Four Obsessions: or maybe three...or two...or one...

a little link love

2012-01-12T15:07:00.001-05:00

I'm loving pinterest as a way to store on-line recipes that I want to try. I've been pulling up my recipe board and getting inspired to make some new stuff like this soup, this chickpea curry dish (both of which are fantastic recipes) and this kale quinoa crustless quiche (which is tasty and easy, though not exactly mind blowing). The only problem is I also have to keep a file or bookmark for recipes that I find that don't contain a photo.

Our house addition construction continues (siding and windows in as of this week!) and pinterest is also good for saving images of possible bathroom tiles.

On Monday I received a restock of my favorite tea: Ceylon Fancy Silver Tips from Tea Trekker. It came on the perfect day (kids' first day back at school and all of us stumbling around in the afternoon from the early start). They haven't had this particular Ceylon in stock for about 6 months so I ordered kind of a lot of it...

I'm not the biggest non-fiction reader but have been totally sucked in and consumed by The Beauty and the Sorrow. It's an amazing book with a chilling ending.

And for Christmas we finally succumbed to the wishes of the small people and got an Xbox and I think it is...really pretty fun. I thought I'd hate the thing and then I found myself playing Rayman Origins with my kid for two hours. The Kinect is also pretty cool though it'll be better when we have a bigger living room.

2012

2012-01-03T16:29:00.001-05:00

I don't really go in for formal resolutions, but I do like to start the year thinking about what I'd like to accomplish, particularly if it differs from a previous pattern.

1. Get over any lingering fear of the power tools. When we built the fort in the back yard for the kids I discovered that the compound miter saw is actually pretty easy to use and doesn't give me visions of severed limbs. It has been a while since I dealt with anything more intense than a power sander but with all the finishing of our addition that we'll be doing this coming year, I want to get over my sissy side. Don't make me touch the circular saw or a chain saw, though. I think you have to be bat-shit crazy to touch one of those and come away with all your appendages.

2. Keep the low-meat trend in cooking. I started eating very little meat around October and what do you know, I feel a lot better. More energy, less sluggish. And it doesn't hurt that I lost about five pounds with almost no effort at all. I didn't eat a lot of meat before October, but I was often a little lazy and ate it even when I didn't really want it because it was there. Lately I've been making regular meaty meals for the other three family members and either piling my plate with sides and salad, adding the meat at the end of a dish and keeping it out of my portion, or doing a tofu version. Much to my surprise, Brian volunteered to join me in low-meat eating (yes, the man who has a "wall of meat" display at work is game to cut down). Of course, he eats out a lot more than I do, so if he's craving meat then he can have it at lunch or when he meets up with guy-friends. And I'm not planning on becoming strict in any sense. I still love lamb, expect that I will want a burger a couple of times a year and know that a little bacon can sometimes make a big impact. But if I am eating meat, it's going to be a conscious decision rather than a lazy default.

2.5. In order to be successful with 2, I'm going to try and cook up at least one pot of dried beans every week. I know this doesn't sound too hard, but it's the planning part that I fail at with dried beans (and I don't own a pressure cooker). I have an unnatural loathing of canned beans (just too mushy...and I hate the smell when the can is first opened) but really love pretty much any bean when cooked from their dried state. Also, I discovered that cooked dried beans can be drained, packed in freezer bags and frozen then used like canned one (but without the mush). But that only works if you remember to make the damn beans in the first place.

3. Finish knitting the frigging sweater I started over a year ago. Preferably before it has become swelteringly hot.

4. Finish the current draft of the book before the kids get out of school for the summer. Feels do-able now, but who knows what writer's blocks will come with deep winter! And once the wonderful builder we hired to get the addition to drywall stage is done, then a good chunk of my time will be spent tileing, laying hardwood floors, painting, etc. etc. So I need to give myself a good push once the kids head back to school on January 9, despite the urge to hibernate.

5. Once that draft is done, share it. That's a really scary proposition and will force me to embrace #6.

6. Be more daring. Ask questions even if you think you'll look stupid rather than save up the thought and research it when you are by yourself (the coward's version of knowledge acquisition). Realize that if, when you share your book, the people you share it with think it is crap, that you can handle it.

7. This may sound contrary to the previous intention, but back off and don't push sometimes. Quiet the voice of nagging that comes way too easily and try to put myself in other people's places. Cultivate kindness toward people who bug me (This doesn't mean I'm going to seek them out, but when in their presence, try to be gracious and tolerant. This may be extra difficult in an election year...)

That's all I can think of for now. Seems like a decent enough mindset with which to start the new year.

Vegetarian Hoppin' John

2012-01-01T14:11:00.002-05:00

I don't have a southern bone in my body, but I do like the tradition (and taste) of eating hoppin' john on New Year's Day. I've always had it with ham or bacon (or both) but I've been cutting back on meat so I thought I'd do a little improvisation. I put in a little smoked paprika to give some depth to the flavor. I also remembered that a restaurant I really like down in Lexington (Alfafa's) tops their vegetarian hoppin' john with sharp white cheddar cheese so I crumbled up a bit I had in the fridge, too.

It turned out really well--I'm thinking that I might make another batch and freeze individual portions because nuking a bowl of it would make for a fast, tasty and healthy lunch.

Vegetarian Hoppin' John

1 C dried black-eyed peas or yellow-eyed beans*
1 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 stalk of celery, diced
1 t dried thyme
1 t smoked paprika
1 C rice
1 small red pepper, diced
2 C vegetable broth
2-3 scallions, chopped
1/2 C sharp white cheddar cheese, shredded or crumbled
hot sauce

Cook your peas or beans. Either soak overnight in water, change the water, bring to a boil and simmer until tender, or do a fast soak (pour over boiling water and wait an hour before proceeding). If you think of it, chuck a couple of extra garlic cloves into the cooking water. Drain off all but about a cup of cooking liquid.

In a medium pot, heat the oil and add the onion. After about a minute, add the garlic, celery, thyme and smoked paprika. Saute for a couple of more minutes to soften. Add the rice and give it a good stir to coat the grains in oil. Then add the red pepper, peas/beans and cooking liquid, and veg broth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then slap on a lid, turn on low and let simmer for 20 minutes.

Give the pot a good stir, then dish it out. Top each portion with some chopped scallions and a sprinkle of sharp cheddar cheese. Let people add their own hot sauce.

* I hear that you can also make this without the pesky soaking/cooking beans step by using frozen black-eyed peas, in which you just chuck them in with a little extra water or broth with the rice. I've never tried it though since I have enough dried beans in the house to last us through an apocalypse in relative beany comfort.

Christmas baking

2011-12-21T15:28:00.000-05:00

I think I'm almost done (pant, pant). So far I've churned out:

10 pounds of apricot cherry granola (for teachers)

2 of these amazing boozy fruit cakes (no nasty fluorescence in them--more like really good trail mix, soaked in rum and bound together with a minimal amount of flour/sugar/eggs and some spices. I swapped out dried blueberries for dates and added lots more pecans.)

a batch of espresso chocolate chunk (substituted dark brown sugar for the light and hand-chopped 70% chocolate which makes for nice non-uniform bits and blobs)

a batch of currant ginger shortbread

a batch of almond orange biscotti

and a batch of slightly altered Italian wedding cookies (recipe below) (pecans instead of almonds, some orange zest and orange flower water mixed in).

You would never know from this list that I don't really have much of a sweet tooth...

Italian Wedding Cookies
(sort of)

2/3 C of pecans
1 C unsalted butter
1/4 C powdered sugar (plus 1/2 - 1 C more for rolling and dusting the cookies with after baking)
1 t vanilla extract
3 t orange blossom water
zest of two oranges
2 C all purpose-flour
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats.

Toast nuts: toss nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes. They should smell good and, you know, nutty. Cool completely.

Take half the cooled nuts and put them in a food processor with 2 T of flour. Pulse until they are finely ground. Add the rest of the nuts and pulse a couple of times to just chop them.

In the bowl of a mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract, orange blossom water and orange zest. Add the rest of the four and salt and beat until combined. Stir in the nuts. Cover and refrigerate dough until firm (about an hour).

Form dough into 1 inch balls and place them 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until they are brown around the edges. Remove and cool.

Put about 1/4 C of powdered sugar in a plate then put the cooled cookies on top of the sugar. You can then roll them around or (as I prefer) sift the rest of the sugar over the tops.

Makes about 3 dozen.

books books books books

2011-11-17T08:32:00.000-05:00

It's getting close to the time of year when I start to think about gifting books so I was perusing my 2011 books read list and trying to decide which were the clear winners. I came up with 6 total.

For YA readers (particularly girls because the main characters are so terrific) and adults who like YA:
Plain Kate by Erin Bow
Chime by Franny Billingsley
Blood Red Road by Moira Young

For adult readers (who won't/don't read YA):
Percival's Planet by Michael Beyers
A State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Doc by Mary Doria Russell

Some of these are no surprise. A State of Wonder is already showing up on lots of people's/publications' best of lists and Chime was nominated for the National Book Award.

Any clear winners on your lists? I'm always on the look-out for the next wonderful book.

Tantre Farm Share, week 20

2011-10-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

Top row: bag of baby lettuce, bag of spinach, three onions, two sweet potatoes, garlic, carrots, broccoli rabe

Middle row: melon, dumpling squash, delicata squash, red potatoes, hot peppers

Bottom row: arugula, shitake mushrooms, broccoli florets, sorrel, green beans, turnips and greens

Brian just left town for a week which is crummy timing for the last share. So some of this will get blanched and frozen and some of the stuff that will last like potatoes and squash will be set aside until my dinner (and life) partner returns. I eat a lot of vegetable, but even so, I think I'd have to be eating round the clock to consume all this myself before it starts to spoil.

Menu plan:

peanut sauce with brown rice, tofu and steamed vegetables: broccoli, beans, carrots, sweet potato and spinach
salad w/arugula, lettuce, and carrots for lunch through the week
scrambled eggs with shitake and sorrel, whole grain toast
broccoli rabe, turnip greens and some of the green beans will be blanched and frozen
sweet dumpling squash will be stuffed and baked with quinoa, feta, walnuts, scallions and dried cranberries, served with either steamed broccoli or green beans
spinach will be blanched then sauteed with plenty of garlic and used to top cheese ravioli

Tantre Farm Share, week 19

2011-10-06T09:30:00.000-05:00

Top row: spaghetti squash, bag of baby lettuces, kale, beet greens, turnips and greens
Middle row: delicata squash, hot peppers, onion, sweet potatoes
Bottom row: fingerling potatoes, tatsoi, carrots, green and yellow beans, eggplan, radishes

Menu plan:

roasted chicken thighs with roasted delicata squash, braised turnips and salad with lettuce, radishes and carrots
calzones with blanched kale, turkey sausage, ricotta
Spaghetti squash with Indian Spices, daal, rice, and turnip and radish greens cooked up saag style.
sweet potato coconut soup (recipe below)
there will probably be a stir fry in there somewhere to use the tatsoi, green and yellow beans and hot peppers.
no plans yet for the eggplant or beet greens; the fingerlings won't spoil so I'll wait for a chilly day to roast them. It's too beautiful outside right now to crave roasted potatoes.

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

Relish (This is not an extra, but a must)

1 T oil (use coconut oil if you have it)

1 T butter (or more coconut oil)

1/8 t red pepper flakes

1 or 2 sweet potatoes (med to large), peeled and diced small

Salt/pepper

¼ fresh chopped cilantro

Soup

1.5 T oil

1 small red or yellow onion chopped

2 t grated fresh ginger

1/8 t red pepper flakes

3.5 cups vegetable broth

1.5 sweet potatoes (med to large), peeled and diced large

1 can coconut milk

2 T honey

¼ t cinnamon

For relish: Heat oil and butter over medium heat, add red pepper flakes heat for 10 seconds. Add the

diced sweet potato, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, COVERED, stirring occasionally until softened, about 15 minutes. Uncover, increase heat and cook until potatoes are golden brown, another 5 to 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and mix with cilantro.

For soup: Heat oil over medium heat, add ginger and onion, cook until soft (about five minutes), and

add red pepper flakes. Add broth, bring to a boil and then add sweet potatoes, bring to a simmer

and cook until soft (20 to 30 minutes). Blend soup until smooth. Simmer over low heat.

Whisk in coconut milk, honey and cinnamon. Cook until thickened. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve the soup with a large spoonful of the relish on top.

Tantre Farm Share, week 17

2011-09-21T11:36:00.000-05:00

Top row: Basil, radishes, onions, broccoli rabe?, Italian kale

Bottom row: purple potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, purple and yellow beans, salad mix, tomatoes, sorrel

Maybe I'm just feeling curmudgeonly but for this time of year, this week and last week's shares have seemed smaller than I'd expect. Two tomatoes? That's it? Isn't September tomato bounty time in Michigan? It's a good thing I'm not trying to provide vegetables for 4 humans since my kids remain ridiculously picky and will just nibble the occasional carrot or cucumber slice. But even so, there isn't enough there to last a week.

Here's the (grumpy) menu plan:

That's supposed to be broccoli rabe (according to the Tantre share email) but it looks a lot more like turnip greens to me... I haven't made spanikopita since spring so I'll probably use the rabe/turnip greens, radish greens and maybe the kale too to make one.
Roasted vegetables: butternut squash, purple potatoes, onion and garlic. Maybe topped with feta and maybe accompanied by a roast chicken (if I'm up to wrestling a raw chicken into submission).
Salad with salad mix, tomatoes, carrots and radishes, hard cooked eggs, blanched purple and yellow beans and some tuna.
Thai chicken with basil (from this general recipe) with lots of purple and yellow beans added to the mix. Rice on the side.

And that about does it for the week...really, only four meals?

Tantre Farm Share, week 15

2011-09-07T08:51:00.000-05:00

Top row: basil bush, broccoli crowns, curly kale, eggplant, 2 heads garlic, thyme bunch, watermelon, potatoes

Bottom row: tomatoes, hot peppers, cabbage, red peppers, lettuce, purple beans, purple onions, cucumber

(Sorry for the crummy exposure--it's a gloomy day here so no daylight to help illuminated the right side of the photo.)

Menu plan:

Potatoes, some of the purple beans and garlic will go into this potato green bean salad with lemon miso dressing.
A little bit of the thyme and some more garlic will go into this Magic Sauce recipe which sounds like it can boost up any number of dishes.
I'll make some pizza dough and top it with fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, thyme, red onions and some eggplant that I'll thin slice and pre-cooked a little. Serve it with lettuce/shredded cabbage/red pepper salad.
Some more of the purple beans, cabbage, red pepper, garlic, a hot pepper and basil will go into the old standby Thai-style noodles, with cucumber and red onion salad on the side.
There isn't quite enough broccoli to make the garlic sesame cured broccoli salad so I'll stretch out the recipe with some shredded cabbage and red pepper, maybe some kale too. Sounds like that would go well with a dinner of roast chicken.

I also bought a peck of peach seconds and plan to make a big old peach pie and freeze the rest for peach pie in the depths of winter.

Thai noodles and cucumber salad

2011-08-24T10:09:00.000-05:00

I'm finally getting around to posting this thai noodle recipe, which I have adapted from a recipe that Ruth Reichl posted on her blog. The version shown in the photos below is from a couple of weeks ago.

First soak your noodles:

You need 8 oz of rice noodles. I usually make them with this width, but sometimes go with wider ones. I cover them with hot tap water and let them soften (usually for about 1/2 hour) while I'm prepping the other ingredients.

Might as well make your side dish now too. Use a mandoline to thin slice a cucumber (peel and seed if necessary). Then thin slice about 1/2 of a small or a 1/4 of a large onion (red is pretty, but white or yellow onions work fine.) Chop up a little cilantro and toss it all together in a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of rice vinegar, a sprinkle of salt and sugar. After it has sat for a while, taste a slice and adjust seasoning. Pop in the fridge to chill while you're cooking.

Next comes noodle ingredient prep. I usually start with the sauce:

In a small bowl, mix together 1/4 c of white or brown sugar, 1/4 c of fish sauce, 1/4 c rice (or white) vinegar and 2 T of black soy sauce (you can skip this if you want--black soy sauce is almost like a salty molasses so it gives and extra sweet/salty kick). Set aside.

Next prep your first round of add ins: these are the vegetables and stuff you want to have cooked, not merely warmed up. This is also where you get to add lots of variation. I also like to make this with green beans, scallions (the white part here, the greens added at the end), red peppers, sweet potato leaves, kale, etc. If you are ok with shell fish you can add some fresh shrimp instead of the tofu.

1/4-1/2 lb tofu cubed, green peppers, shredded cabbage, thin sliced carrots, sliced onion. There are probably around 3 cups of vegetables plus the tofu here.

Next prep your other stuff. Again, there are a few standards (1/4 c chopped peanuts, 2 limes, 2 cloves of pressed garlic) and room for additions. This week I was just chucking in some basil leaves at the end, but other weeks I've added spinach, bean sprouts, scallion greens, cilantro etc. to this phase.

Put a couple of tablespoons of peanut oil in a wok, heat it up and add your garlic and 1/2 lb ground meat--I use pork or turkey and both turn out well.

When the meant is no longer pink, add the onions (or white parts of the scallions) and the tofu. Continue to stir fry until the meat starts to brown a little. This is also a good time to add dried red pepper flakes if you want it spicy (about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon).

Drain your noodles and dump them in the wok, use a spatula to scrape your sauce ingredients over the noodles and toss while they cook so that the noodles absorb the sauce.

When the sauce is about 1/2 way absorbed, add the vegetables that need some cooking. If you want egg in your noodles (I didn't use egg this week), this is also a good time to make a little space in the wok and crack in an egg or two. Let them cook a little, then scramble with your tongs and toss with the rest when they are firm.

When the sauce has been absorbed and the vegetables sufficiently cooked, add your final ingredients: chopped peanuts, fresh herbs, scallion greens and bean sprouts, if you are using them, and squeeze the two limes over the top.

Give it all a good toss and serve in bowls with a portion of cucumber salad on the side and some sriracha sauce if you like it spicy.

Enjoy!

Tantre Farm Share, week 13

2011-08-24T09:13:00.000-05:00

Top zone: pint of cherry tomatoes, quart of red potatoes, 4 heirloom tomatoes, leaf lettuce, parsley, melon

Bottom zone: green and wax beans, 4 red peppers, sweet potato leaves, red and yellow onions, hot peppers, kale, 3 cucumbers, two ears of corn, 2 huge shitake mushrooms

(not pictured: a basil bush)

We're heading out of town for a week so the following will come with us to be prepared very simply in a cabin kitchen: kale, onions, melon, red potatoes, one or two of the firmer tomatoes

Here's the plan for the other stuff:

red and hot peppers will get roasted and jarred in a garlic/vinegar/olive oil mixture.
green beans, sweet potato leaves, shitakes and some basil will get made into thai noodles (recipe in the next post, really!) with cucumber salad
lettuce, tomatoes, parsley and remaining cucumbers will make a simple salad, and corn will just be enjoyed on the cob with a nob of butter, as sides with something basic like turkey burgers or grilled chicken thighs.
cherry tomatoes just for snacking!
more pesto for freezing to get us through the dark winter months.

Tantre Farm Share, week 12

2011-08-22T08:45:00.000-05:00

Gaps and delays: we were out of town for week 11 and this week picked up our share on Saturday rather than Wednesday. Gotta get eating since our next share pick up is this coming Wednesday!

I present to you, the star of the show:

Shitake and oyster mushrooms

Also in the share: Collards, sweet potato leaves, red and yellow onions, red potatoes, garlic, green beans, 2 red peppers, eggplant, poblano, jalapeno and shishito peppers, summer squash, 4 cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes (2 huge, one more normal sized), cherry tomatoes, basil bush, sorrel

Menu plan:

Fish in a packet with some sweet potato leaves, summer squash, onion, red pepper, cherry tomatoes and feta
sauteed mushrooms with garlic for breakfast, served with soft scrambled eggs with sorrel and Ed's Bread multigrain toast
green beans (and basil and jalapeno) with tofu and nuoc cham
some pesto for freezing
roasted eggplant salad with red and poblano pepper, basil, garlic and feta
baked potatoes, chicken thighs on the grill, collard greens braised with garlic, onion and apple cider vinegar, and tomato salad
sesame cucumber salad, to be combined with tofu and brown rice (and maybe a few stir fried sweet potato leaves if there are any left) for a quick rice bowl lunch or just snacked on when the urge hits

Tantre Farm Share, week 10

2011-08-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

Top row: 1 quart yukon gold potatoes, swiss chard, green pepper, carrots, lettuce, garlic, eggplant, two (huge) stems of basil

Bottom row: sumer squash, red russian kale, beets, cucumbers, onion, shishito peppers

not pictured: 1 quart red new potatoes

Menu plan:

Tonight I'm going to make a vegetable stew (sort of like a ratatouille but without tomatoes) with eggplant, basil, onion, garlic, a couple of shishito peppers and the big summer squash, maybe a couple of potatoes too if I feel like making it thicker. I'll grate some pecorino over it at the end and serve with baguette. I wish I had some good marinated olives to go with it, but I'm too lazy to go out to the store today.
Pasta with a kale/fresh rosemary/garlic/walnut/feta sauce
One cucumber will be diced and mixed into drained plain yogurt with some crushed garlic, salt and pepper. I can eat this by the bowlful on its own but will probably make some of Fiona's favorite lamb patties to go with it, make a simple beet vinaigrette salad and serve it all with fresh pita.
Some of the potatoes, the three small summer squash and some basil will go into this gratin. I made a half-sized recipe of this with some of the extra squash last week and Brian and I almost licked the pan out. I'll probably just saute up the chard with garlic as a side dish and make some sort of simple meat protein (chicken breasts or pork tenderloin) to serve with it.
Brian is off on a work trip for most of the week so that calls for one cucumber to go into a single girl's rice bowl (while I make something bland and boring for the critters).
Lettuce, carrots, cucumber and green pepper will become basic salad. If we're in need of a main course I might boil up some potatoes, hard cook and egg or two and open a can of tuna in olive oil and make it into a big main course salad.
I haven't decided what to do with the other shishito peppers yet.

