Earth Day

April 22nd marked this years Earth Day celebration.  I think of Earth Day as a day to think about how what we consume and what our impact is on our planet.  Since it is the only one we have and God intrusted it to us, I want to make my best efforts to treat it gently. 

Truth of the matter is, any day I can find an excuse to celebrate something and cook something special, I will take it!  So we set out to buy some local fresh produce and other fair trade and organic ingredients to make a special dinner.  The menu was not preplanned because I knew I would have to work with what I could find but we ended up with:

BBQ Organic Free-Range Chicken Thighs
Roasted Parmesean Brussel Sprouts
Fried Squash, Potatoes, and Onions

and

Strawberry Almond Shortcakes

Most of the meal was pretty straight forward fare for our family.  I simply baked the chicken and brushed on some BBQ sauce toward the end.  We tossed the brussel sprouts in olive oil, s&p, a bit of garlic salt and fresh grated parmesean cheese on a cookie sheet and baked them up with the chicken about 20 minutes.  The squash is a family regular that my Gram always made for us fresh from the garden.  I lucked out to find local squash and onions on a produce truck which made this dish a taste memory.
 

The best part of any dinner is dessert!  I had also purchased fresh, local strawberries and immediately thought of Strawberry Shortcakes.  I really dislike teh storebought shortcakes we always bought to eat.  They are funky little sponge cakes and just leave a lot to be desired.  I knew we had some almonds around from earlier in the week so I looked for a almond shortcake recipe on my favorite recipe resource, Martha Stewart Living Online.  Anyone who knows me know I have a library of MS mags and her Everyday Food which is full of great and simple recipes.  I was stoked to find the perfect recipe, Almond-Cornmeal Strawberry Shortcakes!  I whipped these babies up in a snap and it just made 6 which was good for us to not have too many extras laying about.  I also had all the necessary ingredients in our pantry which is the best kind of recipe.

Here's the recipe and some yumalicious pics of the finished product:

From Martha Stewart Living

To serve I whipped up a pint of heavy cream with a couple tablespoons of powdered sugar in my mixer.  I used the whisk attatchment and whipped it into submission on high.  A little trick to perfect whipped cream is to put your bowl in the fridge a while before you whip it to get it nice and cold.  You want to do this right before you serve too so your whipped topping is nice and fresh.  It will keep in a lidded tupperware for a couple days though...in case you need seconds! 

I cut the tops off the shortcakes, put a dollip of whipped cream, then a bunch of chopped up berries and more whipped cream.  Then I put the top back on to make a giant strawberry sandwich!  I sprinkled a few more berries around on the plate. 

Since the berries were fresh and in season, they were nice and sweet and did not need extra sugar.  My mom used to cut them up and sprinkle them with sugar and then leave them in the fridge a bit before putting them in the store bought shortbreads for us.  They would let out their juices and make a nice sweet syrup but I felt this recipe had enough sugar to skip that step.  I didn't overdo it with the whipped cream either just letting the fresh cold cream speak for itself in letting these flavors meld. 

I loved that the shortcake had a nice texture from the cornmeal (which my dad did not detect) and ground almonds...they added a nice flavor as well.  I don't love a dessert that is overly sweet, especially when it gets warm so I was so pleased with how cool and clean the flavors were on this one.  You should definatly try it for yourself!

Yumalicious Dishes!