Week 9

varied tomatoes, kale, green and yellow beans, head of red leaf lettuce, three different cucumbers, two green peppers, small bag of tatsoi, head of butter lettuce


Produce plans:

• Yay it's bean season! I love fresh picked beans. The green and yellow beans will get dived up between green beans and tofu w/nuoc cham (one of my favorite hot weather salads) and a jar of refrigerator pickle dilly beans which are a terrific accompaniment for too-damn-hot-to-cook nights with a plate of cheese, salami, crackers and a cold beer (Fat Tire Amber from New Belgium is my go-to beer this summer.)
• The two lettuces, tomatoes and one cucumber will go into a massive chicken Greek salad. I still have the mini beets from last week to add to this. (I ended up adding the beet greens to a goat cheese pasta sauce and they were excellent).
• The cucumbers will be slotted into happy hour consumption: I'm completely hooked on making Pimm's cups during these hot days of summer (recipe below) and a good chunk of cucumber goes in each drink. The rest will be used for my favorite summer beer snack.
• Brian has claimed the green peppers for use in some sort of jambalaya-ish combination with rice, andouille sausage, onion and whatever else he feels inspired to throw in. 
• The kale is enough for another kale Caesar salad. This time I'll add some cooked red quinoa and hard cooked egg to it to make it more substantial so it can stand on its own for lunch.
• The tatsoi will probably get chucked into some end-of-the-week, use-up-stuff-in-the-fridge stir-fry which is an undignified end for such nice organic produce. Or maybe I'll eat it for lunch mid-week with some tofu, scallions and kimchi. 

Pimm's Cup

makes 2 drinks

1 bottle Reed's extra strong ginger beer

Pimm's No 1

1/2 a lemon, cut in two pieces

1/2 a lime, cut in two pieces

2 inches of cucumber (preferably with skin on--scrub off the wax if it isn't an organic, uncoated cuke), cut in four pieces

ice

In the bottom of each of two pint glasses put one piece of lemon, one piece of lime and two pieces of cucumber. Take a muddler (or in my case, the handle-end of a wooden spoon) and mash the hell out of them to release the juice from the citrus and create delicious little bits of cucumber to float around in the finished drinks. Put some ice in the glass, add about 1/4 of the ginger beer to each glass, then add the Pimm's to taste (I put in about 2 oz--a good glug), stir it up with your wooden spoon handle, then top with the rest of the ginger beer and stir again. Go find a chair on a deck with a breeze and enjoy.

Summer Refreshment

I recently returned from one of the most beautiful places on earth:

Ah, Georgian Bay, how I love you. (That's Little McCoy Island pictured above. We canoed out and camped on nearby Big McCoy Island last week.)

Now that we're home I'm trying to prolong that vacation feeling and a nice cold drink seemed like the most efficient way to do so. I also may just be attempting to avoid the reality of the coming week in which my better half and I attempt to put up all the trim in the addition that we have learned (quite happily) to live without due to severe construction-fatigue. Luckily, alcohol is a multi-purpose sort of thing! While cracking a cold beer is always pleasant, I've rediscovered an old summer drink favorite:

The Pimm's Cup (variation #2)

It seems particularly appropriate to write about it today since, according to Wikipedia, it is one of the staple drinks at Wimbledon which just had the first British male singles winner in 77 years--so I raise a glass (well, a mason jar) to you Andy Murray!

There are lots of different recipes out there for a Pimm's Cup so I'm trying out a few of them (research, you know...). All include Pimm's No. 1 (duh), cucumber, ice and some sort of fizz. But after that you find plenty of other stuff thrown in: lemon, orange, strawberries, extra gin, and mint are some of the players. I'm game to try them all except for the mint. I'm saving my mint for mojitos and mint sounds like it would compete with the juniper in gin (even if you don't use extra gin, Pimm's No. 1 is gin-based. The other numbers have different bases like Pimm's No. 3 is brandy-based and No. 6 is vodka-based but most of the other numbers are hard to come by or have been phased out.) I think I might be too much of a lightweight to substitute champagne for the soda mixer but if anyone out there tries it (and can remember after trying it...) let me know what kind of a taste sensation it provides!

So far, I like my variation #1 best:

cucumber, orange slice, Pimm's and ginger ale.

#2 was pretty tasty too:
cucumber, lemon slice, sliced strawberry, Pimm's and 7-Up.

Next to be tried will be the #1 with extra gin and maybe extra cucumber.
UPDATE: extra gin is good, particularly if you don't have to go anywhere anytime soon! Adding double lemon and double cucumber makes it almost like a salad so you can pretend it is healthy, too.

The basic method is the same:
Take a mason jar (or a high-ball glass for those of you who have appropriate bar-ware) and drop a thick slice of cucumber in the bottom. Add a thick slice of orange or lemon. Then muddle the hell out of them (I use the handle end of a wooden spoon and find it quite therapeutic). Then add lots of ice, pour over 2 oz of Pimm's (you can add another 1/2 oz of gin now if you want to amp up the flavor and potency of the drink), and fill up the glass with your fizzy sweet soda of choice (or use sparkling water, agave nectar and extra lemon juice if you are adverse to purchasing commercial soda. Or the afore mentioned champagne if you are up for it). Use the end of the wooden spoon to stir it all up and then top with any accoutrements or garnishes you desire: a sliced strawberry gives you fun little boozy snacks to fish out while you are drinking, another slice of un-muddled cuke would look nice too since the muddled one is mush now.