Tantre Farm Share, week 9

2011-07-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

Whoo hoo! I found the camera again. It was not, as suspected, buried in the boy-critter's sty of a room (though I am ardently hoping that his missing iPod is in there somewhere). I found it at the bottom of my purse, having been dislodged from its case due to the girl-critter's energetic scrounging for gum, so I can still blame my kids for its disappearance.

Top row: cabbage, lettuce, kale, sorrel, leeks, basil

Middle row: garlic, summer squash and zucchini

Bottom row: green beans, carrots, onion, 8 more cucumbers, tongues of fire shelling beans, 2 quarts of new potatoes

Menu plan:

Tongues of fire shelling beans will be cooked up with some garlic, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Then the kale will get added in. When ready to serve, I'll put them in deep bowls, squeeze in some lemon, shred a lot of parmesan on top, drizzle with good olive oil and serve with crusty bread and a glass of red wine. This is a meal I look forward to all year.
It's another week of crazy cucumber bounty and I have a couple of new recipes to share that I tried out last week and loved (linked to below this menu plan). One is for a crazy refreshing cucumber-lime-mint agua fresca and the other is for sichuan cucumber salad. That'll use up about 3 or 4 of the 8. I'm sure one will get sliced up in salads, another will get sliced thin and put on my favorite sandwich (tuna and mayo with cucumber on a baguette) and another one or two will get consumed in the beer snack. And I might gift one if I'm feeling overwhelmed at the end of all that.
I have a poblano pepper in the house that I'll roast and add to the summer squash, zucchini and onion for calabacitas. I'm thinking I'll add some corn, cooked and cut off the cob, at the end to make it a little more exciting. I'll probably serve it with some sort of tacos, maybe pinto beans and pork, since the kids will eat tacos without a fuss and that is not something I can say about most of the food I make.
Green beans, carrots, cabbage, garlic, onion and some basil will go into thai noodles, which I just realized I've been blabbing about repeatedly (since I make it almost once a week) and have yet to post the recipe. I'll take a picture and rectify that here soon.
I doubt that Brian will ever taste the sorrel that comes from our share because, yep, I've already eaten it in an omelet. I think a sorrel, feta or goat cheese and chive omelet might be my favorite of all time. Maybe sometime I'll be generous and share one with him...or maybe not!
Not sure what to do with all the potatoes, but at least they don't rot right away so I have a little time to figure it out. Last week I boiled some as a dinner side and just drizzled olive oil, snipped fresh chives over the top and sprinkled them with fleur de sel and they were pretty delicious that way. Of course the leeks and potatoes obviously call for vichyssoise but for some reason I love it when other people make this for me, but have never appreciated it as much when I make it myself...

And now, two things to do with all those cucumbers:

It looks green and frothy and a lot like a pitcher of pond scum. But it isn't.

It's cucumber-mint-lime agua fresca.

This stuff is pretty intense, but amazingly good after you've been out working in the yard in the hot sun. Rather than add the ice cubes to the pitcher as they recommend in the recipe, I fill up a glass with ice and consume the stuff a glass at a time. Ice is essential to dilute the intensity.

I don't have a photo of the sichuan cucumbers, but there's a picture here where I got the recipe. I love the lip and tongue tingling effect of sichuan peppercorns and served this with dan dan noodles so it was a double dose of numb. And very tasty too!

(The following has nothing to do with cucumbers.)

Paddy's favorite mode of transport. I think he might be part kangaroo.

Tantre Farm Share, week 8

2011-07-20T07:25:00.000-05:00

Grrrrr....the camera is missing again! Probably buried in the sty that is my boy-critter's room.

So I can't (yet) show you the pile of 8, yes 8, cucumbers that were a part of this week's share. Question: what enjoyes the 105 degree heat index days we're having? Answer: cucumbers.

Today's day of summer fun with the critters will involve the three of us cleaning all the horizontal surfaces in the house. In most rooms this involves desks/tables/shelves. But in the boy critter's it involves the entire damn floor. Good thing he has a small room.

Isn't summer fun? (Yesterday I took the critters and two of their friends to the water park for the whole day so you know what? They owe me. I am not a nice enough mom to do that without considering the future targeted use of guilt in the negotiation process when they inevitably gripe about cleaning the house all day today. But wait! We'll take a couple of fun breaks to go get their annual physicals from the pediatrician and to get the boy critter a hair cut! Whoopee!)

Sigh.

If I unearth the camera from the crap I'll post a picture here. Meanwhile, here's a list of what was in the box: beets and greens, rainbow chard, new potatoes, basil, green and wax beans, two heads of lettuce, a big onion, head of garlic, cilantro, cabbage, 4 summer squash and yes, 8 cucumbers.

And here's my plan:

summer squash, beans, garlic and basil will go into one of my favorite dishes: (pretty much any vegetable) topped with sauce vert.
cabbage, onion and cilantro will go into Alice Water's coleslaw.
some more of the beans (there are a lot of beans) and some basil will go into one of my favorite stinking-hot-day lunchtime salads: green beans and tofu with nuoc cham.
All those cukes call for regular evening consumption of the Vietnamese beer snack with an ice cold homebrew.
If we don't eat all the cucumbers that way, I'll make a batch of tarragon bread and butter refrigerator pickles (unlike the kind of bread and butter pickles that I make and can, these are good with regular rather than kirby cukes). Excellent with a turkey burger and some corn on the cob.
I'll make some lemon-dill potato salad with the new potatoes and some of the sweet onion. (No real recipe for that: lots of lemon juice and dill, sliced raw onion, salt and pepper and olive oil tossed with the cooked and cooled new potatoes.)
I'm looking for something new and interesting to do with the chard and beet greens. I'm not turning on the oven with the weather being what it is, so baked gratin and quiche-like preparations are out. Simply Recipes has a stove top preparations that sounds promising: Sauteed Swiss Chard with mustard seeds that also uses some shallots. I just so happen to have harvested a load of shallots from my garden and was looking for something to do with them other than my regular use of mincing one small shallot to put in a bottle of vinaigrette. So I'm thinking the chard dish will trigger an Indian dinner with raita (using another of those bountiful cukes), some daal and rice. So far that's my plan but drop me a line if you have a great chard recipe.

Tantre Farm Share, week 7

2011-07-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

Top row: baby oak-leaf lettuce, beets and greens, head of lettuce, onion, garlic, rainbow chard

Bottom row: sorrel, cabbage, zucchini and summer squash, green and yellow beans, cucumber, new potatoes

Menu plan:

The sorrel is already gone, having disappeared into a wonderful omelet with feta cheese shortly after coming through my door.
Tonight we'll have a Nicoise-ish salade compose with new potatoes, beans, beets, cucumber, lettuce, radishes, hard boiled egg and tuna.
The chard and beet greens will get sauteed and drizzled with some of the leftover chili vinaigrette that I still have in the fridge from a couple of weeks ago, and topped with either goat cheese or feta.
The cabbage will become coleslaw. The rest of the potatoes and and some of the (huge) onion will become potato salad and we'll serve them with some grilled chicken thighs and corn on the cob. Sometimes it's fun to have traditional summer picnic fare.
The zucchini and summer squash, along with more of the beans, some onion, any cabbage that might be left from the cole slaw and tofu will get steamed, put on a bed of rice and topped with peanut sauce.

Tantre Farm Share, week 5

2011-06-29T16:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry no photo (again). A certain newly minted 11-year-old borrowed my camera to make a stop motion video with his friend and now we can't find the thing...he's upstairs cleaning his room right now so there is hope it will be excavated soon.

This weeks share:
small bunch of bok choi, head of garlic, summer onions, bag of fava beans, bag of small lettuces, one big head of lettuce, big bunch of beets and greens, haruki turnips and greens, collard greens, chives

Menu plan:
We're going out of town next week so I'm kind of relieved that the share is a bit small this week.

bok choi, garlic, and onions will go into Asain noodles (with some ground turkey, tofu, shredded carrot, peanuts, etc.)
turnip greens and collards will get braised together with some more garlic. Since my kids are out of school and not at camp this week and keep asking for homemade mac and cheese for lunch--guess what they are going to learn out to make? I love homemade mac and cheese with braised greens and lots of hot pepper vinegar.
Salad (duh). Even after eating salad twice a day because of last week's lettuce bounty, I'm still happy to have more salad, though I don't know if we'll finish all the lettuce before leaving. I'll probably make a chive and sherry vinegar dressing.
favas and beet greens will get sauteed with a few summer onions and tossed with hot pasta and goat cheese. If there are any chives left, they'll go in there too.
Not sure of any plan for the beets (once I cut off their greens though, they can stay good for a few weeks so I might save them for later) or turnips, yet.

Tantre Farm Share, week 4

2011-06-22T08:36:00.000-05:00

I think this is the week to try making lettuce soup.

You're going to have to trust me on the bounty because blogger is being persnickity about uploading my photo of this week's share. You can see it here on flickr if you're really interested. About a quarter of my dining room table is taken up with lettuce: three HUGE heads, two green, one red, of leaf lettuce and a big bag of more young green leaf lettuces. Seriously, one of the green heads weighed in at 1 lb 5 oz...

Also included in the share:
a little bunch of cilantro, a quart of strawberries, a bunch of rainbow chard, a bunch of haruki turnips and greens, a small bunch of asparagus, a large bunch of summer onions (sort of like scallions on steroids), large quantity of garlic scapes and a bag of snap peas.

Menu plan:

Lettuce soup. There are a ton of recipes for this on the web. I'll probably go with a version that uses a lot of scallions and chicken broth and a little bit of potato to give it some heft. Then some creme fraiche and sauteed garlic scapes to top it. Maybe a little cilantro too if it fits the flavor profile, other wise I have some tarragon out back that I think would be good.
Speaking of sauteed garlic scapes: most mornings I'm sautéing up a couple in a little olive oil and then making an omelet with them and feta and a couple of dashes of Clancy's Fancy.
Any remaining garlic scapes will be processed into pesto and frozen for the winter.
I love snap pea's sauteed in a little butter and finished with chopped mint, black pepper and a little sea salt. Brian will have to fight me for them.
Yea! Chard! I've been hankering to make the beet/chard/chile/goat cheese combo again, though I'm craving chard as the star of the show and fewer beets (since I only have a couple in the fridge). If there's any cilantro left by then, I'll probably chop up a little as a garnish.
Turnips, greens and asparagus sound like a good combo for a sauteed side dish for something meaty--pork tenderloin maybe?
And, of course, salad. Lots and lots of salad. And if we eat all the salad we can and still have lettuce left, I might try this lettuce sauce which sounds like it would be good with poached salmon.

Tantre Farm Share, week 3

2011-06-15T14:51:00.000-05:00

Top row: Red Russian kale, big head of lettuce, bag of small lettuces

Bottom row: scallions, lots of garlic scapes, strawberries, black stemmed peppermint, English peas, haruki turnips

It's kind of a small share this week--good thing I only have to feed two people since my critters still only tentatively nibble the occasional piece of lettuce or a few peas. I was hoping for another load of spinach because I have a hankering to make Indian food and saag is one of my favorite dishes. Ah well, it'll have to wait until another week!

The kale will get cooked up with garlic and olive oil and combined with cannelini beans, rosemary and parmesan, served with baguette. Beans n' greens Italian style.
I'll make a big batch of garlic scape pesto to freeze.
Scallions, lettuce and peas will go into another round of Larb Mu (recipe below).
The rest of the scallions will probably go into a korean pancake and I'll simmer the turnips with some mirin and soy sauce to serve with them. If I get really motivated I'll stir fry the turnip greens with some tofu and kim chi we'll have a multi course feast!
It's been cool in the evenings so I'll have the peppermint tea hot--good post dinner beverage.
No reason to do anything with the strawberries but rinse and eat!

Larb Mu (Thai pork salad)

Traditionally this is served with whole lettuce leaves that you use to wrap up a portion of the seasoned meat. My lazy version has you make a big salad for each person and top it with the meat. It makes it a fast week-night meal instead of something I would only take the time to do occasionally.

1 lb ground pork (or turkey)

1 T peanut oil

3 T uncooked jasmine rice

1 T fish sauce

1-2 t sriracha sauce

1 t sugar

juice from 1 lime

1 shallot, sliced thin

2 scallions, chopped

1 head of lettuce, washed and torn

1 C of shredded cabbage

1/2 cucumber, sliced thin

3 or 4 radishes, sliced thin (optional)

fresh peas or pea pods (optional)

1/2 red bell pepper, sliced thing (optional)

small bunch of cilantro, chopped

small bunch of mint, chopped

small bunch of thai (or regular) basil, (optional), chopped

In a small skillet, toast the uncooked rice, stirring so it doesn't burn. It should turn golden brown and have a nutty smell. Grind in a mortar and pestle or a spice or coffee grinder. (If this step sounds like too much of a pain, I've made this salad without the toasted rice powder and thought it was still pretty terrific though I'm sure some people think that it is essential to the dish.)

In a big bowl mix together the fish sauce, sriracha, sugar, lime juice, shallot, and scallions and set aside.

In a big skillet or wok heat the peanut oil and cook the pork (or turkey) until it isn't pink. Crumble it while cooking so it doesn't clump up. Dump the cooked meat into the bowl with the sauce and toss it around a little. Sprinkle in the rice powder.

On plates make a pile of lettuce, top with the chopped/shredded vegetables of your choice. Then place a generous portion of the meat mixture on top. Sprinkle with plenty of the herbs and serve.

Tantre Farm Share, week 2

2011-06-08T12:42:00.000-05:00

Top row: Red Russian kale, radishes, garlic scapes, spinach, asparagus, komatsuna (spinach mustard)

Bottom row: haruki turnips, 4 heads of lettuce, black stemmed peppermint, scallions

Menu plan:

The garlic scapes will go into garlic scape pesto which has become far and away my favorite pesto. I'll toss it with some pasta and the asparagus and the turnip greens which get chucked into the pasta water for the last minute or so of cooking.
I'm thinking of using the kale in this kale salad with toasted coconut, probably with quinoa instead of farro since my better half has requested that we go gluten-free for a while.
The radishes will get turned into quick ginger radish pickles.
I love the haruki turnips so much but will try and not be a selfish cow. I'm tempted to eat them all for lunch today, but Brian loves them too. They'll probably get braised with a little butter and some poppy seeds.
The komatsuna and spinach will be stir fried with ground turkey, shallots, fish sauce, lime and scallions and then plopped on top of a bed of lettuce to make a bastardized version of Thai pork salad (Larb Mu).
Any remaining lettuce and scallions will go into green salads for lunches for the week.
The black stemmed peppermint will be made into the most refreshing iced tea ever which will be good for these crazy 90 degree days we're having now.

Well hello there! (aka Tantre Farm Share, week 1)

2011-06-01T11:18:00.000-05:00

After blogging for 5+ years, I needed a little break. For the last few months when I thought of blogging I felt tired. And frankly my life was going relatively smoothly, but there weren't a whole lot of interesting things to write about. We all were just plugging along, getting stuff done without a whole lot of drama.

I thought about shutting down the blog, I thought about starting a new one with a more accurate name since the things I was obsessed with 5+ years ago have shifted and changed but coming up with a blog name that encompassed cooking, reading and writing YA fiction, house renovation, and the occasional parenting fiasco was too high a hurdle. Something like "Ephemera" sounded a little too snooty. "Aggle Flaggle" would be accurate for the mental nonsense realm, but hard to spell. So here we are! Back in the same old place.

This morning I picked up my farm share this morning and there is nothing like a big box of beautiful organic produce to reinvigorate my urge to share. If you were wondering what would possibly grow in the crazy amount of rain we've been getting, I have the answer: spinach! Lots and lots of spinach.

Top row: 4 huge bunches of spinach, tatsoi, scallions, asparagus

Bottom row: chives and blossoms, spicy greens mix, red russian kale, 2 green leaf lettuces, radishes and some over-wintered fingerling potatoes.

And here's the plan:

The asparagus is already gone. I couldn't resist; before I even finished unpacking the box I had a pot of water on to boil so I could make this for my lunch:

asparagus topped with a poached egg, olive oil, shards of parmesan, chive flowers, fleur de sel, black pepper and lemon juice. Oh my was it tasty!

With all that spinach (and some of the scallions) how could I not make spanikopita? Besides I have some left-over grilled leg of lamb and yogurt cucumber salad that will be so good with it.
The tatsoi and some more scallions will get the thai noodle treatment with a little ground pork and tofu.
I'm going to make some homemade blue cheese dressing for a salad with the lettuce, radishes and chives. It'll probably go with something simple like turkey burgers.
That leaves me with kale, spicy greens mix and potatoes so I might try to combine them into some sort of gratin with gruyere, if the weather is conducive to turning on the oven. If it is hot and that sounds dopey then the greens will just get the classic garlic, olive oil and lemon treatment.

Villain Work

2011-02-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

I'm within three chapters of finishing my first draft (and they aren't even big chapters) but I've been fighting and fighting with them and recently realized that I can't write them without believing in my present bad guy more than I do.

So I'm backing off from the chapters and doing some villain work.

The villain is the main problem I'm facing, but working on him also made me realize that I need to make some other characters in the book less pleasant--there are too many nice people right now. I think this is a result of me being in my winter mode and wishfully writing what I'd like to be surrounded by, as though crafting nasty characters is just too hard for my brain in the midst of the dark and cold days. I can imagine a sunny, warm day, sitting out on the deck and having a great time writing a really despicable character. But right now, when I feel the world is not an overly easy place to live in I'm doing a much better job crafting the kind characters--I've developed a sibling relationship that was a little thin and have filled in some of the (pleasant) background characters. But if I want to finish the draft, I'm going to have to get over the niceness hump* and write the meanies.

So I went out and bought a bag full of out-of-season non-local fruit: strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and kiwis. Maybe I can trick my brain into summer mode for a short while, just long enough for me to crank out some really nasty characters to make my book more interesting.

And if you have any great villains you think I should keep in mind, please let me know!

*The niceness thing does not apply to me. I am not nice to be around now. In fact the best I can do is resolve not to be as unpleasant this February as I was last year. That's hard enough.

Getting weepy on the stairmaster

2011-01-21T20:02:00.000-05:00

I was at the gym the other night stomping away on the stairmaster when all of a sudden everything got sort of blurry. No, I wasn't going so fast that the machine was smoking (ha!), nor was my vision deteriorating more than its already crappy state; I was reading the final chapters of the wonderful book Plain Kate by Erin Bow and my eyes were responding appropriately.

This is a wonderful book. The story is about a young girl and is set in a vaguely Russian-ish land with prominent characters who are members of a traveling Roma family. The story has elements of magic and mystery, but primarily it is about loneliness and belonging.

None of the characters are simple--almost all of them have been deeply hurt by the world--and none of their feelings are simple. The best example is the villain of the piece, who I absolutely hated for preying on Kate at times, and for whom I felt a deep sympathy for his suffering at others. Kate is also unsure what to feel or think about him: fear? pity? friend? enemy? There's no simple way to render a character who steals from Kate but also saves her, and I loved this complexity.

You'd think that with such layered characters the book would be long and it would take a lot of text to convey such complicated feelings and characters. But there is a remarkable economy to the language--it is lyrical, yet spare. It didn't feel like there were any extraneous words in the book. By comparison, most other books (many of which I also enjoy) seem downright sloppy.

And I challenge anyone to read this book and not be thoroughly in love with character of Taggle the cat. Bow has captured the most perfect "cat-ness" of Taggle:

Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. "It's covered in bread," he huffed. "What fool has covered meat with bread?" He batted at the crust, then sprang back as it broke, and began licking gravy off his paw. "Ooooo," he purred. "Ooooo, good."
"Taggle," gulped Kate, again.
The cat looked up from his licking. "Oh. Well. I could share." He arched his whiskers forward and, like a lord, demonstrated his beneficence by giving away what he didn't want. "There is bread you might like."

The only other fictional animal I can think of that is this perfect, that absolutely captures the appeal of the particular species, is Manchee the dog in Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go (which I mentioned here) whose love for the boy Todd made me cry.

For the writers out there, it was really nice for the author to include the information in the acknowledgments* that it took her six years to write this book. That seems like a perfectly reasonable amount of time in which to create something so perfect and precise. I checked out the author's web site and it looks like her next book will be out in 2012 so (yeah!) we don't have to wait another six years to read it.

And now a word about the cover art: Very pretty but it just doesn't fit. Take a look at the picture at the start of this post. It looks like the girl on the cover is having a lovely time, balancing on the ridgepole of a roof, looking out over a magical town, a gentle breeze making her hair and scarf float out behind her and her cat is prancing in front of her! This lighthearted depiction is the absolute opposite of the one incident in the book when the main character (and the cat) are on a roof. They are in a city that is about to be destroyed and the inhabitants of the city are known to pick scapegoats (like Kate), accuse them of witchcraft and burn them at the stake (so not a friendly, happy place). And by this point in the story Kate has had her hair cut off and been badly burned. She is hunched and tense and clinging to the slates. For example: "The downpour slowed to a cold soaking rain. The steep roofs were slippery, but they didn't dare go into the streets. Men in the dark garb of the city watch roamed in packs and harried the refugees from doorways and alleys. So Drina and Kate stuck to the roofs, inching, sliding, scraping, keeping out of sight. It was slow and exhausting." This cover just doesn't fit this wonderful book.

*Thank you, editor, for putting the acknowledgments at the end! One of my big pet peeves is when they are at the beginning.

Frita Batidos

2010-12-20T07:47:00.000-05:00

It's been a good long while since I blogged about a restaurant. I haven't been eating out much and when I do its usually just a rushed post-gym dinner at our favorite Korean local, Maru, or for a beer and sandwich at a brew pub. But yesterday I joined some friends for a holiday lunch. Since only one of us works in a traditional office where holiday parties are the norm, we made our own little celebration and decided to try Eve Arranoff's new place Frita Batidos.

I got there before the lunch rush began and it was quiet and very, very white. It's a casual place with (white) picnic tables and all hard surfaces so while it was quiet when we arrived, once the traffic picked up, the noise level was approaching uncomfortable. I'm not sure my sensitive ears could handle a boisterous late night crowd.

But the food! Oh my the food! I ordered a black bean frita with tropical coleslaw on top and a side of the twice fried plantains. The black bean patties I've had in the past have been leaden and heavy and feel a bit like a punishment for choosing them over meat. But these are creamy and flavorful and really rewarding. I didn't wish I was eating another friends big Cuban sandwich, delicious though it looked.

