Mahlzeit

Baking to share

2012-01-21T16:46:00.003-06:00

One of the better side effects of baking is a warm kitchen. Our kitchen is freezing because it (like the rest of our old house) isn't insulated. Unlike the rest of our old house, however, the kitchen is new(ish) and it's our fault it isn't insulated. The criminal that we hired to do it sold us on the concept that the plastic moisture barrier "has the same R factor as insulation" and we were such idiots we didn't call him on it.

So it's a good idea to bake in the winter--it gets the kitchen nice and warm.

Of course, the downside of baking so much is lots of fattening goodies in the house. Last week's turtle cupcakes are still calling my name and now there's almost 3 dozen of these tormenting me as well. I will need to be giving them away, or I'll just sit here eating them, because they're pretty yummy.

Glazed lemon-coriander cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 T crushed coriander
zest of one lemon
juice of 1/4 lemon*
2/3 cup honey (or 2/3 cup sugar, which will make a sweeter, heavier cookie)
2/3 cup plain yogurt*
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
optional: 1/4- 1/3 cup crushed walnuts or pecans (I like the crunch)

Preheat oven to 375F/190C

Cream together first six ingredients. Beat the honey, yogurt and egg, and beat about 1/3 of it into the butter mixture. Slowly add the flour, alternating with the remaining wet ingredients. Fold in the nuts and drop dough in rounded teaspoons onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, or until edges are golden brown. Makes a soft, cake-y cookie.

Allow to cool completely, then glaze with a lemon glaze:

1T butter, melted
pinch of salt
juice of 1/3 lemon
powdered sugar, enough to make a thick but pourable consistency (about 1/3+ cup)

Drizzle over the cookies and allow to set.

*the recipe I based this on called for buttermilk or sour milk and no lemon juice, just zest. Since I added lemon juice for a lemonier (is that a word?) flavor, I substituted the less-acidic yogurt. Also, I had no buttermilk. If you really want to punch up the lemon flavor, add 1/4 teaspoon of lemon extract, but I think that would overwhelm the delicate coriander flavor.

This is a Dark Days treat-- only the lemon is not local.

No such thing as "one pot"

2012-01-19T08:58:00.002-06:00

So, I'm Greek, which basically means that I am constitutionally incapable of using only one pot. The following "one pot" meal actually used 4 pots, a jar and two bags and that was before I got to the biscuits.

Squash soup with caramelized onions
2-3 cups veggie stock
Cream or half-half
1 quart squash puree (I used acorn)
3 medium garlic cloves, smashed and minced
1 large onion
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 T molasses

Make stock using the frozen bits and pieces you've been saving. Add the puree, salt and pepper to taste and blend with a whisk. In a cast iron skillet, melt the butter until it foams, then add the onions. Turn down the heat and sautée at least 10 minutes until onions start to brown and lose their shape. Add the molasses and continue to sautée on low heat, stirring occasionally. Add to the soup and stir. Use the cream or half-half to thin and cool the soup after serving. Do not reheat the soup with the milk product in it as it will curdle.

For a little crunch, garnish with walnuts or pecans. Serve with....

Spicy cheesy biscuits
Standard biscuit recipe
1/2 cup grated cheese (any cheese at all will do)
roasted jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

Mix the biscuit dough, adding the peppers and cheese to the dry ingredients, then blending with the wet. Cook per biscuit instructions.

This also qualifies as a 100% Dark Days meal, as all ingredients were preserved from my garden, or acquired from local sources.

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T09:04:00.002-06:00

Just taking a break for a political statement (since I can't figure out how to actually make the site go dark).

I want to help to raise awareness of two bills in congress: H.R.3261 "Stop Online Piracy Act" and S.968 "PROTECT IP", which could radically change the landscape of the Internet. These bills provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright which would restrict innovation and threaten the existence of websites with user-submitted content, such as all those great recipes you love to make, and important articles that get shared on sites like this one. (Thanks reddit for the content, most of which I stole verbatim)

Please take today as a day of focus and action to learn about these destructive bills and do what you can to prevent them from becoming reality.

Make a call.

Sign the petition.

Thanks. Come back tomorrow for a one-pot meal!

Reconstructing a memory

2012-01-09T09:00:00.000-06:00

My mother used to make pineapple-apricot pie using whole fruit. Given that this was the 60s and 70s, she probably used canned fruit; I'm pretty sure I never saw a fresh apricot until I was an adult, but still, this was a whole fruit pie.

Mom kept all her recipes in a little wooden box; after she died I always knew the recipes were in there, but didn't have the heart to open the box. Crispy, crumbly cheese crackers; spice cake with caramel icing; pineapple upsdie-down cake. And this pie.

I've written before about opening the box finally, more than a decade after she died, only to discover that the box was empty. Wrenching.

The pineapple pie is one I've always wanted to make, so I started hunting around the web for recipes, and I can't find one that uses whole, let alone fresh, fruit. One calls for dried apricots, another for frozen pineapple concentrate. All use canned fruit in heavy (!) syrup. So I'm making it up folks. Call it hubris.

Fresh Pineapple-apricot pie
Crust:
2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup finely ground walnuts
2/3 cup shortening (yes, I use lard)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 T apricot liqueur

Filling:
1 fresh pineapple, cut into bite-sized chunks
2-3 T crystal sugar

1 quart halved, pitted whole apricots
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup wheat pastry flour
1 T corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg white, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 425

Crust:
Toss the ground nuts, flour and salt, cut in the shortening until crumbly. Add the liqueur one tablespoon at a time, and work it in with a fork, using only enough to wet the dough until it sticks together. Divide into two equal pieces and chill. (You can roll them into thick disks first if you like.)

Butter or spray a 9-inch pie plate. Remove half the dough from the refrigerator. Roll it out on a lightly floured surface to form a disc, 1/8-inch thick and 2 inches larger than the pie plate. If it's a weird shape, as mine always is, trim it and puzzle-piece it into a disc, lightly rolling again to make the extra pieces stick. Use a spatula to help lift the dough and transfer it to the pie plate. Press it lightly in the plate to fit. Trim, leaving a 1-inch overhang. Place in the refrigerator to keep cold. You'll use the rest of the dough to create a lattice top. Note: the nut crust is not quite as elastic as a traditional flour crust, so you have to handle it very gently.

For the filling, start by draining off some of the juice from the pineapples: macerate the pieces in the sugar for one hour. Because this recipe uses honey instead of sugar to sweeten, there's a lot of liquid, so don't skip this step. Drain and conserve the juice.*

Once you've drained the pineapple, place all fruit in a large bowl. Toss with the vanilla, honey, cornstarch and flour; mix thoroughly.

Lightly brush the bottom crust all over with the lightly whipped egg white; spoon in the filling and dot with butter.

Roll out the remaining dough and cut nto strips 3/4-inch wide to make a lattice cover over the filling. Trim the overhang to 1 inch. Moisten the edges of the crusts where they meet with a little water, then press them together lightly and turn them under. Crimp the edges.

Brush the lattice crust and the rim with the cream. Optional: sprinkle the surface with 2 tablespoons of turbinato sugar.

Bake 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375°F and bake until it is golden and the juices are bubbling, about 50 to 60 minutes. Let the pie cool on a wire rack before serving.

*Pineapple syrup
Use the rinds and conserved juice to make a simple syrup: Boil the rinds all in 5 cups of water until the fruit starts falling off the rind. Drain and continue to boil, adding juice of 1/2 lemon, and 1 1/2 cups sugar, until volume is reduced to 2 to 3 cups (depending on how syrupy a syrup you want). Drain thoroughly. Keeps about 2 weeks.

A Dark Days offering

2012-01-05T08:30:00.000-06:00

Seasonal, Organic, Local, Ethical

And vegan (which is about as ethical as a meal gets). All the ingredients in this meal came from my garden, except the chili powder, which is the hot organic from The Spice House.

SOLE chili

2 Thai peppers (or other hot pepper, I just happened to have these)
1 medium onion, diced
1 roasted green pepper, diced
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
5-6 small carrots, cut into rough chunks
1 quart roasted eggplant
1 cup heirloom beans (I used Tiger Eye)
Spinach, 4 oz uncooked
1 quart roasted tomatoes
1 pint tomato sauce
2-3 T chili powder (to taste)

Saute the onion and peppers in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Add the cilantro and simmer a couple of minutes. Add the carrots, tomato and eggplant, season to taste. Simmer about 10 minutes, add the beans. Continue to simmer about an hour. Serve with cornbread.

I used the roasted vegetables--peppers, eggplant, tomatoes--that I had cooked and frozen from last summer's garden.

Served with this cornbread, but Snarky Vegan recommends this vegan recipe.

Chamomile

2012-01-02T08:58:00.000-06:00

This year's One Seed Chicago choices are chamomile, basil, and cilantro. I think it's the first year that I've actually liked every choice, and would feel just fine no matter which one wins (last tiny sniff for last year's loser- eggplant). I'll do some posts on the other two choices as well.

Therefore, I'm not tipping my hand, (I'll do some posts on the other two choices as well) but I want to depress some misinformation that has started to get out there via Mike Nowak's show during the announcement:

Chamomile is not hard to grow

I first planted chamomile maybe a decade ago. It's the only time I've ever planted it, and yet I get more chamomile every year than I can use. This is because it reseeds. And I just let it go--I have


Grown for a plant sale in 2011

chamomile in the ornamental beds, in the herb beds, in the berry patch, in the tomatoes, in the onions. It's kind of fun to see where it pops up. If it's really somewhere that I don't want it, I let it get about 5 inches tall, and then move it.

Chamomile is pretty, and it behaves itself. Unlike other flowering herbs, like dill, it doesn't get leggy or wild. The biggest drawback of chamomile is that it's a drag to harvest.

I suppose there are probably other uses for chamomile, but primarily I use it for tea. The tea is made from the yellow seed heads, and you want them without the white petals. I wait for the petals to drop, then I grap the top of a given plant, and just hack all the seed heads off with their stems. Then, unfortunately, you have to remove the stems from all the hundreds of tiny seed heads, and any petals that are left. I put it in a pie pan to dry. Don't crumble it (it may fall apart on its own); store in jars.

What you're left with is the most flavorful tea you can imagine. You'll never drink commercial chamomile tea again--the flavor is a pale shadow of the real thing. I grow enough every year to get me through the winter, because you barely need any to make a pot since the flavor is so strong.

As far as next year, it's just about impossible to harvest it all, so some of the seed heads will fall into the soil, and you'll have chamomile next year too. I'm a little worried this year, because a lot of chamomile has sprouted already because of the extended warmth this year.

Self-seeded chamomile in my Savory Walk

Maybe it will be the first year I need to replant! If so, I might get some seeds from One Seed Chicago.

Ginger

2011-12-30T05:30:00.000-06:00

I had a large piece of ginger left from the ginger pie (with ginger whipped cream*) thatI made for Christmas, so I decided to play around with it and made honey-candied ginger, pickled ginger, crystallized ginger, and ginger syrup (another "waste not" recipe!)