Beer-y pleasures

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.

From behind the veil

I have a friend who has gone behind the veil. It is a meaty veil. And tasty too.

I have a confession: I love sausage. I know that it is horrible for you. I know that it contains more salt and fat than you should eat in a month much less in one go, but I still love the stuff. I can't think of a type of sausage I don't like: dried, smoked, blood, pork, lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, high-end charcuterie or low-end hot dog (OK, I prefer the better type of hot dog, like a Koegel's Vienna, but have been known to enjoy an Oscar Meyer too).

You can blame my love of this incredibly unhealthy meat on rebellion: my parents never allowed me to eat hot dogs when I was a kid--my dad would start quoting Upton Sinclair and talking about ground up fingers. They eat red meat only a couple of times a year, and usually only when I cook for them. So some part of me is still a kicking, screaming teenager inside and gets an extra thrill when my teeth snap through that casing and the hot sausage juice floods my mouth. I try to tell myself that I make up for this nutritional weakness with the abundant vegetal nature of the rest of my diet (yeah, yeah, I see you rolling your eyes...).

Anyway, back to the veil. Tonight I was lucky enough to eat this for dinner:
Focus on the tubes of beauty in the foreground and on the left side of the plate: I present to you Brian Pinkelman's first batch of homemade smoked sausage. Brian is a brave man! He screwed his courage (and stomach) to the sticking place and plunged behind that veil! He didn't just intellectually accept that this product is made of vast quantities of fat but he tracked down fatty-enough meat (which apparently is hard to come by and requires a special order), manhandled it, mixed it, stuffed it and smoked it. And then, bless him, he shared it!

I am much too scared to go behind the veil. There is a big difference between knowing that sausage is bad for you and being elbow deep in the fat that you intend eventually to ingest. I fear that I would be overwhelmed with the visceral sight of the ingredients and would be unable to enjoy sausage ever again. And that is just not a risk I'm able to take.

God it was good. So good that after I finished mine I got on the phone and offered to babysit for his (albeit cute and infinitely better behaved than my own) kids if he paid me in sausage.

Or maybe I can come up with a trade--I was thinking as I ate the blissful thing that I wished I had some sauerkraut to go with it. Some homemade sauerkraut, something I have wanted to make but never took the plunge. What with the possibility of more Brian-creations on my plate in the future, I feel like destiny is telling me to ferment my first cabbage!

And speaking of fermentation, I got to enjoy the marvelous tube of meat with my first taste of my Brian's new beer--a toasty, tasty Grand Cru.

For those of you who brew, here is what went into it:
5 lbs 2-row pale barley
3 lbs wheat
1 lb caravienne (toasted barley)
2 lbs Michigan wildflower honey
1 oz hallertauer (hops--flavoring)
1 oz strisselspalt (hops--aromatic)
Belgian Abbey Ale Yeast

How that becomes beer is a bit of a mystery to me, but I know it involves a weekend day's worth of hanging out on the deck with friends, a full cooler of the last batch of beer (you know, to keep the inspiration up) and a big cauldron of stuff simmering away on the turkey-fryer/propane thingy and fiddling around with digital thermometer and lots of buckets and tubing. As Brian quotes frequently from The Joy of Homebrewing essential to the process is the phrase "Relax! Have a homebrew!"

ahhhhhh

The kids have been subdued, this is what my sangria pitcher looks like and I feel much better now that the malondialdehyde and hydroperoxide in my system have been neutralized by the polyphenols in the wine. And I also feel better because of the ALCOHOL!

I made it with a bottle of La Vieille Ferme red--super cheap this month at $5.47 a bottle at Plum Market--a lemon, a lime, some sugar, and what was left in the triple sec bottle. The swig of wine I took before dumping it in the pitcher made me think it would be fine without the (ahem) fortifications, no bells and whistles, but perfectly drinkable which is more than I can say for most wine at this price.

Taking it up a notch

Well now she's done it. That Ami. She took it up a notch.

To what am I refering?

Why, the hosting of our book group. I hosted last month and I gotta say I'm glad that I'm not the person who has to follow Ami (Hi Meagan! Thanks for stepping up to the plate!) Don't get me wrong, the evening at my house was perfectly enjoyable: we talked about The Welsh Girl (which I was happy to read again) and ate a combination of British and German food that actually went together rather well:

Sole with creamy leek sauce, minted pea puree, German potato salad and red cabbage, with white wine and beer to drink.

But we were all crammed around my small dining room table that seats 4 comfortably, 6 in a pinch and was really too cramped for the 8 people in our group...I had a little music playing and had cleaned up the worst of the crap around the house, but that was about it when it came to ambiance.

