More Fun Playing With Grass Fed Beef

Last night, we had our first taste of the hamburger patties we got from Brandon Smith of Wayne Cattle Company. They were fantastic! And good for you - grass fed beef is low in fat and saturated fat, but has a great beefy flavor.

The quarter pound burgers were a little thin, so they cooked very fast. We seasoned them with salt, pepper, and some of Emeril's "Baby Bam" hamburger spice and Bob grilled them on the Weber. Placed upon fresh buns from The Mustard Seed Market, with large slices of beautiful tomato and onions - it made a special dinner.









Instead of the traditional fries - I took my second shot at making stuffed squash blossoms, finishing off the Mackenzie Creamery cheese. I kept better control of the fry oil temperature (I had let it cool down too much the first time I made them) and the results were fabulous.





We had fun playing with Brandon's grass fed burgers!

Fun Playing with Garden Squash Blossoms

Last night, I tried something I've heard a lot about, but only eaten once or twice in my life: stuffed squash blossoms. And of course, my first attempt at making this delicacy comes with a story!

The story begins with compost. Last fall's compost. Which contained a lot of winter squash seeds. Which resulted in a lot of "volunteer" winter squash plants in this summer's garden. This is all the more ironic - that the volunteer squashes (which Bob was going to get rid of) are the most advanced plants we have at this moment, because we were out of town for two weeks right after Bob tilled, and weeds took over the garden before he could plant one seed. He has spent the last seven weeks of his life on his knees, weeding.



Personally, I think he is nuts.

Anyway, I was looking around the garden hoping for signs of edibles, when I noticed an abundance of blossoms on those volunteer squash.



I asked around for recipes, and looked on the web, and finally, my Saturday trip to the Geauga Fresh Farmers' Market sealed it. I got a package of Mackenzie Creamery Sweet Fire - fresh cherve with port wine and a touch of habanero pepper knowing it was going into those squash blossoms!

I stuck with the simplest batter - flour, cornstarch, salt and beer. While it chilled, I carefully washed the blossoms, cleaned out the stamens and dried them. Stuffed with the cheese, they looked like this:





After a dip in batter and about 3 minutes in some hot oil:







Hot, crunchy, oozy, cheesy - pure comfort food.



We had fun playing with this food, that's for sure.