The honey ginger is the winner.

Ginger Syrup
2 cups water
ginger peels from the other recipes
about 2 cups ginger "stock" from making the candy and pickles

1 1/2 cups sugar
juice of 1/4 lemon
lemon zest
pinch of salt

Make 1 more cup of "stock" by boiling the ginger peels in the water; turn heat to simmer and continue to cook until it is reduced by half. Add to the stock from the other recipes. Add the remaining ingredients and heat until the sugar is completely melted. Continue to simmer until the syrup is reduced by a third to half (depending on how thick a syrup you want). You should end up with about 2 cups of syrup.

Use as pancake syrup, or to flavor tea, cocktails, or sparkling water.

*Ginger whipped cream
1 cup heavy cream
2 T powdered sugar
1/2 t vanilla
1/4 cup ginger liqueur

In a small bowl, whip the cream until it starts to thicken. Add the remaining ingredients and continue to beat until stiff, about 3-5 minutes. For best results, put the bowl and the beaters in the freezer for at least 3 hours before hand.

Playing with pie crust

2011-12-27T05:30:00.000-06:00

I did a lot of baking this week and didn't want to make a dessert pie, so I made a quiche instead.

I always avoided pies because I was afraid of the crust. Well, it turns out the crust is the easy part. I make quiche a lot, but only recently started using my own crust once I realized this. Today I added green tea powder and dried mint (about 1/4 teaspoon each) to the flour, and mixed it with some green mint tea still sitting in the pot from this morning.

After a couple of false starts, I seem to have developed a bit of a knack for a tender and flaky crust. I've been playing around with the basic recipe; here are some of my variations.

Basic pie crust
2 cups flour (I use a wheat pastry flour)
2/3 cup shortening (yes, I've been using lard, from humanely-raised local pigs)
1/4 teaspoon salt
4-6 teaspoons water

Whisk the flour and salt, then cut in the shortening until it's mixed to pea-sized bits. Add the liquid a tablespoonful at a time, mixing it with a fork, and being careful not to overwork any single portion of the the dough. The more you handle it, the tougher it will be. I've found because lard is so moist, I usually need only 3-4 tablespoons of liquid.

Finish the last bit of combining with your hands, divide dough into two equal pieces and flatten into disks. Put one away while you roll out the other, it's easier to handle when it's slightly chilled.

Some variations:

You can alter the flour. I've substituted

1/4 cup oats + 1/4 cup ground walnuts

1/4 rice flour

mixed white and wheat flour

used only whole wheat (nice for a quiche)

I've add the following to the crust (not all at once):

dried orange zest

a tablespoon of raw sugar (this is nice for dessert pies)

various sweet or savory spices including

ground coriander, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, ground clove

green tea powder

dried mint

You can mess with the liquid you use too. I've substituted

tea (including a green mint)

apple cider

orange juice

liqueur

Christmas dinner

2011-12-25T14:47:00.000-06:00

I make menu cards every year for our Christmas dinners, using seasonal photos from the garden. Here are the ones from the past few years.

2008

2009

2011

( Don't know where 2010 disappeared to!)

Waste not

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-06:00

Apple, pear or peach peels. Cherry pits. Lemon rinds. Orange rinds. Chard stems.

You should not be throwing any of these away. Any time you use a lemon, orange or lime, zest it before you discard the rind. Leave the zest out for a couple of days on a paper towel, or zap it for a minute (literally, just one minute) in the microwave to dry it, and save it in an old spice jar. This will be the best zest you ever use short of fresh, and essentially free.

All vegetable discards, with the possible exception of potato peels, should be thrown in a ziplock and frozen for a quick stock.

Fruit peels can be turned into simple syrups--a couple of cups of peels, a couple of cups of water and some sugar and lemon juice makes enough syrup for a drink or two.

Here's another stick-to-your ribs Dark Days meal for a gloomy cold day, using this principal!

Potato-leek soup, with a twist
1 large or several small leeks
2 very large russets
3-4 white carrots
2 small parsnips
1 small turnip
2 T butter
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon white peppercorns
Apple stock

Now, then, you've frozen those apple peels from all that apple sauce and pie, right? Right? Good. Because it makes a wonderful stock for soups--sweet and heavy, and able to give vegetarian soups the closest thing to an umami flavor you can get without adding soy sauce. To make stock, put a quart or more of the peels into a quart of water and boil down to three cups (about 10-20 minutes). Drain and set aside.

Peel and roughly cut, into bite sized pieces, the root vegetables and boil until very soft. Drain. Slice the leeks and saute in a couple tablespoons of a high-heat oil like grapeseed or olive. Add butter and the drained roots to the pan and stir over medium heat until the butter is melted. Grind the seasoning and stir it in. Add the stock and simmer a couple hours (or less, if you're impatient). This is not a smooth soup, don't blend it please, you'll want to taste all those lovely chunks.

If you must, fry up some bacon and add it. Cool the soup with a little half-and-half (don't add it directly to the pot; if you reheat this soup with dairy in it, it will curdle). I served this with homemade cheesy biscuits.

A holiday meal

2011-12-20T14:07:00.000-06:00

We're having our oldest friends over for dinner tonight. Even the kids don't argue about setting time aside for dinner with Steve and Gayle every year.

I don't like to make a typical holiday meal of ham or turkey for this family tradition. (I'm not actually making any traditional meals this year--we're having salmon for Christmas day.) I should probably have made at least an attempt at a kosher meal in honor of the first day of hanukkah today, but I couldn't resist the dip (shell fish and cheese) or the cheesecake.

I love putting together meals like this, thinking through all the courses to make a balance, and to make every course interesting and different.

A good bit of the ingredients are local and seasonal, all of it (with the probable exception of the crab meat) is sustainable and whole:

Appetizer

Goat cheese dip with crab meat
Place in a food processor or mixing bowl: 4 oz crumbled goat cheese, 2 T yogurt, 4 T soft cream cheese, winter or indoor herbs: 2-3 sprigs each. I still had chives, parsley, and thyme outside, and rosemary inside. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix until smooth. Serve with homemade crackers.

Hot spiced cider
Mix in a large saucepan: 1 quart cider, 1 cup orange juice, 1 T each cinnamon (or 3-4 cinnamon sticks) orange zest, 1 teaspoon whole coriander, 1/4 each teaspoon nutmeg, allspice, a few black peppercorns. Heat to a simmer, cover and continue to barely simmer for a couple of hours. Strain through cheesecloth. Add a little spiced cider liqueur (scroll down to "apple jail fail-redux").

Dinner

Chicken curry with fall vegetables I finally bought a dutch oven, which you really need to finish a dish like this properly, by letting it simmer in the dutch oven for a couple of hours. I served it with local(ish) wild rice and brussels sprouts.

Dessert

Chocolate raspberry cheesecake. I used this recipe from epicurious, but substituted semi-sweet chocolate and semi-sweet milk chocolate melting dots for the white chocolate. I had to add the melting dots when I discovered that you can't melt chocolate in the microwave because it makes it burn. Good news is that I didn't actually burn down the kitchen (scroll down to the photo that says "Ack").

What's in your larder?

2011-12-18T08:55:00.000-06:00

It used to be a common skill--not just knowing how to put up food, but also a sense of how much you'll need.

I've got plenty of fruit to get me through the winter, I think, and peppers, and eggplants. But I don't think I put up enough tomatoes, and I definitely haven't solved the root-vegetable thing. I still just buy them from the year-round CSA which tends to have local veggies well into early winter. I don't have room to grow the beans I know I'd eat-- about 45 square feet yielded just 3 quarts of beans.

Reading the sustainability blogs as one of the managers of this year's Dark Days Challenge, I'm also amazed at the amount of preserving people do. Do they have a million kids or something? People talk about 40 jars of pickles, and 200 jars of tomato paste. People kill, butcher and freeze 5 and 6 and 7 deer. I start to think that I'm not doing it right.

Last year I made it all the way to May without buying vegetables. This year, I'm not so sure.

Everything in the meal below was made from food I grew, except the seasonings and bacon.

White bean cassoulet with chard
4-6 thick bacon slices
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 cups (1/2-inch-thick) slices diagonally cut carrot
1 cup (1/2-inch-thick) slices diagonally cut parsnip

3 cups white beans (I used Hutterites)
3/4 cup vegetable broth
1 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
3-4 fresh sage leaves, chopped very fine

1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1-2 large tomatoes, skinned, seeded, then roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced

Garnish:
1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated fresh Parmesan or Romano cheese (not for vegans, natch)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Preparation

Cut up some bacon and fry in a large sauce pan until very well done. Drain and set aside. Using the bacon grease, add onion, carrot, parsnip, and garlic; cover and cook 5 minutes or until tender. (Add a little olive oil, lard, or preserved bacon grease if you need more). Add stock, beans, enough cold water to cover, sage, and thyme. I'm told you shouldn't add salt to the beans until they are fully cooked because they won't cook correctly, but I don't know what that means. Plus, there's salt in the bacon. Bring to a boil, and then simmer covered for about 1 1/2 hours, stirring about every 20 minutes.

Add next 4 ingredients and bring back to simmer. When the beans are just about done, add the bacon, parsley and garlic, and simmer another 10 minutes.

Remove the stems from some chard and blanch the leaves. Place these in the bottom of a bowl and ladle in the cassoulet. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and top with a little garnish of extra parsley.

I thought you said you don't bake?

2011-12-15T15:52:00.000-06:00

I'm a baking machine this fall. I've been doing a pie a week (although not this week--I'll make a quiche to fill that promise this week). Yesterday I threw together some cheesy baking-powder biscuits, and I'm planning a cake for my "Housiversary" (25 years in our house on the 16th!) and a chocolate raspberry cheesecake for dinner with friends next week.

Thank goodness my daughter makes the bouche for Christmas!

Here's another use for those Thanksgiving leftovers!

Cranberry-oatmeal cookies
2 sticks butter
1 ½ cups light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
½ cup cranberry sauce
½ teaspoon orange extract

2 cups oats
1 ½ cups wheat pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ salt

1 cup dried cranberries, plumped

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350F/176C. To plump cranberries, place in a pyrex or other microwave-safe container, cover with water and heat on high for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Combine and whisk the dry ingredients. Set aside. Cream the butter, about 5 minutes. Add the sugar and cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until smooth, add the cranberry sauce and beat until fully blended. Add the dry ingredients about 1/2 cup at a time, blending fully each time. When done, fold in the fruit using a fork or spatula.

Spoon onto cookie sheet in small teaspoonfuls (about 1" across). Bake for 13 minutes.

Dark Days Challenge, Week One

2011-12-08T17:24:00.001-06:00

I'm helping the writers at Not Dabbling in Normal to manage Urban Hennery's Dark Days Challenge this year (use the link on the badge in the side bar to find out more).