This may not look like a huge amount of food for $14, which is more than I usually spend on lunch, but it is all so rich that it was amazingly filling; I wasn't hungry when dinner time rolled around and since I'm one of those people with a hobbit-like tendency to eat every three hours or so, that's saying something. If I worked downtown I could see getting just the black bean frita with a side of tropical slaw (it was good on top, but I think I'd like it even better on the side); that would set me back $8 and mean that I wouldn't be feeling stuffed. But those plantains were amazing and amazingly rich. They are drenched in a garlic-cilantro butter and accompanied by a sweet chili mayo for dipping. They melt on your tongue and the combination of the sweet plantain and the rich butter, combined with the bright flavors of the garlic and cilantro is just magical. This place is open late and I could see coming here after a show for an alcohol-soaking up plantain gorging.

If you have a sweet tooth, as one of my friends most decidedly does, then you should try the churros with chocolate Espanol. It was a huge portion which meant we each got to sample them without depriving her of the blood sugar spike she so desired.

They were the best churros I've ever tasted--the dough is flecked with orange peel and nutmeg, they are rolled in cinnamon sugar, and the chocolate is like warm, cinnamon-spiked ganache. I'd say one order could easily satisfy two sweet-tooths or four normal-tooths.

None of us tried the batidos--I was chilled from walking downtown on a windy cold day so I'm going to wait until the weather is more conducive to the consumption of ice to give those a try.

December catch up

2010-12-14T14:45:00.001-05:00

Just a little update for those who still check in here. As you may have noticed, blog posts have been scarce of late. I blame that on the 1600+ words I've been churning out for the 1st draft of the novel. By the end of my fiction writing I'm so sick of sitting still (and my wrists hurt) that even if I have an idea for a blog post, I'm too wiped to write it. So here are a few miscellaneous things that I've been meaning to post:

I finished NaNoWriMo! Unfortunately 50,000 words only took me to just past the half-way point in my novel so I'm trying to keep up the momentum. December is harder than November as far as making the time to write. I'm giving myself a break and not expecting any writing on the weekends--it's just too crazy. But I've managed to add a little more than 15,000 words since the end of NaNoWriMo. I'm approaching the end of part 3 (of 4) so that feels good, though I'm thinking I probably won't be able to finish the draft before the New Year. The kids get out of school next week and finding time to write will become even more challenging.

Gift/book wise: I'm giving a few family members The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell. Somehow I neglected to blog about it here but it was probably my favorite read of the year.

I have a hard time staying hydrated in the winter because drinking cold water when it's freezing flipping cold outside is something that I have to force myself to do. So lately I've been making an effort to make and consume the following two hot, non-caffeinated beverages. The first I call
Winter Comfort: Make a half a mug of strong peppermint tea--let it steep for about 10 minutes. Then glug in vanilla soy milk to the top of the mug and nuke until the whole thing is warm. I know, it sounds kind of disgusting, but I really love it.

The second is Cheaper than Sweetwaters' Lemon-Ginger Tea: Put about 5-6 cups of water in a pot. Take a piece of ginger root, about 2 inches long, and slice crosswise into 1/4 inch pieces (no need to peel it). Chuck the pieces in the pot. Dump about 1 T of powdered ginger in there too (more if you really love the ginger burn). Then bring to a boil, cover and simmer for a few hours. Stir in the juice of 2 lemons that you squeezed and about 1/2 cup of honey or sugar and stir until dissolved. Taste and adjust for your own sweet/sour preference. You can strain out the chunks of ginger and keep this in a jar in the fridge for a while. Then give it a shake (the powdered ginger settles to the bottom), pour in a mug and nuke until hot. It's also very nice to settle a tummy that may have overindulged in holiday treats.

Past the half way point

2010-11-19T08:21:00.001-05:00

It's day 19 of NaNoWriMo and so far I've churned out 34,992 words. So I'm a little ahead of schedule with the word count though I'm only about a third of the way through my plot map. Since I know that what I've written will need to be tightened up, I'm not too bothered by the length though I will have to keep this momentum up after November 30th to get the first draft finished.

A few things I've discovered:

I really like writing with a map. Whoa boy is it a different experience. Less choice is a good thing for me. It keeps me plugging through the hard parts and stops me from jumping ahead to the bits I know will be fun to write.
My main character's mother is blind! And her father dies in the course of the book! I didn't know these things when I started writing, but that's the process of discovery. As one writing site recommended (can't remember which one): it can be kind of fun to throw a whole lot of grief at your main character and see how they respond.
I love Last FM. I don't think the interface or organization of the web site is as good as Pandora but the way it connects songs and groups is way more diverse. For example, if you are on Pandora and create an Iron and Wine station, be prepared to get swamped with Nick Drake and Bonnie Prince Billie. I like both, but not all the damn time. Last FM mixes in way more artists: Andrew Bird, Elliot Smith, Noah and the Whale, and plenty of other bands I've never heard of. I've been playing Last FM while I've been writing and it has proved to be a good way to keep me at the computer.
The house is a sty, there are piles of mail that need to be sorted through and we keep running out of stuff like milk, bread and prescription meds. If I didn't have most of our bills set up for auto pay, we'd probably be getting threatening notices from utility companies. I'm barely remembering to get the laundry washed and dried and have had to tell everyone just to rummage around in the clean laundry pile to find what they need for the day because folding and putting it away isn't happening. But the kitties think the ~~clothes pile~~ new kitty bed is fantastic! Dinners of late have been mediocre at best. The thing that blows my mind is how people who work out of the house for 8+ hours a day get any of this stuff done. At least I can chuck in laundry and go back upstairs and write.
But hey, it feels good to be so jazzed with the writing that things that normally bug the crap out of me don't seem to matter.

Patterns/Maps/Plans (and the problems when you don't have one)

2010-10-27T09:01:00.000-05:00

I've been feeling a little frantic lately. Halloween is approaching and I've been trying to figure out how to transform last year's bat costume into a dragon, for the girl critter. At least the wings are taken care of...but there's still a tail to construct and the pointy spikes along the spine to attach and part of me thinks it would probably be easier to start from scratch rather than trying to modify the old costume. Then I could go and buy a pattern and have someone else do the thinking part of how to craft it--all I'd have to do is follow the instructions. But the girl is rather attached to last year's costume (though won't be so easy going as to agree to be a bat again this year...) The boy critter wants to be an Ipod so that takes a big box and some time for him to trick it out--shouldn't be too big of a deal. But this week he also has his class Mythology Wax Museum and he chose to be Hermes, so we have to figure out how to make and stick some wings onto his sandals and on a hat, create a drapey toga thingy and a caduceus (thanks to the girl's reptile enthusiasm we have plenty of rubber snakes available).

I've also been preping like crazy for this year's NaNoWriMo. I'm working on a new (NEW!) novel and, though I'm hesitant to curse it, the prep has been going really well. I'm not letting myself write any of it until I've created a really detailed plot map, including a chapter synopsis and scene by scene summaries. I got lost in the narrative of the last book and realized that once I'd generated enough text for a three volume series (and it still wasn't finished...) that I really shouldn't have been writing without a map. Maybe someday I'll have the patience and distance to be able to go back and force a form on that text, but for now I'm going to let it sit and start with a completely different mindset. I'm pretty excited about November starting--I feel like a dog that's been kept on a tight leash and on Monday I get let off of it to romp and play and write all the scenes and chapters I've planned.

Of course I am a little worried about the necessary time commitment and the way everything else in our lives will go to hell.

Which brings me to my kitchen. Maybe because my brain has been so preoccupied with stitching and plotting, I haven't had much energy left over for dinner planning. So instead of feeling free in the kitchen, for the past week or two, I've felt really stressed. The farm share ended recently and while I still have a big box of winter squash and bags of sweet and regular potatoes to work through, the rest of my produce is now of my own choosing. It should be liberating, right? I can cook whatever I want! But it's a different sort of thinking and I've been overwhelmed by the liberty, so there's been a lot of 5pm grouchiness where I dig through the fridge and/or freezer trying to figure out what sort of slop to heave on the table and pass off as dinner, while the critters subtly hint (by gnawing on my ankle) that they expect to be fed soon.

It's not going to get better once November 1st rolls around and I put food (even) lower on the priority list while I try to churn out the book. So, this weekend I'm going to take a little break from my Scrivener plot mapping frenzy to put together a meal plan along with a shopping list (so I don't find myself tearing through the crisper drawers looking for the cilantro I forgot to buy). I'm thinking of getting really regimented for the month of November--making Monday Slow Cooker night, Tuesday Pasta night, Wednesday Mexican night, Thursday Stir-Fry night and Friday Pizza night. I'll probably feel a little annoyed with how repetitious and rigid this plan is (and I know it would drive me to despair if I had to do this forever), but hey, for the next month I'm going to keep reminding myself that prose, not food is the priority. If I can follow the map in my novel, I should be able to follow the plan in my menu.

And hopefully, stay sort of sane-ish.

It has been a while...Tantre Farm Share, week 19

2010-10-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

From vaguely left to right: (Top) butternut squash, sweet potatoes (yams? They don't look pale enough to be real sweet potatoes...), kale, lettuce, arugula

(Middle-ish zone) delicata squash, head of garlic, tatsoi, sorrel, radishes, kohlrabi

(Bottom) carrots, red potatoes, green tomatoes, red tomatoes, hot peppers, tongues of fire shell beans, turnips

Only one more week of overwhelming (and overwhelmingly good) produce! I know I haven't been doing these updates much--summer got pretty crazy since I did not book enough critter activities to keep them out of my hair for long enough to lay out and admire my produce. Thank god for school!

So what to do with all that stuff up there? Here's what I've come up with so far:

The shell beans will go into some sort of minestrone-style soup (they are fantastic in soup--super creamy dreamy). I'll probably chuck in a couple of carrots, the 2 plum tomatoes, a couple of potatoes and some kale too.
One butternut will get cut into cubes and roasted, then tossed while still hot with the arugula, some cheese ravioli, olive oil and a little balsamic, lots of black pepper and shards of Parmesan or pecorino. The rest of the squash will probably go in the basement to be stored for later.
the sorrel will go in an omelet. I love sorrel omelets.
I'll probably try and ripen those green tomatoes in a paper bag (toss in an apple for good ethylene gas).
According to Tantre the sweet potatoes (yams?) need to be cured, though last year that resulted in mine going rotten, so I must have done something wrong. If I don't rot this batch then I'll probably peel, shred and make them into burrito filling (like this Moosewood recipe for sweet potato quesadillas).
kohlrabi? Akk. I've been pleased that Tantre cut way back on the kohlrabi this year. The one I got is about the size of a softball so maybe I'll go play catch-the-kohlrabi with the critters!
lettuce + radishes = salad (duh)

And the rest of it...will probably get the same old (boring but tasty) treatment of heat, olive oil, garlic, salt, and some sort of acid.

Hope for next year's garden

2010-10-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

This year I grew a lot of weeds.

Two years ago I made the dumb mistake of mulching my vegetable garden with straw. Clearly it was very seedy straw because this year the grass growing in my raised beds was out of control--it smothered pretty much everything but the peas, garlic and two very determined turnips. Everything else was swallowed by the aggressive grass. I'd weed it all out, go away for a week, and come back to see a luxurious green carpet again.

Eventually I gave up. I was getting plenty of good produce from the farm share and I just didn't have the energy to deal with the mess I had created.

However, I do have hope for next year.

Today I took this,

dug up the worst of the weeds,

covered the bed with two layers of newspaper,

and dumped on about 2 inches of compost ($2.25 per big trash can behind the recycling shed at the dump).

I read about the newspaper/compost weed-blocker plan in this article in the NY Times. I did two of the three beds today (I only have 2 trash cans and each bed took one trash can full of compost so I'll have to head back for one more fill up). And now I'm looking forward to planting some things that I can't get enough of: one bed will get strawberry plants, one bed will get tomatillos (I want to can some green salsa next year) and the third will get a lot of sugar snap peas, garlic, and maybe a few plants that I've failed at in the past (cucumbers are on the list) and still want to try again. Even if I get the weirdly warped and stunted cukes that I seem to specialize in, they'll have to be better than all the grass.

The creative schedule (and a biscotti recipe)

2010-09-30T16:16:00.000-05:00

I've been having a really hard time getting into the writing groove after I ~~shove the critters out the door~~ wave fondly to my departing progeny. Being yelled at by two uncooperative beings who don't want to get up, don't want to get dressed, don't want to eat breakfast somehow ruins the mood for coherent, much less creative, thought. (Who'd of guessed?)

But for about the last week, my fiction ideas have been flowing fast and furious when I get up at 6 am. I used to read while I drank my coffee, taking 45 minutes or so for myself before the morning chaos began. But lately, I haven't been reading, I've been grabbing the laptop and pounding out what feels like really good plot solutions while I sip my black brew. But 45 minutes is not enough time--7 am comes around and I feel like I'm just getting going and that makes the process of bed-extraction and school-preparation even more unpleasant because it is tinged with resentment.

So what to do? Do I continue to return to the writing desk after the critter departure time and attempt to drag myself back to the ideas and inspiration that was flowing so well before all the morning stress and drama began? Or do I do something that sounds a little sick at first: get up at 5 am and add an hour to my creative me-time before anyone (except for the furry hair-balls) is conscious?

Yeah, it sounds kind of sick when I write it but I'm trying the 5 am thing. In my favor I have the fact that I'm a morning person. I won't be skipping down the stairs at 5 am, mind you, but I will adjust to and accept being awake at such an hour much better than my night-owl husband. But this creative schedule presents me with a problem: I still need to be functional in the afternoon and evening and I don't want to go to bed shortly after the bed-time critter-wrestling takes place.

I've decided to try a three fold approach: nap, tea and baked goods. I'm not much of a napper but I'm going to try and get myself to lie down and quiet my brain a little in the early afternoon before I have to collect the critters from their scholarly pursuits. I'll follow this forced break with supplemental caffeine consumption and a snack that might help provide enough sustenance to allow me to function (relatively) normally in the evenings.

The caffeine part I've got down: my sister got me hooked on a new tea supplier, The Tea Trekker. A pot of their Ceylon Fancy Silvertips tea should do the trick. The snack part just came to me as I was preparing for my Dad's 75th birthday this week. As a part of his birthday celebration he requested a batch of biscotti from a recipe my friend Lea gave me; I made these for him a couple of years ago and did not realize how much he liked them. Or maybe it's just that when you turn 75 you get a strong desire to break your teeth!

These are real biscotti, not the kind that have been prettied up with butter added to make the dough more tender. These babies are hard and substantial and, as I was making the recipe, contain a pretty good quantity of protein thanks to the copious quantity of almonds in there.

Yesterday afternoon I found myself snacking on the ends and crumbles of the batch I made for him with my cups of strong tea and I didn't have too much trouble functioning like a grownup that evening. So these babies are going into regular rotation in the baking plans--I might try and add some whole grain flours to the next batch to see if I can make them healthier.

Lea's Biscotti di Greve in Chianti (Orange-Flavored Almond Biscotti)

2 C all-purpose flour
1 C sugar
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 eggs and 1 yolk (reserve the egg white for an egg wash)
1 t vanilla
grated orange zest from 1 orange
1 and 1/2 C almonds, skins on, toasted

Preheat oven to 325.
Put the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times to mix.
In a 2 C measuring cup, or something with a good spout, mix together the 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk, vanilla and orange zest.
With the motor running, pour the egg mixture down the feed tube into the dry mixture. Process just until the dough is a shaggy mass--not collected into a ball. (Depending on your egg size you might need about a Tablespoon of water to get the dough to stick together. Drip it in a few drops at a time if needed.)
Pour half the nuts down the feed tube and pulse several times; repeat with the remaining half. (If you have a smallish food processor, like I do, you'll need to take off the top and scrape down the sides/break up the big lumps with a spatula.) Don't over grind the nuts--you still want some recognizable chunks of almond in there.
Turn the dough out onto a baking sheet lined in parchment paper and start to squish/shape it into 2 long loafs, each about 2 inches wide and situated 3 inches apart on the sheet. This is much easier to do if your hands are damp (the dough is super sticky) so keep a bowl of water to dip your hands in while you are shaping.
Take the reserved egg white, add a dribble of water to it and brush the tops of the loaves with the egg white wash.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until pale gold. Remove them from the oven and leave until they are cool enough to handle. Using a serrated knife, cut the logs diagonally into 3/4 inch wide pieces. Lay them cut side down back on the parchment and bake for about 12 minutes longer. Then use tongs to flip the slices and bake the other side for about 12 minutes. If your dough was a little on the damp side, you might need to increase the second bake time by a few minutes--the centers of the slices should be dry and not sticky.
Cool on racks.

Exquisite eggs (and a salsa recipe)

2010-09-14T08:25:00.008-05:00

Brian's friend, John, has started keeping chickens and yesterday Brian came home with a half-dozen exquisite eggs.

This morning I poached one and had it with paesano bread drizzled with a little olive oil:
You can just see the intense color of the yolk glowing through the white, but here's a clearer view:
No, I did not touch up the photo! It really was that glorious golden orange. I've bought plenty of eggs from the farmer's market, but none have been this deeply colored or this flavorful.

John is also the source of my salsa recipe. He's a salsa-making fiend and every year adds to the number of tomato plants he grows in his back yard (I think he's up to 50 plants this year). I can't even imagine how many jars of salsa he makes, but he and his two sons eat it pretty much every day. Last year I used his recipe and made 6 pints, which we loved. This year I made 12 pints--6 of the original recipe and 6 with chipotle peppers to give it a smoky kick.

Tomorrow I think I'll have my poached egg with a dollop of salsa and will raise my mug of black coffee in a toast to John!

John's Amazing Salsa
makes about 6 pints

10-11 cups of peeled and seeded tomatoes. Roma's are preferred but I've made these with all kinds of tomatoes--roma's, brandywines, green zebras, yellow plum, etc.
3 cloves of garlic
3 large white or yellow onions
4 mild red, green or yellow peppers (or a mix)
4-6 jalapenos with seeds; for the chipotle version swap in two chipotles in adobo sauce for the regular jalapenos
1 bunch of cilantro, washed (you can leave the stems on)
3/4 C brown sugar
1 C white vinegar
3 T pickling or kosher salt (not iodized)

Wash all the vegetables and then cut into manageable size pieces. Use a food processor to chop all the vegetables--I usually leave some a little chunky and almost puree others so the salsa has some thickness. Put all the chopped vegetables, the sugar, vinegar and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2.5 hours, stirring frequently so the bottom doesn't scorch. You want to reduce the salsa so it isn't watery and some of this will depend on the juice content of your tomatoes, so if it still looks a little watery at the end of 2.5 hours, simmer for a bit longer.

Prepare your jars--wash, then put on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven for 10 minutes to sterilize. Boil the lids to sterilize.

Fill jars with hot salsa, put on a lid and screw on a ring. You can either set these on the counter and hope they all take a seal (I have pretty good luck with this but if the seal doesn't take then you'll have to refrigerate the jar and consume it relatively quickly) or take the safe route and process the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Enjoy the taste of late summer all winter long!

Canning time

2010-09-08T08:04:00.004-05:00

The critters are back at school (whoo hoo!) and I went a little cuckoo this morning at the farmer's market:
In addition to my regular bountiful farm share, I purchased a peck of peach 2nds, a peck of tomato 2nds and some additional peppers. The first will go into peach jam and the second and third will go into salsa. Last year I made my own salsa for the first time and it has totally ruined me for the store bought stuff.

I already have peeled and frozen some tomatoes and slow roasted and froze some other tomatoes and roasted some red peppers from previous weeks of the farm share so I'm hoping to experiment with some different batches. If I come up with a phenomenal new combination, I'll share the recipe.

So today, while the critters are easing themselves back into the school year, I'll be steaming up the house, peeling and skinning and chopping these fruits. I've loaded up my iPod with a bunch of my favorite podcasts and an audiobook that I've been meaning to listen to. And I'll try not to get so deeply involved that I forget to pick up the critters at the end of the school day...):

A sight for sore eyes (and stomach)

2010-08-21T07:10:00.004-05:00

After two days of road food, the last of which consisted of cheese sticks, grainy apples, granola bars and a couple of cans of Starbucks Double Shots, I was so happy to go out this morning and pick up this:
No, I have no distinct plans for all this produce, and yes, I will try not to binge and make myself sick.

Now if you'll excuse me, there are some (a lot!) of tomatoes to be consumed for breakfast!

I wish I was this good with duct tape

2010-08-04T14:23:00.010-05:00

I took the critters to the Botanical Gardens this week to play in their wonderful children's garden and to check out the decorated flamingo lawn ornament display.

There we met this fine fellow--a flamingo transformed into a dragon, all done with duct tape!
If I attempted this I would probably stick all my fingers together and end up with wads upon wads of crumpled tape, not this elegant creature.

There were some other nice flamingos (flamingi?). There was a bird decorated to look like a strawberry (standing, appropriately, in a strawberry patch):

a bride and groom flamingo (which made me want to perch them on top of a really big cake):

and a few that had been transformed into other bird species, like this blue heron,

and this shy loon:

Maybe next summer I'll keep an eye out for cheap flamingos and see what the critters and I can come up with.

Tantre Farm Share, week 8

2010-07-21T08:47:00.007-05:00

Top row: onions, dill, lots of cucumbers, broccoli, swiss chard
Bottom row: Thai basil, green beans, red potatoes, carrots, summer squash, beets

Menu plan:

A couple of the recipes from last week's menu plan were so good that I'm making them again: the cucumber dill feta salad (this one is tried and true and since we have a bumper crop of cukes this week, it seems wise to have some around for snacking), the beets and chard w/goat cheese and chile dressing (Brian didn't even get to taste this since I loved it so much I didn't save any for him; he's on a work trip this week so once again he misses out!) and the squash and green beans with sauce vert. There was sauce vert leftover which I ended up eating smeared on pieces of baguette with some cheese. I wished I'd had some cold roast beef because the sauce, with its capers and mustard, would make a pretty terrific roast beef sandwich.

