Another Post about Food

I know I've written about food a lot lately, but, well, it's either that or the cute two-year old and goodness knows I can write volumes and volumes about her (and do). Plus, it's kind of fun when the food comes with a story, right?

First up, a garden report. We've been dining on fresh onions, sad zucchini, broccoli, a variety of peppers, and of course, lovely sweet tomatoes. The other night I asked Dan to bring in some veggies for the next day's meals. This was the haul:

 

Not bad, even despite the plants that have been nipped by the early frost we woke up to twice already. The zucchini and most of the other vines were hit and probably won't produce much. Some of the earlier corn in almost ready and we've eaten green beans a few times.

Then, there is the BEEF. I'll admit it; I'm a beef snob. I didn't mean to become one, but after years of refining my beef palette by only eating high-quality, locally raised, custom cut beef, I had a hard time eating anything else. But alas, our steers weren't ready when we ran out of beef and the freezer spent about a month empty, and during that time I had to break down and buy grocery store beef. We survived and now we (finally!!!) have our freezers full of beef we raised on our pasture.
And it's goooood. Oh so very good.
Let's take a look, shall we.

This is a sirloin:

I know, it doesn't look like the petite sirloin steaks from the grocery does it? It's ginormous and quite tasty.

We had one for dinner along with garden-fresh green beans and baked sweet potatoes.

 

Dan recently spent some time in the kitchen too. He's been wanting to make Moo-wiches, which are the Northwest Washington Fair's signature treat. He didn't get an authentic Moo-wich prepared by a member of the dairy women's organization because we didn't venture to Lynden for the fair this year, so I suppose making your own is the next best thing. He asked me to make large, fairly uniform chocolate chip cookies. (I just followed the Nestle' Toll House recipe.) Dan picked up a tub of Tillamook vanilla ice cream. He wanted the cookies to be big enough so all he would have to do is cut the round ice cream tub into slices to build the perfect ice cream and cookie sandwich.
Well, the picture won't lie, it worked out pretty darn perfectly, and these guys taste even better than they look. Dan ate the last one tonight after power-washing the deck and I'm really hoping he wants to make more soon.

 

Oh, and Dan snapped this picture. I've been reading tutorials on taking great food shots and setting up plates and lighting and all that, and he just puts two Moo-wiches on a red plate, sets them on the table and SHAZAAM! he has a perfect food photograph.