Well, Ollin Farms never disappoints! They have crabapples, which I find pretty cool. I picked some up at the market and headed over to my friend Chad at Hazel Dell and asked for mushrooms for a crabapple sauté.

Chad recommended a 1/2 pound mixed bag of small cremini and shiitake mushrooms. Chad knows best…

I got them home and had a plan: Tempeh burgers topped with a crabapple mushroom sauce. Perfect.

I got started on my tempeh burgers and made them according to my recipe. Then, I assembled the crabapple mushroom sauce.

First I sauteed 1/2 of a local sweet yellow onion in 1 TB olive oil and 1 TB butter until they started to turn golden brown.

Next, I added the mushrooms, which I had sliced, and let them start to cook on medium-high for 10 minutes or so in the butter-olive oil mixture until they were nice and soft. I added a little sea salt, tossed them a bit, and added 3 crabapples, chopped into small chunks.

After adding the crabapples, lower the heat to medium. The apples will start to release juice and make a crabapple-mushroom gravy-sauce.

I made some quick vegetarian maple beer baked beans, grilled a zucchini and yellow squash, grilled some tempeh burgers, and topped them with shaved parmesan and my crabapple-mushroom sauce.

Delicious.

Turkey burgers are a great way for the carnivore in this house and the mostly vegetarian (me) to compromise. I do enjoy turkey, especially over the last year or so. It has good flavor, and something about it does not trigger the gag reflex so many vegetarians talk about when they smell raw meats. So, I’ve come to like turkey and I’m trying to find good ways to prepare it.

This was my first try at a turkey burger and it turned out great.

I bought one pound of ground turkey thigh at Whole Foods. I put it in a big bowl and added:

• 2 cloves chopped garlic
• 1 small chopped onion
• some scallions, sliced
• 1 TB Worcestershire
• 1 TB olive oil
• some Urfa pepper flakes from Savory Spice Shop (use red pepper flakes if you don’t have the kind I used)
• a splash of Harry’s Habanero, from the Boulder Hot Sauce Company
• 3 TB of crumbled feta

I put mine on a small ciabatta bun I picked up at Whole Foods, and topped it with some local lettuce from Munson Farms, and a simple mushroom sauté of a medley of little mushrooms I picked up from Hazel Dell that I sauteed in butter, garlic, and sea salt. Those little mushrooms really didn’t need any special treatment since they were so flavorful on their own… but I do apologize for not recalling which shrooms made it into the mix.

In the end, it turned out to be a tasty burger.

It all started with some mushrooms. My friend Chad from Hazel Dell suggested I try these tree oyster mushrooms last week at the Boulder Farmers Market, so I had to figure out what to do with them.

Also, I had a beautiful head of radicchio from Ollin Farms, which was an ingredient in my CSA Challenge. I knew I wanted to grill it, which is easy. Just slice it, drizzle with olive oil and sea salt, and grill for a few minutes. Turns out great.

Then we decided to buy some halibut. Now I knew what to do with my meal. Halibut with caramelized onions, grilled radicchio, zucchini, and yellow pepper, and sauteed tree oyster mushrooms. A perfect combination.

It is easy to caramelize onions. It just takes a little while, so that usually needs to be done first. I had a beautiful little walla-walla onion from the market, so I sliced it and added it to a hot saute pan with a little olive oil and let that start to turn golden brown. You need to watch your onions and turn down the heat if they start to burn. The idea is to let them slowly release their sugars and caramelize into sweet, delicious, heavenly-brown goodness.

As I said before, the radicchio and veggies were grilled. I baked the halibut with a little olive oil at 350 until is was just cooked through. All ovens are a little different, so watch your fish. Mine took 15 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, a mushroom saute with a little butter, olive oil, shallots, sea salt and pepper was under way. Nothing too fancy because all of my produce came from local farms, so it was all super fresh and delicious.

I definitely enjoyed this one!