Deb Augusta's Cucumber Salad

This is a great, easy salad for those hot summer days when your garden is overflowing with produce.

3 medium-sized cucumbers, sliced thin
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c red wine vinegar
hot sauce to taste
2 T water
1/2 t salt
sprinkle of parsley

Combine and chill.

Chopped onion, tomato, or peppers are optional.

More Martha

Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook by Martha Stewart

My review

Beautifully illustrated and filled with common sense baking tips, this book is joy to page through and use. Recipes range from the simple and homey to the complex and elegant, but all have each step carefully documented with text and great color photos.


View all my reviews.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Kingsolver's lament on the nature of the American diet and state of our ignorance about the food we consume each day manages to be wildly depressing and amazingly readable at the same time. Her story of her family's return to their Virginia farm is interspersed with commentary by her husband and eldest daughter. While Kingsolver makes her case against the industrialization of the American farm she also brings to her book a warmth that comes from her love of the farm's land and livestock, and abundance of food and positive experiences they provide her family.



Barbara Kingsolver discusses the book on the NPR show "Speaking of Faith" and you can hear the podcast for free by going to the website for the show: http://speakingoffaith.publicr...



You can also visit Kingsolver's website on this topic: http://www.animalvegetablemira...


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Vegetarian Potluck Dinners in Mill Creek Park

Youngstown area vegetarians hold their monthly potluck dinner at 4 pm on the first Sunday of each month at either Birch Hill Cabin or Slippery Rock Pavilion. Check Vegetarian Youngstown on the sidebar under Sites and Sources for more details.

Yo! Northside Farmer's Market Underway

The Northside Farmer's Market is now being held in front of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Elm Street in Youngstown from 9-12 on Saturday mornings. Last year I was able to find currents at this market, plus some wicked hot salsa that was excellent. Not huge, but of nice quality - take a look.

The Spendid Table's How to East Supper

The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

My review

I've enjoyed this book so much I actually purchased my own personal copy and didn't just use the library's copy. The recipes range from the "ordinary" to the elaborate, always keeping in mind that the theme involves hungry diners with little time to cook. I also find the little taste tests to be a lot of fun and intend to do some of those with my cooking group.

Enjoy!


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White House Fruit Farm

Today's visit to White House Fruit Farm in Canfield, Ohio turned out to be an especially pleasant one. White House has been a popular destination year-round for the Youngstown-area community for decades. This large farm has provided us with locally grown fruit, and is best known for its many varieties of apples. In addition White House has excellent baked goods including bread, pies, fudge and, perhaps best of all, doughnuts. Try the fresh blueberry doughnuts - even without icing these slightly blue cake doughnuts will be something you jones for late at night. They also stock preserved fruit in jams and jellies as well as brandied peaches, local relishes, noodles, kitchen gadgets, honey, maple syrup, candy, and the previously mentioned Troyer Heat & Serve chicken broth with 65 mg of sodium per cup. In fall they host a pumpkin festival at which they often serve the freshest and most delicious caramel apple you will ever lose a filling in.

In the last few years White House has recently become quite the happening destination, probably as an antidote to Giant Eagle and the mall-type groceries we've become accustomed to. The original building has been remodeled, and they've enlarged both the parking area and the interior of the market. There's a deli and an area where you can get Hershey's ice cream, or extrude-your-own peanut butter, plus the whole produce section. I had gone to buy a pie for my brother's birthday and check out the sweet corn. I was pleasantly surprised to find that White House now produces its own line of salad dressings. Better yet, all of the salad dressings I examined are what I'd consider to be low sodium. All have a sodium content under 300 mg, and most of them are under 200. Many are unusual and lots of them have vidalia onions as the base. I considered peach pecan, lemon peppercorn, green olive tomato, key lime, balsamic herb, vidalia onion and poppyseed, roasted red pepper and blackberry walnut vinaigrette before settling on vidalia onion creamy ranch. Although the vidalia ranch has a little more sodium it is delicious and could easily be used on a pasta salad or as a sauce on meat.

Visit White House in Canfield, Ohio or online. Their website is listed under Sites and Sources in the sidebar. You can find a list of their crops and the ripening dates for those crop on their website, and in addition they also provide a list of the local products they carry. Perhaps White House can be part of our area's answer to buying local and reducing our carbon footprints.

Low Sodium Chicken Stock

So far I've been able to find three decent low-sodium chicken stocks:

Troyer Heat & Serve 65 mg per cup $2.49 at Whitehouse Fruit Farm
College Inn Light & Fat Free 450 mg per cup $2.29 at Giant Eagle
365 Organic 140mg per cup $1.99 at Whole Foods

I'd like to put these to a taste test with my local Cooks Guild and see how they fare.