate at home.

As parents know, kids love to feel like they are in control, so empowering them to choose their favorites while you shop is a great way to get them engaged in what they are eating. By shopping at a market or organic grocer where virtually all the options are healthy, it helps reduce the temptation of processed foods and gets them excited about healthy foods. My son will often request fruit or cheese as a snack, which I hope will remain a habit as he gets older. When he’s older, I plan to use the market as an opportunity to teach him about money as well, by giving him his own budget and letting him determine what, and how much, to buy. And of course I will be encouraging him to join me in the kitchen as much as possible to learn how to cook his healthy selections, too.

Shared with Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade — check out the round-upround-up!

Calling all farmers market fans! One Local Summer returns in June. If you’re up for the challenge of cooking one all-local meal each week, click the image above to sign up. Here’s a reminder of some of the Chesapeake Bay foodshed meals we enjoyed last year.