Also on the menu this week:

Vietnamese rice vermicelli salad w/cucumber, thai basil, carrots, sweet onion, blanched green beans, tofu and peanuts with nuoc cham dressing.
At least one other stem of the thai basil will get planted with my potted herbs so I can have it to use later in the summer (a nice benefit of getting the basil with its roots).
Some of the potatoes and one of the cucumbers will go into this German-ish style potato cucumber salad; it sounds like it would be good with grilled sausages.
The rest of the potatoes and the broccoli will get roasted w/a soy butter sauce. I'll pair it with either marinated and grilled chicken or tofu.
It looks like I'll still have a couple of cukes left so I think I'll make a jar of bread and butter tarragon refrigerator pickles. Normally, I'm a lacto-fermented type pickle eater, but these pickles are really good with summer bbq or on a turkey burger so it'll be good to have a jar on hand.

Tantre Farm Share, week 7

2010-07-14T07:28:00.007-05:00

From Left to Right: (top row) cucumbers, broccoli, yellow zucchini, garlic, epazote, basil
(bottom row) fava beans, beets, swiss chard, sweet onions, green beans

Menu plan:

I'm going to use the fava beans in this recipe for linguine with fava beans, garlic, tomato and bread crumbs (and I'll chuck in some of the basil).

Half the broccoli will go into a half recipe of Sesame garlic broccoli salad.

I'll toast up some pita chips to scoop up this feta cucumber salad; I doubt it will be a part of a meal, more like a good beer-absorbing appetizer.

I'll caramelize the onions and use them on a white pizza with goat cheese, olives, basil and fresh thyme, served with this recipe for green beans and (yellow) zucchini with sauce vert. If it is stinking hot, the pizza will get done on the grill.

Provided I can stand to turn on the oven in this warm, humid weather I'll make Roasted Beets with Guajillo chile dressing with added swiss chard. It sounds like it would be good with grilled chicken (I want to try a butterflied grilled chicken that is in this month's Food and Wine--no recipe on-line yet; if it's good I'll post it) and baguette.

I'll dry the epazote to use later when I cook dry pinto beans.

Tantre Farm Share, week 5

2010-06-30T11:44:00.008-05:00

Bottom row: scallions, 2 quarts shelling peas, beets and greens, fava beans, Asian greens
Top row: 2 kinds of lettuce, parsley, a lone yellow zucchini, broccoli

This week's share seems a little small, but we're having beautiful cool weather for we humans so I guess that's the price we pay. It works out fine with me since we won't be here the whole week and I would have had to give away a bunch of stuff otherwise.

Menu plan

The fava beans and some of the peas will go into this recipe for sizzling halloumi to be served with good bread.
A salad with lettuce, beets, some more fresh peas, scallions, parsley, feta and walnuts will be my lunch for a couple of days.
Stir fry of Asian greens, yellow zucchini and scallions with a lot of ginger, served with rice and kim chi and maybe a fried egg.
Super basic broccoli this week: just steamed with butter. I'm hoping the girl-critter who eats broccoli will participate in its consumption.

Tantre Farm Share, week 4

2010-06-26T08:01:00.005-05:00

Clockwise from bottom center: turnips, quart Chinese pea pods, chives, spinach, bok choi, 4 heads of lettuce, English peas, scallions, broccoli

Menu plan:

The lettuce and a few scallions will make some lunch-time salads. Lately I've been making a sweet and tangy vinaigrette with some muscat vinegar from Morgan and York, Spanish olive oil from Sparrow, a glob of Michigan honey, salt, pepper and a little dijon. It's pretty basic, but doesn't overpower these soft lettuces.
Some of the pea pods will get combined in a stir fry with the bok choi, some sliced chicken, ginger and scallions.
The spinach will go into goma ae (I know, again, but we're still not sick of it)
Turnip greens and shelled peas get tossed in for the last few seconds of cooking with pasta, then tossed with the leftover frozen pesto from last year (I've got to clear out last year's supply before the basil starts rolling in!)
The broccoli and the rest of the pea pods (and probably some scallions too) will go into this Miso vegetables with Tofu recipe which I'll serve with brown rice.
I'll use the chives in soft scrambled eggs, a combination I love, particularly with some good, dense, multigrain toast and a mug of strong black coffee.
I haven't decided what to do with the turnips. I tried grilling them the other day (tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper and drizzled with a little balsamic when they came off) with some other vegetables and they turned out pretty well, so if we're firing up the grill I'll probably do that again.

Tantre Farm Share, week 3

2010-06-16T09:19:00.010-05:00

From left to right, top row: Massive bunch of spinach, spicy greens, two heads of red lettuce, romaine lettuce, strawberries
bottom row: turnips, radishes, scallions, English peas, garlic scapes, lemon balm

Menu Plan:

Some of the spinach, a few garlic scapes, and two of the scallions will be used to make foil-packet tilapia (see below).
Garlic scape pesto to freeze and enjoy in the depths of winter
Fresh peas and radishes will be tossed with toasted walnuts, feta, scallions and a mustard vinaigrette.
The rest of the spinach will be blanched and combined into this salad with ricotta (and wheat berries instead of barley).
My mom's birthday was yesterday so we consumed the strawberries with a lemon sour cream cake and whipped cream. I much prefer lemon cake to biscuity shortcakes as my strawberries and cream delivery device.
The lemon balm will be made into herbal tea. I love infusions with fresh herbs--the flavor is much brighter than the dried.
I haven't really decided what to do with the lettuce, turnips or spicy greens yet. Probably just salad, braise and stir fry respectively.

Now, about that fish in a foil packet. I really like making fish this way, partly because there is very little mess (no pan to wash, just rinse the used foil and toss in the recycling bin) and partly because it is easy and flavorful and eminently flexible. It works just as well in the winter with frozen vegetables as it does now with all this glorious produce.

Here's the general idea:

First, crank up the oven to 400.
Rip off a big piece of foil for each serving, probably about 18 inches long. Rub a little olive oil on the center and then pile on a portion of leftover rice (you can freeze leftover rice which makes this super easy. Just thaw the rice first.)
Assemble a cutting board full of vegetables--you definitely want one or more members of the allium family: thin sliced onion, minced garlic, chopped garlic scapes, chopped scallions, you get the idea. Put half of your chosen allium(s) on the rice and reserve a few to top the whole pile so there is lots of pungent goodness throughout. Most vegetables work fine, just watch out for the ones that release a lot of water when they cook. Try combining any of the following: thin sliced carrots, sliced red peppers, steamed greens, thin sliced fennel, sugar snap peas, some cherry tomatoes. Whatever sounds good and is hanging out in the crisper drawers. Heck, even frozen peas and frozen broccoli works in the wintertime.
Lay a tilapia fillet on top of the rice pile. Sprinkle on a little salt and pepper and any other herbs you want (dill, tarragon, fresh basil, whatever works with your vegetable pile).
Pile on the vegetables and the rest of your chosen alliums.
Top with some feta, another sprinkle of salt and pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil. Then fold over your foil and seal up your packets, plop them on a baking sheet and chuck them in the oven for 15 minutes.
Take out a packet and carefully open it up (there will be some steam); use a knife to poke around and see if the fish is cooked through. If not, seal up the packet again and leave it for another 5 minutes.
Open up the packets and slide each one onto its own plate.

As I mentioned before, this recipe is flexible. You can splash on a little white wine if you are so inspired, you can smear the tilapia with some dijon mustard, or replace the feta with a blob of sour cream and a little lemon zest. I'm sure you could substitute a different fish fillet, just make sure it is thin. I use tilapia because it a) cheap b) mild and c) the US farmed tilapia is one of the best choices on the seafood watch guide. I usually get a bag of frozen fillets and pull out as many as I need the morning I want to make this.

Tonight's packet contained brown rice, garlic scapes, two big scallions, spinach that I had nuked until it wilted and chopped (the leaves were HUGE), feta and lemon and it was terrific--all the flavors melded together but it wasn't a big pile of fishy mush (which may be one of the more disgusting phrases I've ever written. Fishy mush=ewwww.) I neglected to photograph it before I gobbled it down, but here's a picture of a depths of winter version all piled up and ready to be sealed in its packet:
Let me know if you come up with any particularly tasty combinations that I can add to our repertoire!

Sunday Supper Sillies

2010-06-13T17:41:00.004-05:00

By Sunday evening we tend to get a little nutso around here. Brian decided that his hakurei turnips from the farm share would make an excellent base for a little man, particularly since there was the opportunity to deck him out with orcchiette (the hat), rotini (for the arms) and peas (eyeballs) which could be scavenged from the rest of our dinner. Poor little turnip man never saw it coming...

On a more serious note, the garlic scape pesto that is topping the pasta and peas turned out much better this year than last year's attempt. Last year I left the flower part on the end of the scape and that left us with garlic breath for about a week. This year, I pinched off the flower portion and just used the stem which made for a much more pleasant garlic experience. This year's recipe also included some lemon juice and zest which turns out to be a great way to keep the flavor bright and spring-like. Tossing some peas in with the pasta--sauteed sugar snaps, blanched fresh shelled peas, some pea shoots or just a cup of thawed frozen peas--adds a nice sweetness and balances out the intensity of the pesto.

Garlic Scape Pesto
from Tantre Farm CSA newsletter

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
3/4 cup coarsely chopped garlic scapes, the top flower part pinched off (or leave them on if you want a much more intense garlic experience)
Juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine the scapes, pine nuts, lemon juice and zest, salt, pepper and Parmesan in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse about 20 times, until fairly well combined. Pour in the olive oil slowly through the feed tube while the motor is running. Store in an air-tight jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or freeze.

If you thought last week was green....(Tantre Farm Share, week 2)

2010-06-09T08:03:00.004-05:00

From left to right: (bottom row) scallions, radishes, turnips, garlic scapes, arugula, thyme, peppermint, oregano
(top row) three heads of lettuce, two huge bunches of spinach, quart of strawberries

The green just keep on coming! Reporting back from last week's menu: the Turnip Greens Tart was a real winner--I liked it so much I made it twice (I also had some turnip thinnings from my garden to use up for the second tart). I tried it once with the cornmeal tart crust in the recipe, and once with a simple whole wheat pie crust (I preferred the latter). If you are trying to figure out what to do with your turnip greens this week, the greens from this bunch would make one tart.

Menu plan:

Homemade pizza with mozzarella, garlic scapes and oregano, topped with arugula and shaved Parmesan when it comes out of the oven and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic.
Spanakopita with the spinach, oregano and scallions, and a salad with the lettuce and radishes. It looks like a ton of spinach, but I know it loses volume when cooked down, so if I need more greens I'll toss in the radish tops.
Garlic scape pesto on orecchiette pasta with sugar snap peas (recipe came in the CSA newsletter).
Peppermint iced tea
It's a little chilly out this week so I'm thinking that a big bowl of Pho-style noodle soup would be good with turnips, turnip greens and scallions in a star anise, ginger, lime broth topped with sliced jalapenos, cilantro and mint. No recipe yet, just an idea...
Strawberries to be gobbled straight and fresh!
Haven't decided what to do with the thyme yet...maybe I'll dry it if I don't think of something. Send suggestions if you have good thyme-heavy recipes!

Morning Buzz

2010-06-08T09:31:00.003-05:00

I've been doing my story mapping and now have a much better plan for how to shape and pace what I've written. So today I woke up ready to do some major revisions on my book. In anticipation of a whole lot of desk sitting and concentrating, I set myself up for success by doing some yoga (I'm loving Yoga Journal's video podcasts) and then made myself something to eat that is sort of decadent (because I respond well to treats) and yet still pretty healthy (so I don't crash and burn out). These whole wheat ginger scones were just the ticket.

Scones don't have to be unhealthy if you resist the urge to slather them with copious quantities of butter. These babies are made with whole wheat flour, plain yogurt and a minimal amount of butter and while they might not be my first choice for a decadent afternoon tea in which clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam are featured, they are a great mid-morning sustaining snack with a latte. You can vary the degree of healthy-tasting-ness by using different types of whole wheat flour: white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour will look and taste more like a traditional scone; all (regular) whole wheat flour will increase the nutty, toasty flavor, if that's what you're looking for, though the latter will also make the dough a bit more crumbly. I did a 50-50 split.

I paired mine with marmalade, but they would also be great with a small piece of sharp cheddar cheese. Or both if, like me, you are a fan of mixing your sweet and savory.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some marmalade to wipe off of my mouse before I get down to the writing part of my day.

Whole Wheat Ginger Scones
adapted from this recipe at Everybody Likes Sandwiches

1/2 C plain, lowfat yogurt
1 t vanilla
1 egg
1 C white whole wheat flour
1 C whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/4 C cold butter
1/4 C candied ginger, chopped into small pieces
2 T white sugar
zest of one lemon
1-3 T milk

(optional)
1 T milk and some demerara sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 425.

In a small bowl, mix together yogurt, vanilla and egg.

In a large bowl mix together flours, baking powder and salt. Cut or rub in the butter until the flour is coated but still has some small pea-sized lumps. Add the ginger, white sugar, and lemon zest and give it a stir to distribute. Then stir in the yogurt/egg mixture with a rubber spatula until it sort of sticks together. If your dough is still too crumbly to clump up nicely (depending on the flour you use, it may need a little more moisture), drizzle over 1-3 T milk and that should do the trick.

Turn out onto a counter top and knead just until the dough is fairly uniform. As a friend of mine once said when making pie crust, treat it like a liver! (very gently) Pat it into a circle with a thickness of about 1/2-3/4 inch. If you are going to do the milk and sugar topping, do it now (brush with milk, sprinkle with demerara sugar). Cut it into 8 wedges. Put on a silpat or parchment covered baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Green season is here again! (Tantre Farm Share, week 1)

2010-06-02T07:40:00.006-05:00

From (vaguely) left to right: radishes, scallions, asparagus, turnips, spinach, garlic scapes, three heads of lettuce, spicy greens mix, tatsoi, black stemmed peppermint

Menu Plan

Tonight I'll be using the turnip greens and a couple of garlic scapes to make this Turnip Green Tart and some of the green frilly lettuce, radishes and scallions will be assembled into a salad.
I'll use the other garlic scapes (and add in the radish tops) to this garlic scape spaghetti carbonara. I like that it uses whole wheat pasta and I have some good eggs from the farmer's market too. Braised turnips will make a good side.
Red and green lettuce, scallions, and radishes will be the base for a chicken Greek salad. I found some reasonably flavorful beets at the supermarket this week to add in. If I get my act together and remember early enough in the day (and if it isn't stinking hot out) I'll try and make some fresh bread to go with it.
I'll assemble a bi bim bop-ish variation with stir fried spicy greens mix, scallions, beef, eggs, carrots and the spinach transformed into goma ae.
I'll sub out the red pepper for tatsoi in this soba noodles with asparagus (and scallions) recipe.
The peppermint will get hot water dumped over it to infuse for peppermint iced tea. It is infinitely more refreshing that making it from dried.

It is almost CSA time

2010-05-24T13:27:00.003-05:00

This past weekend we went out to Tantre Farm's open house and while the kids played on the swing and visited with the chickens, I realized that I need to get my act together since the first share is only weeks away.

The first order of business is to dig through the freezer and see what is left. I'm pretty sure I used up all the packages of blanched kale and beet greens, but I think there are still some frozen green beans and roasted red peppers that haven't been eaten and maybe some more purple potatoes lurking in the bin of the "beer fridge" (or "beer and potato fridge".)

The other thing I just started (and hope will be helpful) is some recipe preparation for this year's share. Now that I have a better idea of what will be in the box each week, I need to get a selection of recipes prepared so that I don't blank out and freak out when I see the bounty piled on my table. Of course, I can always refer to last summer's Tantre posts and remind myself which recipes were real winners (and hopefully also remember which ones weren't...). But I've also started a Google Doc called "CSA recipe ideas" and have it organized by vegetable. I browse a lot of cooking blogs and now, whenever I come across a recipe that sounds interesting in the produce-consumption department, I add it to the document with a link to the recipe. So if there is an inundation of peas one week, I can be reminded of Sesame Roasted Snap Peas or Sauteed Radishes and Snap Peas with Dill.

I've been feeling a little guilty at how I seem to always turn to the internet for recipes these days so I'm also going to take a little time and dig through my cookbook collection and see what looks good in there--then tab it with a post-it note and add the recipe to the document. Maybe I'll also discover that some of my cookbooks have outlived their usefulness and I can liberate a little shelf space.

Are there any other suggestions people have to prepare for the CSA bounty that will soon be upon us?

Mapping

2010-05-24T12:58:00.003-05:00

I don't head out into the wilderness without a map. Well, I did once in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and, despite having a good sense of direction, got totally lost and was lucky to find my way back before nightfall. I remember being confused, a little freaked out and yet still hopeful that I'd stumble across something familiar.

That one time was enough for me to learn my lesson about the importance of maps.

So why has it taken me so long to figure out that I need a map for my writing?

I guess I thought that I knew enough from all my years of endless reading and class attending. But plot structure does not come via osmosis and I'm discovering that the way I've been writing is the equivalent of a hand drawn map on the back of a napkin when heading into treacherous territory. Because really, is there any territory more treacherous than my thoughts? (For those of you who have happy relationships with your thought processes, more power to you. However, my thoughts and I battle each other regularly.)

I recently had this "ah ha!" moment and have put the brakes on the work I've been doing on my book. In the week or so before the "ah ha!" I spent way too much time navigating, getting lost, moving chapters around, questioning turns in the plot and screwing up.

It was not the most satisfying week of work. In fact, I was a big time grump.

But now I know it was because I was lost. And yes, the feelings were remarkably similar to what I felt when lost in the forest except for the fact that it was all happening inside my head and I had plenty of tea and cookies* on hand to help me feel a little better.

So I'm backing up. I've pulled a few books that I admire off the shelf and I'm mapping them.** I'm re-reading them for structure and charting their movements chapter by chapter. And then I'm going to use them as models to map my own book. I can now actually say that I'm looking forward to trying again with my map in hand. It's kind of like getting myself psyched up to climb a challenging mountain, but I won't be going up it empty handed this time.
__
*Speaking of cookies, I thought I made good chocolate chip cookies, but the newest chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cook's Illustrated in which you brown the butter before making the cookie batter, is amazing.
**One really good side effect of the mapping project is that I've discovered the central idea for my next book and plan to have a map in hand for that one before NaNoWriMo rolls around.

Writing Goals

2010-04-30T07:55:00.009-05:00

It's hard when you are working on your first novel* to know what is a reasonable amount of time in which to set your goals. There are people like Joyce Carol Oates who crank out amazing prose at a rate that makes normal humans just want to give up and crawl into a cave. There are other writers who taaake-theiiir-tiiiiime and either do or don't feel bad about it. I'm still trying to figure out where I fall on the writing speed continuum.

I had a hard writing month in April. Not sure why--the weather was glorious so I can't use the excuse of seasonal lethargy. But maybe I can blame the lilacs for distracting me! No, seriously. I went through a couple of weeks in which my writing self-esteem took a nose dive and I thought, with some degree of despair, that I'd have to chuck this baby out the window.

I'm still not quite sure how I dragged myself out of this pit. I cooked a little, I knit a little, I tried to remember that I'm not totally incompetent at everything I do.

Here's what I'm planning for the near future in the writing department:

Summer is going to suck as far as writing time goes. I'm looking forward to some of the stuff I have planned to do with my critters**, but realistically I'll probably only get one morning a week to really be able to write. That means that I need to have a good intact draft done by June 18th (the critter's last day of school and my 41st birthday) with an organized to-do writing list of stuff that could, conceivably, be done with half a brain while simultaneously officiating a super-squirter showdown (typing on the lap top through a clear plastic bag, perhaps). That means it is more important to crank out that missing chapter now than to dig through the first 10 chapters checking for contradictions. The latter is something I could conceivably do with the critters in the immediate vicinity--the former is not.

Also over the summer I am going to get over my fear that the first person who reads this will look at me with pity and say "This is how you've been spending your time?" So I'm starting safe with my dear husband whose continued gainful employment has allowed me the time to pursue this project (I am still in awe of the fact that he likes his job and they like him and, oh yeah, they PAY him too!). Then after him, I want to find some other people--critical readers, fellow writers--who can be my early readers. Anyone out there who is interested in reading and constructively commenting on my YA/Middle Grade (still not sure which) fiction with a fantasy bent?

After I spend the summer with the above two projects (working on the to-do list and absorbing feed back on the project) then in September and October I'll plan for a big overhaul.

Hopefully this will leave me with a submittable draft that I can shop around to agents and will leave my brain somewhat liberated so that in November I can do NaNoWriMo and work on a completely new book. Maybe a different genre or age range or even (gasp) non-fiction.

Aggg. It's scary just writing this stuff down because that means people will feel like they can ask me about the progress I'm making toward these goals. If you do see me, and venture to ask, and I turn pale and look like I'm going to faint, please administer beer. A nice hoppy IPA should bring me back around!

______
*Well, the first novel that I actually think I'll finish and try and pitch. There are at least two that I've started and worked on, one for a considerable amount of time, and then decided to chuck.
**Which is the topic of another post in which I will be trolling for ideas to add to my "how to stay sane and maybe even enjoy yourself" list.

Fiona's favorite

2010-04-11T13:04:00.011-05:00

Based on how much I bitch about my kids' lousy eating habits, what am I doing promoting anything that appeals to them? But the one area in which they don't drive me totally nuts is Middle Eastern food. We may have crap Thai and mediocre Vietnamese around here but the Lebanese food can not be beat (well, except in Lebanon...). When the boy critter was just a babe he sucked hummus (aka white velvet) off his pudgy little fist though, before you ask, sadly he no longer eats hummus...but he and his sister do eat copious quantities of lamb!

Since I can't afford to take them out for kofta and shawarma every week, I had to come up with a home version. Into the base of ground lamb goes some fine chopped onion, pine nuts, allspice and cinnamon, parsley, salt and pepper.
I make Brian squish it all together and shape it into patties. It's nice to delegate the icky part of the recipe.

Then I pop them in a non-stick or cast iron pan and cook away:

There's a lot of fat in most ground lamb*, but a lot of it also stays in the pan, not the patty.

Then serve it with your favorite Middle Eastern sides and accompaniments:

Tahini lemon sauce, chopped salad with sumac lemon dressing, red lentil soup, homemade pita and "Fiona's Favorite" lamb patties.

