There are only three more weeks to the market. Collingswood Farmers’ Market opens at the beginning of May and closes the Saturday before Thanksgiving. During that time the market is my supermarket (except for milk and yogurt!). The farmers offer the best of the season and they make me pay attention as the spring, summer, and fall go by.
Hillacres Pride sells cheese, grass fed and pasture raised beef, pork, lamb, and chicken. And they sell eggs. They also sell some interesting and delicious ready to use food. And you can get their products all year! They have a winter program. If you’re not already signed up for it you can do so at the market. You can get information on their website.
The way the Hillacres Pride winter program works is simple. You sign up with them. They send you an email to remind you to place your order and when the pickup is. (The pickup is where the market is). You place your order online. You pick up your order on the pickup date. Easy!
Hillacres Pride meat order pickup days for this winter are: Saturday, 9 December 2017; Saturday, 13 January 2018; Saturday, 10 February 2018; Saturday, 10 March 2018; Saturday, 7 April 2018.
Now that school and activities are in full swing, ordering on line and making quick, simple, and nutritious meals is a boon.
We started by making a quick lunch which could easily be dinner with a bowl of soup. I spread Hillacres Pride fresh cheese with bacon on a slice of Amber Grains sour dough bread, heated it up in the toaster over until the cheese melted. Delicious!
Hillacres Pride makes a frozen macaroni and cheese from their own cheese. They make plain and spicy varieties. The pasta and sauce is packaged in a foil tin with a paper lid. Completely frozen. I simply put the frozen pan on a sheet pan and covered it with foil. The directions are clear and on the lid of the pan. The macaroni and cheese was creamy and delicious…and I didn’t have tons of pans to wash! This would be great with a salad for dinner or with burgers or hot dogs (also available from Hillacres Pride). My husband and I ate it once and had leftovers for twice.
Next up were meatballs. Again. Delicious! These are frozen pork meatballs. Cook them with some jarred sauce (I used sauce I purchased from Villa Barone’s stand at the market) You can put them on rolls for sandwiches or add to your favorite pasta. I had dinner on the table in less than twenty minutes!
Hillacres Pride sells a one pound package of the best tasting chipped beef you will ever eat. This is a very fast fix. (Just remember to thaw it!). For this meal I made potato chips and mushroom cheese steaks. I don’t always like a roll…gets too messy. So I often fry some bread, in this instance Challah rolls from Wild Flour, and serve the cheese steaks on top.
Ingredients for potato chips:
starchy potatoes
olive oil
coarse Kosher salt
Directions for potato chips:
1. Preheat the olive oil in the pan to medium high. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Peel the potato
3. Slice the potato in thin disks
4. Dry the potato slices with a paper towel (very important…do not skip this step)
5. Place the slices in the pan in a single layer and fry until just starting to turn golden. About ten minutes, depending on how hot the oil is.
6. Take the potato slices out of the pan and place on a paper towel to absorb some, but not all, of the oil.
7. Place the potato slices on a sheet pan in a single layer. Sprinkle with Kosher coarse salt. Place the sheet pan in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes.
8. Serve.
Finally….if the week has been way too crazy….there is nothing wrong with and nothing better than a quick dinner of peanut butter and jelly or a scrambled egg followed by a huge bowl of freshly popped popcorn (from DanLynn Organic Farm) and a great movie! In PJs, of course!
Hillacres Pride – macaroni & cheese, fresh cheese with bacon, chipped steak, meatballs (available all year!)
Savoie Organic – Kennebec potatoes
DanLynn Organic – popping corn
Villa Barone – tomato and Vodka sauce, olive oil
Amber Grains – sourdough bread
Wild Flour – Challah rolls
Mushrooms – Davidson’s
yellow room upstairs 
One thought on “Easy meals”