Step one is get your hands on some thick-cut pork chops (about 1" thick). I highly recommend these Countrytime pork chops. Paul raises some incredible hogs. From the site:

The "Big Black" pigs we raise on our farm were called Devon or Cornwall pigs from their area of origin in England, but now are a registered rare heritage breed named "Large Black Hog" and are hardy, docile and friendly foraging hogs that feed from pasture vegetation and grains. Because they are slow to mature, they aren’t the type of animal that produces uniformly injected flavor, chemically treated meat one may find at large supermarkets, but alternatively are appreciated for tasty succulent meat and excel cured as artisanal bacon.

"Tasty succulent meat" ditto.

Two-packs run roughly $10 – $15 so you'll get 2 solid meals out of them. I cook them, cut them in half and take them in for lunch so I actually get more than 2 meals out of them. If you get them fresh, that will save you some time, but you'll have to make them quickly before the meat's no good. I'd stick meat in the freezer by day 5. If you get a frozen chop, put it on a plate and in your fridge overnight. It'll be ready to handle by dinner prep time. Once you have a defrosted chop, take it out of the fridge and bring it to room temperature. While you're waiting, do your prep work. Ah, what should you stuff into your chops? I think apples are great, but not here. I went with onion, shallot, garlic and habanero peppers. In addition to that, I coated each side with coarse salt, fresh ground pepper, sage and rosemary. I also prefer the awesomeness of cast iron, but any oven-safe skillet will do.

The prep: preheat your oven to 400&deg:F. Chop up half an onion, finely slice up a shallot and finely slice a habanero, mince a clove of garlic. In a little mortar and pestle, portion out a couple pinches of rosemary and sage and give them a grind. Once the chops are at room temperature, hold the chop on the bone end with your non-cutting hand. Take a sharp knife and cut a pocket on the fat side running the length of the side. You may need to do some maneuvering to cut out the inside of the pocket some more. Salt and pepper and rub the herbs into each side of the chops. Get some heat going under your skillet. Add in some olive oil and once hot, add in the onion and shallots. Cook those down for a minute and add in the garlic and habanero. Cook them down until your kitchen smells lovely and then dump the goods into a bowl and place the skillet back over the flame. Now the fun part.

Stand up the chops, bone side down, and open up that pocket. Now stuff the chop with the hot onion, shallot, garlic, habanero mixture. This will get easier after you've done it a few times. Overstuff it a bit, don't worry. Now put the stuffed chops into the skillet and cook each side for about 4 minutes until a nice crust develops. Stick the entire skillet into the oven to finish off for another 8 minutes. Take them out and marvel at how easy that was. Let them sit and rest for a few minutes before digging in.

We really love the tofu from Fresh Tofu, a company based out of Allentown, PA. Their delicious, organic, Kosher tofu is available for purchase around town at Whole Foods, Essene and Fair Food. According to their website, if you've eaten tofu at Horizons, Govinda's or Magic Carpet, you've eaten Fresh Tofu's product.

So, you have your block of tofu. Slice it up. We normally slice 6 or 8 pieces from a block depending on who's cutting. Now here's the trick (thanks mom!) to getting some firmer texture out of your dish: salt each side of tofu and wrap it in a piece of paper towel (or wrap all of them up, flat, in a dishtowel) and rest it on a tilted surface, allowing the water to run off into your sink. The salt sucks out the water (osmosis!) leaving you with a more firm piece. Allow the pieces to dry out for around an hour.

Now the marinade. The main ingredient is a Korean red pepper paste called kochu-jang. It comes in glass or plastic jars measuring about 1 pt. and you kind find it at any Asian grocery. Here's a base recipe:

• 2 T kochu-jang
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed and finely chopped
• 1 T rice or cider vinegar
• 1 T soy sauce
• 1 t sesame oil
• 2 t toasted sesame seeds
• a few chives or scallions cut on the bias for looks
• 2 t sugar

Mix up the ingredients in a bowl and voila, you've got paste.

Now the base upon which to serve everything. We really like greens. Tatsoi, kale, chard, spinach, mustard… Use what you like. Our preferred method is to saute or crispy fry the greens in olive oil, salt and pepper and garlic. Takes all of 5-8 minutes. And remember that greens cook down considerably. When we shop at farmers markets, a bundled bunch is usually good for two servings for us.

