Olive-Rosemary Bread

The Durham Farmer’s Market has gone through many changes in the two years I’ve been regularly shopping there, and I’m sure there are many evolutions yet to come. It’s been fun to see the new vendors who’ve arrived in the past year, like Dolly Mama, who makes her own North Carolina inspired chocolates, including specialties like Sweet Tea (black tea & honey), The Southern Belle (white chocolate & peach), and Sea Turtle (caramel & local pecans).  I love the idea of the CSP (Community Supported Pie) offered by Scratch. Rather than picking up a box of veggies each week, you get a sweet or savory pie. This past winter I fell hard for the coconut cream pie with a layer of chocolate ganache.

But my favorite addition this year has been Loaf, a husband-and-wife bread team. He bakes the bread, she sells it. From what I’ve  seen, they’ve had a lot of success right off the bat; probably because they have tasting cubes of all their breads set out and they encourage you to try as many as you want until you settle on the one that is just right for you. Even though I’m usually at the market early, they are almost always sold out of my favorite: olive bread. On several occasions, though, they’ve had a second delivery. I’ve been known to wait around a little while longer just for the chance to shell out $5 for an olive loaf. Last week we were at the market much later than usual and decided to try one of the few types they still had available. We chose walnut rye and have been loving it as breakfast toast all week long. I enjoyed it this morning spread with some peach butter I’d made for canning. It’s had me thinking about tomorrow’s breakfast all day long!

Daring Bakers: Mallow Cookies

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This post is dedicated to my Grandpa Z, who loves anything marshmallow, especially Peeps & Mallowmars. I thought our fabulous hostess Nicole had a great idea here – trying a homemade version of one’s favorite storebought things. Though not as big a fan of marshmallow as my grandpa, I decided to make the mallowmars first. The idea of piping marshmallow piqued my interest. I intended to follow up with milanos with a twist- chocolate cookies with a chocolate mint filling. However, I seriously underestimated the number of cookies I would end up with after trying the first recipe. Even after taking at least a dozen to my friend Emily, whose sweet baby Rachel decided to make an appearance 6 weeks early (!), I still had at least 50 cookies left. My next step is to give some to my brother. College students have a way of putting lots of homemade sweets away. In any case, the milanos will have to wait for another time.

I thought these cookies were good but not incredible. The cookie part is rather biscuit-like. I found it a bit too crumbly. The marshmallow was good and even though I thought I’d piped generously, I wished there was more of it on each cookie. I made my glaze with bittersweet chocolate and it came together nicely, though it needed to be refrigerated in order to harden, which the recipe does not mention.

Mint Chocolate Swirl Ice Cream

A love for ice cream is required in my family. My grandpa Z can never resist a milkshake or sundae. My grandma Carol lives for chocolate on chocolate Haagen Dazs bars. My Uncle Lee has been known to make ice cream a main meal. And as I recently discovered, my cousins who live in Germany eagerly anticipate trips to the US, where the quality and price make ice cream a daily treat.

In my family, we’ve always had something for mint. My mom has a huge electric ice cream churn that uses rock salt and ice. Something like this but much larger. She stores it at the mountain house and we have spent many a summer’s night ignoring its rather loud buzzing sound as it works its magic on the back deck. Mint chocolate chip has almost always been the flavor found inside its massive metal canister. At some point, I began to claim that I did not like mint chocolate chip ice cream. This is not actually true. I do like it, but I tend to tire quickly of the same flavor of anything, particularly ice cream. I have many half-eaten pints in the freezer simply because I grew bored of one and decided to purchase another. However, when I pulled out my ice cream maker this summer, I decided that maybe I was overdue for an old favorite flavor.

Olive Pasta

One of my first cookbooks was a Williams-Sonoma pasta collection. They make several pasta cookbooks but this particular one is chock-full of recipes that utilize both fresh and dried pasta. It also includes recipes for pasta salads, soups, and risottos. It is one of my most loved cookbooks, although I cannot stand the shape of it. Because it is too large for my cookbook shelf it has to hide out on the bookshelf in the living room. This means that I often forget about it. Luckily, I have this recipe memorized, which has been affectionately called “olive pasta” by myself and my family for quite a few years.