I brought home a box of Near East Roasted Garlic & Olive Oil Wheat Couscous in my big bag of swag from BlogHer Food. After looking at the ingredients, I decided it was something I don’t mind feeding my family. Cooking from ingredients is always best, but sometimes packaged foods end up my table. How about your’s?
To the prepared packaged food, however, I chopped up a bunch of organic scallions from DanLynn Farms in the fridge that needed to be used up. I don’t like to waste food and I really don’t like to waste fresh, local food I’ve bought from the farmers market. They added a nice additional layer of flavor to the whole grain side dish.
When you’re making packaged grains like couscous, do you ever throw fresh vegetables into the mix? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments about how to liven up packaged or other foods with local ingredients.
Hi Robin,
I just linked to this post at Slow Food South Jersey Shore’s Facebook page! We want to help people add local foods to their cooking routines without stressing about it being Martha Stewart perfect. Thanks for sharing these good tips.
For a memorial day party, I made strawberry ice cream, using local strawberries. I broke out the rock-salt-using ice cream maker that lives in the garage – thank goodness the guy at Acme was able to find me a bag of rock salt somewhere in the storage area in the back of the store. When I told him I was looking for rock salt, he said, “Do you need it for ice cream?” I said, “Yes, how did you know?!” And he replied, “Ma’am, I’m from Tennessee. We make our own ice cream in Tennessee.” Awesome.
Esther
Thanks Esther.
My boys and I are talking about trying to do ice cream this year. We’ve got chocolate mint growing in the garden and we’re thinking mint chocolate chip would be good to give a go.