The exquisite evening at Ami's complemented the book we read: William Trevor's My House in Umbria. Trevor's prose is so subtle and the untrustworthy narrator, Mrs Delahunty, is so complicated that we spent a good deal of time discussing what was real and what was imagined in the story. Trevor's ability to write cringe-worthy scenes while maintaining your sympathy for the main character raises complicated feelings which we discussed while gathered in Ami's backyard, drinking Gin and Tonic's (in honor of the main character) and icy homemade Limoncello and Orangcello from Lea's sister:
The weather was perfect as we gathered around the table--a little breeze to keep the mosquitoes away but still sunny enough for us to imagine ourselves in an exotic locale. And Ami set a beautiful table:

Peonies and party favors! Ami photocopied some of her favorite Trevor short stories for each of us to take home. (photo courtesy of John Baird)

And of course the food didn't disappoint (I'm wracking my brain for a time when a book group meal failed to live up to expectations...). There was chicken diavolo cooked on the grill, a beautiful salad from Marilyn's garden, sauteed vegetables, Italian bread and of course, plenty of good red wine.

Here I am helping myself to some more of that good red wine. (photo courtesy of John Baird)

I made a dessert from a cookbook that I had neglected for very petty reasons: La Tavola Italiana is a perfectly decent book that has suffered the sin of acquaintance. I bought the book shortly after TAing for a man who had to be the worst Shakespeare professor I have ever witnessed. I was put in the awkward position of having to serve as his apologist to kids who were clued in that their $20,000+ tuition should have offered them better than what this guy was presenting. What does this have to do with the cookbook? The professor was friends with the authors of the cookbook and they mention him by name in the introduction to a few of the recipes. Once I read that a recipe came from his kitchen, well, it just turned my stomach. But thankfully after owning this book for at least 10 years, I have (mostly) recovered from my grad school experience and can once again open the book without gnashing my teeth. So I finally made something out of it!

Ricotta cake with sweetened almond ricotta and strawberries.

It was pretty decent. The cake wasn't anything mind blowing; I liked the pine nuts that studded it and it had a pleasant spongy texture. But it was a fine platform for the consumption of sweetened ricotta and strawberries and tasted particularly good with one of John's expertly pulled espressos. The ricotta (whole milk, not skim) had a few tablespoons of amaretto and a few teaspoons of powdered sugar stirred in. I pressed it through a sieve to make sure it was creamy and not lumpy. Simple, but really nice.

The whole evening was leisurely and graceful and none of us was in a rush to get back in our cars and leave such an enchanted place.

Happy women. (photo courtesy of John Baird)

A perfect photo of Marilyn--she is always able to get us to smile! (photo courtesy of John Baird)

Moderation in winter

I had a little reminder of what it is like to be a normal grown up rather than a slave to kid-sized creatures this week. I also discovered that it isn't as hard to be social during my normally reclusive month of February as I had been making it out to be. I met friends for drinks twice in one week.

The first event took place after a parent's meeting at my kid's preschool (Open house March 7! Ms. Juli is GOD!). Lea and I headed down to a newish Cuban restaurant called Cafe Habana and sat at the bar and tried their Mojitos. Sarah and Brian met us after they had an elementary school parent's meeting ('tis the season) and we all reveled in the opportunity to a)be in a bar on a week night! b)talk to grown ups! c)stay up past 9:30 pm (the time at which I usually have wrestled my resistant sleepers into submission and promptly collapsed myself). The drinks were good but the noise and smoke level made me prefer the also-good Mojitos at Zanzibar.

When we left the bar and were walking back to the car, Lea and I noticed the moon looking a little funny. As the driver, I had only consumed one Mojito, so I didn't think it was alcohol to blame for my perception--the moon looked weirdly red and round. When we got home and I checked with my resident astronomer, I found out that we had been seeing the lunar eclipse! It was really beautiful (if you missed it, check out all these images on Flickr) and I think I enjoyed it even more because of the chance factor--no planning, just the luck of being out at night with a friend and looking up into a clear night sky.

Then last night I skipped out at 8:30 and met my friend Emily at The Earle. I discovered that it wasn't that hard to leave the house (even for the second time in a week) and meet up with a friend after the kids were (mostly) ready for bed. It was really, really good to reconnect with an old friend from my UMS days who I have not seen in way too long. I also discovered that The Earle has one of my favorite wines on their wine-by-the-glass menu at the moment--Woop Woop Australian Shiraz 2006.

The key these grown up evenings being workable is moderation--I didn't stay out really late either time and I didn't have more than one alcoholic drink, so getting up the next morning and dealing with the responsibilities of the day weren't difficult at all. I think in the past I've been so relieved to get a break that I have perhaps indulged too much and for too long and then regretted it the next day. Fatigue and dehydration made me think that meeting up with friends in winter was just too hard to do regularly, but now I think I can make the rest of this grim season a little more tolerable by scheduling more evenings of moderation.