I guess that means I should really play along and make at least one SOLE meal (Seasonal Organic Local Ethical) food meal a week. I think I hit it out of the park with this one, although I confess to pepper, salt, and yes, sherry. Everything else, except the bacon and the cheese (which are from farms in Wisconsin and Illinois, ordered through freshpicks.com), was so local that it came out of my garden.

White bean cassoulet with rosemary and sage
based on this recipe from Edible Chicago Magazine

2 cups beans (I used Bumble Bee heirlooms from Seed Savers Exchange)

1 tablespoon kosher salt

3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

2 sprigs fresh sage

2 sprigs of rosemary

2 whole peeled medium tomatoes (I pulled out a quart bag that I froze a couple of months ago)

splash of sherry
6 pieces of bacon, fried quite crisp and crumbled
olive oil

fresh ground pepper

any hard Italian cheese (asiago, parmesan, pecorino, romano), grated

Cook the beans; if they are commercial dried beans they usually recommend soaking overnight, but I've found it works better to boil them for 20 minutes, let them soak until the water is cool, then repeat. With beans you've dried yourself, usually a single boiling will work. Drain the water off. No need to conserve it.

In a large cast iron Dutch oven or heavy enamel pot, add garlic, tomato, sherry, sage and rosemary to the beans. Add the herbs on the stem so you can easily remove them before serving or you'll be picking them out a leaf at a time. Do not ask me how I know this. Add water to just cover the beans. You may need to add water as the beans cook. You want to keep them covered, but remember that it isn't soup. When you're done there should be minimal liquid.

Remember to use the good sherry. Although a lot of cooks apparently now dispute this, I like the saying that you shouldn't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink, if for no other reason than why buy a whole extra bottle just to cook with? I don't know about you, but I don't use liquor to cook with all that often. I don't even use liquor to drink with all that often.

Bring the pot to a boil then reduce heat to low and keep the beans at low simmer adding water as necessary. You may cook the beans on stovetop or place in a 350° oven and cook until tender. Add the bacon about 10 minutes before serving.

Garnish with grated hard cheese, olive oil, salt, and fresh ground pepper.

I honestly did not expect this to be all that good--cassoulets are easy to make, but hard to make tasty--but this was delicious.

Mayors Landscape Awards

2011-12-06T08:43:00.001-06:00

I was honored to receive Second Place (Region 1) for Single Residential Landscapes from the venerable Chicago Mayor's Landscape Awards for 2011.

Here's the essay I submitted with the application (regular readers will recognize places where I plagiarized myself!)

I grew my garden in lockstep with my family. We moved in to a vast expanse of grass in 1986 (actually a vast expanse of snow, since it was December).

For a while the garden grew with the family-- add a child, add a flower bed. As the children grew in complexity so did the garden, adding vegetables, trees, more flowers, patios and a pond. The children are grown and gone and the garden is grown yet comes back every year, a lovely metaphor on the nature of parenting adults.

I get joy from gardening that is visceral and emotional. I put in a bed to fix the shape; or put in a plant to change the profile or enhance the color. My garden has a beautiful design, but I didn't "design" it. It's just nearly 30 years of living in a space, and moving things around, kind of like the living room furniture. It just takes a little longer with plants. If the color or size works in the spot I want to fill, I’ll try it. If I want to try growing some new thing to eat or preserve, I'll try it.A benefit of this is that the plants that have survived are indeed hardy, with some spectacular successes. I have a number of my own backyard cultivars- an heirloom tomato, sweet alyssum, cleome.

A garden assaults the senses; it makes you “be”: taste, spirit, beauty, scent, intellect. Is there food, light, color, understanding? Are you scientist or goddess? Do you plant for joy or with an understanding of the the science of the effort? What makes a garden a garden and not just a yard? There’s sight of course— what most people think of when they see a garden— it looks nice. And taste— you can grow the things you eat.

This is where gardeners start, I think, with a desire for beauty and food. But gardens also have sound. Buzzing insects, and singing birds. Rustling of small animals in the brush, maybe running water. Gardeners know about touch. The fuzz of a lambs ear, or the prick of a rose. A crisp forsythia leaf, the hard shell of a nut, the heavy sun on the back of your neck and of course the wonderful feel of the soil around your hands.

Technique is important to get the result you want, and each pursuit has an inherent aesthetic that is met even if you don't think about it. Green things are pretty; food tastes good.

But technique alone cannot bring joy, that ineffable element that stills your heart and calms your brain. Through every season, as the plants cycle through their growth and decline, the monochrome of winter arrives, tone and contrast become the main color statements in a garden— black dirt or red branches against white snow, the warmer areas that melt sooner creating lines through the garden, a shoveled path. In winter you see more clearly the lines of a tree, and the texture of seedpods left for the birds. The dense branches of a shrub, especially if its red or orange or purple berries still hang on, add a contrasting round shape within the lines of the canes or branches, and the overall shape of the bush stands in contrast to the clean lines of architechtural elements like walkways, trellises and patios.

I finally went through the Master Gardener course, thinking I wanted to be a “real” gardener at last, but I think like our old friend the Velveteen Rabbit, a gardener becomes real, not through her methods or involvement, but through the love she feels for her plants, and the feedback of friends; through the flowers in her vase, and the food she shares.

The application asks for “challenges” but I refuse to think of my garden in that way. A garden is not a challenge, but an antidote to the challenge that is life.

A sure sign of the season

2011-12-01T06:17:00.001-06:00

I'm not someone who keeps, or collects, stuff. In fact, I hate acquiring things, and I especially hate acquiring things I don't need. I have pots that I have had, quite literally, all my life. Yes, folks, 50+ year old pots.

I don't buy appliances. I don't buy clothes. I use things I don't really like because I've already got them and they're good enough.

And then there's coffee mugs. Coffee mugs bring out the fussy old lady that lives in all of us. I love coffee mugs. You know that aunt with all the ridiculous ceramic figurines?

That's me and my mugs.

This isn't all of them. Sigh.

I strong armed my family into buying me a holiday mug every year for Christmas. For a while they would just drop into Starbuck's and get the mug-of-the-year, but nuh-uh. It's got to be a mug that other people don't have. You need to work a little harder (or not really; these things form the backbone of most resale shops).Of course, when you get a mug every year for 25 years (or more, as other people started learning about this weakness of mine), you accumulate too many mugs.

So a few years ago I decided to start switching them out, not just for Christmas, but seasonally. I now have garden season mugs, autumn mugs, summer mugs. My daughter threatened to disown me if I started up a collection of Valentine's mugs.

After Thanksgiving every year, out come the Christmas mugs. Make yourself some snickerdoodles and hot chocolate and enjoy!

Cocoa, the real way
2 T cocoa powder
1 T sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water

Combine in a saucepan and heat to boiling until a smooth consistency, stirring constantly. I mean it. CONSTANTLY. Reduce heat, add milk, bring to a scald (just short of boiling--don't boil it).

Serve it in your silly mug, and no snickering.

Waste not

2011-11-27T17:49:00.001-06:00

I grind my own spices in an old coffee grinder. Because spices aren't really dry, they leave a residue in the grinder which is hard to clean--you can't immerse the thing, and wiping with a paper towel always misses something. To get everything out, I grind white rice (although I suppose any dried rice will work).

This leaves me with, essentially, rice flour, lightly flavored with spices, which I used to make these crumbly flavorful crackers.

There's a nice little Thanksgiving-leftovers angle to this one as well.

Walnut-rice crackers
3/4 cup ground rice or rice flour
1 1/2 cups wheat flour
1/4 cup finely ground walnuts (or other oily nut)
1 heaping tablespoon evaporated sugar
1 teaspoon table salt
2 1/2 T cold butter

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
3 T cranberry sauce

Heat oven to 300f/148c

Whisk the dry ingredients, and in a separate bowl the wet ingredients. With a fork, blended the wet with the dry; you may need to do the last bit with your hand. Break it into three equal pieces and roll out each piece very very thin, using plenty of flour on the rolling surface so it doesn't stick. Paint it lightly with oil (I used walnut), then sprinkle with sea salt. Lightly roll the surface to make the salt adhere.

Using a pizza or pastry cutter, slice into 1" squares. Transfer to a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake 25 minutes or until crisp.

2011-11-22T09:00:00.000-06:00

This is a family favorite that I've never seemed to post before! So no story, just delicious pork chops! Strangely, I did post a picture of it.

Tomato-basil pork chops

1 chop per diner
per chop: 1 medium to large tomato, one small onion, handful basil leaves
1 or more large cloves of garlic, pressed
3 T butter
Sherry

To prepare the meat, poke both sides of chops with fork, lightly dredge w salt, pepper, crushed garlic. Set aside. Slice onions, tomatoes and basil. Melt 2-4 tablespoons of butter (you heard me) in a large skillet. Brown the chops on both sides (a few minutes per side), then add the sliced onions to the pan, stir until they are thoroughly coated with butter. Cook until just short of carmelization. If you have any other veggies to add do it now. I had a small black bell pepper, so that went in. Before you add the tomatoes, make sure the pan is browning. If it's not, let the chops fry another few minutes . Add the tomatoes and turn down heat. Continue to sautee until a light sauce has formed. I like to lift out the tomato skins as they separate from the meat. To start creating gravy, through a splash of sherry in. You want a little bit of liquid at all times after this point. Add the fresh basil.

Start water for pasta, continue to simmer the meat while the pasta is cooking. We're using a German egg noodle tonight, but spaetzle, gnochi, or fettucini are also nice with this.

Start to finish about 40 minutes, not counting waiting for the pasta to cook. For a complete step by step time line, check out the Twitter thread, in real time: #basilporkchops.

Opting out

2011-11-17T05:30:00.000-06:00

Six reasons to opt out of national food system:

Industrial foods are lower in nutritional value.
Buying from local, entrepreneurial farmers and sellers improves the local economy. Know your farmer!
The US does not require that genetically modified foods be labeled as such.
A pregnant teen that I know told me that she "doesn't eat vegetables."
HFCS. 'nuff said.
You'll never find this in a box:

Mashed summer roots
Per every 2 diners:
One large potato
3-5 radishes
1 medium parsnip
1 pat butter
1/4 cup (or so) milk, half-half, or cream
white pepper and sea salt to taste

Peel, roughly cube, and boil all until soft (you can easily slip a knife in). To cube vegetables, just cut them up along each axis-- length, width, height. Mash into a lumpy mass with a potato masher or fork, then add the butter and milk/cream. Continue to mash with the masher/fork or whip with a hand mixer on low. I don't mind lumps in my mashed potatoes, but some people like them really smooth.

Serve with meat loaf, or pan fried pork, fish or portobello mushroom.

Missing ingredients

2011-11-14T06:30:00.000-06:00

One of the best lessons you learn from cooking a lot is utter loss of fear. Run out of a key ingredient? Too lazy to run to the market (or worse--don't realize it until you're too deep into the prep). Open the cupboard, see what's there, and substitute substitute substitute.