Now back to the tofu. Get a fry pan out, drop in a good amount of oil (not just coating the pan, but not like you're submerging things in it) and get a good fire going underneath. If you have a splatter guard, have that handy as well, there's still a good amount of water in the tofu. Unwrap the tofu and gently place the pieces into the pan. If you have a flat, slotted spatula, it'll do well. Don't move the pieces around in the pan after you put them in, you'll rip the tofu apart. Let it cook until golden brown and then flip and wait for golden brown again. Our 10" cast iron skillet takes 2 loads to go through 8 pieces, but it goes by quickly. You may need to add a little more oil to the pan in between sets as it'll be soaked up by the tofu. If you're worried about too much oil, pat dry the fried tofu in a paper towel before eating.

Now plate it all up. Get a nice base of greens and lay the tofu on top. Give the red pepper sauce a good final stir and spoon it on there. Top with sesame seeds or scallions, if you like. Enjoy!

So we went and got ourselves a cool little gadget, a Kodak Zi8 pocket video camera. Picky took the opportunity to show off our awesome range and show how he likes to prepare an egg sandwich, in this case an egg sandwich like the one in this post with the addition of some double hickory smoked bacon from Gap, PA (the best bacon in the land). There's no narration, just the sounds of cooking and clanging in the kitchen. We might be doing some video stuff in the future, pending on how much Picky wants to render files.

The ramps were foraged by a friend of mine and his friend, LJ and Lou, in Chester County. Where you ask? They could tell you, but then they'd surely have to kill you – perhaps even before they told you. Locations for ramps, which grow wild, are like old family recipes or locations for chanterelle and morel mushrooms. Closely guarded secrets which one can enjoy the fruits of, but never can the secrets be revealed. The asparagus from Buzby Farm in South Jerz. The shiitake from the mushroom capital of the world, Kennett Square. The eggs from the man with 16 heritage breeds of pastured hens, Mark Skinner of Natural Meadows Farm.

I melted some unsalted butter in a pan and dropped in the ramp bulbs (3 or 4) to cook for a minute and then added in the asparagus slices (3 or 4 spears). A pinch of fleur de sel and fresh cracked pepper are added to the mix. Let the ingredients cook for another minute and add in a handful of sliced shiitake (I have big hands and love the strong flavor of shiitake) and another pat of butter into the pan. Toss them around for another minute. Sometime around when you add the mushrooms to the pan, start up another flame for your eggs. I love cast iron for eggs and I cook them in unsalted butter, always. Lightly beat the eggs with some salt and pepper and few sprigs of chopped chives if you have them handy. Once the pan is hot, pour in the eggs and stir them around a bit to get them cooking. Slivered up some Hillacres Pride habanero cheddar with a veggie peeler and spread it over the cheese. Now I add in the ramp leaves to the pan of veggies to wilt them. Above is a shot of all the veggies removed from heat for a sec for me to get a pic in.

After a final minute of sauteeing, add all the veggies atop the eggs and let them warm up the cheese below. Fold over the other edge and presto, you've got an omelet fit for a king.

Anybody out there have one of these as well? Any favorite things to make on it? Picky is not a fan of pancakes so he won't be making any of those. The griddle sits very low on our rage so it's hard to see just how high the flame is underneath. It's gonna take a little bit of getting used to, but given our experience with cast iron cookware, we should get the hang of this beast fairly easily. This is going to be a great alternative to firing up an outdoor grill and this one's all season!

Above is a shot from our dinner a few months ago which we recapped here. It was some seriously good eats. It was so good, we kept the thought of Picky's entree rattling in our heads to recreate, but so that Messy could enjoy as well. We've become seitan fiends over the last few years and we've settled on Ray's Seitan as the real deal, hands down, best we've had. One day, we'll get around to making our own wheat meat, but that's another story. Ray's is available all around town in places like Fair Food in RTM, Whole Foods, Essene, among others. It's an incredibly flexible meat alternative which can take on flavors, but it's got tons of flavor and not much like tofu which relies more on soaking up flavors. The texture is close to shredded pork.

We use a shake and bake (actually, fry) recipe from our friend Liz comprised of nutritional yeast, flour, garlic salt, salt and a liberal grind of pepper. Dredge the seitan after squeezing out some water and toss in a container. Fry up in some oil – we prefer it in a cast iron skillet. Add in a pour of your favorite BBQ sauce and let the sauce carmelize. For the rest of the dish we used sauteed savoy spinach (with salt and pepper and garlic in oil, from FFF), a can of beans from TJs (yeah, yeah), and 1/4lbs. of bleu d'auvergne (from Salumeria in RTM) reduced over low heat.