I couldn't stand the thought of going to the store (sometimes I suffer from severe retail aversion) and it was a good thing too because tonight I discovered that making your own pita is really easy and really good. I followed this recipe from the blog, Brown Eyed Baker, though as a lazy person, I let my Kitchen Aid do all the kneading. Since we were heading down to the FestiFools parade and this outing would interrupt the regular timing for the second rising, after I weighed and shaped the individual dough balls, I set them on a parchment covered baking sheet and loosely covered them with plastic wrap before sticking them in the fridge. When we got back, they rolled out nicely and puffed up when I baked them on the pizza stone. And the sensation of popping a lamb patty into a fresh, warm pita? Fantastic!

Fiona literally started jumping around the house with excitement when I told her I'd be making lamb patties for dinner tonight, and for a kid who is indifferent-to-hostile to most dinner foods, that is something to see.

Lamb Patties
feeds 4

1 lb ground lamb (can also use ground beef if you are not fond of lamb, though Fiona will think you are crazy)
2 T toasted pine nuts, chopped fine (or toasted almonds)
2 T onion, chopped fine (about 1/4 of a small onion)
1/2 t cinnamon
3/4 t allspice
1 t salt
1/2 t ground black pepper
1/4 C chopped parsley

In a bowl, combine all ingredients and mix well until evenly combined.

Take heaping tablespoons of the meat mixture and roll into balls, then flatten into patties (12 total, 4 per person). Or divide up into 8 larger balls (like Brian did tonight) and give out 2 per person.

Pan fry in a non-stick or seasoned cast iron skillet until browned on both sides and no longer pink in the middle.

To serve, stuff patties in a pita with tomato, cucumbers, lettuce and tahini lemon sauce or hummus.
_______
* The leanest ground lamb I've found has come from the folks who sell it frozen at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market. They aren't there all weeks, but when they are I try to pick some up.

My head just exploded*

2010-04-07T16:48:00.002-05:00

Both kids just ate red quinoa and a small bowl of lettuce** with their dinner. I'm squinting, but there may be a little light at the end of this hellacious crappy-eater tunnel.

*The boy critter's phrase for being flabergasted.
**ok so the lettuce was iceberg. Plain. No dressing. But I ate plenty of iceberg as a kid and I'm going to think of it as a "gateway" salad vegetable.

Toile rescue

2010-03-12T13:23:00.006-05:00

We moved our Alesis keyboard out of our living room and into the boy-critter's room, since he is the one who uses it most (recent repertoire alternates between: Bach minuets, The Who, Regina Spektor*, and his old stand by, Animusic). I discovered that my 9 year-old has very little appreciation for the efforts I put into the subversive toile keyboard cover. I kept finding it in a crumpled ball on the floor, hanging with the dust bunnies.

So I pulled out some natural canvas, made a (boring) keyboard cover that won't make me wince when I find it abused and rescued my toile. Last week I got some black velveteen, cut up the toile and made two couch pillows**:
So now I can hang with my aliens while watching TV.

But there are some places in the toile that are calling for more embellishment and I am trolling for ideas. Here are the locations that I want to corrupt:

Washing Lady

Empty Tree

Lady with a Rake

I'm trying to figure out if I can turn that rake into a pitchfork somehow; that, plus some devil horns and a tail could work.

Ideas? Tell me in the comments.
__________
*After a few week's worth of practice, I can now listen to the boy critter sing the "I've got a perfect body" line in "Folding Chair" without collapsing in giggles.
**By "made couch pillows" I mean that I attempted to sew two squares together with a zipper and only had to rip it out and start over twice!

Another hat

2010-02-19T13:38:00.004-05:00

For those days when a fish-on-my head is not the look I'm going for, I made this Floppy Fair Isle hat. It was really fun to knit, I made it all from yarn in my stash (which gives me a thrifty thrill) and it is nice and loose, so doesn't create horrible hat head. I only used four colors of yarn, rather than the five called for in the pattern because the other worsted weight yarns in my stash clashed, but I think the colors and patterns turned out fine with four.

This hat works great for me, but I have a big head and thick, curly hair and I can imagine this hat being way too big and sliding over the faces or off the back of the heads of people with a smaller noodle circumference or who have fine, silky hair. As the name says, it is quite floppy, so much so that Brian commented that it would be a useful hat to wear when produce shopping in case you need a place to store an extra cantaloupe.

I'd love to make another one of these for someone, but need to find a big-headed, big-haired recipient who is fond of cantaloupe.

The pattern can be downloaded here.

Valentine's Day Breakfast

2010-02-14T09:57:00.006-05:00

Breakfast for my sweetie.

It grossed me out to be molding hearts out of pork sausage first thing in the morning but hey, I did it for love. The girl critter stuck the toothpicks through to make them look like Cupid's arrow which made for authentic looking hearts, but slightly dangerous eating.

In the past, I've free-handed shaped pancakes, but this time I pulled out some cookie cutters and sprayed the hell out of them with cooking spray.
Flipping was a little tricky because it involved working the spatula under the pancake and using tongs to remove the cookie cutter before flipping the pancake.

Ta da!

It helps to use a thick pancake batter so it doesn't seep under the edge of the cookie cutter and luckily my standard go-to pancake recipe fits the bill. It makes thick cakes and there's just enough batter for each of us to have two decent-sized pancakes.

Sour Cream (or Yogurt) Pancakes

1/2 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C all purpose flour
3 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 T white sugar
1 C milk
1 egg
1/4 C sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 t vanilla
2 T canola oil
some blueberries or mini chocolate chips (optional)
a little powdered sugar for dusting on before serving (optional)

Mix all the dry stuff in one bowl. Mix the wet stuff in another. Add wet to dry and stir until just combined. Cook the way you would any normal pancake.

The friend that gets you through it

2010-02-10T07:32:00.002-05:00

I don't want to return this book to the library. It would be like dumping a friend after they got you through a rough patch. And oh my, have I been through a rough patch. A big old comeuppance.

For those of you who have tolerated my comments these past few winters about how healthy my family has been (despite my kvetching about my kids' crappy diet), today is the day you can sit back and say HA! Because the nasty, nasty norovirus hit us and hit us hard. And that is not a virus that you expose your friends to unless those friends are made of paper. But if your friend is The Art Student's War, by Brad Leithauser, then maybe you will get through without losing your marbles (while you continue to lose your lunch).

I won't go into the fascinating details of all the puking and mopping and digestive discoveries we have made over the last few weeks (except for this one--it is way better to puke up ginger ale than to have the dry heaves. Nuff said.) But I feel like I've been through the wringer and without this book I'm pretty sure I would have also gone crazy. Or more accurately, crazy in a lasting, she-might-not-be-ok-until-Spring kind of way.

This is a wonderful book (though I realize I've now wrecked it by making you associate it with puking...) that managed to distract me from my misery. It is NOT a fast read which is particularly good when you are not recovering quickly. The prose isn't impenetrable, but it is rich and layered and you want to savor the observations. It doesn't have a driving sense of plot--it is gentler than that and will wait patiently while you collapse and moan for a while.

The title seemed very accurate for the first part of the book, where we are following Bea Paradiso from her art classes in Detroit to her USO volunteer work sketching wounded soldiers. Her artist's eye is a wonderful perspective from which to view the strange vibrancy of Detroit in this period. When I moved into the second half of the book which takes place after the war, where Bea is married with kids and rarely has time to do any art, it wasn't immediately clear why the author had chosen the title. But it made sense in the end. The war defined who she was for her whole life--it wasn't just an episode that took place and then was in the past. The fact that she was an art student during this momentous period in which she defined herself and became aware of who she was gave the title a poignancy. She may never have become a full-fledged artist, but she will always have been an art student during the war.

I think this book would have a whole other level of richness and meaning for people whose parents lived in Detroit in this period. By the time my family moved to Michigan when I was 7, Detroit was post-riot and not a place we went except to scurry inside the DIA or some such cultural institution and then scurry back to our safe little enclave. I occasionally got a glimpse of people's affection for the city through some friend's parents who knew the old Detroit. I remember being taken to Eastern Market for the first time on a Saturday by a friend's family and being awed that such a teeming, alive place with amazing food (yes, I liked food a lot even back then) existed in a place I had heard referred to as a wasteland on weekends. I particularly appreciated the fact that the author, who clearly loves the city, does not overly romanticize it. He lays down the sources of the later riots, shows the bubbling ethnic mixture of the city and how the war both led to prosperity and excitement and also set down certain patterns that were later to explode.

For those of us interested in Detroit's future who weren't around for Detroit's past, this book is a very helpful way to envision the uniqueness that Detroit offered--it really wasn't like any other city I've ever heard of or envisioned--and to try and see how the best of this past can fit into its future.

And now, since I still have a cough and thus can allow myself to sit for another couple of hours, I'm going to go watch the new PBS documentary Beyond the Motor City.

The picky eater chronicles continue...

2010-02-02T07:53:00.001-05:00

Photo from Wikipedia

Yesterday Ian got a good firm talking-to by his doctor about diversifying his eating choices so after the appointment we headed to the produce section of the grocery store for each kid to pick out a fresh fruit or vegetable they don't usually eat (which leaves pretty much everything but the apple aisle in play for Ian with the carrot section added for Fiona).

Ian picked out a big hunk of watermelon and Fiona picked out a star fruit. I don't know if there were any two fruits more out-of-season and non-local that the kids could possibly pick, but one battle at a time.

And through a great deal of wheedling, I got Ian to try the star fruit--and he liked it! And not for the novelty shape factor (which is why Fiona chose it--she took one bite and looked like she was going to hurl). Both kids ate some watermelon at dinner and Fiona even asked for seconds.

This small success balances out the fact that when Ian tried a spoonful of my red lentil soup on Sunday, he ran to the garbage can, spit it out and rinsed out his mouth with water at the sink with a great deal of theatrical spitting.

Happy Chunky Soup!

2010-01-21T11:29:00.001-05:00

No photo for this recipe because I have discovered that next-day lentil soup is one of the uglier things on the planet.

But don't let that bias you against this recipe!

After devouring two bowls of this chunky sausage, lentil and spinach soup last night, I told Brian that I think this may be the first hearty, chunky soup that I really think is worth crowing about. I've had a number of successful experiences with smoother soups, be they Middle Eastern red lentil, creamy tomato, or other pureed varieties. And chlodnik is chunky summertime staple around here. But in the wintertime hearty, chunky soup department, I've been less successful. I've made edible, but not memorable, soups like minestrone, white bean and ham, or split pea. And they were ok, but nothing to rave about. It was more like the ingredients happened to be hanging out together, but didn't really meld into something more than their parts.

This soup is rave-able. It has a great balance of flavors that really complement each other--the vinegar at the end brings out the best in the lentils (like a good French green lentil salad) and the ketchup gives this just enough sweetness that it sets off the sausage flavor. The spinach makes you feel like maybe this isn't entirely bad for you. We had it with some homemade garlic bread--a half loaf of Zingerman's Italian bread sliced thick, brushed with olive oil that had a clove of garlic crushed into it and sprinkled with a little cayenne and fresh Parmesan cheese. Then the loaf was reassembled, wrapped in foil and heated in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes. You could also add a salad but since we were in hunker-down-and-try-and-get-through-January mode, we skipped the raw vegetables and just had a second bowl of soup.

And if you want a photo before you'll try the recipe, go to the Food52 blog (which I only recently discovered) and look at their pretty picture. I read through their recipe and used most of the same ingredients, but didn't really follow their instructions (which seemed focused on making it fast--since I made it in the morning that wasn't really an issue for me).

Lentil Sausage Spinach Soup
adapted from antoniajames recipe on Food52

1 large Andouille sausage (mine was about double the length of a normal sausage link)
1 smaller non-smoked sausage, Italian or something like that
1 T olive oil
1 large yellow or white onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 carrots, diced
3 stalks of celery, diced
2 bay leaves
1/2 t dried thyme
1 and 1/2 cups French green lentils
1 can beef broth
1 can chicken broth
2 C water
3/4 cup sturdy red wine
3 tablespoons ketchup
2 packed cups fresh baby spinach
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 T red wine vinegar

In a big soup pot, heat the oil and cook your sausages (may want to add a little water to steam them so they cook through without over browning). Once the sausages are cooked through, remove them from the pot and set aside. When they've cooled a little, slice them up.

In the same pot, saute the onion and garlic on medium heat (you may need to add a little more olive oil--it depends on how much fat your sausages gave off) until onion is translucent. Add celery and carrots and cook, stirring frequently so nothing burns, for another couple of minutes.

Add your bay leaves, thyme, the lentils and all the liquids (broths, wine, water). Crank up the heat and bring to a boil, then simmer for about 1/2 an hour until the lentils are tender.

Season with the ketchup and salt and pepper.

Before serving, add back in the sausage slices, toss in the spinach and parsley and heat through. Stir in the red wine vinegar right at the end.

Big bowls

2010-01-12T07:37:00.000-05:00

It's cold, the snow is coming down and I want to have my dinners in a big bowl. For one, big bowls of food are comforting and I need comfort in these dark January days. Even better, when you lean over a big bowl of hot food, the steam defrosts your face and unclogs your sinuses. Yeah! Multitasking! And I can feel my nose again!

Anyway, as promised, here is my friend Emily's curried bean thread noodles.

This is a master recipe with an infinite number of variations, all of which are relatively healthy, fast and tasty.

Bean Thread Noodle Soup
serves 4

1/4 lb bean thread noodles
1/2 lb boneless chicken breasts or thighs, thinly sliced, or a hunk of tofu cut into cubes
2 T Thai yellow curry paste (or red or green if that's what you prefer)
1 T canola oil
1 can coconut milk (light is fine)
1 can chicken or vegetable broth
1 small can bamboo shoots, sliced
2-3 cups of various vegetables--they can be fresh, they can be frozen, whatever you have. Here are some options: frozen or fresh peas, frozen or fresh green beans, sliced napa or regular green cabbage, mushrooms, sliced onion, red peppers, bok choi, broccoli, snow peas, canned baby corn, scallions, etc. I made the above version with snow peas, napa and frozen green beans.
4 T fish sauce
1 T soy sauce
2 T brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped cilantro, divided
1 or 2 limes sliced in wedges

Soak the noodles in hot water for 15 minutes, drain, and cut if you aren't big on slurping (I'm fine with slurping long noodles, but some people have more refined table manners).

Heat the oil in a wok or big pot and saute the curry paste until fragrant. Add the chicken or tofu and cook until chicken is opaque or tofu is well covered in the curry paste. Stir in coconut milk, broth, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar. Bring to a boil. Add the bamboo shoots and vegetables and cook until for a minute or two until the vegetables aren't quite done.

Add the noodles and simmer for 3-5 minutes.

Serve in bowls with the chopped cilantro on top and a lime wedge. Breathe deep!

Links and lists

2010-01-09T09:03:00.001-05:00

I'm too low-January-energy to write a proper blog post so a link-heavy, list-type post will have to do.

Books you should read:

Best book I forgot to blog about last year: The Gone Away War by Nick Harkaway. This is one of those books that I feel inadequate to comment on because it is so brilliant (sort of like my author hero worship where I approach a much admired author and stutter like an idiot.)
Most quirky-fun book of poetry I've read in a long while: Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler. The people around me had to put up with me reading this out loud to them.
Amazing historical fiction I just finished: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It has been a long time since I read such a compelling and elegantly written piece of historical fiction. (And it is particularly good if you are a late-medieval/early-Renaissance English history buff. This made me want to see the whole series of Shakespeare's war of the roses plays again.)

Food you should eat, especially if you are doing a healthier-food resolution:

This cauliflower cous cous combo. I substituted shaved Parmesan for the manchego and topped it with a healthy squeeze of lemon juice (which I think it needs). Serve with a spinach salad.
Fish in a packet--take a piece of tin foil, spread a little left-over brown rice on it, slap on a piece of tilapia. Salt and pepper it. Top with abundant quantity of: scallions, chopped dill, sliced red peppers, halved cherry tomatoes, spinach and feta. Drizzle with good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Seal up packet and bake at 400 for 20 minutes. Slide onto plate. Super fast and super good.
My friend Emily's curried bean thread noodle bowl which I will post about soon since it deserves a recipe write up.

Dignity, always dignity*

2009-12-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

The fish hat strikes again!

It serves its designated purpose--keeping me warm but not crushing the curls. And I like to think it lends its wearer a certain elegant je ne sais quoi.

If you're feeling shy, it can help with that too.

* from Singing in the Rain, my favorite movie when I was 10.

My new love: Scrivener

2009-12-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

Since the end of NaNoWriMo, I've been having a lot of problems with the organization of my novel-in-progress. Or I should say, the dis-organization. And the universe heard my frustration and answered with a tidy solution.

Here is the software solution to chronic disorganization:

Allow me to introduce you to Scrivener. (I even like its icon--the yin yang and quotation marks--perfect!)

Its like I have my own personal team of software developers who heard about my (writing) problems and created this software just for me--that is how perfectly it solved my (writing) problems. I downloaded it a week ago and have been using it happily all week.

Actually, that is an understatement: I have been **spazy** and **thrilled** to get to my computer each day and to get my paws on my story. It's like my computer now has a magic organizing fairy inside!

Instead of wading in the mire of folders that I had in the word processing program that I usually use, trying to find what I know I wrote last week and want to now incorporate into my master document, and tearing my hair out because I can't remember whether it is in the file titled "Scrap" or the file titled "Fearless Risk Taking Writing" (which I named on a day that I needed a little pep talk) or in the file titled "Rewrite" or the file titled "Gaps to fill". Scrivener helps me actually find what I am looking for pretty quickly.

It has even transformed my non-creative days into productive days. I did not write much new prose today--my brain was foggy and groggy and really not sharp enough to spit out sparkly words that anyone would want to read. But with my buddy Scrivener I was able to solve some other important problems that didn't require a creative mind: things like in which POV a troublesome chapter should be written, how to integrate the antagonists story in the flow of the plot (rather than my previous method of having a separate file called: "Bad Guy Stuff" with little stars inserted into the main document where I thought parts might eventually be inserted). I was even able to come up with some chapter titles. This is all stuff that I would have struggled to do with my word processing version--it was just too big, too long and too much of a mess.

And even better, since I was a NaNo winner, I got 50% off the regular (reasonable) price of $40. I can't even quantify how much the $20 I spent on this software has increased my productivity.

Coincidentally, the same week that I discovered and started to use Scrivener, I read a terrific book, probably the best book with an unreliable narrator I've ever read, called Liar by Justine Larbalestier. I'm not going to blather on about the content of the book because it does have a nifty plot twist that I didn't see coming and I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. Let me just say, it's a really well written YA novel that I'd bet a lot of adult readers would enjoy. The Scrivener coincidence came up when I finished the book and was reading the author's acknowledgments (I like reading these--does anyone else? Though I confess it bugs the crap out of me when they are positioned before the book begins. I think you should thank people at the end of the book). In it she says that she used Scrivener to write the book and didn't think she could have managed the complexity of her plot without it.

I started reading this book the day after I downloaded Scrivener and now that I have played around with it for a week I can completely see how it would make her novel much more manageable. Another reason for me to feel grateful for Scrivener since it enabled me to read a really fun book!

Now I just need to see if the smart people who created Scrivener have another program that will solve the rest of my problems. Anyone know of software that can tackle the problem of every horizontal surface in my house being covered with paper? Earlier this week I waded through a mountain of bills, catalogs, the girl critter's many drawings of dragons, the boy critter's homework that I have no idea whether or not he was supposed to turn in last month, scraps of paper with phone numbers but no names, coupons that I'll probably never remember to use, printed out recipes, book reviews, torn off pages from the Cute Overload calendar, business cards, school phone directories, and so on. I thought I did a pretty good job of organizing and recycling, but now that it is the weekend, I look around the ~~sty~~ house and it has all reappeared.

If someone can write a program that solves this problem, I swear I will drop this novel writing nonsense and devote myself to pitching your product until you have made your first million.

cookie swap

2009-12-12T09:45:00.008-05:00

Warning! After viewing the following photo, you may feel a surge in your blood sugar level:
That's right, this past Friday was the annual Michigan Lady Food Bloggers' cookie exchange!

I brought lavender lemon shortbread and molasses raspberry cookies (on the big white platter in the photo).

It'll be a little easier to name the cookies with the photo below, which contains the quantity I brought home, minus the cookies I ate while at Patti's, minus the cookies I ate in the car, minus the cookies Brian ate when I came through the door... (The cookies I brought aren't in this photo because I gave all of them away at the swap. I froze some extra dough so we can have some once we deplete this vast quantity of sugar and fat...maybe sometime in April...)

Starting with the top left corner and working vaguely clockwise we have: apricot and raspberry linzer cookies, white chocolate cookies, pecan snowballs, ginger snaps and molasses cookies, three different kinds of 'bastards': Oreo bastards (the white ones), lemon bastards (the yellow) and peanut butter bastards (the chocolate), raspberry rugulach, Hanukkah dreidels and stars, Spritz cookies, mini carrot cardamon muffins, date walnut spirals, anise cut outs, chocolate crinkles, and chocolate macarons.

I love this tradition--it is the best way to get variety in your cookie selection and I get to hang out with a bunch of cool women for an evening and I don't get guilt-tripped by my critters for ditching them for an evening. When they saw this platter of sugary bounty their eyes went all round and they started treating me like God.

New problem: hat head

2009-12-08T08:56:00.008-05:00

Since I filled up a trash can at my hairdressers with the bulk of my hair recently (quick way to lose 5 lbs) I have felt the liberation of the short haired.

I'm loving the short hair but, with the newly nippy weather, have now encountered a new problem: hat head. It's not something you have to worry about with a ponytail, but with short curls that are kind of wiry in the texture department, putting on a hat is like sticking my head into a weird hair mould--pointy hat=pointy head, bowl hat=bowl head, etc.

So I've been on a quest for a knitting pattern for a loose warm hat that won't smash my curls or make me look like I have a muffin on my head.

I knit this one (pattern is available for free on Ravelry if you are a member):
It treats the curls well, but isn't very warm due to the loose knit and the shape (it only barely covers the tops of my ears.)
If I pull it down over my forehead, my head looks like a big moss covered boulder. Not really the look I'm going for. So this will do for a brisk fall day, but I hear that a blizzard is on the way and this hat does not have the chops to keep my noggin warm.