The other thing about cooking a lot, and about cooking SLOW (Seasonal Local Organic Whole) is that there always is something in the cupboard to substitute, and that you tend to have what might be considered unusual ingredients in a more package-oriented kitchen. I have flour made from three different grains. I know how to grind oats, and I've ground rice into powder/flour in a pinch (it makes a great addition to bulk up soup).

We don't consume much meat around here-- a pound or two a week between the two of us, and very very little of that beef, but somehow I count the days until it gets cold enough for meatloaf. And here was this wonderful chilly rainy autumn day. Meatloaf weather.

I know-- what? Cold enough for meatloaf? You never knew it was a seasonal dish, did you.

But somehow, I think of meatloaf as a wintertime meal. I almost never make it in the summer. I'd say it's because it takes a long time to bake and the kitchen gets hot, except that I've happily done canning and baking in the middle of the hottest late summer days.

There's just something about meatloaf that says "short day meal" to me--maybe my mother only made meatloaf in the autumn or something.

So I'm pulling out ingredients and jeez, I have no bread crumbs. I never run out of breadcrumbs, because I always dry out my loaf ends and crumble them up. But somehow--no bread crumbs. Hmmm. How about oats?

Autumn meatloaf
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground lamb or pork
2 small onions, diced very fine
1/2 large appled, peeled and diced very fine
1/2 c steel-cut oats
1 tablespoon honey
optional-1 large egg

Seasoning:
1 T crushed dried orange zest
1-2 teaspoons black pepper (I used an orange-seasoned pepper I found at the spice shop)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
You can figure out your own seasonings, but don't use traditional meatloaf seasonings like oregano, which will overwhelm the apple flavor.

Preheat oven to 375F/190C

Soak the oats for 20 minutes in about 1 cup of boiling water. Drain thoroughly, then mix everything together (yes, with your hands--leave the water running so you can easily rinse them). Because the oats are so moist you don't really need the egg, but it's traditional in meatloaf and won't hurt. I didn't use one, mostly because I just forgot and it was fine. Press into a loaf or meatloaf pan (I just discovered these) and bake at 375/190 for an hour and 15 minutes.

This one of the moistest, tenderest meatloafs (meatloaves? that doesn't sound right) I've ever made, and my meatloaf is legendary.

Serve with apple mashed root vegetables: roughly cut the other half of the apple, plus 3 medium russet potatos, a medium parsnip, and a medium turnip. Boil until all are very soft (the parsnip will take a while), add a tablespoon of butter, a little milk, and a dollop of honey and mash until smooth.

A word about orange (and other citrus) zest-- always zest your oranges and lemons before you eat/use them. It makes them easier to peel, and you'll always have zest. You can dry it on the counter (it'll take a day or two), or zap it on a paper towel for a few minutes. Store it in a jar with your spices.

The Dark Days Challenge

2011-11-09T17:52:00.000-06:00

I’m very pleased to announce I'm helping with the 5th Annual Dark Days Challenge. Along with my fellow writers at Not Dabbling in Normal we'll be working with (not so) Urban Hennery to manage it this year.

What’s the Challenge?
Cook one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients, write about it on your blog (or in the comments here, on Not Dabbling or at Urban Hennery) and email your happy recapper a link to your post. There's more details in the post and in the right sidebar at the Urban Hennery blog.

We’re still finalizing all the details, but there are likely to be THEME WEEKS and PRIZES and a whole lot of other reasons that this will be the best challenge ever. I'll be recapping participants in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region, since I share your challenges.

To sign up, head over here and fill in the form at the bottom of the page. You need to sign up by December 4, although if you miss the deadline you can still follow along; you just won't be part of the recap.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up! Join in! Cook the winter blahs away with fabulous local food all winter! But seriously, I hope you’ll join us in eating locally, sustainably and fantastically well this year!

The challenge runs from Sunday, November 27th, 2011 to Saturday, March 31st, 2012; check out the Dark Days post (here it is again, in case I haven't linked it enough) for answers to questions on what constitutes "local," how to participate if you don't have a blog, etc.

How do I sign up?
Use the form here (okay, that's 5 copies of the link, if you haven't managed to find it by now, I give up) to join; and make sure to include your location so you get put into the right geographic group!

And finally, remember that pumpkin maple bread I was bragging about? Here it is--made with home-grown pumpkin, local flour and local maple syrup.

Pumpkin Maple Quick Bread

1 cup evaporated, raw, or granulated sugar
1/2 cup maple sugar ($16 a pound. Substitute regular sugar to save money)
1 cup canola oil (if you know that no one with a nut allergy will be eating it, use walnut or hazelnut oil)
1/2 cup maple syrup
½ teaspoon maple extract
3 eggs
2 cups pumpkin puree

3 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg (or 1 teaspoon pre-ground)
½ teaspoon allspice

Optional: 1 cup chopped, toasted walnuts or hazelnuts and/or plumped raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter and flour two 9x5 inch Pyrex loaf pans. Tap off excess flour from the pans.

Combine the dry ingredients and set aside. Beat together the sugar, oil, maple syrup, and maple extract until smooth and completely combined. Add the eggs and beat until combined. Add the pumpkin and mix until combined. Then add the flour and mix on low speed until just combined. To plump raisins, cover them with water, then microwave for one minute. Drain thoroughly, then add to batter.

Divide the batter equally among two pans. (I made a double recipe, and used mini pans because I had them.) Bake for 60 to 65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Place in the pans on a cooling rack, and allow to cool about 10 minutes before removing the loaves from the pans.

Serve with maple butter:
1/2 cup softened butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
pinch of salt

whip until completely combined

Abundance

2011-11-06T06:52:00.001-06:00

I haven't made a meat dish in a while. This is not because I don't think you should eat meat, it's more a function of the empty nest.

In fact, I find myself cooking less and less, and struggling with quantities. Despite the fact the the kids have been on their own for four years (and one of them for 7--how did that happen?), I still find myself growing, shopping, and cooking for four. And then I have enough leftovers for days and days. Really, I could get away with cooking once or twice a week and then Wei and I just living on leftovers, like we did in college.

It's especially frustrating because right now I have tons of time--my hoped for new job did not come through (yet), and I've cut my teaching schedule back to almost nothing. So I have lots of time for cooking. But with fewer people, and less income, I really have to be careful about not wasting food.

Wasting food, of course, is practically a national pastime. About half the food grown (!) never gets to the table. All you have to do to see how cavalier we are about food is to walk through any cafeteria after lunch, or a park after a big event, to see the trash overflowing, not just with trash, but with uneaten, often perfectly good food.

The EPA has lots of suggestions about how to mitigate the problem, and resources for study. There are entire organizations dedicated to reducing food waste.

Which all seems kind of silly. Because like a lot of things, this is really in our control. Don't buy what you don't need, and eat those leftovers!

This lasted us for 3 meals:

Pork Xandaloo
Grind into a light powder:
2 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp cardamom seeds
3 in stick cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp whole black mustard seeds
1 tsp whole fenugreek seeds (if you've got 'em)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ight brown sugar
1 Tbsp ground coriander seeds
1/2 tsp ground turmeric

if you like heat also use:
2 small hot peppers (like a shishito), cut fine
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Mix into:
5 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1/2 cup tomato paste
up to 6 T water if needed

Pork chops, whatever cut you like. I used very thinly cut boneless center loin

10 T oil
2 large onions

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Fry onions, stirring frequently, until they are a rich, dark brown. Remove onions with a slotted spoon, leaving the oil. Sear the meat on both sides, until the fat starts to carmelize, Turn down the heat and add the sauce. It should cover the meat; if it doesn't add a little water. Bring to a simmer, then place the onions on top. Cover and simmer 30 minutes. Serve over:

Garlic rice
1 cup rice
4 medium cloves garlic

Prepare rice according to package instructions. Using a garlic press, add the garlic when the water comes to a boil.

Neighborhoods

2011-10-29T07:22:00.000-05:00

I confess. When Michelle Obama was in Chicago last week, and visited Walgreens, I stood in front of the television yelling at her.

Why was Michelle Obama, of all people, in Chicago-city of neighborhoods, home of the nation's most diverse ethnic population, in the middle of the richest farmland in the world, and leader of the WW2 Victory Gardens movement-standing in some anonymous Walgreens, praising them for importing tomatoes from Chile.

Why was she not walking down Clark Street in Rogers Park, where there are probably 15 locally-owned mercados featuring produce raised locally, and run by families living in the neighborhood. Why was she not on Devon Avenue in the 40th ward, another strip of vibrant local economy? How about 57th Street in her own neighborhood, and home, until the big boxes shut it down, of the famous 57th Street Food Co-op?

The solution to healthy food systems and urban vitality is not another vast parking lot, where private security will boot your car if you so much as step onto the sidewalk to mail a letter, but small, locally owned grocery stores, with sensible inspection protocols, and family management.

After the '68 riots, Chicago let its local economies die. Where once there were dozens of family businesses keeping the neighborhoods, especially the African-American neighborhoods alive, a decades-long shibboleth has been sold us, teaching us that "business" happens on Wall Street or LaSalle Street, over-regulating small businesses while letting the big guys get away with murder and the family silver, and selling our own livelihoods back to us in Big Boxes stocked with the fruits of foreign slave labor.

Once "business" is what your grandpa did, in his shop around the corner from his house, or downstairs from his apartment. You worked there on the weekends and after school, learning how to run a business, a business that you would take over, when your grandpa and your pa got too old. We've let not one, or two, but now three generations of business acumen just die in service to the supposed "efficiency" and low prices of Walmart and its ilk.

Just another reason to be disappointed in the Obamas. Michelle, Walgreen's is not the answer to food deserts or to sustainable economies. Walgreen's is the problem. Bring back the neighborhood pharmacists, tailors, shoe repairs, appliance repairs, and grocers.

A coalition of local food activists agrees with me. They've created the Statement of Local Food Economy. You can sign the statement, too--instructions here.

Root n fruit soup
1 medium parsnip
1 medium white carrot
1 medium orange carrot
1 cup cooked rice
1 cup pumpkin puree
2+ cups water

1 medium purple carrot, sliced
1 medium white carrot, sliced
small onion, cubed

salt and white pepper to taste

Roughly chop and then saute the parsnip, orange carrot and one of the white carrots in about 2 tablespoon butter, until very soft. Add a cup of water and boil under they start to fall apart. Add the pumpkin and another cup of water; bring to a light boil, then puree with an immersible blender (or decant into a food processor if you don't have the blender).

Sautee the sliced onion and carrot in about a tablespoon of butter, until onion is translucent. Add to the puree, and add water until it reaches the desired consistency (personal choice). Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with homemade shortbread biscuits.

Occupy Safeway

2011-10-21T06:40:00.000-05:00

I envision a massive crowd of suburban uber-moms standing on top of their SUVs.

