Maciej ("Ski") Skierkowski

This is another one of those recipes I got from my mom over the phone and everything was measured in “just enough”, “not too much”, “only a little”, as opposed to cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons.

Traditional Gołąbki are made with ground pork or beef, but my mom makes them with ground turkey instead. Everybody seems to like em, as do I.

When I make them, they will be a little bit smaller since I got the Full Circles Farm delivery which included the cabbage; however, the cabbage is a bit smaller than what you might find in a grocery store.

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cabbage
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 lb turkey
• 1 cut boiled rice
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 chopped red pepper
• 2 tsp garlic salt
• 1/3 cup chopped bacon (optional)
• 2 tbls olive oil
• 1 can tomato sauce

Directions:

1. Bring large pot of water with salt to a boil. Add the full cabbage head to the pot. Place it upside down. As the outside gets soft, cut around the edge of the root and cut the outer layers off. Repeat until most large leafs are cut off. Should take 5-10 minutes. Reserve the remainder of the head and leaves.
2. In a large bowl mix together the turkey, rice, onion (optionally fry it a little), red pepper and garlic salt.
3. Fill each of the cabbage leaves with the turkey mixture. Wrap like a little burrito
4. Cut the remainder of the cabbage leaves off the head
5. Place the cut off cabbage leaves, olive oil, and bacon into a large pot. Place the rolls on top. Fill the pot with water until it covers all the rolls 3/4 of the way. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a low simmer. Cook for 1 hour.
6. Add the can of tomato sauce and cook for 5-10 more minutes

Interesting quick Borscht recipe. Both Michelle and I often ate beets as kids as a part of traditional polish cuisine, so it comes as no surprise that we both enjoy it into our adulthood. This isn’t the first time I’ve made some form of beet soup. This is a “Borscht” but it isn’t a traditional Polish recipe.

This includes diced cubed steamed beets, cubed potatoes, and chopped onions cooked with other secondary ingredients. The recipe can be found here. I used farmers cheese instead of sour cream and the horseradish was fresh since I coincidently had some root.

Pork Chops with Maple Mustard Sauce made with vinegar, maple syrup, mustard, pork juices, and fresh chopped sage. The side are baby beats and baked potatoes.

The potatoes and Pork we got from the farmers market, the beats were nearly two weeks old from our full circle farms delivery.

I definitely recommend the pork. For some reason the pork tasted unusually good to me. It usually has a weird taste to me that I can’t exactly describe but this time it was just perfect. My piece was thicker and slightly undercooked, but it didn’t bother me at all, the texture was perfect.

The sauce was surprisingly tasty too. Most of the substance was from the vinegar which was quickly reduced and the maple and mustard made a nice balanced flavor.

Whole Foods has introduced a labeling method on seafood to reduce demand and eventually stop carrying unsustainable seafood. You can do the same with your own Seafood Watch Pocket Guide without having to shop at Whole Foods.

I might not have the greatest opinion of Whole Foods since it is pretty much like any national market buying from industrial food suppliers (though mostly organic and expensive); however, as a large scale buyer of food they also have the power to shift market demand.

Walmart has demonstrated this in the past too. As a part of a green initiative they stopped carrying incandescent light bulbs and had them fully replaced with higher efficiency bulbs (e.g. LED). Obviously there was more to the initiative, but that’s just one small example where the company made a decision for the consumer because the consumer didn’t necessarily have the data to make a good decision.

Whole Foods approach is slightly different. Instead of making the decision for the consumer, they are providing data so the consumer can make the decision.

I believe people will make good decisions if they are empowered with consumable data. The governments role shouldn’t be to make decisions for us, but rather, to ensure that the markets present data to the consumers to make good informed decisions with data that is consumable by the great majority.

Delicious simple dessert. I only have one picture because the ones of making this are boring since it is about 10 minutes of work. I basically mixed in a packet of unflavored powder gelatin, a cup of milk, three cups of cream, half a cup of sugar, two teaspoons of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt in a pot at a sub-boiling temperature. The containers I lightly oiled such that it would slide out more easily. It took hours to set so I didn’t get to enjoy it the same night I made it, hence it was today’s breakfast.

If I could do anything different I would probably use vanilla bean, just because I like the look of the little vanilla seeds, and I would use little pots that are wider and shorter such that I could get a better form when they fall out. I would also probably use more milk and less cream because it is very rich; I don’t think it changes the consistency since it’s the gelatin that makes it mold.

This is the “Crunchy Salmon with Lemony Squash” recipe; however, I renamed this because the squash/zucchini mixed with the lemon and honey taste like tea to me. Michelle made fun of me at first for saying that, then after eating she agreed. Usually all of the ingredients come from the local market; however, this time I had to get the lemon and wild salmon from QFC, though the rest was from the Full Circle Farms delivery.

As a side I had a mixture of shallots, onions, corn, and chanterelles. The shallots are the ones that I got weeks ago from Becky’s at the farmers market in Bainbridge, and the onions and corn were from the Full Circles farm delivery from 1.5 weeks ago and the chanterelles from last Sunday’s broadway market. I learned a valuable lesson: they need to be eaten fast. The shrunk and started getting dried up a bit fairly fast. It didn’t change the flavor much and they were cooked with some water so texture was still fine.

Preparing the salmon was fun. I cut regular slices of Italian round bread and then used a rolling pin to get it to about 1/3 it’s width. The recipe timing was impeccable; the bread came out a perfect color and the salmon was just the right texture.

At the Farmers Market on Sunday we picked up a couple pound chunk of grass fed beef brisket from Olson Farms. I just finished reading Omnivores Dilemma and in one of the last few chapters Michael Pollan picked wild Chanterelles, and it just so happened that there was a bunch at the famers market, so we picked those up too. Lastly, we had some Kale left from last week’s Full Circles Farm delivery.

As such Michelle made two recipes (I just helped). Oven Barbecued Brisket and Smothered Mushrooms and Kale. She also made a side of simple mashed potatoes.

The Brisket was absolutely amazing; probably one of my favorite meals. The beef was tender and the flavors were mouth watering. The combination of spices made a unique flavor that worked very well with the rest of the meal.