Winning meals with farm fresh ingredients
We hear so often from our customers that they’d like to try lamb, whole chickens, brussels sprouts, etc, but they are just not sure how to prepare them or what exactly to do with them. I totally get it! It’s hard to spend the money on a product that you’re not sure is going to turn out or if your family will eat it.
Here are some tips on how to prepare winning meals with those farm fresh products every time.
Check out our veggie farm boxes or meat boxes that include recipes that we love. We don’t provide our customers with products that we don’t enjoy ourselves. We provide weekly vegetable boxes with some recipe ideas and we have limited meat boxes (chicken, lamb, beef and pork) available with at least 1 recipe for each cut included. Make your meal planning super easy by giving these recipes a try.
Ask farmers for recipes. We don’t often see our customers as they shop our farm stand at their convenience but we’re available via email or facebook regularly. The staple of our diets are the products we produce and I love to cook. I am more than happy to share recipe ideas. I am always on the look out for easy and fast meal ideas since we never seem to have enough time. I love crockpot-fix it and forget it type recipes and 1 pot meals. I enjoy recipes from www.ayearofslowcooking.com and momadvice.com for budget friendly meals.
Google! When I am stuck and not sure what to make I go to google. I search the main ingredient and then look for highly rated recipes to try. I want to get as specific with my searching as I can like “easy leg of lamb” recipe or “kale and sausage casserole ideas”. I have found many of our family favorite recipes from google. Mark Bittman offers simple recipes with farm fresh products and so does Jamie Oliver. These are 2 chefs that will provide you with hit meals every time.
Search old cookbooks. This may be a little more challenging for some. I have a collection of old church cookbooks, primarily from rummages and my grandmother after she passed. Some of the best recipes for fresh from the farm ingredients come from these old cookbooks. Often times, the ingredients were whole foods and those not necessarily popular now cuts like sirloin steak and chuck roasts. These recipe are usually pretty simple and really let the taste of quality ingredients shine.
So, folks, there you have it. A couple suggestions to help you make farm fresh meals that your family will love. Though when in doubt, roast the vegetables-you usually can’t go wrong with that!
Warmly,
Farmer Jackie
