I am the youngest of 3 Cozzolino kids. Well, certainly not kids...we're all in our 60's. Amy and I headed down to Maryland on Sunday to help my sister, Jean, through a difficult medical situation. She's home recuperating now. Of course as soon as we got her settled in, I headed to the grocery store and came back and started cookin'. It's what I do. I wanted to fill up her fridge with nourishing foods as she heals.
My brother, the oldest of us, is retired. He has begun gardening, vegetables and flowers (especially pollinator plants from Amy's nursery!), a new late in life passion. Sharing a lifelong passion of Amy's and mine has been a great thing to experience with Ed. Throughout the summer, during our phone calls, he tells me of his most recent harvest, and what his wife Kathleen has cooked and stashed in the freezer for winter's bounty. It sounds like she has made enough tomato sauce to feed the entire Cozzolino clan!
Ed showed up with a big basket brimming with red ripe tomatoes and sweet yellow and orange peppers. What a special thing to have him show up at our sister's house with his offering of food that he has grown in his gardens. And what an extra special thing for me to be able to take his gift and turn it into nourishment for Jean as she recuperates. It's a beautiful web of family connections.
I put some sweet potatoes in the oven to roast, made some vegetable stock, roasted some veggies, cooked a pot of rice, and put on 2 soups to slow cook. The first was a roasted squash, seared mushroom & leek soup.
For the 2nd soup, Amy chunked up all the tomatoes and peppers from Ed's garden. I tossed them with olive oil, balsamic, salt & pomegranate molasses and popped them in the oven to roast. They transformed into deeply flavored, condensed, rich deliciousness. I sauteed some onions, leeks, celery, carrots & potatoes, added fresh ginger and coconut milk and simmered all of that until everything was soft. Then I blended the roasted tomatoes/peppers and poured them into the soup with vegetable stock. That bubbled away on low heat for an hour or so until the flavors melded into a delicious fresh tomato stew.
Jean enjoyed the soup poured over the coconut basmati rice, with a roasted sweet potato on the side. Nourishment and healing from foods grown by her brother and cooked by her sisters, offered with love. What a rare treat for every one of us. Food. Family. Feast. Love. What could be better?
Community Supported Foods Members AND A La Carte Customers:
click here for this week's menu
For Carly's Cupboard click here for this week's offering
Amy's Nursery, Wing & A Prayer Nursery is
open for business on Sundays and Mondays, 9-3, or by appointment (call 413-634-5659 or email us). Here is the
current list of plants. All of Amy's plants have been chosen for their usefulness to bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. We hope you will stop in for a visit and to chat about how to improve your garden habitat for pollinators. The bees and butterflies are out and about and magic is afoot!
Please visit our website at
www.aliceskitchenathoneyhill.com. It is a joy to provide delicious, nourishing, and beautiful foods, prepared with care and love, for our community.