So I also cast on to make myself a fish hat like the girl critter's. I tried hers on and it is pretty loose but able to be pulled down low to cover most of my head. And I don't look like a muffin-head; I look like a fish is swallowing my head (but that's intentional, right?)
The colors are all wonky in the photo; I'm making it in the subdued tones of grass green, dusty blue and black. Because subdued is really the quality I'm going for with a fish on my head...(really I chose them because they were a) in the stash bin b) all wool so hopefully warm c) passed the squish-up-against-my-forehead-not-itchy test).

Does anyone have ideas for other patterns that might work for non-curl compression? Please send me any ideas because I have a feeling I'll be in some situations this winter where a fish might not be totally appropriate...

Beer-y pleasures

2009-12-03T10:08:00.012-05:00

As I mentioned in my Montreal food post, we did some pleasant sampling of various beers while we were on our trip.

On our one evening in Toronto, we visited the Beer Bistro. It's a really lovely spot with a terrific range of beers on tap (click here to see a mostly-legible photo of the beer menu):

Papa beer and the three baby beers.

My samples were of three excellent Canadian beers: St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout, Durham Hop Addict and Ephemere Cassis. If we hadn't been going to a play afterward I would have followed these with a full size of the St. Ambroise. Brian's was a Leffe Brune.

They also make some terrific fries served with mayo and seriously addictive smokey ketchup.
I wasn't as impressed with the sandwich I ordered which was a shaved lamb and blue cheese panini--it was just kinda greasy.

Montreal has a number of good places to try local and non-local beers. I loved the bar decor at Le Cigare du Pharon where we had these lambic beers. It's a Belgian place and is covered in Tintin memorabilia. Brian and I had fun identifying different scenes and witnessing someone else's obsessive trinket-collecting habits. Unfortunately it was too dark to get photos of all the quirky stuff without bugging the crap out of the other patrons by using the flash, but here are the beers:
Brian's Mort Subite kriek (cherry) and my Floris fraise (strawberry). Mine had 25% strawberry juice and was less dry than I expected though it still managed a nice crisp finish.

Conveniently located right around the corner from our hotel was a branch of Les Trois Brasseurs. I tried their Brun and Amber and thought they were both pretty tasty, though not super memorable.
Brian is drinking the White in this picture which I did not care for--I thought it had way too much coriander in it so I couldn't taste anything else. But tear your eyes away from the beer and focus on what he is eating: a banana chocolate tarte flambee. We've had the classic tarte flambee when we were in Strasbourg: creme fraiche, onions, and bacon on a thin crust that is a cross between a pizza and a cracker. But I've never had a desert flam and this one was fantastic. I thought Brian was crazy when he ordered it, but I was won over with my first bite and am now a determined to make it at home. It seems pretty simple: crust, bananas, cinnamon, some sugar and a dark chocolate sauce drizzled on after it comes out of the oven. If I figure out a recipe, I'll be sure to post it here. And if I can locate the St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout around here, I'll serve it with this.

Sadly we did not get to sample the wares at Dieu du Ciel or Reservoir. We got to Dieu du Ciel an hour before they opened and were too tired to wait around. Ah well, next time. We loved Montreal so much that there definitely will be a next time.

Winner!

2009-11-30T09:41:00.003-05:00

I did it! I added 53000 words to my novel this month.

Whew!

That said, my novel is more done than it was but still not a full draft. I'd say the last third is still pretty sketchy. The first third is now pretty darn good and the middle third is on its way.

But the best thing about NaNoWriMo is that I realized that it really wasn't that hard to crank out 2000 words a day. I really loved the little statistics page on the NaNo website where you saw your word count compared with your daily goal. I'm going to set up a spread sheet and log in my efforts on my own to keep this momentum and motivation going.

Today I am going to clean the house and make dinner and deal with a lot of the stuff that I let slide in the past month. I know that sounds like a sad way to celebrate but asserting some order on my real world (as opposed to my fictional world where all the organizing energy has been spent of late) will feel good. I'll blast loud music and make cookies, too.

And tomorrow morning, I'll be sitting down and cranking out another 2000 words.

Munch your way through Montreal

2009-11-30T07:58:00.013-05:00

Let's start with a dramatic shot:
That's a huge pile of smoked meat, the Montreal version of Pastrami, at Schwartz's. All the guide books warned us that there would be lines down the block--they clearly weren't in Montreal in November! We waltzed right in and found a seat and moments later were looking at this spread:
Classic smoked meat sandwich on rye with mustard, half-sour pickle, coleslaw and diet coke (I know, it should have been a black cherry soda to be authentic, but I needed some caffeine.)

And then we dug in:

Thanks to Brian's photographic efforts, I have discovered that I often eat tasty things with my eye brows way the hell up:
Fairmount Bagels: I'm cuddling the other 11 which are still warm and are like carrying a bagful of kittens (except you can eat them!) Montreal bagels are boiled in a water and honey bath and the sweetness on the outer crust is very nice.

We indulged in a little French bistro food at L'Express:
The bass and green beans were delicious but that is probably because they were sauteed in about a pint of clarified butter and cardboard would taste good with that treatment. I had a glass of Pouilly Fumé and a tasty octopus and lentil vinaigrette appetizer but the photo didn't come out because for about 15 minutes the restaurant lost all power. They seemed to expect it (and we saw a big Hydro-Québec truck parked on the block) and had candles ready but it made for lousy picture taking.

There is a big Vietnamese population in Montreal which led us grab the occasional Bánh mì sandwich for a snack and to indulge in big bowls of Pho,
with copious quantities of basil and bean sprouts to stir in.

There is also a food phenomenon that I ardently wish we could persuade to come to Ann Arbor: Portuguese Chicken.
Here it is, with a couple of really delicious loin lamb chops. Doesn't look like much: grilled meat with fries, right? But oh, how wonderful the seasoning is. The mug in the background contains extra marinade so you can really douse your food in it--tangy, spicy, umami. Yummy. (The fries, which were super fresh and crisp and hot, responded particularly well to a dousing in the marinade followed by a little dip in mayonnaise. Mmmm: fat with salt and then a little more fat!) Oh, and it's pretty cheap too. There are a whole bunch of Portuguese chicken places in Montreal and, were we lucky enough to live in this city, I can imagine it being our take-out stand by for those crazy days when no one has time to cook.

The only food area that I wasn't thrilled with was the lack of patisserie on every corner. Actually, the lack of patisserie on any corner. There were a few bakeries that we saw, but they were really more bread oriented, not the individual elaborate pastries that are everywhere in France. So, other than a strange and delicious creation that I will cover in my next post about Montreal beer, we hardly had anything sweet.

Then again, with my salt tooth, I'd go for a smoked meat sandwich over a mille-feuilles any day.

Not a traditional Thanksgiving post

2009-11-29T09:12:00.003-05:00

Many of you may know that Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday--I like the sentiment of focusing on the good since it is a nice antidote to my normal pessimism, but I'd rather do that over a plate of something more tasty than dessicated turkey and bloppy mashed potatoes.

This year Brian and I decided to feel really grateful--for each other! It was our 10 year anniversary in September and we knocked around a bunch of ideas for how to celebrate. We decided a trip somewhere together without the critters was the way to go and since we have two sets of local grandparents to abuse the generosity of, we picked Thanksgiving week to abandon our spawn.

We contemplated trips to Italy/Spain/Southern France but the budget (and the US Dollar) did not support such a plan. Finally we decided to go somewhere that feels a bit like Europe but is easier and faster to get to, friendlier and a hell of a lot cheaper since it isn't exactly a major tourist destination in November: Montreal!

We took the train from Windsor, stopped for a night in Toronto and saw a really excellent experimental production of Hamlet and then spent four days in Montreal.

We probably got really lucky--the weather was beautiful, in the 50s, for most of our time there and we only had only one brief period of rain and even that fell on the evening that the Musee d'art Contemporain is open late (and free!) I complained at one point when we were walking into the sun that it was too bright and Brian, that sainted man who has put up with my moody self for 10 years and deserves a big medal, resisted the urge to whack me upside the head for kvetching about too much light!

Hotel rooms are cheap cheap cheap in November. Even the schwoopy boutique Hotel Gault was less than $150 per night. We decided on the Auberge du Vieux Porte and it was way nicer than we could have afforded at a different time of year. There was a terrific breakfast included in our pretty room with a view of the port and every afternoon at 5 pm they poured big, free glasses of a decent shiraz and laid out a plate of tasty cheese and grapes and baguette for the guests to consume before heading out for the evening.

The food in Montreal is lovely and the people even lovelier (and that is saying something since the food is really damn good). I think it may be my favorite North American city, definitely one that I would happily move to if life made such demands on me (not likely, but a girl can dream.)

We returned home at 1 am on Friday morning and that evening we consumed the dessicated turkey and bland side dishes with the slightly frazzled grandparents and felt very, very thankful for our good life together.

Stay tuned for some photos/highlights of our Montreal interlude.

Progress!

2009-11-15T12:27:00.000-05:00

I just passed the 25,000 word mark for NaNoWriMo--that's the half-way point and supposed to be today's goal. Because Brian and the critters are up north enjoying the beauty of Michigan in Autumn (and possibly freezing their asses off, but the weather has been kinder than in past years) and it is not yet noon, I suspect I will be able to add significantly to that word total in the second half of the day.

One thing that has really kept me going during NaNoWriMo has been new music. In the past I've written mostly to classical music--some traditional (the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Bach cello concertos in heavy rotation) and some less so (Steve Reich and Philip Glass minimalism which can get me into a writing trance and make me forget how long I have been sitting in front of the computer).

But this time I'm writing to songs with words. I used to find the words in songs terribly distracting to my own attempts at prose generation. But this time I'm not distracted or annoyed but feel it pushing me gently to keep going. I'm using Pandora Radio to keep a stream of good stuff coming out of the speakers. So far my best writing has come from a station* composed of Great Lakes Swimmers, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Iron & Wine (who I just discovered will be at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival on January 29th). Men's voices, particularly kinda soft ones, seem be doing the trick which is strange because this isn't music I've written to or even listened to that much in the past. I've tried making stations based on some of my favorite women singer's voices but they haven't kept the words flowing like the boys. So thanks boys!

Do you have any particular artists/genres that get you writing? What is on your writing playlist?
_______
* I'm not sure if that link will take you to the station or not...I can e-mail individuals with a link that should work if you ask (nicely!)

Wake up brain, it's time to wriiiiiite!

2009-11-10T09:05:00.000-05:00

Garlic naan bread with cream cheese, sliced raw jalapenos and ground black pepper.

Combining the above spicy breakfast with a strong cup of Roo's French Roast, I'm fueled to punch out my daily word quota in record time.

And then I'll collapse with caffeine tremors and a capsicum burned tongue!

Shaun Tan

2009-11-08T19:18:00.000-05:00

The NY Times has their special Children's Books section in the book review today! And one of the books they review is a book I love: Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. I just searched my blog and realized that I never mentioned it when I read it (a serious memory lapse on my part). Personally, I wouldn't classify it as a children's book, though my girl critter did like it a lot (her favorite story was "Eric" about a wee creature who comes to a family as their foreign exchange student--it is full of whimsy and light).

My favorite story in Tales is called "Grandpa's Story." I'd love to get it in stand-alone booklet form to give to people on their wedding day or anniversary: in it a pair of newlyweds embark on a surreal journey that best exemplifies the potential challenges and joys of the marriage endeavor. It is sweet and sad and hopeful and beautiful all at once.

I think of Tales as illustrated stories for everyone. Tan's previous book, The Arrival was a wordless moving meditation on immigration and cultural adaptation. Sure, kids who can't read could understand it, but that doesn't mean that it was intended for the pre-literate. In Tan's work images are just as communicative as words, and carry a poignancy and impress the mind in a distinct and powerful way. (I have always been biased towards words; my sister is very visually inclined). I find Tales particularly lovely because it contains both!

Wow.

2009-11-06T13:58:00.001-05:00

It kinda works.

I'm 6 days into NaNoWriMo and I've added 12,199 words to my manuscript. If I can keep up the pace then I think I'll have a complete first draft done by the end of the month.

It helped that for the first two days I was under the mistaken idea that I had to generate 7000 words a day. I have no idea where I came up with that number--maybe I read it on the blog of someone who knew they could only write two or three days per week and thus set themselves an insane daily word goal? I mean, I'm not that bad at math (50,000 words divided by 30 days makes 1666 words per day)! But the goof up turned out to be kind of useful since for the first couple of days I really cranked out the prose (and ate a lot of the kids' Halloween candy). I didn't make 7000 either day, but wrote about 8000 words in two days. That got me ahead of the curve so that, when the critters had the day off school on Tuesday, I had enough of a buffer to skip a day and didn't have to feel guilty about wanting to park them in front of crap videos for hours on end.

And since my initial burst, I've found that writing 1500 words per day isn't that hard. No, they aren't the best words I've ever written, but some of them are decent and others hold the germ of a good chapter. The important thing is that I'm getting the damn plot cranked out and not getting all OCD and revising the first 50 pages over and over again.

I needed something to slap me out of the pattern I'd fallen into and it looks like NaNo was just the thing.

Throwing down the gauntlet

2009-11-01T09:10:00.001-05:00

I've signed up and I'm going to do it: the National Novel Writing Month challenge!

After reading Stephanie Perkins' particularly compelling recruitment post, I decided this might just be what I need to get that completed draft cranked out before the end of the year.

It's tempting to procrastinate and write a long meditative post about what I hope will come out of the experience, but the clock is ticking and I have 6,387 more words to spit out today! Wish me luck!

CSA reflections

2009-10-30T07:54:00.000-05:00

I picked up my last Tantre Farm share this past Wednesday (sorry, no photo--I had a sick kid this week and obtaining the share was challenge enough). I thought it would be appropriate to reflect a little on the CSA experience.

Question: Was it worth it economically?
Answer: Yes, for the full 20 week summer share. No, for the 3 week autumn share. I learned a little something about my cooking moods and temperament by signing up for both the summer and fall extension. We saved a LOT of money over the summer by ordering virtually no carry out. It works out that each week's share is $30 and that is at least how much we'd spend on one Chinese or Middle Eastern carry out meal. My grocery bills for the summer were pretty low, more than a $30 reduction. And we ate more healthy and tasty meals with much less meat. The autumn share suffered both from the vegetable selection (hard squash and loads of brassica are ok, but didn't really get my creativity going) and from my own increase in rigidity

Q: Was it stressfull having to deal with all that produce at once?
A: Sometimes. Though I did learn that when the greens threatened to overwhelm me, I could always blanch and freeze them. It did take a significant amount of time planning meals so that the produce would be used in the right order (carrots can wait until the following Monday, spinach must be used pretty quickly), but I did enjoy that part, particularly prowling about for new recipes which were worthy of the vegetables.

Q: Discover any new likes or dislikes?
A: Turnips! Oh my lord do I love fresh turnips now. I had bought grocery store turnips before and liked them well enough but the small, fresh tender ones we got in the farm share were transformative. Brian and I would fork-battle for the last one. I also loved the black-veined peppermint--it made the best tea ever. The only thing I disliked was the kohlrabi bulb (the greens were just like kale so I was fine with those): however I prepared it I would think that another vegetable would be better. Roasted? Prefer potatoes or parsnips. In stir fry? Harmless but just filler. Raw shredded? Prefer cabbage. True, I didn't try it pickled. Maybe next summer that'll convince me of its worth.

Q: What about the control issue?
A: My summer self found getting the box a thrill. I looked forward to seeing what would be in there and letting it challenge me preparation-wise. As I mentioned before, my autumn self found it tiring.

Q: What about variety?
A: Tantre is very good at balancing the week's share so that there is variety from week to week (different varieties of potatoes, onions, greens, herbs each week). I think it would have grown tiresome if every week the same curly kale was there. There isn't a big difference between the three kinds of kale that I received but enough so that it didn't feel monotonous. There weren't very many times that I wandered through the market looking at the offerings from other farmers and wishing that something else had been included in my share box.

Q: Wishes?
A: I wish there had been more garlic in the shares and some green zucchini. I know summer squash is almost identical in flavor, but I missed getting the green torpedoes. I also could have eaten turnips every week, but I know that not everyone feels that way.

Q: Knowing what you know, what will you plant in your garden next year?
A: Absolutely NO potatoes or basil! (Folks warned me of those bounties and they were right). I'll plant tomatoes--definitely green zebras and romas, my own turnips (since I can't get enough), leeks, and peas.

Q: What about the critters?
A: Sigh. The farm share did not magically transform my kids into vegetable lovers, but I'd say they are marginally more tolerant of different produce. In order to get their weekly allowance, they had to try one new thing from the farm share box and even though this was often accompanied by squinched up faces and minor gagging, they did it. And didn't die.

Any questions you have about the CSA experience?

Batty

2009-10-27T07:55:00.000-05:00

I'm a little amazed, but my latest attempt with my sewing machine did not leave me batty or swearing a blue streak (unlike, dare I remind you, last time). The girl critter wanted to be a bat for Halloween and no, she would not be satisfied with a purchased bat superhero costume--she is into animals, not superheros. So it was time to drag that crafty side of myself out of hibernation.

First we assembled materials:
Some black satin that was on sale at Joann's, a McCall's #3329 pattern to crib the bat hood and smock (the pattern is for a superhero jumpsuit) that was on sale for 99 cents, and a black umbrella from the dollar store.

The hood and the sleeve caps were a little fiddly, but luckily a costume that has to hold together for three events (Halloween concert at Hill, school party on Friday and Saturday trick or treating) can have plenty of wrinkles and fraying edges and still look ok.

I contemplated leaving some of the wire frame on the umbrella to look like wing-bones, but then realized the kid would probably impale herself or one of her friends. So off they came! It looks good enough to me, and, despite her very serious visage in the photo below, the girl critter is happily flapping around the house.

After my encounter with a real bat in the house this summer, I just have to resist the temptation to reach for a tennis racket and take a swing.

Oktober-FEAST

2009-10-27T07:37:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Sarah's efforts (and willingness to have a crowd of drunken revelers in her home) we did it--we had our Oktoberfest/feast!

Yes, one must wear silly hats or little-lederhosen outfits. Funny how only Brian and I remembered that rule...My photos have some major gaps in them--primarily of the stuff I brought (German soft pretzels, braised cabbage with bacon and apples, green salad and sauerkraut) which I blame on the stuff that my Brian brought: BEER! The Dark Father in particular packed a punch, though there was also his Belgian White and hefeweizen to choose from. I'll have to make the pretzels again because they were terrific and a recipe worth sharing here. Next time I promise I won't have a beer until after I take a picture of them.

Brian P made and grilled a copious quantity of sausages:

There's smoked, bratwurst and a fennel-heavy Italian sausage (because, as Sarah said, "It doesn't matter if it isn't German: women love fennel!")

Here's a glimpse of a partial plate of plenty (missing the braised cabbage; the pretzels were long gone by this time):

Meg's spaetzel, made moments before serving, Sarah's wild mushroom rice cakes (for the vegetarians among us, though there were plenty for the rest of us to try), a selection of Brian's sausages with sauerkraut, and my big green salad with honey mustard vinaigrette.

We discovered that Dark Father goes really well with dessert:

Meagan's German chocolate cake and Deb's chocolate ginger cake were great accompaniments to the dark-sweet beer.

The gathering fulfilled my revelry quota for the month. Now I can crawl back into my reclusive autumnal hole and wait for the next book-group feast to lure me out.

Tantre farm share, Fall Extension, week 2

2009-10-21T11:55:00.008-05:00

Bottom row (left to right): red onions, Easter egg radishes, spicy greens, arugula, wee red peppers, garlic, hot peppers
Middle row: kohlrabi, sweet potatoes and yams, salad greens, fingerling potatoes, delicata squash
Top row: shell beans, carrots, some sort of Asian greens, huge cabbage, huge bunch of kale

Next week is the last week for my Tantre farm share (since I chose to do the 3 week extension) and that's a good thing, because for the first time, when I picked up my box yesterday and unpacked the contents, I felt tired. No thrill of excitement when I saw all the pretty vegetables, just a weariness that I'd have to do something with all of them.

I think my burn out has to do with my non-summer cooking habits and moods. I tend to get a wee bit reclusive in the darker months and I think that my flexibility suffers as well. In the summertime, I'm game to try anything--why not? The sun is shining! The world is beautiful! I can do anything (within reason and only in the kitchen)! But my autumnal self really wants what she wants and this week I want to make roasted cauliflower with tahini sauce this week. While there are a ton of brassicas in this week's share, there isn't any cauliflower. And that is making me feel a bit cranky.

So this week's recipes and plan may not be terribly inspired. I'm going to make and freeze some stuff so we have a stash of things to pull out on those evenings when I'm on the run. And since Sarah is hosting an Oktoberfest party this weekend, I'll use up a significant amount of the above by pushing my produce on other people.

kale and apple soup (to be frozen)
kale and potato gratin (there's A LOT of kale) served with turkey burgers
EZ part (i.e. make other people eat the stuff)--the cabbage will get sauteed with apples and caraway seeds for the Oktoberfest party. (I'll also be bringing a salad with the arugula, salad greens, carrots, red peppers, radishes and red onions, some of my homemade sauerkraut and lots of pretzel dough so people can shape and bake their own pretzels.)
Shelling beans will be sauteed with garlic and olive oil and served as a side with homemade mac and cheese (with some of last week's pureed squash sneaked into the cheese sauce).
Marinated, pan fried tofu slabs with stir fried Asian greens with garlic, and some brown rice.
I'm going to shove the rest of the potatoes, the sweet potatoes, yams and winter squash in a dark cupboard and ignore them for a week or so.
I'll slice and freeze the jalapeno peppers. They'll be good for Indian cooking this winter where the texture isn't as essential.
Anyone want a kohlrabi? I can leave it on a doorstep if you live nearby...or we can play kohlrabi catch if you're passing by in your car (if I can whack a bat out of my bedroom window with a tennis racket, I should be able to pitch this into the open window of a slow moving car.)

In which the word "fuck-wit" is exemplified

2009-10-16T13:05:00.003-05:00

Sigh.

I am a fuck-wit.

If you don't know what a fuck-wit is, come on over and have a look.

