My mom, brother and sister-in-law were in town this past weekend, so naturally I took advantage of the opportunity to have extra hands and dragged them out to an orchard for peach picking. (I have a little one to carry, after all.) We went to Hollin Farms this time in Fauquier County, a hilltop orchard and farm with views that can’t be beat.

And we were in for an extra treat with pick-your-own-corn. The boy and his aunt and uncle picked a dozen ears of Silver Queen sweet white corn, which we then took home and immediately grilled up for dinner, along with our Cibola Farms buffalo burgers. It doesn’t get any fresher than this!

Now typically when we make corn-on-the-cob, I cut the kernels off for the boy. I know some kids love biting into a big ear of corn, but I guess it’s a little intimidating when the ear is bigger than your head. Yesterday, Jan from Family Bites shared a recipe on Twitter for “corn coins,” and a light bulb went off. These “coins” are simply short pieces of corn, cut into kid-sized lengths, wrapped in foil packets with butter and seasoning and cooked on the grill. It’s proof that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. Sure enough, they boy devoured five of them with dinner. (Thanks, Jan!)

I could eat plain old grilled corn-on-the-cob all summer, but I’ve seen some other corn recipes lately that look pretty tempting, too. Like this corn-and-asiago-cheese bread pudding from the Tennessee Locavore. Yum!

What’s your favorite way to enjoy summer’s sweet corn?

If you’ve got a favorite corn recipe, please share it below — or anything else you’ve cooked up lately from the farmers market, CSA or your garden!

Local Potluck Tuesday — a few guidelines:
1. Share a relevant post — a recipe, menu or pictures of a meal featuring local foods, from the farmers market, CSA, farm stand or your own garden — using the MckLinky widget below. In the link title field, enter both your post title and your name &/or blog name, e.g., “Lemon Cucumber Salad — Colleen @ FoodieTots.”

2. Bonus points if you included your kids in picking, growing, purchasing or cooking the ingredients for the meal! (And by bonus points, I mean increased likelihood of seeing your post featured in a future post.)

3. In your post, please link back to this post here at FoodieTots, so your readers can find the potluck and be encouraged to join in as well.  Of course if you don’t have a blog, you’re welcome to share in the comments.

That’s it! I hope you’ll join in and share what you’re cooking up that’s fresh & local to you!

There are few things better than the scent of cinnamon on a Saturday morning. While these waffles aren’t quite as decadent as fresh cinnamon rolls, they do offer more instant gratification. I had some toasted hazelnuts left over from another recipe and added them on a whim — turned out delicious. A little sweet, and warmly satisfying. (On yet another snow day.)

Recipe: Cinnamon Hazelnut Waffles

Ingredients:
2 cups unbleached flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, finely chopped

Instructions: Preheat waffle iron.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk eggs until frothy. Add milk, sugar, butter and vanilla and stir to combine. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined (you may have some small lumps still). Stir in the hazelnuts.

Cook on hot, oiled waffle iron. I use about 1/2 cup of batter per 4-inch-square. Makes 10 4-inch waffles. Enjoy! (Leftover waffles can be frozen and then popped in the toaster for quick breakfasts during the week.)

Cooking with Kids note: Waffle irons can be highly tempting to curious preschoolers … particularly ones who feel compelled to touch and see when you tell them it’s really hot. So for best results, I recommend letting young children help with the whisking, but distracting them in another room for the actual cooking. My son also likes to help garnish for the photographs (as seen above).

If I try hard enough, I can almost a remember a time when my idea of unwinding after a long work week was heading out for cocktails with girlfriends. (Okay, so it really wasn’t that long ago.) But nowadays, few things are more soothing than spending some quality time creaming butter, sugar and eggs in the KitchenAid. Sure, cooking with a 3.5-year-old isn’t entirely relaxing, but it is especially rewarding to see the boy bite into a fresh baked cookie or slice of bread with glee and to watch him proudly boast to his dad, “Look what Mommy and me made!” And there’s no better time than February (hello Valentine’s Day) to share home baked goodies with the ones you love. So I’m declaring February “Homemade with Love” month here at FoodieTots. I hope you’ll join in and share what you and your kids are baking, too. There may even be a round-up at the end of the month if you have links to share.

First up is Cinnamon Swirl Bread, the next entry in my Bread Baker’s Apprentice challenge. Peter Reinhart’s bread calls for raisins and walnuts, which I like well enough, but I wanted to make a simple cinnamon bread first. This is the bread that inspired me to join the challenge, as I have strong memories of my mother baking cinnamon bread and the warm fragrance that filled the house. I don’t even remember if she ever made it more than once, but the cinnamon-sweet scent has stayed with me all these years, and motivated me to overcome my phobia of yeast.

This is a pretty simple bread, the dough smooth and pliable. In addition to omitting the raisins and nuts, I replaced the shortening with melted butter. The boy helped me knead, giving it a few enthusiastic whacks and pokes.

