Friday Recipe: Stuff Flowers with Cheese!

Cotton Hill Road is more than just your average thoroughfare. Schoharie County Route 66 is a steep and winding climb, treacherous in the winter; the location of thousands of acres of state forest; home to a hardscrabble mix of Sloughters and newcomers, with some rarely-seen weekenders; and these days, quite a culinary destination. We have our resident brewer (OK, the brewery is in town, but we were the beneficiaries of many a practice batch), Justin at Green Wolf Brewery, we the cheesemakers, and wonderful organic vegetables at The Farm on Cotton Hill. Jim and Greg are the farmers, and Jim and I got together yesterday to celebrate the end of summer by stuffing cheese into flowers and frying them.

I love eating flowers whenever possible, but somehow I never tasted squash blossoms. Now I am hooked! Try them! Here's what you do:

1. Harvest the flowers in the middle of a sunny day, when they are open. Use them right away, or keep them in a cool place to use later.

2. Gather your ingredients: flour and a couple eggs for dredging, some good soft fresh goat cheese and anchovies for stuffing, and olive oil for frying.

Flowers! We will eat you!

Friday Recipe: Summer Bounty Pasta

Got veggies? If you have a garden or a CSA share, I'll bet you do! At the farmers' market, eggplants, zucchinis, tomatoes, garlic, and onions abound. How about roasting them in the oven while you play outside, then tossing them with pasta when you're ready to chow down?

I saved the big tomatoes for sauce

I made this a few weeks ago with the first eggplant in the garden. It was perfect summer comfort food, good for a chilly night, and great at room temperature the next day. I think I used these ingredients*:

1 big eggplant
2 small summer squash
2 garlic bulbs
A quart or so of cherry tomatoes

Fresh or dried herbs: basil, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and/or thyme

Olive oil

Salt & Pepper

1 lb. pasta 

1/2 lb. feta cheese, cut into small cubes (our feta is somewhat creamy, which worked nicely)

*Peppers and onions would be nice additions too

Chop Chop

It's Easy:

The New Girls

There are a few new goat faces here at Cotton Hill Creamery. They are very little, so we won't be milking them anytime real soon. They've got some growing to do. 

Here's Nettle and Olive (with good old Buttons trying to photobomb in the background). Noisy Nettle and Black Olive stick together. This is good, because it allows me to distinguish Olive from Jem, who has one tiny white spot on her left side where Olive doesn't. Otherwise the two are identical.

Here's Raindrops. She is a yearling, actually, but she is very tiny. She has flashy markings and a pretty smile.

Little Daisy just came to our farm this week. She is sweet sweet sweet. After a few days in our pasture, she looks like a basketball resting on four popsicle sticks. She wants to follow me around all the time. Farmer Fin won't let me bring her in the house though.

And here they are all together. With Buttons, of course.