I still can't figure out how I wound up with the only copy of my work-in-progress novel being a version from September 22nd. Somehow all the work I'd done and all the versions saved since then went into the trash and, being a little compulsive (as fuck-wits are) I emptied the trash. Bye bye 3+ weeks of work!

Thank god for Mac Time Machine. It saved my ass, though only after a great deal of psychic pain and self-flagellation and the waste of a good writing day (or, if not a writing day, a good day to go for a walk--sun shining! leaves changing color!) But the fuck-wit was inside grinding her molars down into stumps.

About the only thing I feel proud of today is the fact that I have not turned to the gin (yet). Later, once small people have been toted to piano lessons and other forms of cultural enrichment, I, the fuck-wit, have a date with the gin bottle in the freezer.

Tantre farm share, Fall extension, week 1

2009-10-13T13:29:00.006-05:00

Bottom row (left to right): big chunk of a massive winter squash, spicy salad mix, turnip greens (and a few wee turnips attached, 1 qt beans, Brussels sprouts, big bunch of parsley
Middle row: beets, onions, purplish broccoli, red peppers, purple potatoes
Top row: Easter egg radishes, bag of spinach, bag of baby greens, Italian kale, carrots, russet potatoes

I still have some eggplant and red peppers leftover from last week which, when combined with this weeks' red peppers and onions will become roasted red pepper and eggplant soup. With a salad of spicy greens and Zingerman's farm bread (on sale this month) it should make a comforting meal now that the weather is cold.
The broccoli will go into broccoli cheese soup--I might freeze this if we are all souped out from the previous soup.
Spanikopita with radish greens, turnip greens, and spinach will make good use of those greens, served with a salad of baby lettuce, parsley and roasted beets.
The kids will get homemade pizza while Brian and I have calzones with turkey Italian sausage, feta, kale and roasted red peppers.
The radishes were a bit strong when eaten raw last week so this week we'll be eating them cooked--braised radishes to be more specific, served with mashed russet potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts, and pork chops.
The green beans look a little tough, so they'll get slow cooked with a slice of bacon and onions and served with hot sauce.
I'm going to steam the big hunk of winter squash and puree it; I'll freeze some and use some in pumpkin turkey chili.

Tantre farm share, week 20 (plus interlopers)

2009-10-07T10:32:00.004-05:00

Bottom row (left to right): Sweet dumpling squash, buttercup squash, red peppers, Easter egg radishes, spicy salad mix, red torpedo onions
Middle row: Tongue of Fire shelling beans, turnip greens, baby lettuces, hot peppers, garlic, cilantro
Interloper's corner (upper left): doz. eggs, huge bag of Asian eggplants, Roo's French Roast, qt Concord Grapes.
Top row: savoy cabbage, spinach, sweet potatoes and yams, carrots

For a lot of people this is the last week of the Tantre farm share, but I signed up for the three week extension so I'll be blundering along for another three weeks.

Southwest style buttercup squash soup with chopped cilantro (recipe from Cook's Country which makes you pay for on-line access to their recipes, but the library subscribes to the paper version which is where I got this), corn bread, and salad with spicy salad greens, baby lettuces, radishes, red peppers and carrots.
I can't decide what to do with the shelling beans--there are lots of tempting recipes out there, like this one for a lamb/cabbage/bean stew, pasta with beans, or fried gnocchi with shelling beans. Do you have any favorite recipes for shelling beans I should know about?
Thai style eggplant/tofu/red pepper/cabbage/basil with red curry and rice.
The rest of the eggplant will be made into Nasu Dengaku (Japanese eggplant broiled with miso), with rice, it should make a nice light lunch.
"Cheaters" palak paneer (replace the paneer with tofu) with spinach, turnip greens, radish greens, hot peppers and (separate dish) stir-fried cabbage with cumin seeds. Maybe some daal too if I have time.
Sweet dumpling squash stuffed with quinoa, with salad and probably something meat based or the meat lovers in my house will rise up in fury at the quantity of vegetarian proteins I expect them consume this week...

The yams/sweet potatoes are supposed to "cure" for at least a week so I won't be doing anything with them yet.

Snacktime

2009-10-06T19:51:00.009-05:00

I don't remember Summer asking my permission to be excused.

That's how I feel, like a grumpy mama whose kid ditched the table with their plate half-full. (This is a feeling that I am all too familiar with since both critters continue their disinterest in food...)

Perhaps it's because we had an extraordinarily wonderful summer (for humans, not so good for tomatoes) that I didn't really look forward to Autumn the way I usually do. Usually by the end of summer, I'm so beaten down with sweating and mosquitoes and sick of feeling dehydrated no matter how much water I drink that Autumn feels like bliss.

This year, not so much. I'm loving the critters both being in school full day (finally) and they are thriving, so it isn't as though Autumn hasn't brought good stuff with it. Somehow, I just wasn't expecting it so soon. (In fact, I'm not really clear on where August and September went...I remember about a week of each.)

So in order to make myself feel better and to be a wee bit more accepting of the present, I've been indulging regularly in my favorite snack/desert/even (ahem) breakfast:

One Jonathan apple and one square of dark hazelnut chocolate.

Jonathan apples are my favorite variety by far. They don't last long because they don't store well, but when they are freshly picked they are just what I'm looking for: crisp, spicy, tart and not insanely huge. They remind me of Cox's Orange Pippins--an English variety that, when we went on hikes up to Captain Cook's Monument or Roseberry Topping, my Granny always had stashed in her jacket pocket along with a bar of Terry's dark chocolate. Alternating bites of apple and dark chocolate, particularly on a windy, nippy day, helps me accept, even enjoy, my present environment.

If you're having trouble accepting the season, give it a try. Jonathans are at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market and even at Meijer's. Trader Joe's is my source for the dark chocolate hazelnut bar.

Faceted

2009-10-05T14:58:00.013-05:00

I recently finished a book that does something quite remarkable: it presents all the sides of a conflict so evenly that as soon as you have sympathized and supported one side of the conflict, the author makes you see and understand it from the polar opposite perspective.

Paulette Jiles' The Color of Lightning begins with a scene of remarkable violence: a Comanche and Kiowa raid on a northern Texas frontier settlement, the murder of some, the torture of others, the brutal rape of two of the women and their capture along with four of their surviving children. If you told me that 100 pages later I would feel heartbroken when one of the captive children who has been adopted by the tribe has to leave the Kiowa to return to his family I'd have thought you were off your rocker. But that's what happened.

Jiles has written an historical novel that does not flinch at the complexities of history: she shows the flaws and the virtues of three disparate cultures that collided with tragic results. There is the story of Britt Johnson,* a freed slave, and his wife and children who are negotiating the freedom of the Texas frontier while tiptoeing around some very angry white people who are pissed about losing the Civil War. There is the story of Samuel Hammond, a Quaker from Philadelphia, who is sent as an Indian Agent to some of the most war-like and violent tribes, to preach peace and convert them to Christianity and an agrarian lifestyle (unsuccessfully in both cases). And there is the story of the Comanche and Kiowa whose traditions and way of life are disappearing and who react with both extreme violence toward the settlers, and extreme tenderness toward the captive children they adopt. Most vivid is the portrait of a particular warrior, Tissoyo, whose love of gossip and befriending of Britt make him a complicated bridge between two of the worlds.

Using Samuel and his friend the illustrator James Deaver as her mouthpiece, whose biblical morals (in the case of the former), and liberal cultural appreciation (in the case of the latter), make them echo the contemporary questions that were popping into my head as I read, the author probes the clash of the cultures: at one point Deaver remarks to Samuel that "Americans are uncomfortable with tragedy." Near the end Samuel, who finally sees the futility of his position, violates his principals of non-violence, and says to Deaver, "And here [tragedy] is. We are regarding it. Like an audience." Shortly after this statement, he leaves the territory and the role he has played forever. In a way, he is less like a member of an audience, and more like a character who walked off the stage when it is clear that things will turn out very badly (something that I've always secretly hoped Edgar might do in King Lear...)

I thought that one of the most memorable and heartbreaking moments in the book (and there are many) was watching Jube, Britt's son who was captured and adopted by the Kiowa, decide to return to his family. His loyalty to his parents, particularly seeing the sacrifices his mother made to keep him and his sister Cherry alive, motivate his actions. But he is ripped up inside because on an individual level, staying with the Kiowa would have been much better for him as a black man. For his own sake I wished he could live in a place where he could grow into an equal member of the community. His longing for the freedom and the self-esteem that he left behind is a difficult compromise to watch.

And on the other side, I loved Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a white captive woman who dubs one of the wives of the man who captured her "the Dismal Bitch." She is so terrifically foul tempered (with good reason since she is a slave and treated brutally, not adopted like the young captives) that she eventually causes the Dismal Bitch to commit suicide. After this, the Comanche are convinced that she is a witch and eventually when Brit arrives to ransom the captives, they pay him to take her back. Moments of levity like this help keep the book from sinking into a morass of historical misery.

The book kept me emotionally charged by my feelings for all the different characters and their cultures. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention all the physical beauty in the book: the way the mountains rise out of the plains, the horses that gallop in giant wild herds, the quick on-set storms rushing towards a settlement, the view of a buffalo calf tottering near its mother. The author's gorgeous prose makes this a tragedy that is drenched in beauty. Jiles facility with language makes the landscape sounds so exquisite that I understood why people loved it so fiercely and fought so hard to claim it for their people.

________
*I only discovered in the author's end-note that Britt Johnson was a real person and many of the events that she depicted were based on historical records.

Tantre farm share, week 19

2009-09-30T08:38:00.010-05:00

Bottom row: carrots, qt of Brussels sprouts, onions, French radishes, tatsoi, two hot peppers and basil
Middle-ish row: red fingerlings, lots of red peppers, cilantro, tomatillos, turnip greens
Top row: green beans, broccoli, baby lettuces, butternut squash

I can't say that this week's menu plan is terribly inspired or inventive, but hopefully it will be tasty:

The tomatillos, some onion and the hot peppers and cilantro will get turned into tomatillo salsa.
I'll make cheese grits with spicy turnip and radish greens for breakfast.
Tonight we'll have roasted red pepper pasta sauce on whole wheat penne which will use up some peppers, onion and basil (I don't have any heavy cream, so I'll use some milk and a little sour cream--it won't be quite as luxurious, but hell, it's a Thursday and we don't need luxury on a Thursday); steamed broccoli will be served with it. (Boring, I know, but the girl critter actually eats it).
The tatsoi will go into a lunch stir fry with tofu and any of the broccoli that is left over.
My book group is meeting this week and I'll bring a salad with the baby lettuces, radishes, red peppers and carrots. I might mix up a blue cheese vinaigrette to make a change from our normal dressing.
Some of the butternut squash will be used to fill homemade ravioli and I'll strip the sage bush outside to add fried sage leaves to the brown butter sauce.
We need to have a roasted night with roasted Brussels sprouts, fingerling potatoes and what's left of the butternut squash. We might need some protein source to go with it...personally I could just pig myself on roasted vegetables but the other members of my household will probably feel like their needs have not been completely met.

Putting on the pink

2009-09-30T07:27:00.006-05:00

The days have been gray and there is a chill in the air. Autumn is definitely here and I need a jolt of color to keep me perky. In the last few days I've been drawn to hot pink. This isn't a color I usually embrace--I'm more of a red and orange type--but it has felt good and energizing in a transitional sort of way.

I've begun knitting a pair of wool socks from some stash wool that I acquired about 4 years ago.
I'm doing them toe-up, using the short row toe instructions that I found in Socks from the Toe-Up. This isn't the first time I tried toe-up socks; in fact this very wool was used in my first attempt and ripped out when it looked funky. But the short-row toe worked great. I'm not really using a pattern--just ribbing the top and keeping the sole smooth and I haven't decided what kind of heel I'll do yet. But it is very nice to have something so cheerful to knit and so portable; way better than wrestling with a big sweater when I go out (sweaters are better for in-front-of-the-dvd player knitting).

Yesterday I spread the pink into the kitchen by making 3 pints of pickled red onions.
I was going to do Orangette's recipe, but then I happened upon David Lebovitz's much simpler lazy-person's version and went with that. Mine aren't quite as brilliantly pink as his--some of my Tantre torpedo red onions were almost white on the inside so there wasn't as much pigment to seep out into the brine. But they should still be a cheerful accompaniment to the burgers I'm planning on making soon.

Tantre farm share, week 18

2009-09-23T07:48:00.008-05:00

Bottom row (left to right): two red onions, wee head of garlic, arugula, tomatillos, hot peppers, poblano peppers, cilantro, parsnips, basil
Middle: two quarts russet potatoes, carrots, lots of red peppers, French radishes, pt grape tomatoes
Top: almost 3 lbs of green beans, Red Russian kale, bag of baby lettuces, bunch of Asian greens, Sunshine Kabocha squash

I'm feeling a little maxed out on the simple steamed green beans and blanched green bean salads so this week we're going for the much less photogenic, but meltingly tasty slow cooked Greek green beans with tomatoes and potatoes, grilled lamb chops and Greek salad (with the red onions, cherry tomatoes, radishes, baby lettuces, feta, cucumber, olives)
So long as the hot humid weather we are having goes away and I can stand to turn on the oven, the parsnips, carrots and potatoes will get roasted and then tossed with feta and a squeeze of lemon when they come out, which should go well with an arugula, radish and cherry tomato salad (If the stinky heat continues the root vegetables will get chucked in the crisper bin while I wait for cooler weather.)
I'm going to have to do something Mexican with the red peppers, hot peppers, poblano peppers, cilantro, tomatillos and garlic. I'm thinking of some sort of vegetarian enchiladas with roasted peppers and roasted tomatillos combined with corn cut off the cob, cilantro and cheese and rolled up in corn tortillas and baked. Might crack out a jar of the homemade salsa and some sour cream to top it off.
Soy braised kabocha squash will be served with stir fried Asian greens and tofu with garlic, and rice
This week's bounty of peppers and beans means I'll also be roasting and freezing some of the peppers and blanching and freezing some of the green beans.
No great plans for the kale or basil yet...ideas anyone?

some pretties (and one not-so-pretty)

2009-09-20T08:05:00.010-05:00

Brian's smoked brisket, my version of Noelle's potato salad, heirloom tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, green beans with olive oil and lemon, and a very hoppy beer

Grilled pork tenderloin medallions with grilled peaches and nectarines, blue cheese, pine nuts and basil-balsamic vinaigrette, with homemade ciabatta and steamed green beans

Open wide! Fish taco wants to come inside!

Bi Bim Bop-ish

There is simply no way to make sauerkraut (at least sauerkraut made with white cabbage) look pretty...

salsa time!

2009-09-18T08:13:00.004-05:00

Last Sunday I transformed these:
Into this:
Which got packaged like this:
Whoo hoo! My first batch of canned salsa!

I've made plenty of fresh salsa, but never took the effort to preserve the stuff. Last spring, after tasting the salsa that one of Brian's co-workers made, I was inspired to make an attempt this year. John (the co-worker who might be a teeny bit obsessive since he has canned 46 jars of salsa so far this year...) was kind enough to share his recipe with me and the Farmer's Market cooperated by providing me with a peck of Roma seconds for $4 (I got there at about 8:30 am and think I may have got the last peck of Roma seconds. There were plenty more regular tomato seconds though.)

So long as you have a food processor, making this stuff is a breeze. Without it, the daunting quantity of chopping might push it into the 'labor of love' category, but the taste was really terrific--full rounded flavor, little edge and kick, and very difficult to stop eating.

Salsa
makes about 6.5 pints (6 jars and a container to eat RIGHT NOW)

Approximately 31 Roma tomatoes (10-11 cups): plunge in boiling water until skin splits. Cool tomatoes in cold water—peel, core and squeeze out juice and excess seeds. (The first photo contains about 11 cups of peeled seeded tomatoes.)
3-4 big cloves of garlic, peeled
4-6 jalapeno peppers with seeds—tops cut off and cut in half width wise
3 large white or yellow onions, peeled and cut in 1/4s
4 mild red, green or yellow peppers—seeded, stem cut off and cut in 1/4s
1 small bunch of cilantro, washed and lower part of stems cut off
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup white vinegar
3 tablespoons kosher salt

Get your food processor ready for some action: with the S-blade roughly chop the tomatoes (in a couple of batches). Dump into a big pot.

Then fine chop the garlic and jalapenos, add the onions and peppers and chop until smallish but not reduced to a pulp. Then add the cilantro and pulse a few times to chop it. Dump into the big pot.

Mix in the brown sugar, vinegar, and salt and bring to a boil. Then simmer for 2-3 hours, stirring frequently so bottom does not scorch.

Prior to filling jars, heat the jars and lids in boiling water for ten minutes.

Fill jars with hot salsa, wipe the rim with a clean towel and cover with lids. Then screw on the ring. Be careful to keep everything clean when boiling and filling jars.

If you are a "proper canner" and have the deep pot/rack/jar lifter, go ahead and process the jars in a hot water bath. If you are a) lazy b) equipment challenged c) willing to risk a little (salsa is high in acid and salt so the likelihood of it poisoning you is much lower than some non-acidic, non-salty food) you can do the sloth version. Set the jars on the counter and as they cool down they should seal (my mom always flipped the jars over so they were resting on their lids with the hot contents in contact with the metal--I'm not sure if it is supposed to help the seal or if it is just a compulsive quirk, but I do it too). If jar does not seal it must be refrigerated (press the lid and if it gives and makes a little popping sound, then it didn't seal).

Tantre farm share, week 17

2009-09-16T07:59:00.006-05:00

From left to right and vaguely bottom to top: Basil, hot peppers, squash, kale, big bunch of parsley, cherry and grape tomatoes, cabbage, two wee eggplant, 2 qts green beans, spicy salad mix, lots of red peppers, red onions, 3 small heads of lettuce, 5 ears of corn, carrots

Menu plan:

Last week I didn't get around to making the long bean salad (I ended up just steaming beans and tossing with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper) so this week's green beans will get that treatment. I'll serve it with stir fried tofu, red peppers and eggplant and some rice.
Fish tacos will use some of the cabbage, some of the corn cut off the cob and some of my homemade salsa*.
Ina Garten's perfect roast chicken will get roasted on a bed of carrots and last week's huge cipollini onion (I plan to substitute the squash for the fennel in the recipe and don't think the chicken needs butter rubbed into the skin), served with some salad.
The rest of corn will be prepared Mexican style--grilled on the cob with mayo, chili pepper, pecorino, cilantro and lime juice--and served with turkey burgers and salad.
Some of the red peppers will get roasted and packed in a jar with olive oil (or some other preservation method? Must look into the best method.)
I like the looks of this recipe for basil rubbed pork chops with blue cheese and nectarines and will try to adapt it to a pork tenderloin I have in the freezer, a lot more basil than the recipe calls for and the last few Michigan peaches that I still have. Probably served with some form of kale.
I'll have a big bowl of salad always ready for lunch to use up all the nice lettuce.
The bounteous quantity of parsley will get split between a batch of Sarah's hummus and a batch of parsley heavy tabbouleh.
The red onions will get pickled using Orangette's recipe.

* Recipe for and pictures of the salsa coming in the next post. This would also be a good week to make it, what with the ample quantity of red and hot peppers, so long as you can lay your hands on a peck of tomato seconds.

Tantre farm share, week 16 (plus a bunch of interlopers)

2009-09-09T08:18:00.006-05:00

When you have recently returned from a camping trip, fresh food is really irresistible. That's part of the reason that I got a little greedy today at the market and supplemented my farm share with some interlopers.

The far left side of the table contains the interlopers (from bottom to top): Zingerman's Paesano bread, a huge eggplant, 3 peaches, a head of lettuce, a quart of raspberries, a pound of Roo's Roast and a bottle of Greek olive oil from Sparrow market.
The rest of the table is taken over by the farm share (roughly left to right): big bag of green beans, bunch of tatsoi, carrots, insane quantity of basil, daikon radishes, big cipollini onion, cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, potatoes, bunch of thyme, red peppers and Italian kale.

I'm really not going to have trouble putting this week's share away. Vegetables taste so damn good after a week of mostly dehydrated stuff! (But it was worth the culinary sacrifice for the wealth of amphibian life the girl critter was able to find).

So, here's what the menu plan is for the week:

You can't get a better time for my favorite eggplant salad--eggplant, red peppers, cherry tomatoes, mint and feta perfection.
For lunch, the daikon greens will get sauteed with garlic and lemon and heaped on top of slabs of the paesano bread and drizzled with the grassy Greek olive oil.
Tomorrow's dinner will be bi bim bop with: tatsoi, daikon, carrots, and a few green beans with bulgoki beef and kim chi (a couple of people have asked me for a recipe, which is probably a little more formal than what you'd call what I make, but I'll try to document the basic preparation and assemblage.)
On the weekend, I'm thinking grilled steak and grilled tomatoes with basil sauce--sort of like pesto but a little less pasty--with ~~roasted potatoes~~ *Update* Noelle posted a beautiful looking herbed potato salad that I'll try instead; now I won't have to turn on the oven at all!
I already made (and consumed two pieces of) this raspberry tart. (Hey, raspberries get moldy really quickly so I had to take action...)
They aren't long beans, but some of the green beans should adapt well enough to this SE Asian long bean salad treatment. I haven't figured out what to serve with it--maybe it's time to remember how to make pad thai again.
I'll probably make the kale into this salad. Meagan made it once for book group and it was terrific and I think it would make a great lunch with more of that paesano bread.
and finally, more pesto for freezing in ice cube trays.

A few more ideas

2009-08-26T11:46:00.006-05:00

Last week my book group met again to enjoy each others' company, eat and drink well and discuss a lovely book. I had already read Tobias Wolfe's Old School (and blogged about it here), but was happy to read it again.

Actually, this time I didn't read it so much as listened to the book on CD while driving out to MA (while the critters were plugged into the portable DVD player with endless episodes of Pee-Wee's Playhouse). This time, I was laughing out loud at the telling of the Cow-Sci-Fi story that Ayn Rand chose as the winner of the school writing contest. The critters even pulled off their earphones and wanted to know what was so funny at which point in time I spluttered an incomprehensible summary which they promptly tuned out.

I still think this is a lovely book and the reader, Dan Cashman, did a fine job.

We accompanied our brisk discussion with food that felt like a celebration of the season.