And with that realization, I ask for recommendations so I can diversify my locations beyond Zanzibar and The Earle. I'm ok with being a frequent patron of these two places, but I'd bet there are other places I don't know about that I'd enjoy too. Send me your suggestions of other bars/restaurants that fulfill the following conditions:
1) a non-smoking section
2) not too loud to have a conversation
3) they are ok with you ordering one drink and hanging out for a while on a weeknight when no-one else is waiting for your table or seat (I love the wait staff at the Earle--they totally get it that grown ups need a place to talk over a glass of wine and I've never felt rushed there; yes, I tip accordingly, as though my table was a cab with a meter running, not just a percentage of the cost of my one glass of wine).
4) While there may be nicely attired patrons, you don't feel like you have to get gussied up to go there--I'm just too damn tired for gussying on a weeknight.

What 2-buck-chuck was made for

Mulled Wine!

I'm not the biggest fan of egg nog. Once in a while a little bit of it amply fortified with whiskey tastes good, but most of the time egg nog is too rich for me. I feel like I'm drinking creme anglaise and while I like creme anglaise in its proper place (that is to say, accompanying a dessert), I don't choose it as a beverage. Mulled wine is much more my kind of holiday beverage and it also serves to scent the whole house with its spicy bouquet. The Williams Sonoma stuff is a good lazy-person's alternative to digging around in the spice cupboard to locate the appropriate items, but it is pretty darn simple to assemble your own. Some cinnamon sticks, allspice berries, cloves, ginger slices and a star anise or two if you are feeling exotic combined with the wine, some sugar and citrus peel can be combined in about 5 minutes. Some people also add brandy, but since I like to sip mugs of this stuff all day long (on the weekend--I try to stay sober when weekday responsibilities are involved) I leave the brandy out or else I'd be, as the Brits like to say, blotto.

Yesterday, while on my third (or fourth?) mug of wine I sat down and finally finished sewing this totebag as a Christmas gift for my dear sister:
On the front are three of Fiona's little alien drawings that I embroidered. From left to right they are Momo, Mi and Fomi. Mi is my favorite. And inside is a soft doty flannel lining:
I'm going to send it to her with some chocolates, nice lavender soap, orange and almond biscotti (recipe to come soon) and homemade peanut butter dog biscuits for her darling Basenji, Theo (another recipe to come soon).

Mulled wine

One bottle of cheap dry red wine
1/3 C sugar
2 T of spices--lots of whole cinnamon sticks and whole allspice, some whole cloves (not too many--those little buggers are strong), slices of fresh ginger, a star anise or two if you are feeling exotic
strips of lemon and orange peel
1/2 C of brandy (optional)

Put the spices in a large tea-ball or tie loosely in cheese cloth. Heat up the red wine, sugar, spices and peel until steaming. Let spices steep for at least 20 minutes--remove spices and peel after about an hour (it'll get really strong if you forget and leave the spices in, in which case you can dilute it down with another bottle of wine and some more sugar). If you don't plan on sipping this all day long and want it to pack more of a punch, or if you want a more intense day-long buzz, then add the brandy too.

What we'll be drinking

I just got back from Arbor Farms where I was picking up the last of the ingredients for our Thanksgiving menu and, most fun of all, picking out what we'll drink:From right to left--Vruit, for the small people, Estancia 2006 Pinot Noir with dinner, and for the cheese course, a half-bottle of Chateau Beylieux 2003 Sauternes.

Arbor Farms has good deals on wine. Their selection isn't the biggest in town, but the store manager loves to talk about wine (he pointed me to the Estancia and said it was a great deal and better than some of the higher priced Pinots he carries) and they give you a 10% discount when you buy any 6 bottles.

I was going to get some tawny port for the cheese course, but then I spied the Sauternes and went for that. The first time I tasted Sauternes was when I lived in Bordeaux and was invited to dinner at one of the profs houses. A fellow lecteur, who was a non-drinker, brought along a bottle of Sauternes that someone had given him; the prof said that it was a really good Sauternes, way out of a lecteur's price range, and when it rolled across my tongue it made me think of liquid gold. Since it is cold and damp and rainy today, I was inspired to bring that bit of sunshine to our meal tomorrow. It probably won't be as glorious as that first sip years ago (especially since this is a relatively affordable bottle), but I'll embellish it with my memories.

Cider making time

I present to you the totally self-serving birthday present I am giving Brian for his birthday:
Nope, I'm not planning on deep frying a turkey; this stainless steel beauty is perfect for beer brewing and (drum roll please) hard cider making!

Now we need to pick a cider mill. The cider can be pasteurized (since we are adding champagne yeast to the cider to ferment it) but cannot have any preservatives (most of the stuff you get at a standard grocery store will have preservatives. So when Meijer's is having a sale and cider is $1.50 a gallon, go ahead and get it for mulling, but don't expect it to ferment).

The closest mill, Dexter Cider Mill, fits the bill--they don't even pasteurize--but unfortunately, we bought a half gallon there a couple of weeks ago and I wasn't impressed with the flavor. It was pretty bland stuff, lacked the spicy kick that I crave and tasted like it was overloaded with bland, sweet apple varieties, like red delicious.

Right now I'm tempted to try Erwin Orchards, in South Lyon. I wouldn't be tempted to go apple picking there because they don't have my favorite apple, the Jonathan, available. But I have heard good things about their cider from an email list I'm on.

