Dinner, Day 1: Asparagus and sorrel soup with whole wheat bread

Our dinner tonight, made with ingredients we picked up at Essex Farm yesterday:

After being obsessed with the taste of that sorrel, I decided to make an asparagus and sorrel soup and spoon it over rice. The only thing that I was disappointed about was that that delicious, lemony zing of the sorrel was somewhat diluted when I blended it up in the soup. I'm thinking that tomorrow night, I'll make a shredded beet and sorrel salad for dinner with a light dressing so I can really taste it.

The soup wasn't as easy as the recipe made it look. At the end of her book, Kristin said something about if you don't have an immersion blender, you need to drop everything and go get one. And she's right.

This soup required two turns in the food processor to blend it, and it didn't do a very good job. I want a new immersion blender. (We used to have one, a Christmas present from Tom the year I was pregnant with Colden, but according to Tom, "we" melted it in the dishwasher.)

Tom made two loaves of dense, crusty bread with the whole wheat flour we picked up yesterday, too.

We could hardly wait to taste the bread as soon as it came out of the oven! It was not like the whole wheat breads that Tom made with store-bought whole wheat flour. This was a fluffy, slightly sweet, very chewy loaf. I spread it with a little bit of the butter from Essex Farm, and dunked it in the soup.

All I have to say about that butter is, DAMN! That's some butter. Tom and I agreed that getting used to the strong, bovine-scented dairy products is going to be a big adjustment. My entire life, all my dairy products have been pasteurized and processed to within an inch of their lives, and the butter that comes out of a waxed paper wrapped just does not taste the same as the thick, musky, creamy stuff that comes out of the glass jar from Essex Farm.

I told Tom that I think the trick to getting used to these dairy products is going to be for me to use them sparingly. Just a pinch goes a long way, apparently!

I'm feeling better about the whole raw dairy thing now. I've done a lot of reading, and the health benefits of eating raw dairy definitely outweigh the risks, especially if the folks making the raw dairy (like Mark and his crew) know what they're doing. 

I was glad that we had some rice in the pantry, and sliced up a couple of the tomatoes from last week's grocery shopping trip to round out the meal. Desert was (what else?) leftover birthday cake.

Unfortunately, Colden had a major potty training meltdown and spent dinner in our room, watching How to Train Your Dragon. Oy.

We went to Max's birthday party this morning over at the Jay fire house, and Colden had such a blast!

He was so tired when we got home that he actually took a nap, after which he put his fireman hat on and ran around the backyard, "putting out fires". Everything was on fire - Moose, the chickens, the box elder tree...

Tomorrow, I tackle making my very first English muffins. No more buying those from the grocery store, either, and it's the only thing I can think to do with that buttermilk that looks more like yogurt!

To be continued...