These are our demands:

1. Only healthy junk food, with pictures of rain forests and bunnies so I know it's safe
2. Fresh organic lettuce, sold in plastic bags, preferably pre-cut, because who has time.
3. No dirt-- otherwise who KNOWS where that turnip has been
4. Healthy options at MacDonald's. If you eat a salad with the Big Mac, I'm pretty sure it has fewer calories.
5. Have Maria teach me the proper pronunciation of "habanero" next time she comes to clean
6. All vegetables presented in faux wood bins, with real wicker baskets instead of shopping carts so I can pretend I'm at the Farmers Market, which is full of all these farmers, which can't be sanitary
7. A special display with 14 different heirloom tomatoes (not 14 types--14 tomatoes) so I can say I've seen one. Make sure they cost $7 apiece so I can complain about how organic (sic) is too expensive
8. Candy in the checkout aisle. Because those nuts from Occupy Safeway are blocking access to the candy.
9. Support local farmers! Give them jobs as baggers, since their farms are all mortgaged to the hilt.

No energy to come up with my own recipe today. Made these honey-apple muffins.

Headache

2011-10-19T09:40:00.004-05:00

My head hurts. I think it's from falling off the October Unprocessed wagon and eating hallowe'en candy.

Serves me right.

Here's a delicious mild salsa from pastry chef Lindsay Shepherd. I guess pastry chefs like to walk on the wild side every now and then!

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa (Salsa Verde)
1 pound fresh tomatillos (about 8-10 ripe tomatillos)
2 serrano peppers (if you like heat) *optional- if you want mild salsa, use 1 large bell pepper (prefer chocolate bell peppers)
2 jalapenos
1 medium sweet onion
2 garlic cloves, unpeeled
¼ - ½ cup fresh cilantro (depending on how much you like cilantro)
¼ cup fresh lemon basil
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 Tbsp. fresh squeezed lime juice

Preheat broiler.

Remove husks from tomatillos and rinse under warm water to remove stickiness. Remove skin from onion, and cut into 4 wedges. Place fresh tomatillos, serranos (or bell pepper), jalapenos , onion, and garlic (with skin on) on rack of a broiler pan 1 to 2 inches from heat. Broil, turning once, until tomatillos are softened and all ingredients are slightly charred, about 10-20 minutes.

Peel garlic, and rub the charred skin off the peppers. Pull off tops of chiles and jalapenos and take out the seeds (leaving just a few for heat).

Place all of the ingredients (including the remaining cilantro, basil, salt, and lime juice) in a blender, and puree until desired consistency.

Cake thief

2011-10-09T07:49:00.007-05:00

I went to a wonderful harvest dinner at The Yarden last night. Madam Yarden, aka LaManda Joy, made an amazing feast from the bounty of her gorgeous urban farmette, with two dishes contributed by guests: ratatouille (by yours truly) and Apple Dapple cake, from another friend's mother.

I got the last piece of the cake.

Which turned out to be LaManda's. I ought to say that I feel really guilty about stealing her dessert, when she had just spent the day preparing this amazing feast for us. But it was so delicious I'm having trouble summoning up the shame.

So I made these for her this morning.

Apple dapple blondies

2/3 cup butter, softened
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup chopped peeled apples
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (i did not add nuts)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla until thick and smooth, about 3 minutes. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture on low speed, mixing until blended. Stir in apples, cinnamon and nuts, mixing well. Spread evenly in greased 9x13 pan.Bake in Preheated oven at 350 degrees until set and golden, 25-30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan on rack.

Sauce:
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup margarine(1 -1/2 sticks)

Stir together in a medium sauce pan and bring to a gentle boil. Once it starts boiling gently, keep stirring and cook for about three minutes. Remove from heat. Remove hot delicious cake from the oven. Pour over hot cake while cake is still in pan. Let cake cool completely before removing.

I ate that on purpose

2011-10-06T07:37:00.002-05:00

Repost, from October 10, 2010

Unprocessed. Real Food. Slow food. Locavore.

Every time you turn around these days, there's a new term about getting away from the American industrialized, depersonalized, outsourced food culture. Now on my third food challenge, I think that Michael Pollan actually said it best (that's why they pay him the big bucks).

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

The main thing I take away from these efforts--all of them personally and culturally challenging, mostly well meaning, in varying degrees sensible--is that what you need to do is think about what you are eating.

When I was growing up in the middle of the last century, you didn't have to think about it. The food you bought, even in suburban supermarkets, was what it said it was. It had a shelf life and a source, which was mostly nearby. Importing food was something that starving Indians (as in subcontinent) did. Even as a child I knew which fruits were in season, not because I looked up a chart, but because if it wasn't in season, you couldn't buy it. No one ever got salmonella poisoning, and E. Coli was something you learned about in high school biology. Meat was meat colored, not that bizarre bright red (how do they do that, and why?). Chickens came with innards. Fruits did not have individual labels, and the butcher packed your meat in paper, even at the supermarket (yes, Virginia, there were butchers at the supermarket). You could buy only the amount you needed, and exactly the amount you needed, because they cut it on the premises. I got to Junior year in college before I knew that you could buy French fries frozen in a bag.

Because of this, I am able to "think" about food. I have clear memories of what it looks like, when it's naturally available, and how it tastes. My mother had to cook, because the prepared food industry was just getting started ("Prince spaghetti day", anyone?).

Younger generations don't have this advantage. You are rediscovering what I grew up understanding, perhaps the last generation to do so. I'm not saying there were no processed foods; we had spam and cake mixes and tv dinners and every day there was a new "convenience" product. But families eating meals cooked from whole ingredients was the norm, not the outlier.

For the way I live and eat, I think the "slow" approach works best-- seasonal, local, organic, whole. It gives you flexibility--can't find or afford organic? Buy it from the local mom-and-pop, instead of the super store (on the "3 outta 4 ain't bad" theory). What works about it, and all the other monikers, is that they make you think about what you're putting into your and your family's bodies.

Unprocessed. Real Food. Slow food. Locavore.

Call it deliberate eating.

What if you're already unprocessed?

2011-10-03T08:58:00.007-05:00

One of the things I've been hearing alot in talking about October Unprocessed, is "oh, we already eat really healthy."

This statement is not just hubris--I work in food activism and I live and work in a crunchy-granola urban neighborhood, so a lot of the people I know eat only seasonal, local, organic and whole. They know how to make their own yeast. They have root cellars, in the city. They haven't set foot in a grocery store in 5 years.

I'm one myself. I started with Not Dabbling in Normal's Real Food Challenge in 2009 and never looked back. Except.

I gave myself a pass on candy bars. I like flavored teas. I eat out.

I'm probably not going to stop doing any of those things in the long haul. But I can do it for a month. And maybe I'll find, like I did with the Real Food Challenge, that there are things I can live without. And things that are easy, I mean easy, to replace, like getting local farmer-made raw-milk cheese and plain yogurt, or bread from the family-owned bakery, instead of Sara Lee's "healthy" line. And things that are absurdly easy to make, like jam, and mayonnaise, and flat breads-pita or nan.

Don't talk to me about "I have no time." I don't have kids at home, but I work full time and then some. I just spend all day Sunday cooking, and then the rest of the week I get to hang out on line looking for challenges.

So if you're as green as you think you can get, think again. Look through your cupboard and your larder and take an extra step. Think of creative ways to approach the challenge--go vegetarian if you're not already, or vegan, for one day. (Meat being one of the most highly processed foods we know.) Get really unprocessed and try incorporating more raw foods into your weekly diet. Think ahead and put something up for the winter.

As Andrew says in the Eating Rules blog that "runs" the challenge, October Unprocessed is not just about eating real food. It's about eating mindfully. Read a label, or better yet, a recipe. Eat a carrot for snack.

You'll be surprised how basic you can get.

Apple-maple oatmeal
1/2 cup apple cider (buy it at the farmers market, or read the label. It should say "ingredients: apples")
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oats
pinch of salt
1 T maple syrup
1/2 apple, cubed.

Boil the apple cider and water, then slowly add the oats, stirring constantly. Boil about 5 minutes or until the oats start to soften. Add the salt and maple syrup, continue cooking until it's the consistency you like. For a sweeter oatmeal, increase the apple cider to a full cup (and skip the water), and/or add more maple syrup.

Add the cut-up apple and serve.

October Unprocessed: snacks

2011-10-02T16:38:00.005-05:00

Can't get away from the topic, seemingly. I wrote about an unprocessed treat on Friday, and here we are two days later, snacking again.

Here's what I "snacked" on today:

Fresh-squeezed orange juice
A 6-oz glass of locally pressed apple cider
A pear
A donut from the farmers' market, freshly made on Saturday
Some dried cranberries (from Mick Klug Farm, bought through the CSA, so not commercially processed)
Popcorn, the old fashioned kind

In other words, to snack "unprocessed," just eat food. Snacking isn't about the type of food you're eating, it's about timing, convenience and quantity. If it's 3:00 in the afternoon and you're eating an apple, that's a snack. If it's noon and you're eating it with a sandwich, that's lunch. If it's 7:30 and you've put it in a pie, that's dessert (the pie also counts as a snack in the middle of the afternoon, but mother says you may only have a small piece).

The problem is we've let the industrialized food system and Madison Avenue tell us what a "snack" is, and have swallowed wholesale, if I may, the idea that "snack food" is somehow different from "food."

Unprocessed snacks can include nuts, raw fruit, dried fruit (but read the label, the grocery store ones contain a lot of preservatives, artificial colors and even sweeteners), potato chips are easy to make if a little tedious, popcorn–the old fashioned kind, you pop it in the microwave just like “microwave” popcorn. Just stick it in a paper bag and hit the “popcorn” preset, bread and butter, jam or nut butters, hot cocoa or a hard boiled egg.

Here's the homemade hot chocolate my mother used to make for us when we were little (I never had commercial hot cocoa til I got to college; didn't know what it was, despite watching Bosco ads all my life). I remember traveling with some friends, they asked me to make hot cocoa and handed me little bags filled with brown powder. I knew what it was, but had never seen it, let alone made it. I did it wrong. They were really mad, and I was really embarrassed, but in retrospect, I'm very glad I did not know that dirt-colored powder was considered an acceptable drink.

Homemade hot cocoa
from the Woman's Home Companion Cook Book

2½ oz unsweetend chocolate (2½ squares)
⅓ cup sugar
pinch of salt (just a few grains)
½ cup boiling water
4 cups milk

Melt chocolate in the top of a double boiler, add sugar and salt; add boiling water, stirring until well-blended. Place pan back over heat and boil about 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Gradually add milk, heat just short of scalding, again, stirring constantly. Beat until frothy. Pour into mugs and top with whipped cream or a marshmallow.

Here's a recipe for a homemade chocolate syrup that can be used in milk, or on ice cream.