Plated, it looks pretty similar. As similar as you're gonna get without the piece of "meat" being a single, huge, 9" slab of delicious belly fat. The taste was, as you guessed it, not the same. But – it was fantastic. We can't think of a way to vegan up a blue cheese sauce, but if you've got a recipe, let us know.

I headed over to ForkYou HQ with just under 4 lbs of figs. Yeah, that's right – I foraged 4lbs of delicious brown figs right off the streets of The City of Brotherly Love. I probably ate a dozen or so between the foraging and the 2 days before I went over to Marisa's house to make the jam. Unfortunately, fig season is done. Kaput. Bye bye. Sure you may find some errant figs here and there, but the big production is over and it's just too cold and not sunny to make the delicious orbs. The agonizing wait until next September begins, but we'll have a few pints of fig jam to lessen the pain.

Step one (after marveling at the mound of freshly picked and rinsed figs before us) was to cut the figs into eighths. Each of us took a knife and a cutting board and went to work.

Into the big orange pot it went and half the weight of the figs in sugar was added to the mix. Marisa dove right into it with a wooden spoon, mixing over some good heat.

The juice of 1.5 lemons were squeezed in.

And then everything was brought up to a boil. You can see some of the figs already starting to come apart here with seeds lining the sides of the pot.

After a burner mishap, a roiling boil was achieved. At some point, Marisa added one packet of pectin gel. Why? Because it cuts down the time to make jam. And no, Marisa didn't do all the work; I chipped in too. She had me stir the pot o' figs at various points so that I could feel the difference in viscosity as the figs became jammy.

Half-pint jars were sanitized in the jarring pot to kill two birds with one stone.

Marisa got out her widemouth funnel and poured in the slurry. There was actually more jam than she anticipated!

The bottom of the pot.

I took home 5 half-pints of fig jam and Marisa kept 4 or 5 herself. In addition, she gave me a jar of pear butter and plum jam (at bottom right). We ripped through the first jar of fig jam in a week. One jar went to a locavore friend as a birthday present. Another will go to Messy's mom, another lover of all things fig. That leaves us 2 half-pints of delicious, sweet, homemade fig jam to bring us through to next September. They will obviously not last the whole way, but it'll make the wait that much less painful.

Thank you, Marisa for the private jarring lesson. It was pretty sweet to take in all that geeky information.

I'd totally understand if you didn't get that far though. Slicing them in half (or simply chowing down on them sans utensils like I love to do) is a perfectly good way to eat them. But let's say you do get to the point of putting on all the ingredients listed above. That leaves you at this photo above. It's quite tempting. I know. I prepped half a dozen figs on a 1/2 sheet to stick into the oven, but had to keep one pair of halves to try raw. Messy liked the one with honey better, but she's generally not the biggest fan of figs – it's a texture thing for her.

It's not easy getting the figs to stay nice and level. Well, it's impossible I guess without additional support – they're round! This will result in the honey drizzling off and pooling a bit at the base of the figs in the oven. No worries, enough will bake in. The goat chevre didn't run off the figs which was nice. I've heard people subbing in mascarpone which sounds great. But I love me some chevre so that's the route I went.

Ingredients:
5lbs. heirloom Queensland Blue squash (you can use butternut squash for a much sweeter soup – 2 medium or 1 large)
1 can of unsweetened coconut milk (the original recipe called for an 8 oz. can, we used 13.5 oz. and it tasted awesome)
2 ribs celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
3 scallions, sliced
1 small shallot, diced
3 dried Thai peppers, diced (use a jalapeño if you don't like things too spicy)
6-8 cups vegetable stock (we use bouillon)
splash of dry sherry
salt and pepper

Here is an interior look at the squash. Almost a solid 2" of flesh at the edges. The flesh is quite aromatic. The skin is on the thin side and the flesh is soft and easy to cut with a good sized cleaver or chef's knife, whatever floats your boat. Once you pierce the skin, you'll be treated to a lovely nose of light pumpkin and fresh bread.

Onward to the recipe! You'll need 5lbs. of Queensland Blue squash (conveniently found at Fair Food Farmstand [closed Mondays] for about $1.50/lbs.). Line a tray with parchment paper or one of them fan-cay Silicon mats. Stick it in a 400°F oven for about 40 minutes. You may have to cut the squash further to get the innards nice and soft in a reasonable amount of time.

Dice up 2 ribs of celery; slice 3 scallions (we don't call them "green onions" in this house!); dice 1 smallish shallot; slice 2 cloves of garlic. Lay them all out nicely on a bamboo cutting board with 8" chef's knife and take a nice photo (this may take awhile). Everything will be puréed, so the chopping doesn't have to be perfect for show.