The other three mills under consideration (all of which I'd have to call to find out if they add preservatives) are:

• Parmenter Northville Cider Mill
• Ostbaum Orchards (also in Northville)
• Wasem Fruit Farm (in Milan) which I'm feeling quite warmly toward because they got my fruit-o-phobic kids to try different varieties of apples on their respective school field trips to the farm last week.

Brewing

Rather than freak out about school starting and having to wake the kids up at 7 am when their summer bedtime has been around 10:30 PM, I'll focus on something much more enjoyable:

Alcohol

Brian is a great lover of beer, particularly wheat beer. Bell's Oberon is the local wheat beer he prefers, while Franziskaner is the bottled import he buys and Erdinger is the draft beer he drinks when he gets sent to Germany on work trips. Wheat beer is usually fruity and spicy with words like "clove," "toffee," "citrus," and (somewhat alarmingly) "banana" bandied about in reviews. It is also a "premium" beer and pretty expensive.

Brian has talked about home brewing since two of his work friends are brewing aficionados and he has happily sampled their wares. So this summer, he convinced me of the economic sense it made to investment in the equipment, borrowed a friend's deep fat turkey fryer (good for cooking up the wort outside so it doesn't stink up the house) and got started. He made two types on his first attempt: a wheat and a pilsner.
Here he is corrupting our kids by involving them in the beer production process. Fiona gets a dollar for helping Brian wash bottles and they each get a dollar for helping with the filling, capping, and labeling.Ian got to write "P1" on all the pilsner bottles, while Fiona got to put smiley faces on the caps of the wheat beers. After the proper number of weeks of waiting we tried the stuff and it was pretty good! The wheat was better than the pilsner, though personally I found the wheat almost too flavorful--great for sipping, but I couldn't finish a whole one without feeling overwhelmed. But Brian and his wheat-beer friends love the stuff. The pilsner had a nice initial taste but no lasting bouquet or depth.

Batch two was another wheat, which turned out well, and a Mexican style lager which, since its yeast requires a cold ferment, is still awaiting judgment.

It's great to see Brian so excited about something in the eating and drinking department; he's happy to taste whatever I cook but I don't think he really got the thrill of a well executed pie, or a tricky fish dish that turned out well, until he started brewing. And I am pleased about the economic side of the process. But he really got my attention and support when he mentioned a few weeks ago that this fall he could try and make me a batch of hard cider, a beverage I dearly love.

When I was a kid, I used to make this stuff under my bed. I wasn't a lush, and wasn't even aware that what I was doing was making the cider alcoholic; I just liked the slight fizz and sharpness that came when the cider started to turn. When a gallon was about half empty, I'd sneak it out of the fridge and hide it under my bed. After about a week, the gallon jug would show signs of swelling and I'd take the lid off and inhale the scent of my yeasty, fizzy apple cider. Since then, I've tried pretty much any hard cider that crossed my path with my two favorites being the cloudy, potent Scrumpy from the West Country in England, and dry, champagne-like Cidre Brut from Normandy.

I'll probably call our local cider mill, the Dexter Cider Mill, which still uses 100 year old equipment and an oak press, and see if we can do some sort of bulk buy to keep the price from being too outrageous.

If anyone has experience making hard cider and tips to pass on, please do!

Cheese brain

A friend was incredibly generous and gave me a bag full of Zingerman's delicacies for the minimal task of watering her indoor plants every couple of weeks while she was away this summer. There were chocolates, a lovely little coconut lime cake and a mysterious package labeled "Langres." Wikipedia informs me that this is "a soft, pungent cow's milk cheese that is known for its rind, which is washed with champagne."
But I confess, this cheese scared me just a little. It reminded me of brain coral which, the few times I've gone snorkeling, freaked me out. The smell was powerful, a big whiff of barnyard as soon as I opened the paper.

So I chickened out, wrapped it back up and called a friend to supply some culinary support. Ami was kind enough to stop by after work and cut into the oozing brain, er, cheese.
It was very ripe so we smeared on on baguette slices and topped it with this stuff:
pear mostarda, which frankly, is not my favorite cheese condiment. If I could have found the 1/3rd-of-the-price fig jam that I know is hiding somewhere in my kitchen, I would have gone for that. The pear mostarda is ok--thin slices of pear in a very lightly mustardy jam base--but the pear flavor is too washed out for me. I like really ripe flowery pear flavor that punches you in the face. I bought this stuff when the NYTimes raved about it back in 2005 and still have about half a jar left...but I did actually enjoy the stuff with the Langres. The cheese wasn't as intense as its smell implied, but it still needed some sort of sweet counterpart to balance the barnyard--pear mostarda, fig jam, fresh grapes, figs, pears or apples, something along those lines.

We drank a cool, dry rose with enough flavor to stand up to the cheese. This is my new favorite summer wine:
Bonny Doon's Vin Gris de Cigare, 2005, about $11. I drank it at a friend's house in July side by side with a decent rose from Provence and liked this one better. And I'm also charmed by a vineyard with a sense of humor. The Cigare refers to the spaceship pictured on the label above and there is a creepy alien face on the screw top. Yippie for decent screw top wines! One less piece of equipment to forget when I go on a picnic.

Summer tea and toxins

I crave iced tea in the summer far more often than I actually consume it.