What's a little cold between friends

2011-10-01T05:00:00.001-05:00

At the ice rink where I teach, there are two vending machines. One of them is full of candy and dorritos; the other one has what the snack food industry likes to call "healthy snacks"-- things like granola bars, and sun chips, and those "reel froot jelly" things that kids insist isn't candy. I refuse to call it "healthy" food, so I tell the kids that one of the machines has "junk food" and the other one has "snack food."

A fine distinction.

In fact the distinction should not be "healthy" or "snack" or "junk" but simply there is food and then there is that edible stuff that they sell in all the pretty boxes. Why not have a vending machine full of "food"-- yogurt mixed with jam, and only jam. Apples and pears. Nuts. Milk. Raisins. If you have to say "this is healthy food" chances are it isn't food at all because saying "healthy" food is like saying "cold" ice or "metal" steel-- it's simply redundant. Food is healthy. That is its purpose.

It seems appropriate to start October Unprocessed with snack food, since it's snack food where we find the most processing, and the most resistance to the idea that you can snack on something that's not bad for you.

And since it's a balmy 40 out right now, I thought I'd start with ice cream

Autumn ice cream
1 pear, roasted
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 T home-powdered maple sugar
1/2 teaspoon maple extract, if you're cheating on the unprocessed thing

So, powdering your own sugar turns out to be a giant drag when you only have a little coffee grinder to do it in. I put a tablespoon at a time into a standard coffee grinder, and let 'er rip. It's not exactly powdered, but it's very very fine. Mix this, the cream and extract, and stick them in the freezer about 30 minutes (this helps with the aerating process).

Roast the pear at 350 for about 40 minutes, peel the skin off, then grind it in the blender, and put in the fridge until chilled.

When the pear is chilled, start up the ice cream maker (I have a little 2 cup one) and pour in the cream mixture. When it starts to resemble ice cream, add the chilled pear, and aerate until it turns into ice cream.

I tried this with maple syrup for sweetener, but it makes the mixture too watery and it doesn't aerate properly.

Michaelmas

2011-09-29T06:24:00.002-05:00

If you were a medieval farm laborer, you'd be getting paid today, for the last 3 month's work, as September 29th is a traditional Quarter Day, known in the Anglican calendar as the feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas (pronounced "mikkelmuss" because, well, England). Fans of Thomas Hardy may remember Tess Durbeyville selling her services at a Quarter Day fair, and the drunken Michael Henchard auctioning off his family in an act that would come back to haunt him, decades later (hmmm, modern politicians would probably do well to re-read The Mayor of Casterbridge).

The Quarter Days--Lady Day (spring equinox), Midsummer Day (June solstice), Michaelmas (roughly the autumn equinox), and Christmas (winter solstice) and Cross-quarter days (Imbolc on February 2, May Day, Lammas (August 1), and Samhain (Halloween)--mark the ancient agrarian calendar.

Following these days puts you in rhythm with the earth and the ancestors, and reminds us that Hallmark and Macy's did not invent holidays, nor in fact did any modern religion. The holidays--holy days--are given to us by the universe, to mark the changing of the seasons and the passage of the earth around the sun. By focusing on the seasonal and celestial origin of these events, it becomes easier to resist the consumer culture that is consuming us, and to focus on the creative, the productive, and the holy.

It's traditional to make a goose on Michaelmas, although I'm making beef stew, since that's what I have in the house (and you see how out of rhythm I am? Why didn't I get a goose?) Other Michaelmas foods are carrots and other roots, and oat cakes.

The soup below is not very traditional, except inasmuch as it's made with a current harvest.

Cucumber Soup with corn and new potatoes
4-5 large cucumbers
1 large onion
1 T chopped fresh parsley
1 cup fingerling or new potatoes
niblets from 1-2 ears corn
2 T butter

1 tablespoon cornstarch (optional; for thickening. This recipe is from my MIL, who puts cornstarch in everything)
1 quart stock (chicken or vegetable; make sure it's a "white" stock or the soup will be ugly!)
>1 cup milk
2 cups half-half
2 yolks eggs
pepper and salt to taste

If any of the potatoes are larger than bite sized, cut them up, then boil them to al dente (not completely done!) and set aside.

Peel, seed and dice the largest cucumbers, leaving one for garnish. Dice onions and saute in butter with the parsley in the soup pot about 5 minutes (the cukes will turn a bright light green). Add water or stock, simmer 20 minutes. Mix cornstarch with milk, stir into the soup and bring it to a bare simmer, allowing to simmer for 10 minutes. Don't bring it to a full boil. Puree with an immersible mixer (or in a blender if you don't have a mixer; if you use a blender, let it cool a little before decanting it).

Lightly beat the half-half and egg yolks, pour a little boiling soup on to them, stirring at same time, then return it to the hot soup, stirring constantly; it must not boil again or it will curdle.

Add the potatoes and corn and heat; remember don't let it boil! Season to taste with white pepper and salt.

Soup

2011-09-24T18:07:00.011-05:00

At this time of year, all I seem to make is soup.

Roasted squash, pear and leek soup
1½ pounds sqash (I used delicata)
2 pears
2-3 leeks
2-3 cups leek stock
Creme fraiche
Honey

Heat oven to 350/170

Halve and seed the squash; halve the pears. Prepare a baking sheet with spray oil, and place the pears and squash face down. Trim the greens off the leeks, and also place the leeks on the sheet. Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife slips easily into the squash. (Save the seeds and greens.) Allow to cool.

While the vegetables are roasting, use the greens from the leeks, and the squash seeds to make a stock: boil about 20 minutes in 4 cups of water, with a handful of green peppercorns and salt to taste. Boil down to 3 cups. Drain and set aside.

Peel the squash and 1 pear, and grind them to pulp in a blender or food processor, using a little of the stock. Transfer the pulp to a large soup pot, and add stock until it's a little more watery than you want in the finished soup. You will probably have stock left over; conserve it. Blend the squash soup smooth with an immersible blender. Simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes, until it's the consistency you like.

Cut up the leeks and the other pear (peel on), and gently fold into the soup. Garnish with freshly ground nutmeg and a dollop of creme fraiche. Drizzle very lightly with local honey.

The seed saver's dilemma

2011-09-14T05:25:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago I was talking seeds with some people from The Peterson Garden Project. I'm not really one of those seed people that just likes to buy seeds, but I flat out love harvesting seeds. There's something about growing plants from seeds that I grew that is just magical to me. It's an agrarian feedback loop.

I like the idea of the "backyard cultivar" as well--a plant that you've saved seeds from for so many years, that it's micro-adapted to your garden. I'm convinced my alyssum (which reseeds itself, no need to save them) and Black Krim tomatoes qualify.

Plus it's fascinating learning how different plants produce seeds--biennials that you leave to overwinter, and eggplants or cukes that you have allow to overripen so that the seeds get ripe too. I have rows of little jars of different colored tomato gel on the window sill, waiting to ferment the slime off so I can dry the seeds for next year.

But where was I? Right--talking to people from Peterson Garden, who introduced me to the idea of seed purchases as small business support. "I like to buy seeds to support the seed companies," my friend said.

And in the past two weeks we've seen this at work, with the imminent possible demise of Landreth Seeds, not only America's oldest seed company, but America's oldest company, period. Older than Chase Bank. Older than the New York Times. Older than Sears. And still local, family-owned and operated, and in dire straits.

I hope it's not because people like me aren't buying seeds.

Rainbow salsa
Golden, green, purple, and red tomatoes (plus any other color you have), about 3-4 lbs total, or 2 small to medium tomatoes of each color.
1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 cup fresh cilantro, minced fine (will be less than a cup when minced)
1 medium onion, minced
hot peppers to taste (I used four shishitos, a small mild pepper)
Juice of 1/2 lime
Salt to taste

Makes about 8 cups

Chop and mix the vegetables. I like to drain the tomatoes for about 10 minutes to reduce the amount of liquid. Mix it all together, let it sit overnight.

By the way, you can help Landreth, by placing your fall seed, bulb and set purchases with them, and by ordering a catalog, or ten.

As American as

2011-09-11T11:27:00.005-05:00

Nothing more American than apples on this uber-American day. I got 10 pounds of them from freshpicks.com last week, so I've spent the last few days making stuff.

I started with a simple applesauce--peel and core, and boil the hell out of a gallon of diced apples. Dump in honey for sweetener, and lemon juice for preserving. Hot water bath, and I've got a quart and half of apple sauce.

I used Early Golds; these seem mostly to be recommended by the "Early" part of the variety name. I actually happen to like mealy apples, but these are a little mealy, even for me. They make a nice tart sauce, but if you like your sauce sweet, this is not the apple for you.

Last year I discovered that apple peels make a great stock, so I froze some of them to use for that in a future risotto or soup. About 4 quarts of peels, however, I used for my latest torture of trying to make jelly. I boiled the peels and cores until I had, essentially, apple stock (about 15 minutes), ran them through a food mill, and then strained out the liquid. Followed an apple jelly recipe to the *#* -%&$#&^ letter and I still appear to have apple syrup instead of apple jelly. It can't be that hard, right? I mean illiterate pioneers and immigrants can make a jelly set up, why can't I?

Still having a lot of apples, I started hunting through my favorite recipe sites: Orangette, and Chocolate and Zucchini, and Southern Food.com and finally found a fantastic list of apple recipes at the ever wonderful Coconut and Lime. I made this apple bread, and I'll be making meat loaf for dinner.

And that's all about as American as Apple Pie, if you ask me.

No funny vegetables

2011-09-03T08:19:00.000-05:00

There's a concept in fine arts marketing known as "threshold" art--it's the stuff that gets people past the doorway, that gets them to buy that first ticket. In visual art it's Monet, probably; in theater it's the musicals put on by the regional houses. In classical music it's often the school field trip to Symphony Hall. It's familiar, not too expensive, easy to understand, and ideally located right in the community.

The threshold experience gives you a taste for more. No one ever started going to the theater by checking out the experimental storefront in the sketchy neighborhood, or instrumental music by buying a subscription to the Kronos Quartet. But they just might get there via Brigadoon or Beethoven.

I'm sure this concept exists in other fields as well--you don't buy your first food processor as a high-end professional one from some obscure online source. You go down to Target and buy it on price and looks.

Home grown vegetables need a threshold level, too. I've got 220 square feet growing for two nutrition programs. The recipients are very excited about the produce I bring them, until I bring them a Dragon's Egg cucumber (pale yellow and fist shaped), or a light green or dark yellow zucchini (heck, a zucchini, period), or a green-when-ripe tomato, all planted by well-meaning volunteers who had already passed this threshold.

These people are barely familiar with standard vegetables. Several times this summer I've gotten "what's that" accompanied by a skeptical, slightly disgusted look. And I leave the veggie and walk away, thinking, well that's going in the garbage.

Several gardeners I've worked with over the past two summers are gaga to plant unusual vegetables--black carrots and white eggplants and blue tomatoes--for kids, food pantries, and new gardeners, as though somehow if the vegetables are weird enough they'll get eaten, whereas the ordinary ones are just too, well, ordinary and that's why people aren't trying them. I admit, the shock value is fun and even educational, but if the point is that you want people to eat this stuff, don't hand them something that doesn't look, to them, like food.