Beverage and book (and Meg's elegant table)--ahhhh.

I brought a pitcher of peach basil sangria made with basil from the back deck and Red Haven peaches from the Farmer's Market. It was lovely, and the little pieces of peach bobbing in the glass soaked up the alcohol so they were like little boozy bombs when you got down to the bottom of the glass.

To keep us from getting too tipsy on them, I also made some eggplant caviar to go with sliced baguette. (It would be an excellent way to use up this week's farm share, come to think of it.)

I love eggplant caviar (recipe below) and don't remember to make it often enough--I usually just go the baba ganoush route but this dip/spread is more delicately flavored and really brings out the floral tones that eggplant can be convinced to release when treated with a slow roasting.

Then we moved from the front yard to the table and enjoyed Marilyn's beautifully composed salad with nasturtium blossoms, roasted beets and shaved Parmesan.

Our main course was broiled trout with basil sauce--a perfect homage to the Hemingway hero-worship by the boys in the book.
It was served with a corn flan that Ami made which was airy and sweet, and Jen brought an asparagus, roasted red pepper vegetable side dish.

Sarah and the mostaccioli

Then we wrapped it all up with Sarah's intense Chocolate Hazelnut Spiced Cookies (recipe here). One of our members is heading off to Germany for a year on sabbatical and while we're all a little envious, we will miss her greatly (and are maybe trying to figure out how to finance a visit...). She also has the strongest sweet tooth of the bunch of us so Sarah's cookies were a fine send off: nutty, spicy, chewy and most of all, Chocolate.

Eggplant Caviar
This makes a lot so you can easily cut the recipe in half.

2 large eggplants (globe type) or equivalent number of smaller ones
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut lengthwise into slivers
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 C olive oil
1 T soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1 small tomato, chopped
1/2 of a red pepper, chopped
1/2 C chopped basil leaves
1/4 C chopped flat leaf parsley leaves
1/3 C toasted pine nuts
1/3 C dried currants or golden raisins

preheat oven to 400.

Slice the eggplants in half lengthwise. Cut long slits in the flesh and stuff with the garlic slices. Place cut side down on an oiled baking sheet and cook for at least 1/2 hour or until collapsed. The remove and set aside to cool a bit.

In the serving bowl mix together the lemon juice, olive oil, soy sauce, salt and pepper. Then take the cooled eggplants and scoop out the flesh from the skins (along with the garlic) onto a cutting board. Chop coarsely then dump in the bowl with the dressing and mash with a fork.

Stir in the rest of the ingredients and taste for seasoning (you might want to add a dash of red wine vinegar if you like it a bit sharper). Refrigerate after making--it's good to make it a little in advance to let the flavors meld.

Serve with sliced baguette or as a spread on sandwiches.

Tantre farm share, week 14

2009-08-26T09:21:00.009-05:00

Bottom row: Asian greens, two small bunches of chard, 3 yellow summer squash, 4 red torpedo onions, bunch of purple carrots, 6 big heirloom tomatoes, wee bunch of dill
Middle: 1 qt fingerling potatoes, eggplant, red peppers, assorted beets, 1 pt cherry and grape tomatoes
Top (looming over it all): a tremendous quantity of basil

Menu/preserving plan (We're headed out of town for part of the week so what doesn't fit into our dinner plans will get put into things that can be prepared and frozen. Beets and potatoes are going to be set aside since they won't rot right away):

All that basil will be made into pesto for freezing in ice cube trays.
The Asian greens will get sauteed with garlic, ginger and tofu. Add some rice and frozen dumplings and that's dinner!
I'll make a small batch of ratatouille with the eggplant, tomato, and summer squash (I like the Cook's Illustrated recipe) and will probably freeze that too.
I'm thinking that this recipe for swiss chard with anchovy butter would be good with a red quinoa salad that uses up some tomatoes and red onions.
The cherry tomatoes will be made into a tart with puff pastry, dry jack cheese and some mustard, probably based on this recipe. Since I'll have the oven on already I'll also roast the purple carrots and toss them with some dill and a little lemon juice.
Any leftover tomatoes that aren't consumed with a drizzle of balsamic, olive oil and a little fleur de sel will probably just get hacked up and frozen.

Letting go

2009-08-24T20:00:00.007-05:00

I'm really good at mad. But I'm not going to do mad right now.

I'm referring to this infuriating information: that until 12 months ago SIGG, which promoted itself as a safe alternative to Nalgene (and other plastic) bottles that contained the endocrine disruptor BPA, was actually lining their bottles with an epoxy that contained, you guessed it, BPA! They have changed the liner on new SIGGs (and were very quiet not to mention the BPA problem until the stock of the old BPA containing bottles were sold) and will give people who return their old SIGGs coupons for replacement bottles. But the whole shebang reeks of corporate coverup. The blogger Sarah Gilbert did a very nice job of detailing the sliminess--if you have the stomach to read it. (There's also a well-explained post from a store that pulled SIGGs.)

A parent on the wonderfully informative yahoo group list arborparents posted about this and another told me she received a postage paid return label. So I wrote to SIGG and asked for one because I don't want to spend a nickel more and they refused. Then I wrote to the CEO and mentioned that I knew they had issued postage paid return labels and would he authorize one.

He refused.

The CEO told me that he and his kids still drink out of the bottles with the BPA-containing liner (though he neglected to mention that his family also has gills...joking!). He offered me cleaning tablets (because I don't know how to wash out a water bottle? Huh? Or maybe it's something specially formulated to block the BPAs....) which probably would cost more than the return shipping I was requesting.

Clearly I have lived too long in a town where customer service and happiness is taken seriously. So ZingTrain, if you have anyone free to give a seminar, I know of a company that could really use your services! Or maybe the CEO, Steve Wasik, should read this book:
Yes, the title is Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000. You, dear reader, are one of my 3000.

All this crummy corporate bullshit is upsetting enough but here's the worst part: I was so pissed when I was receiving and responding to their e-mails that, when my girl critter wandered into my office requesting a cup of grape juice (which, she knows, is not hiding under mom's desk but located in the fridge; however, since I keep it in a heavy non-BPA leaching Frigoverre glass pitcher, she still needs me to pour it), I snapped at her. Actually I yelled. I was so pissed at SIGG that my shoulders were up around my ears and I looked like Nixon and I dare say I behaved like him too (treating those around me like crap, not the break-in part). And the little critter jumped. And that's just not right. (I went and apologized to her and told her that I wasn't mad at her, I was mad at the crummy company that made her dinosaur water bottle. She doesn't appear to be too traumatized by her mother's inability to compartmentalize her anger though I probably should add a few extra dollars to her college/therapy fund).

And that's when I realized that Steve and his crummy company were not worth it. Not worth the anger. Not worth pursuing a free shipping label on principle even though it means that someone sleazy is getting away with something.

So you know what? I'm going to try and breathe my way through this.

In one of my yoga classes, the teacher got us to assume a pose like a pretzel--I had trouble figuring out how my left arm was twisted around my right leg and how exactly I was able to see the sole of my left foot which normally isn't so close to my eyes but finally got into the pose. And once there she said: "Keep breathing. Remember if you can breathe through this pose you can breathe through pretty much anything that life throws at you." So. This isn't so bad. I can breathe through this.

So now I am turning to you folks for advice. To say that the water I drink from any SIGG will taste bitter now is an understatement. I refuse to have these bottles in my family's life any more. It just makes me too flipping mad when I see them and I don't think I want quite that much practice breathing.

I'll eat the postage to get these things out of the house and to make the company pay out for new ones because that's the only way to reach these people--through their wallets. But what should I do with the replacements since I can't stand the sight of them? (Hello Klean Kanteen! You'll be getting our business soon!) It'll be a set of 4 different sized bottles ranging from .4 L to .75 L.

I was thinking maybe I could donate the new ones somewhere. My kids' former preschool has an annual fundraising auction. Do you think anyone would buy a set of 4 new water bottles at an auction? That way at least the money I originally spent (over $50 agggggh!) would actually work its way to a good cause.

Any other ideas? Help me make this letting go as painless as it can be. Send me your suggestions. Send me your peaceful thoughts to help me forgive icky people for their ickyness.
And breathe with me.
In--
And out.
In--
And out.

Summer

2009-08-24T14:47:00.008-05:00

We're back from our trip out to MA to visit my sister and the critters and I are now suffering from Aunty Anna, assorted amphibian and Basenji withdrawal.

Look at that sweet boy. I didn't mind one bit that he was blocking my book and I'm usually kind of grouchy when my book is blocked.

We've had an active and interesting summer up until last week, but the days we spent with Anna felt like the way summer is supposed to be--very relaxed, very hot, very fun. Maybe she was planning up a storm in the background, but I certainly wasn't and it felt like we flowed from one thing to the next: swimming and frog catching at Potter's Pond, eating cumin and yogurt marinated tofu and carrot salad, appreciating the air conditioner after a 94 degree day with 98 percent humidity, getting invited along to visit Anna's friend Rosie's magical family and swimming with a hoard of her nieces and nephews, jumping on a trampoline, and eating ice cream cones that dripped down our arms before we could finish them.
I'm pretty sure that this is what summer is all about.

Tantre farm share, week 12 (and 1 interloper)

2009-08-12T07:32:00.007-05:00

Bottom-ish row, left to right: Red Haven peaches (interloper), 7 ears of corn, 2 qts beans, 3 cucumbers basil, red onions.
Top-ish row: 2 qts potatoes, carrots, snow leopard honeydew melon, 3 tomatoes, big bag of broccoli crowns, beets (no greens), 8 summer squash, 2 heads of lettuce, chives

Tonight we're having an all-American dinner: grilled chicken drumsticks, potato salad with chives, corn on the cob, tarragon cucumber pickles and peach pie.
Some form of corn soup--either corn potato basil chowder or Tammy's lovely sounding silky corn soup (see the comments for the recipe) which I might try chilled, depending on the whether it is stinking hot or not; served with the broccoli/chick pea/red onion salad I made a couple of weeks ago and loved.
1 tomato will go into a potato-summer squash gratin: I'll use the mandoline to slice the potatoes and squash paper thin and then layer them with the tomatoes and some cheddar and chives. It'll be loosely based on the goat cheese-potato-summer squash gratin I made couple of weeks ago and loved.
The other two tomatoes will go into salads with the lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, beets, feta and some blanched green beans.

The menu is brief this week because on Friday I'm going to have to go through what is left and either blanch and freeze it, or give it away. I'm leaving on Saturday to take the critters to visit my sister in Massachusetts so this means that next week I'll miss out on the bounty. My parents will be picking up and consuming my share which should be a bit of a (hopefully fun) shock to their cooking habits!

Whew

2009-08-10T11:26:00.004-05:00

Just a quick note: Thanks for the words of support about the writing block/crisis of confidence. I really appreciated hearing from people about their experiences. I think it is one of the big benefits of the internet to make this incredibly isolated endeavor something that can be shared.

And the good news is that on this stinky hot and humid day, I've got the critters at camp, the AC on, and I've managed to pick my writer self up off the ground, dust off my keister and get back to writing. It isn't flowing like the magical day a few weeks ago, but it is moving and I feel a direction and shape and purpose.

Whew.

Down at the mouth

2009-08-06T16:07:00.004-05:00

Two weekends ago, I sat down at my computer at 11 am and didn't leave it (except for quick snacks and bathroom breaks) until 5:30 pm.*

And when I left the computer at 5:30 I went for a walk -- no, correct that -- I was so giddy about my wonderful day of writing that I went for a float.

Not only did I produce probably a whole chapter's worth of new material, but I had confidence in what I had already written--I saw the shape of the book, even the parts that I have only vaguely sketched out, and I felt all I needed was the time (say, starting on September 8th when the kids go back to school) in which to fill it all in.

Where did that confidence go? Why am I presently in such a muddle? It's a beautiful day, the critters are behaving themselves, there is no reason to be down at the mouth. But my confidence in my ability to write this book is simply gone. All I've been able to accomplish since that very productive day is some very minor editing.

The only vaguely positive thing I can say is that at least in reading what I've written, I wasn't tempted to delete it--I thought it was pretty good. But right now it feels like a different person wrote it.
__________
*Brian took the critters away overnight to do some choo choo stuff so I had no interruptions or distractions of a human nature.

Tantre farm share, week 11 (plus 2 interlopers)

2009-08-04T14:39:00.011-05:00

Vaguely left to right and bottom to top: basil, Roos Roast (interloper #1), eggs from Amos Coblentz (interloper #2), peppermint, 1 pt mixed cherry tomatoes, garlic, 2 qts potatoes, 1 qt mixed green and wax beans, Italian kale, melon, 4 eggplants, 2 heads of lettuce, broccoli, 4 cucumbers, onions, beets, lots of summer squash, carrots. Much easier to see in the pic with notes her e.

This week's menu plan:

Thanks to Noelle and her mention of a wonderful sounding Vietnamese cook book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen (which I promptly requested from the library), tonight we'll have rice topped with fried tofu, Vietnamese deep fried eggplant, nuoc cham, and cucumber-red onion-cilantro salad.
On the night I have my yoga class we'll have a salad night of totally mashed together cuisines (Alsatian, vaguely Greek, sort of Japanese and French-ish) accompanied by wine, crusty bread and a hunk of deliciously stinky Muenster d'Alsace I was gifted: a lettuce, carrot and cucumber salad with tarragon vinaigrette, the rest of the eggplant, tomatoes and mint in a half batch of my favorite eggplant salad and green and wax beans with walnut miso dressing. I know none of these things go together and I don't really care!
I'm going to try to get some melon into the small people by pureeing it and making it into popsicles (probably with some lime juice and agave nectar or honey). The rest will get eaten at breakfast with granola and plain yogurt.
Bi bim bop with copious quantities of vegetables will join the beef, egg, rice and kim chi: broccoli, green beans, carrots, cucumber, summer squash.
Grilled pizza with caramelized onions, roasted beets, pine nuts, olives and goat cheese and accompanied by super thin sliced raw summer squash with shaved Parmesan, salt, olive oil, and basil.
Brian is planning on smoking some brisket this weekend, so I'll use the potatoes to make some sort of potato salad to go with it. Maybe the kale will get the southern treatment and be braised and doused in hot pepper vinegar. And some cucumbers will get made into quick tarragon pickles.
Some garlic and basil will go into pesto (to be frozen in ice cube trays for a taste of summer in the depths of winter).

Internal voices

2009-08-04T13:19:00.004-05:00

I can't remember the last book I read that relied so heavily on internal voices. John Pipkin has written a remarkable book, Woodsburner, that not only takes on a fascinating little blip of history (the day that Thoreau accidentally set fire to the Concord woods) but that does it through the thoughts of a kaleidoscopic collection of characters. There is very little dialog in the book--it mostly occurs only as the characters remember the past.

All the characters are suffering from some level of crisis whether it be spiritual, ethical, or emotional. Eliot is the excruciatingly bad want-to-be playwright--a man who desperately wants to be perceived as artistic and literary, but who can't appreciate what he has and does well. There is Caleb, a self-righteous guilt-riddled, hellfire-spouting and opium-addicted preacher. Oddmund is probably the most sympathetic character, a humble almost to the point of invisibility immigrant who silently loves his employer's wife. Emma, the rotund recipient of Oddmund's adoration, is a barely literate lover of books. There are a pair of strange old women, Anezka and Zalenka, who bring a touch of magical realism to the proceedings. And of course there is the star of the show: Thoreau.

Because you are inside the character's heads, there isn't much back story--there's no external narrator who brings you up to speed. This results in some really lovely reveals: the characters' pasts come out unexpectedly. There are delicate inferences which help move the book along, crucial for the pacing since without it, the internal nature of the book might get claustrophobic and leaden.

The fire serves as the catalyst and the crisis for each of the characters. It motivates their thoughts and propels their actions. The ending is beautiful and liberating: all the characters have had their trial-by-fire and all come out the other side transformed, liberated, and changed though in very different ways.

I thought the author did particularly well with Thoreau's voice. We follow Thoreau's mind through complicated shifts from desperate panic trying to stop the fire, to justifications and excuses that he comes up with to shift the blame for the fire off of himself, to the exhilarating pleasure that he takes in the force and intensity of nature. It has been a long time since I read Walden but I remember a bit of these shifts--methodical accounting, lyrical enjoyment of nature and underneath, some justification sneaking in ("I didn't ask my neighbors to feed me a nice dinner so I don't really have to incorporate it into my narrative of simplicity and living off the land"). Pipkin doesn't come right out and say "the fire led to Walden" but he makes his opinion about the cause and effect nature of the actions clear and well reasoned. It seems almost duplicitous that people teach Walden without this piece of authorial context.

About half-way through, I did think I'd need to start a drinking game where I did a shot every time Oddmund sucked on his tiny dead tooth. That repetition started to drive me a bit batty and I think about half of the instances where the phrase was used could be cut. But that's a tiny quibble with a really remarkable book.

Tantre farm share, week 10

2009-07-29T08:19:00.003-05:00

This week the farm share throws down the gauntlet: can I eat (and/or freeze) a full share on my own while Brian is out of town?

My belly and I accept the challenge!

Vaguely left to right: 4 heads of lettuce (red leaf, green frilly, 2 red oakleaf), 1 qt green beans, 2 qts potatoes, arugula, parsley, 3 broccoli crowns, beets, basil, kohlrabi, 4 yellow zucchini, one huge onion, 2 cucumbers, carrots and collard greens

Some potatoes, summer squash and basil will go into this potato, squash goat cheese gratin.
I'm feeling kind of noodly this week so I think I'll make a bastardized pad thai with broccoli, green beans, cucumbers, onion, carrots, egg, tofu and peanuts.
Beets will get roasted like last week (and this week I can eat them all myself--oink oink!)
All the lettuce and arugula means that I'll be eating LOTS of salad. I'm going to keep the spinner full of washed greens so that whenever I get hungry there's salad ready (I'm feeling a little peckish right now at 9:30 am and a morning salad maybe with some toasted walnuts sounds kind of nice). If I'm feeling stumped about how to vary the salads, I'll turn to Mark Bittman's 101 Simple Salads for the Season. It is an excellent way to jog a tired brain. I'm thinking some greens will get topped with some sort of grain and citrus (time to try quinoa again?). Some will get the nicoise treatment again with more green beans, parsley and potatoes and some hard boiled egg. I still have a few peaches left and the chicken/basil/peaches combo is good so I'm going to turn it into a salad this week with salad greens, grilled boneless skinless chicken breast, a peach basil salsa and some blanched broccoli.
The girl critter has requested mashed potatoes so even though I'm not terribly fond of them, I'll make some for her. I can use all the help I can get consuming the share this week...
I'm looking forward to a weekend breakfast of of spicy collards and cheese grits with strong black coffee.
I'm going to see if shredded kohlrabi takes the nuoc cham sauce as well as the green beans did last week.

Fermentation time!

2009-07-28T10:35:00.007-05:00

Brian may have his yeast beer buddies, but I've got my own microscopic friends. I've already been converted to making my own yogurt (which is so stupidly simple that I'm a little disgusted with myself for buying the stuff for so many years) and this week I deepened my relationship with lactic acid bacterias by making sauerkraut.
I snagged some of the brewing supplies that Brian wasn't using: an ale pail, lid and S air lock. Got out my 4 heads of Tantre cabbage (about 7 lbs total), my mandoline, knife and kosher salt.

Then I gave my right forearm a terrific workout shredding all that cabbage into the sterilized pail:Hmmm...not enough cabbage me thinks....

So I dashed off to Krogers (it was Sunday evening) and picked up 4 more huge organic cabbages (.59/lb which seemed pretty cheap to me). By the time I finished shredding those big old mama's my hand was getting numb. Maybe next time I'll use the food processor, even though I don't have one of the newer shwoopy kind with the wide mouth feed tube.

I stirred in the recommended amount of salt (about 3 T per 5lbs) and then ignored it for a while until the cabbage started sweating out its juice. Good god does that stuff ever sweat!
I put a clean plate on top of the cabbage and stuck on another container filled with water to weigh it down and keep the cabbage below the top of the brine. Then I stuck on the pail lid and plunked the thing down in the basement where it will stay relatively cool.

I hear you can get kraut in 5 days if you put in a probiotic, like one of those pills from the health food store, but since the only ones I had in the house were blueberry flavored chewables (from when one of the critters was having tummy troubles) I figured that I'd go the slow and traditional route this time.

So, now we wait for at least a couple of weeks. But instead of tapping my foot impatiently, I'm going to think of it as party planning time! We'll have no need to deal with the crowds at the German Park this summer: we have Brian on board for beer, Brian Pinkelman can make the sausage, I'll supply the sauerkraut, the library will provide the CDs of polka tunes and Sarah will make an appearance dressed as the St. Pauli girl. Right Sarah?

Green Bean Bliss

2009-07-26T11:49:00.004-05:00

I love fresh green beans. I love the way they squeak between my teeth; I love the flavor; I love the color; I love how they can be used as big green fangs to make a 6-year-old crack up.

And now I love them even more because I melded them with my favorite summer flavors, those found in the Vietnamese lime sauce Nuoc Cham. Today I blanched the rest of my Tantre green beans, chopped up a half a cake of firm tofu and tossed it all with the dressing. It was fast, easy, tasty and perfect for a hot, humid day.

Green Bean and Tofu Salad with Nuoc Cham

1.5 quarts green beans
.5 cake of firm tofu, cut into small cubes
juice of 1 lime
2 t brown sugar
1 small clove of garlic, pressed
1 T soy sauce
1.5 T fish sauce (I like the 3 crabs brand)
.5 of a long serrano chili, chopped fine (or more if you want it hotter)
1/4 C unsalted peanuts, chopped coarsely
at least 2 T each of chopped basil (Thai basil if you have it), spearmint and cilantro

Chuck the beans in a big pot of boiling water and blanch until just tender. Dump in a colander and run cool water over them. Cut into 2 inch lengths.

In your serving bowl combine the lime juice, sugar, garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce and chili. Give a stir to dissolve the sugar. It may not look like enough dressing but it is. Then toss in the green beans, tofu, chopped peanuts and chopped herbs. Don't serve immediately--you want the flavors to get absorbed a little into the tofu and beans. Instead, let it sit for about half an hour, tossing every 10 minutes to make sure that the flavors are distributed.