Iced tea requires a little forethought--time to brew the tea and then let it cool and an appropriate container in which to store the cooled tea. I'm not so good at that planning ahead stuff but I could probably get my act together if I had the appropriate container available. My big teapot is a gorgeous Wedgewood Blue Willow wedding gift that would get smashed to pieces by the small people if I left it in the fridge.

After much searching for a sturdy yet not hideous container, I found this:

The Frigoverre 1 L glass pitcher containing concentrated iced jasmine tea.

I love this thing. And I love that it was made in Italy and yet only costs $7.50. I'm making the tea super strong so it lasts a while. When I want some, I pour about half a glass, add some ice cubes and then fill the rest of the glass up with water.

What with all the recalls of Chinese products out there, I'm a little paranoid about what I'm buying these days, especially if it will store food. I also bought the 2 L pitcher which I use for the kids orange or grape juice so I won't have to worry about crazy chemicals or lead leaching into their beverages. My kids are weird enough (charming! charmingly weird!); god only knows what a little industrial poisoning would do to them.

We also got rid of all our Nalgene bottles after discovering that they are made with a plastic that leaches Bisphenol A into the water. Don't you love it? Containers that are specifically made as water bottles with nice endocrine disruptors! My kids have been drinking from these for the past few years which probably explains a lot...but now we have replaced all the Nalgene with a combination of stainless steel Klean Kanteen and coated aluminum Sigg water bottles (which, if you aren't picky about the design on the outside of the bottle, you can often get on sale at the REI Outlet.)

I know this is just one step and we'll still be getting Bispheol A from other sources, but at least this is one relatively easy way to reduce our intake.

What is up

What I'm reading:

I just finished Flight which was fantastic, but I will save my comments until after my book group meets in late July to talk about the book here. I started Michael Chabon's latest, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and it is terrific, too. The alternate reality of a temporary Jewish homeland on an island off the coast of Alaska where the primary language is Yiddish takes some mental adjustment; the prominent humor is very, very ironic and Jewish. I was snorting with laughter when I read this passage in which a gentile reporter who learned Yiddish from "some pompous old German" and whose Yiddish is described as "like a sausage recipe with footnotes" tries to talk to two hardened (Yiddish) homicide detectives:

"A need to repeat the rash threats of yore does not, I assure you, exist, Detective Shemets....Evergreen and ripe with the sap of their original violence they remain."

Which later gets him the response:
"Brennan, please, I beg you to speak American....What the fuck do you want?"

How can you not love dialog like that?

But the book isn't just funny. Though I'm only on page 99, it already has moments of beauty that are sad, in a wasted, persecuted Jewish sort of way. To say this book gives me great insight into my father and his predecessors is a bit of an understatement.

What I'm knitting:

I finished the Branching Out scarf and it looks like it will be the perfect length--not too long for a partly decorative, partly warming piece of neck wear. Here it is being blocked:
The Artfibers Ming yarn was luscious to work with--Thanks again to Deb for the treat! I actually had someone in a doctor's waiting room ask if they could touch the yarn because it gives off that kind of glow.

I sticking with sturdier stuff for the Pea Pod Baby Set I just started knitting for my kid's pre-school auction this fall. I have no patience with the yarn called for in the pattern: a Debbie Bliss yarn with cashmere that is supposed to be dry cleaned. That strikes me as a recipe for a baby sweater that never gets used; I don't know about the babies the designer has met, but my kids copiously urped breast milk all over their clothes (and mine) pretty much every ten minutes and cashmere was not a part of our wardrobe.

What I'm tasting:

I tried the Cold-brewed iced coffee method from the NY Times and thought it was ok. The way the writer, Cindy Price, described the resulting beverage in the article made it sound dramatically different from the "normal" iced coffee I usually make (that is, chuck the leftover coffee from hubby's morning brew in a jar and shove it in the fridge until mid-afternoon when the caffeine is absolutely necessary to keep the kids from making mincemeat out of me before Brian gets home. If I'm desperate I swill it straight from the jar; if I have a little more prep-time I actually pour it in a glass with ice cubes! and maybe a little splash of milk!) Price describes "hints of chocolate, even caramel" coming out of the cold-brewed version. Well, I made a batch of the cold-brewed stuff (1/3 C ground coffee mixed up with 1 and 1/2 C cold water and left overnight to steep, then strained through a coffee filter). It was fine, but the angels neglected to play their trumpets over my head. I couldn't tell the difference between that and the stuff I usually drink. It was kind of nice not to have to heat up water for coffee that you want to drink cold, but as I am one of the few, the proud, the non-garbage disposal owners, cleaning the coffee grounds out of the jar was a messy chore. If you do have a disposal and can just swish it around and dump it down the drain, then this method might be good for you.

However, the angels were in attendance on my birthday when I tasted best red wine I've ever had the privilege of drinking. Brian and I went up to the Five Lakes Grill for their monthly theme dinner; this month was "A Taste of Spain". The food was good, but not mind blowing--there were some tapas, a nice gazpacho, some garlicy big shrimp, a fancified paella and an orange creme brulee. Everything was very nicely prepared, but none of it rocked my world. What did set me spinning was the red wine that was paired with the "Modern Style Paella": 2001 Remelluri Rioja. It was so ripe and rich and smoky and fruity I just about ran out of wine adjectives to describe it. It was this wine, and not the food, that Brian and I talked about on the way home. I've found it listed on-line on sale for $22.99/bottle, but I'd rather find a local source for it.