If you're trying to get someone to do something new, don't start at the geek end. Start at the familiar. Some nice Better Boys and standard Romas are going to look familiar and safe. A good old Danvers carrot will get eaten--and the person eating it, who has maybe never had a freshly dug carrot before, is going to be amazed at the difference in taste to the orange wooden sticks they sell at the Safeway.

I feel the same way about heirlooms. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a hybrid tomato, grown from seed or nursery start. Why disdain or discourage the new gardener, because somehow their effort isn't pure enough? I never grew heirlooms until I started talking with other gardeners--we're talking years and years of standard hybrids--I needed it to be comfortable and familiar before I went out on that limb.

There's safety in the familiar. We don't need more foodies. We just need people to eat fresh, home grown produce.

Z is for zucchini

2011-08-31T09:14:00.006-05:00

I'm hopeless at them.

I always read with amusement the "how to get rid of zucchini" posts every summer. In the past decade, with zucchini planted maybe 4 of those years, I think I have managed, maybe... 3?

That's right-- three zucchinis. Not three plants. Three. Zucchinis.

It's one of the untold stories of the gardening world--the things that experienced, knowledgeable gardeners are bad at. I am hopeless at eggplant, beets, spinach, zucchini, and onions. No amount of reading, training, class-taking, soil-amending, researching, wintersowing, direct sowing, indoor sowing--you name it I've tried it, seems to be able to get consistent harvests from me on these plants.

Notoriously difficult plants like pumpkins and leeks, corn, cabbage, rosemary? No problem. They do just fine.

Mind you, the eggplant seedlings that I grew are in gardens all over Chicago, yielding dozens of fruits per plant. Mine have managed fewer than one each--6 aubergine plants, 5 fruits so far. I did manage to get 80 onions this year, after the 3rd planting finally took. Beets, though. I've planted 4 entire seed packets. I have 6 beets out there, and they're of the "baby" sort. If I ran a fancy restaurant, the type where a dish=one bite, and I only made enough for the first 3 diners, I'd be golden.

And then there's zucchini. I love zucchini. I can cook a LOT of zucchini. Stir fry, lasagna, bread, salads, pickles. And yet I just don't seem to be able to grow it.

Next time you walk into someone's gorgeous garden, think about what you don't see. Everyone can't grow something.

And finally--thank you so much Suzy Morris, for this very challenging challenge. I think I managed every letter, if not every day. Who's with me for the next challenge-- a No Buy October!

Y is for Yellow

2011-08-30T05:23:00.002-05:00

From the garden, spring through fall.

X is for Xan

2011-08-29T06:19:00.001-05:00

I have this funny idea, that people don't remember me. When I encounter someone I've met only a few times, I always put out my hand and state my name, just in case.

Which is really rather funny, as I'm probably one of the more memorable people you'll meet. From my mixed-race family, to my outsized personality, to my pink hair, to my funny name I'm fairly out of the ordinary.

Or make that eXtraordinary.

As are we all.

W is for Work

2011-08-27T07:13:00.001-05:00

In retrospect, it would have been a nice pairing to make V for Vacation as, despite the posts that opened my Alphabet in August, I never take one.

As a freelancer and part timer, not to mention a gardener, "vacation" at one job is usually used for special projects at another. If one job goes on hiatus (for instance, the ice rink closes, as it does 4 times a year, for 1 to 2 weeks at a time), rather than being able to take vacation, one of my other jobs probably just has a big job due.

Sometimes I take vacation time at one job to do the big task at another.

But in some ways that's okay. Work is one of my favorite things to do on vacation--work in the garden, or a week spent working at my art, or doing a rehab project in the house. I like to "work" at my writing. I don't think I could take one of those vacations where you lie around on a beach or a hammock all day, doing nothing. It would drive me insane. Maybe a day, maybe two. But two weeks?

Give me something to work on!

V is for Victory Garden

2011-08-26T06:34:00.002-05:00

I'll let my good friend LaManda Joy handle this one:

A Victory Gardens primer

T is for Tomato and U is for Update

2011-08-24T04:04:00.002-05:00

T is also for twofer, and for thank god because this is really exhausting.

I'm participating in two tomato growing projects this year:

I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a very meaty slicing tomato), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

I also work on adapting tomatoes to my own backyard. I've got my stalwart Black Krim (on its 10th year now and looking great); on their 3rd year- Stupice, and in just their second two new varieties- Goldman's Italian American, and San Marzanos (from seedlings developed by Chicago Botanic Garden), plus I'm trying to decide if I want to keep going with the Heirlooms Golds (don't know the variety). They had a tough year.

Bramki: A real keeper, as I've said before. I've got a good start on seed saving, but would like one more good looking fruit before I call it a day. These got a little stressed from the horrible Blondkopfchen next door (see next), but it's a killer tomato-big, juicy, delicious and also very beautiful.

Blondkopfchen. Never. Again. Hideously blight-prone, leggy, slow. Flavor nice, but nothing to replace a good Sungold. I saved seeds, but I'm loathe to add them to the seed bank because I don't want anyone to grow these. I finally took it out because it was infecting the nearby Bramkis which I don't want to lose. Unfortunately, I also had to take out the sungold, not because it was blighty, but it just stopped setting flowers, so I had all this leggy growth and no fruit. Weird.

Ferris Wheel: Nice, but not great flavor, tendency to very large, easily bruised fruit. Reasonably prolific considering it's not adapted to local conditions. But I don't think I'll be able to devote space to this guy again.

The German Pink is still trying to keep up, and has finally managed to set a fruit. Just one.

S is for Shortcut

2011-08-23T07:22:00.000-05:00

So there you are.

Two hundred and twenty tomatoes, all ripe at once.

And a giant project due at work.

As much as you would like to, you can't spend all day seeding, peeling and rendering tomatoes, but they're going to go bad. But you can make a quick sauce-- a little messier, a little off-the cuff, but way faster than those jars of perfect paste you've been dreaming of.

Ready? Don't tell Martha.

Quick tomato sauce
per serving:
1 pound of whole tomatoes, roughly cut
1/4 cup fresh or 1 T dried oregano and parsley
salt, pepper to taste
If it's going to be around for a while, add about 1 teaspoon rice vinegar or lemon juice per serving

A blender.

Grind away folks. You can use it right away, or freeze it. You can take it out later to make a proper paste as you normally would, and then can it. (You'll have to run it through a food mill because it will have the seeds and skins in it.) I've used this as is to do sauteed chicken and chops, on spaghetti, and in lasagna.

R is for Radio

2011-08-22T07:13:00.005-05:00

For someone who has the tv on a lot, I don't really watch a lot of tv. In fact, I mostly sleep to tv.

But I'm a radio junkie. I like it because you can DO things while listening to the radio. TV, TiVo, Netflix, movies-you have to sit and watch. But I get a lot done while listening to the radio-gardening, cooking, cleaning, writing.

As I write this I'm listening to the Mike Nowak Show on WCPT (Chicago Progressive Talk) my single venture into AM radio. Mike's a lot of fun, and I learn a lot, and he tweets, allowing me to pretend I know a celebrity (if you define celebrity as "my mother would be impressed", since Mike's a pretty regular guy). I've put in a lot of gardens, and made a lot of pickles, while listening to Mike.

The rest of the time, pretty much, being a knee-jerk liberal, I listen to NPR, which stays in the background while tapping the consciousness every now and then with fascinating insights and info.

And my guilty pleasure? Mainstream country music alone in the car on late night drives.

Here's what I made while listening to Mike this morning.

Cucumber-plum honey pickles
Cukes & yellow plums, about 3 plums for every medium cucumber. (I used 7 cukes and a quart of plums, yielding about 8 cups of cut fruit)
Mildly hot peppers (to taste)

For 1 quart of pickling juice:
juice of 2 lemons
3/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 -2 cups water
1/4 cup kosher or pickling salt

Bring the juice to a boil, simmer for about 10 minutes. While it is simmering, peel, seed and slice the cukes, pit the plums and cut them into bite-size pieces (I actually use a scissor for this). Pour the hot liquid over the fruit, and refrigerate overnight. Pack into jars, with the fruit just covered with liquid, and put in a hot water bath to seal (35 minutes fully submersed at a rolling boil). Properly canned, these should be shelf-stable, although I refrigerate anyway, just to be safe.

If you have any leftover juice, save it for the next batch!

This makes a mild sweet-and-sour pickle, with a lovely peachy color.

Q is for questions

2011-08-20T16:02:00.002-05:00

I'm always asking them. Today's question is "why have I never cooked anything that starts with Q?"

P is for Preserving

2011-08-18T19:14:00.003-05:00

I've always been pretty good, considering my demographic, about feeding my family whole, fresh foods, although I was terrible about the junk food when the kids were growing up. Ten hour day and 90 minute commute? McDonald's sounded pretty good to me.

But my kids will confirm that I Cooked Dinner. And once I got the garden in, when they were in grade school, I started, as many gardeners do, to have more than we could consume, especially tomatoes. So I learned how to make tomato paste.

At first I would just stick it in the freezer--no need for heat canning, or worrying about pH levels, but lately the freezer isn't big enough. Twenty-five tomato plants yields a lot of paste.

I also had a duh moment about jam. I never made it, because I didn't grow the ingredients. It literally never occurred to me to buy the fruit when it was in season, and make jam out of someone else's bounty. I really only ever thought about preserving what I grew myself, like there was some sort of law against preserving bought bounty.

Undoubtedly a consequence of my misspent youth.

Here are some of the jams I've made since I figured it out.

N is for Not Enough Time

2011-08-17T14:03:00.011-05:00

I was planning to spend the day at the Independent Garden Center show looking for things that start with N (I was going to say "N-words" but that sounds so wrong).

Unfortunately, I have ended up sick in bed annoying everyone with too much tweeting, and writing/scheduling blog posts to take me through 2018.

So N becomes Not Enough Time, which is how I felt in the 2 or so hours I had to walk the floor yesterday. I think there were more than 1,000 vendors, and the place is brimming with cool stuff, boring stuff, wtf-stuff and lots and lots of people to meet.

I stopped by Clesen Wholesalers, one of those places where one of my lives (skating--Dawn Clesen was my daughter's first serious coach), meets the other, namely gardening. I went by the Ethel's booth to see if there really is an Ethel, and to brag that I know Suzy Morris (aka Chiots Run, and Ethel's official blogger!). Alas, no Ethel, but wowie zowie I got to meet Renee of Renee's Garden. Some people are impressed by R. Kelly. Me? I like the seed ladies.

One of the vendors had lovely handmade soaps in various scents, including a "garden dirt" one, haha. Which, yes, I will buy this. I complain a lot about our toxic, extractive, consumerist culture, but I'm pretty much a sucker for a cute product.

