Maple, Mustard, Bourbon Pork Chops with Micro-Steamed Green Beans

Date Night!

Each Wednesday, hangry bf and I choose recipes from some of my many cookbooks to make for date night! It not only makes my insane collection of cookbooks seem reasonable, but it's also really fun to cook together once in a while. He does much better with a written recipe than my MacGuyver style cooking off the cuff. Last week we chose The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt and picked recipes that could utilize our pork chops from Liberty Delight Farms and a whole mess of green beans. The result? Succulent maple, mustard, Bourbon pork chops with crisp beans tossed with olives and almonds. Try it for yourself with the recipe below!

New Meal Delivery Service, Vegetable + Butcher, takes over DC!

Enjoy Your Weekend, Leave the Meal Prep to V+B

Vegetable and Butcher is a subscription-based meal service that caters to the health-conscious (or simply the busy folk of DC). They’re based locally in DC and cook all of their food out of Union Kitchen in Ivy City.

Belgian Endive & Spinach Salad with Beets, Apples & Walnut Oil Dressing

Fancy Leaves

Making creative salads is one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen. The combinations are endless, and I typically feel really good about my decision to make and/or eat a salad. That said, making salads can be one of the most time consuming dishes to make in the kitchen. Each element of the salad usually requires some sort of preparation, whether it's roasting, chopping, mixing, seasoning, etc. But the pay off sure is worth it. One of my new favorite salad ingredients is roasted beets that have been slightly pickled. I love the combination of beets and apples, so I created this show stopping salad and have been serving it at parties and catering events ever since. It's got all the things a salad needs: acid, fat, crunch, sweetness, leaves and salt. I got the winning "Yum" of approval from none other than my mom, a cook's toughest critic, so you should feel confident in this salad choice!

Shane Hughes: The Cow Whisperer

Shane Hughes, founder and owner of Liberty Delight Farms, traded his Wall Street briefcase for a tractor in Maryland and hasn't looked back since. I caught up with him to discuss his passion for sustainable farming and why it's important to know where your food comes from.