I have a new favorite platform for summer berries--the basic French yogurt cake, Gateau au Yaourt.
The cake is very springy and moist and the small amount of vanilla and rum in the batter give it a big boost of flavor. The strawberries pictured above were the very end of the Michigan crop (at least around here). Fiona and my mom and I went out and picked berries at Rowes earlier this week. The berries required sunstantial work--there weren't many per plant and they were small. But the small size was due to the stressed-out nature of the plants at the end of their fruit producing season and stressed-out, tired plants produce incredibly sweet and perfumed berries (if only all stressed-out, tired entities had such lovely results...). These berries are about as close in flavor to a wild strawberry as I've ever tasted coming from a cultivated plant. And they pair wonderfully with the yogurt cake and a big dollop of whipped cream.

What I'm writing:

I have an idea that I don't want to curse by talking about it. Sorry.

Tea response!

Yea! I got a response/translation/information about the Tea that Brian brought back from China for me! Isn't the web wonderful? The info was left in the comments section, but I'm re posting it here so all can benefit from the wisdom. Can't wait to try the monkey-picked tea (bright green box)!

1.Pu-Er:
Originally from Yun-nan province. Taste is mild(but could be weird to some people). Tea made from it is so dark that you recognize it immediately(and got a good coloring effect). Strongly recommended after each greasy meal. It washes out the fat/calorie you eat, yet won't cause uncomfortable feeling even if you drink a lot on a regular basis. Its function is common knowledge in Canton area where I'm from; It's not my favorite though.

2. Tie-Guan-Yin:
Most-popular pick in Canton morning-tea and other tea sessions. Nice after-taste. Smells really good...Also wash out fat. But don't over do it.

3. Like you said, jasmine tea. It's tea that absorbed jasmine aroma during the making. I think it's weird taste...just not what pure tea is like to me.

4. Long-Jing:
Quite popular in other provinces, but definitely not in Canton. I don't drink it much, so I'm not allowed to make a comment on it. Quite light compared to 2nd.

5. Dong-Ding-Wu-Long:
Expensive stuff if this is the genuine stuff. The name comes from the legend that: this tea only grows in mountains that only monkeys can climb on and pick, thus making it real...special. Originated from Taiwan I think. I don't remember what that taste like, let me know after you've tried it?

All the tea in China

I have 5 new boxes of tea from China. Unfortunately I do not read Chinese and have no idea which is which! I've tried the brown (tasted like a Yunnan tea I have) and the yellow (Jasmine pearls; even I can identify that). Is there anyone out there who can read the labels for me?

The 5 boxes are the peace-offering/I-missed-you gift from my husband when he came back on Friday from his emergency trip to Shanghai.

Why an emergency trip? Well, about a week and a half earlier he received some really freaked out phone calls from the engineering big wigs saying that something was messed up with the Chinese release of a Cadillac. Brian calibrates the transmission on the American release of this car and had to get his ass over their pronto to help whoever had dropped the ball. So as soon as he could get his Visa fed ex-ed from the consulate, he was off on a plane to Shanghai.

A Chinese billboard of said soon-to-be-fixed car

Now normally getting to go to Shanghai would be great! But under these circumstances, it was not so great. He worked 13 hour days (he had to be at the engineering facility for the 8 am and 8pm conference calls back to Milford) and got to know the road between his hotel and the engineering facility pretty well. The rest of Shanghai? Well, he had one afternoon free before he got back on the plane and he moseyed around a little, took photos of the architecture in the smog and bought tea and other quirky stuff for the kids.

That's the main Art Museum. He didn't have time to actually go inside...

Of course, with his absence I indulged in a little self-pity, after all he got out of town for the coldest week we've had this year--the snot froze into little plugs in the kids' noses, so they even cancelled school for two days.

The kids were rather maniacal from being cooped up and stuck with just me for a week. When he returned with the cute clothes he brought them, they were so excited that they danced around like little wind up toys:

Fiona in her "Sparkles the Rescue Cat Dress"

Then we fed them some of the Chinese New Year candy Brian brought home for them and they got even stranger:
The candy includes such delicacies as:

Gummy Corn on the Cob

and

Pudding flavored squishy puffs

Squishy puff kids in their padded (pudding flavored?) Chinese outfits

The big bummer (in my opinion) of the trip was the lack of time to eat. Brian got to know the Chinese cafeteria food pretty well. Finally on his last evening there, he was taken out for a banquet-style meal and gorged himself on what he described as wonderful food. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring the camera to this event (or maybe he was too embarrassed to have to explain his wife's food fixation and why he was photographing all the food...)

However, I did learn that airplane food can look really tempting, provided you fly first class through Tokyo and order the Asian meal:

Yes, people, that is sashimi on an airplane.

