Family dinner!

Every other Wednesday, we enjoy family dinner with my little bro and his two girls. They've tried some new things at our house and some variations of the staples. I decided to nix the long beans tonight and instead oven fried the okra and made two pizzas using pre-made dough from Publix and veggies from the farmers market. Yum!

Here's the recipe I used for oven fried okra. It's super-simple and is always a kiddie & grown-up crowd pleaser with toothpicks for spearing & ranch dressing on the side! One tip - if the okra is small, cook only :30, not :40.

We discovered the pre-made pizza dough in a fridge at the Publix Bakery. I think they're about $3 and they taste so good! Just let it rise for an hour in a greased bowl with a towel over it, then stretch and top. We cook ours on a large baking dish at 450° for 12 minutes. Don't worry about the shape! When we started, we came out with some funky shaped pies.

On this pizza: olive oil, a mixture of blanched broccoli, chopped tomatoes, garlic & ranch dressing and a package of 2% Italian shredded cheese.

The second pizza was more traditional with pizza sauce, basil, garlic, sliced deli ham (for the guys) and mixed cheese.

Food, Family & Politics: they definitely go together!

I started cooking more and more after getting married 8 years ago. Our dinners went from baked chicken & broccoli in 2003 to Aaloo Palak in 2011.

I gave up meat (have a weakness for fall off the bone ribs & bacon, though) at the same time my oldest son Jake was old enough to try it. I always had an aversion to raw meat, gristle and any type of "pink" in my steak, so I had been experimenting with vegetarian dishes for years. That summer, my neighbor lent me the book Skinny Bitch. All that I had tried to ignore my entire life about our food was screaming at me from those pages. So, I gave up meat, except for those special times like eating King's BBQ in Lake County this past week end. Going meat-free in our house was a major turning point in the kitchen.

Almost on a daily basis, I look up recipes online to try something new with whatever's in the house. Last night it was an Indian dish of spinach, potatoes, tomatoes & spices called Aaloo Palak.

The food issue in America was brought to the forefront when we visited the Kennesaw Farmer's Market on Tuesday. I've been to road side stands and to other farmer's markets, but I was blown away by this one. While it was intimate, it was plentiful! I bought hydroponic organic

lettuce for $2 a head, a big bunch of freshly picked spinach for $2, tomatoes & hot peppers for $2, long beans for $2 (going to make tonight! What the heck is a long bean?!), homemade Thai dressing for $5, a basket of freshly picked okra for $2, Georgia peaches for $4 and a basket of freshly tilled sweet potatoes for another $2. A week's worth of FRESH produce for $21 + amazing dressing for a vegetarian family!

Whoah, those are some looong beans!

I'm still on cloud 9! I can barely get over the fact that I've been buying grocery store lettuce and spinach, possibly in a bag, for half my life. And fruits & veggies picked early so they look better in the store. For what? The convenience? What's so convenient about going to the grocery store and paying twice as much for week old, bland, vitamin depleted produce?

You may be thinking "is this chick really just learning about farmer's markets"? Well, no! I've known about farmer's markets for ever, but discovering a good one is the key. While living in Ponce Inlet, the closest weekly Farmer's Market on City Island featured resellers. These folks bought old produce from the grocery stores and then resold it at the farmer's market! yuck! And still others resold things like sunscreen or pallets of water. Yes, some Saturdays, we could score amazing produce, and the local honey was fabulous, but the entire event was spotty.

Long story short, I'll be posting my kitchen creations and food revelations on Kristina's Conscience going forward.

Food, Family & Politics: they definitely go together!