To add the cinnamon swirl, you simply pat the dough out into a rectangle, spread it with a generous layer of cinnamon-sugar, then roll up into a loaf. (You can see pictures of this step on Pinch My Salt’s post.) After a second rise in the loaf pans, it heads into the oven to bake.

(You can see the pronounced difference between the crappy over-stove fluorescent lighting and my Ego lights, the dough didn’t actually turn from yellow to white…) I had a stuffy nose the day I baked it, so the scent wasn’t as strong as I’d remembered, but the taste was everything I remembered.

Cinnamon swirl bread is best with a generous spread of fresh-from-the-farm butter, and maybe a little more of that cinnamon-sugar on top. Delish. Of course, if you somehow don’t finish the loaf the first day or two, it also makes scrumptious French toast. And needless to say, the boy was quite pleased with the finished product.

We were very disappointed to lose the mushroom vendor from our neighborhood (Del Ray) market this past year, especially as I had made such great progress the prior year in convincing my previously mushroom-adverse husband that they really weren’t so bad. So now to get our local ’shroom fix I have to head to one of the FreshFarm markets, which means Dupont Circle in the winter months.

The preferred choice of both the husband and my son are these cute, sweet little honey mushrooms. They require little effort to prepare, and for a really easy meal, I whipped up some instant polenta, with a generous touch of cheese, then topped it with leftover tomato sauce and sauteed mushrooms.

Quick and scrumptious, what could be better for a (meatless) Monday night?

Recipe: Polenta al Funghi (Mushroom Polenta)

Ingredients:

• 1 pint honey mushrooms
• 1 box instant polenta
• 4 cups water
• salt
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 cup pasta sauce

Instructions:

1. Bring water to a boil.

2. Rinse mushrooms and pat dry. Heat a dry skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring only once or twice, until they begin to darken. Add 1 tablespoon butter to pan and remove from heat. Season mushrooms with sea salt and pepper.

3. Prepare polenta as instructed on package. When thickened, stir in 1 tablespoon butter and the cheese. Remove from heat.

4. Warm pasta sauce.

5. Spoon polenta onto plates, shaping a small well in the center. Top with a few spoonfuls of pasta sauce and scatter mushrooms over the top. Enjoy! Makes 4 servings.

I’ve written a lot about apples this fall, but I’d be remiss not to mention that other star of late autumn fruit stands: the pear. From crisp Asian pears, perfect for salads, to sweet Bartlett pears, poached for dessert, and the boy’s favorite, toddler-hand-sized Seckels, we’d be hard pressed to take sides in a pear-apple face-off. We always enjoy the samples offered by Papa’s Orchard at the West End Alexandria farmers market, and the boy has been known to devour a Seckel (or two) before finishing our stroll through the market.

These sweet and savory pizzas also feature two other of my local farmers market favorites, grassfed lamb sausage from Valentine’s Country Meats and fresh ricotta from Keswick Creamery. The pizza crust was made from frozen dough I picked up from the Italian Store for pizza-making emergencies. Of course you could make your own, if you prefer. There are few better ways to get kids into the kitchen than with make-your-own-pizza night. Thanks to the kid-sized tools from Curious Chef (see below), the boy was able to help with rolling out the dough, slicing the pears, and of course, decorating the pies.

Recipe: Pear Ricotta Sausage Pizza

Ingredients:

• pizza crust for 2 pizzas
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound lamb sausage
• 8 ounces fresh ricotta
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 2 sweet pears, thinly sliced
• several fresh basil leaves, shredded
• sea salt and black pepper

Instructions: In a skillet, crumble the sausage and cook over medium heat until browned. Drain excess drippings and set aside. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Roll out pizza crusts and place on baking sheet or pizza peel, if you have one. Spread several tablespoons of ricotta over the crusts, and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil, each. (If your ricotta is particularly moist, use less oil.) Spread pears and onions around, sprinkle with basil, salt and pepper, and scatter sausage over the top. Drop a few more spoonfuls of ricotta over the pears. Drizzle with remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Bake 15-20 minutes, until crust is lightly browned. Makes 2 pizzas. Enjoy!

Curious Chef Product Review: We received the Curious Chef pizza kit to try out, as seen in the photos above. The boy was beyond trilled to have “my very own!” knife and rolling pin. The knife is made of sturdy plastic that actually can cut through an apple or pear, without fear of slicing off finger tips. Ever since our pizza making fun, when he sees me slicing something he gets out his own knife from his kitchen drawer and demands to help. The easy-grip handles make the tools perfect for small hands, and it’s nice to be able to set him up with his own cutting board and knife to keep him busy while I’m prepping the rest of the meal. Needless to say, Curious Chef gets a big thumbs up from the Foodie Tot. (My only complaint is that the white plastic isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, but it’s more kid-appropriate than stocking up on fancier, and more breakable, items from somewhere like Williams-Sonoma.) View the full product line (and safety information) at CuriousChef.com.

*Disclaimer: all reviews are the opinion solely of myself and my son, and are not financially compensated in any way.*