We're trying to get back to normal (or as normal as we get) but it is a challenge with one parent whose body clock is 13 hours off from the rest of us. Yesterday Brian sat down with Ian to read a Choose Your Own Adventure book with him (Ian has just discovered these and loves them; I appreciate them on a new level since you can have some pretty interesting conversations with a kid about narrative and what makes a good story after reading one) and when I went up to check on them, Ian was reading with his book propped up against his sleeping Dad. Dad made it through one "choice" in the book before collapsing.

My solution to the slumbering papa? Why, make him some tea, of course! After all, I have five new varieties from which to choose!

Beer Breath

Brian's birthday was this past Saturday and one of my gifts to him was an all-beer dinner for us and a few friends (due to our dinky dining room, we couldn't make it a huge gathering). Every course was made with beer and there were a load and a half of beers for sampling and tasting.

The menu consisted of:

Cheddar Ale Soup
Choucroute Garnie with Parsley Potatoes
Beer Braised Brussels Sprouts
Chocolate Porter Cake

By far my favorite was the soup:

There's nothing fancy about the soup--a base of leeks, carrots, celery and garlic get sauteed in butter, then flour is sprinkled over and cooked briefly to form a roux, then you add milk, broth and ale. I veered away from the recipe and pureed the soup and then set it aside until shortly before serving it, when I added the sharp cheddar cheese. Rather than top it with bacon, I sprinkled on some chives and it was all set--velvety, rich, but with a nice bite from the beer.

The choucroute was hearty and went well with lots of different beers. I took an excursion to Hamtramck to get good sausages--knockwurst, bratwurst and kielbasa--and sauerkraut.

The brussels sprouts were decent, but a little bit weird--braised in beer with whole cumin seeds and a handful of fresh basil...two flavors that don't really go together.
The basil was overpowered by the cumin and beer so it wasn't really noticeable. I wouldn't include it again.

The biggest disappointment looked promising,
but was pretty disgusting. Lesson: Keep beer out of your cake and out of your ganache.

We might have all been a little too buzzed to be dissuaded by the sour aftertaste and dry-as-sawdust texture. Most of us choked some of it down by focusing on the fresh raspberries between the layers and on top, the raspberry ice cream that was on the side and full glasses of Lindemans Framboise Lambic.

The food, other than dessert, was good, but most of our attention was focused on the myriad of different beers to taste. There were some old favorites: Oberon, Bass Ale, and a couple of the Dexter-based Jolly Pumpkin Ales and then there were all the new beers to sample. We put out a lot of small glasses, set some of the beers on a lazy susan and then started tasting.
I have a new favorite wheat beer, Wittekirke:
It has a honey aftertaste that manages to convey the essence of honey without the sweetness--very crisp.

When the party was over, Brian and I dumped the rest of the cake in the trash, packed up the left over sausages to freeze for a hearty dinner once the cold weather really kicks in and then gazed at the vast quantity of beer still sitting in our beer fridge...

The mucus blaster

For those of you not currently expelling green gunk from your nose and lungs, the timing of this post may make you scratch your head. After all it is Spring, right? Time to start waxing poetic about watercress soup and the anticipated first peas and asparagus? But I know there are other folks out there afflicted with the dreaded Spring-cold-of-copious-snot and to you I say this "Spicy Hot Chocolate".

We all know that hot peppers (capsicums) make your nose run when eaten in sufficient quantity. And we all know that a good cup of hot chocolate can comfort even the most miserable sick human (provided that the stomach remains stable and thank god this has not been a vomiting sickness or else I would never hear the end of Ian's discussions that throw up shouldn't really be called vomit but chyme. I really don't like being corrected on picky technical terms when I am sick.).

Unfortunately, dairy products can exacerbate mucus formation and when already drowning in the green goo, hot chocolate made with milk and perhaps topped with a blob of whipped cream doesn't sound like such a good idea. However I think I have come up with the hot-chocolate-comfort-vs-mucus-production-conundrum with an antidote.

By combining the following with hot milk (and a little extra sugar because let's be honest, one needs a little extra sugar when sick)
you get spicy hot chocolate and the capsicum from the cayenne pepper actually cuts through any added mucus production that the milk might inspire! Add enough cayenne and you can blast pretty much any nose open (I know, pretty vision, yes?).

My inspiration for this beverage came from this:
Vosges Red Fire Bar with two kinds of chili peppers and cinnamon mixed in dark chocolate. At $6-7 per bar, it isn't a daily indulgence in these parts.

So I've been making myself at least one and sometimes far more than one cup of Spicy Hot Chocolate every day and it has made being sick just a little more tolerable. You don't have to be sick to enjoy this, and being a bit of a junky for spicy food I suspect I'll be sprinkling cayenne pepper into my hot chocolate whenever I get the chance.

Spicy Hot Chocolate

One mug full of hot milk
One heaping spoonful of cocoa or hot chocolate powder (the Ghirardelli sweet ground chocolate and cocoa is my favorite)
Sugar to taste
1/8 t cinnamon
1/8 t cayenne pepper
big gob of whipped cream

Mix together the first 5 ingredients, make sure you stir well. Then top with a poof of cream. Settle back and grab the Kleenex box and let 'er flow!