Get out a nice big soup pot and set it over a medium flame. Pop open a can of unsweetened coconut milk (8oz. or 13.5oz depending on how much you like the stuff – we really like it) and spoon out the solid coconut fat. If there's not enough to coat the bottom of the pot, add olive oil. Once it's nice and hot, add all the chopped veggies, until soft, for about 5 minutes. Once soft, remove from heat and wait until the squash is done.

Check on that squash. Stick a fork in it and see if it's soft. It should be a little mushy and not need much force to get the tines of the fork deep into the flesh (not from the skin side). Remove the squash from the oven and peel it. It'll be piping hot so use a potholder to hold it steady. You might be able to peel off the skin with your fingers. Picky used the big knife while Messy tried her hand with a butter knife. You might want to let the squash cool a little before handling it –this process was kind of delicate and a little messy for one of us (guess which one!).

Slice up the squash like a melon and cut the slices into chunks and toss them into the big pot with the veggies and fire up the burner again.

Add a splash of sherry, a chopped hot pepper or 2 or 3 (we used 3 very small spicy Thai peppers from Messy's mom's friend's Connecticut garden) and the coconut liquid into the pot, bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes. Add in 6-8 cups of vegetable stock (we used 6 cups for a thicker soup), return to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. (Note: photo is prior to adding in veggie stock.)

Now the kind of tricky part. You're going to ladle, bit by bit, the contents of your large pot into a food processor to purée it all. We'd advise you to not fill past the halfway mark with each batch. Messy did that the last time we made this soup and the result was — surprise! — extremely messy. Pour the puréed soup directly into bowls or into another container for keeping. We opted to empty the big pot into a smaller pot and pouring the purée back into the big pot for storage. Add salt and pepper to taste and you're done!

For added awesomeness, whip up some croutons in a pan. Thickly slice off a piece or two of some tasty bread. We had a gigantic loaf of Le Bus's golden wheat bread at hand so all it took was one 6" tall slice for the two of us. Dice that up into nice big chunks. Heat some butter (or oil) in a pan – our favorite is our 10" cast iron skillet. Add in the bread cubes and sprinkle some herbs for flavor. Our purple sage and rosemary plants are still going strong in our windowsill so that's what we used. Flip the cubes once lightly (or darkly is you prefer) browned and let the other side get flavored and toasty. This should take all of 5 minutes tops.

Ladle some deliciously orange heirloom Queensland Blue squash soup into a bowl and add in a few fresh croutons. The soup is nice and thick, using 6 cups of stock, but not clumpy. You'll get a nice tingle of heat from the hot pepper to complement the creamy pumpkin sweetness of the Queensland Blue squash. Add an extra crack of pepper for a bit more of a kick. The croutons will give a nice crunchy texture to fill out the bowl of liquid warmth.

Winters don't have to be boring while striving to eat locally. Squash is your friend! [Note: squash is actually not Messy's friend. But it might be yours. . .]

Since it's hard for me to eat nuts (I am sadly rocking adult braces for at least another few months) I figured I would make a graham-cracker crust instead. Then, I thought, wouldn't a chocolate cookie crust be even better? Then I figured I would do away with the raspberry sauce and whip up some cream on the side instead. So basically, I decided to make a different cake all together. There are a lot of recipes for chocolate tofu pie online and I combined a bunch of them to make this one. I made a terrible mistake by forgetting to melt the chocolate (you can see in the picture that the pie is a little grainy) but it turned out to be quite tasty nonetheless.

Ingredients

Crust:
20-25 cookies, crushed [I used Paul Newman's vegan version of Oreos - Newman-O's]
about 4 Tbsp butter or vegan margarine

Filling:
16 oz Silken tofu
1 package (12 oz) Chocolate Chips [If you are serving vegans, make sure the chips are vegan, many aren't!]
1 tsp Vanilla

Directions
To make the crust: Crush up the cookies. Mix with approx. 3 1/2 Tbsp of margarine or butter. Pour into a buttered (or margarined) pie plate. Bake at 350°F for about 8 minutes. Allow to cool completely.

To make the filling: Mix the tofu and vanilla in the blender. Melt the chocolate chips using a double boiler (or equivalent) over medium heat. Add melted chocolate to the blender and mix until smooth. Pour mixture into pie crust and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Serve small slices, as this pie is really rich. We served it with slightly sweetened, homemade whipped cream (Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market has some wonderful local heavy cream). I have not made vegan whipped cream yet, but I hear it can be done with coconut milk. If anyone has a tried-and-true recipe, I'm interested!