The Queer Hipster Kitchen

While most weeks, I focus on the magical trip to the farmers' market to get our CSA share, I thought perhaps I should talk a bit about what happens after the farmers' market - namely, our trip to the co-op to pick up the non-vegetable items and the few things we need to finish out recipes.  This post will be long, heavy on photos, and high on praise! First things first: what the heck is a co-op?  A co-op, or a food cooperative, is a member-owned grocery store.  You pay a certain amount to become a member of the co-op, in exchange for which you usually receive a discount from the advertised prices for things.  (However, anyone can shop at a co-op: you don't have to be a member.)  Our co-op includes a working membership option, where adults in the household can contribute 6 hours of work a year for an additional bit off your bill each week.  The kinds of work vary from actually working at the co-op - say, helping people in the bulk section or packaging up p...

Have you ever been trying to use up some kitchen scraps and made something so fabulous that you write down everything you did, so you can do it again?  That was my day today. We were rolling egg rolls for our gathering with friends tonight.  The trouble was that we had sort of a lot of egg roll wrappers left - we made a beautiful dozen crispy baked rolls, as per the recipe I shared last week , but then were left scrambling to figure out what to do with the rest of the wrappers.  Once they're open, you really only have a day or two to use them. So I went digging in the fridge: what else can be made into an egg roll?  I found barbecue sauce, some more of our endless CSA cabbage, and an open can of jackfruit. Things weren't looking promising. However, I know that many people like jackfruit for its pulled-pork-like texture.  In fact, I have a can at present because I put some into our lentil sloppy joes for exactly that magical texture.  So, if jackfruit...