Oh, and I told Corona Tools I'd find an "N" tool that I like. so here it is: catalog Number FS4350, Thinning Shears, forged blade.

Is that cheating?

M is for Media

2011-08-16T08:42:00.002-05:00

As in, I've got a Media pass to the Independent Garden Center show in Chicago this week.

M is also for Meet up, wherein all the bloggers and social media types with these passes get fed lunch, and I get to meet face to face a lot of the people I've befriended on Twitter and through the blogs. I'm not all that connected, as in no smart phone, so tweeting will be a little one-sided (I can tweet out, but not receive), but I'll let you know about the best products I see. I will make a special effort to look for "Ns" (Wednesday), and "Os" (Thursday)!

Anyway, follow me on Twitter @NotDabblingXan; we'll see how I do as a "real" media person.

And just because you really should be doing this, here's Little Blue Hen's wonderful recipe for easy (easy easy) homemade mayonnaise. I actually double the recipe below and I use cold eggs; I find that the oil emulsifies more reliably if you do that.

Anyway, stop buying mayonnaise in the store. I mean it.

Homemade Mayonnaise
Adapted from The Perfect Pantry via Little Blue Hen
Makes about 1 1/2- 2 cups

2 egg yolks
4 tablespoons room-temp water
1 heaping teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 1/2 cup light, unflavored oil (canola, safflower, or grapeseed. The flavored oils, like nut or olive) will give your mayo a distinct taste of the oils)
1 teaspoon salt
juice of 1/4 lemon

Put egg yolk, water, and mustard in the bowl of a 3-cup food processor. Run the blade to make sure it catches the mixture, dribble in a bit more water if needed or stir up the yolk to get it to catch. Run the food processor until the mixture is pale yellow (about 30 seconds or so).

The oil must be added very slowly to ensure that the mixture emulsifies. With the motor running, drizzle in the oil in a narrow (pencil tip width) steady stream. You can tell the emulsion is working because you'll start to hear slapping sounds as the food processor runs. Some recipes recommend stopping when about 1/3 of the oil has been added, and then continue to add by teaspoonfuls, but I've found it works fine to just keep the steady stream going. Stop the motor and check the mayonnaise to make sure it is emulsifying. If so, continue adding the oil slowly until it is all combined.

When all the oil has been added, add the salt and lemon juice. The lemon juice will help increase its shelf life. I've had this mayo last 3 months in the fridge.

It took me about 3 tries to get my rhythm on homemade mayo, but it is so superior to even the best store bought that once you get the hang of it, you'll never buy mayo again.

L is for Lefovers

2011-08-15T09:05:00.003-05:00

I almost used this one for the 4th-- 'C'-- but leftovers seems more apt, and the celery is more likely to be ready to pick late in the month.

The Thai apple salad (for the Peterson Garden Project Cookbook, and yes, it's delicious, and yes you're going to have to buy the cookbook to get that recipe), left me with leftover apples, apple skins, and bits and pieces of celery. So I invented these two recipes, both of which are delicious. I need Chiot's Run to come over here and take a mouth watering picture of the iced tea.

Celery-apple pesto
Leaves from one bunch of celery, stalks removed (about 2 cups; hold onto those stalks!)
1/2 cup apple, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 cup olive oil
2 large garlic cloves
2 T grated Parmagiano
salt to taste

Stick it in the food processor, grind away. I think you're supposed to do pesto in delicate stages so you don't bruise the leaves or something, but this blog is supposedly about the way people actually prepare food. (Sorry, foodies)

Celery-apple green iced tea
Any leftover apple peels
Any leftover celery stalks (reserve a leafy one for a garnish)
6 bags green tea
1+ T agave syrup (depending on how sweet you like your tea)
4 cups water
2 additional cups water

Put the apple and celery in the first four cups of water and bring to a hard boil. Leaving them in the water, add the teabags and sweetener and steep until the water is cool. Strain into a pitcher and add the additional water, plus 1-2 trays of ice cubes.

Serve with a leafy celery stalk.

K is for Kitchen

2011-08-13T05:08:00.000-05:00

I spend a lot of time in here.

I've always been a cook, of the I-like-home-cooking variety (never a "chef" or "foodie," g*d forbid), but I got into it in a big way about 3 years ago when I got downsized, which was both depressing and gave me a lot of free time.

So I learned to do preserving, and started blogging all our family recipes, and then starting making shit up, and putting those in here too.

Last year we finally put in an island, so I more or less moved my office (aka the laptop) in here so I could cook and "work" at the same time (hahahaha). Seriously, I can sit here and bake or set up preserves while writing for my clients. I look out the back door at my garden. It makes up for the iniquity of being downsized; I like to joke that it beats the heck out of working for a living.

J is for Just make it up

2011-08-12T05:55:00.004-05:00

My community garden is putting together a cook book. I've got a cooking blog, so I think I'm kind of expected to contribute, but the thing is, the contribution form wants to know things like "prep time" and "cooking time" and "number of servings" and, um, ah, "measurements."

As you can see from the recipe below, measurements is a somewhat amorphous concept around here. And serving size? Um, how much can I eat without looking like a total pig? Does that count as a serving size?

It's J, so I suppose I should have made jam. Oh well.

Heirloom potato salad with carmelized onions and hot peppers
4-5 good handfuls of multi-colored fingerling potatoes (have to go to a farmers' market for these, you're not going to find them at the Safeway)
1-2 cups of thinly sliced onions
1-2 large jalapeno (ha- J!) or hot banana peppers, also thinly sliced

oil & vinegar dressing, about 3 tablespoons
1/2 teaspoon ginger, if to taste (in the dressing)

Cut the larger potatoes into bite size pieces, place in a large saucepan filled with water and cook until just done. Immediately drain and refill the pot with cold water (even add some ice cubes) and put the potatoes back in.

Carmelize the onions and peppers in 2 tablespoons of butter, sauteeing on very low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain the potatoes and mix all ingredients together in a decorative bowl (for pretty).

H is for Historical Reenactment

2011-08-10T07:29:00.001-05:00

I'm back home from our brief and delightful vacation, with just one more vacation post.

We spent one day in the town of Elizabeth. You'd be surprised how much time you can spend, and enjoy, in a tiny place like this. It's got a cool little historical downtown, just one block long. It's surrounded by farms, including many homesteaders like Joyful Acres, Holloway Farms, and the Galena Log Cabin Getaway, which despite the name mostly exists to raise alpaca.

Elizabeth is the site of Blackhawk War, another dreadful blot on American history, in which, as usual, European and East Coast settlers helped themselves to Native lands, ignored entreaties to negotiate an equitable settlement and then murdered women and children when the native peoples objected. I learned about Black Hawk as one of the great villains of American history, callously attacking peaceful settlers; I'm happy to report that the history now taught, as written out in the local history museum, seems much more balanced and fair to the native peoples.

Anyway, we were there on a reenactment day, and one of the things they reenacted was a funeral, including a walk to the local graveyard, where the two white victims of the Black Hawk War are buried. No one knew where the 700 Indian victims are.

I got (H is for ) heat stroke.

G is for Galena

2011-08-09T09:26:00.003-05:00

One comes to Galena to be charmed, and Galena does not disappoint. We're in full tourist mode, missing only the fanny packs, but in Galena it hardly matters. I'm pretty sure Galena in August is Paris in August--the only residents in sight are the shop keepers.

They are very very happy.

I'm sitting in the very charming Rendevous Coffee and Tea. Here's a big part of the charm; this is what greeted us as we walked in:
More Galena charm:

F is for Family

2011-08-08T09:14:00.004-05:00

Starting out on our journey, we encountered Nora's Place.

Which is out daughter's name, so we had to eat there.

This engendered a discussion about an interesting road trip, based on visiting places with names of the significant people in your life. (What a concept for a blog. Dibs.)

And right in this area are the towns of Nora, Elizabeth, Free[port], and Dubuque, Iowa (named for Julien Dubuque). Covering my daughter, sister-in-law, brother-in-law and son.

F is also for friends, who lent us their beautiful house for the weekend. Their fully stocked kitchen had arborio rice, so we stopped at a local farmstand and picked up the goods to make this wonderful risotto.

Roasted fennel and onion risotto with fresh corn
1 medium fennel bulb with ferns
1 medium red onion
2 ears corn, nibletted
1 cup arborio rice
3-4 cups fennel-onion stock

salt and pepper to taste

Peel the onion, and cut the ferns and stems off the fennel. Reserve the ferns, and put the onion ends and skins and the fennel stems in 4-5 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for ten minutes. Drain in a separate pot and keep it hot. Meantime, quarter the fennel bulb and the onion and roast in a 350/170 oven for 40 minutes, then chop roughly.

To make the rice, heat the pot and cover the bottom of a 2 quart pot with olive oil, add the corn and rice and toast it for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add 1/2 cup of the hot stock and stir until it is completely absorbed. Continuing to add stock 1/2 cup at a time, letting it absorb completely each time. After about two cups, add the roasted vegetables, and continue adding stock until it is all absorbed. This can take 30 or more minutes. You may have some liquid left over.

When done, turn off the heat, cover and allow the rice to "rest" for about ten minutes. Serve with freshly grated cheese.

E is for Escape

2011-08-06T09:12:00.003-05:00

See you Monday!

D is for Daughter

2011-08-05T08:23:00.002-05:00

Is there anyone who is not blessed in their daughters?

When she was born, I wanted a daughter so badly (I already had a son) that I refused to allow myself to believe that my wish had come true. When my husband and the doctor told me it was a girl, I actually argued.

I can see in my daughter the long line of women leading into the mists back to Eve; her existence connects me to the womb of the earth that is the dark, precious, secret places anchoring us. I am continually amazed at her faith and courage and humor.

Nga* is a sea of tall grass
With roots tangled anchored
To the earth
And stems that stretch for the golden sun
And wave and reach for
air
They hide the small and private things of the earth
with sound and movement and mystery

*her Chinese name

C is for Cheating

2011-08-04T08:16:00.002-05:00

As in, I haven't yet managed to come up with a new recipe on the day it is "due." But I'm hoping I can cheat my way through and hold to the plan. (Maybe I should say, instead, that I am clever. Cute, huh?)

At any rate, I know what you've got in your garden, because I've got them too--waaaaay too many of them because every year I think "I'll plant 12 and remove the 9 weakest plants and end up with just enough....

cucumbers.

You can thank me later.

Wordless Wednesday: B is for Berries

2011-08-03T07:54:00.005-05:00

oh, and broccoli

And a berry recipe.

A is for Apple Salad

2011-08-02T09:05:00.003-05:00

I'm doing Alphabet August with Chiot's Run. Can't promise a recipe every day, but I'm going to try for a word!

The Peterson Garden Project is making a cookbook all about growing and using your own herbs and vegetables. I'm testing four recipes, and recruiting my hapless friends into testing some more. I made three of them for our annual Lammas Fest, and tested them on those same hapless friends. I'll give the bare bones of the ingredients here, but if you want the whole recipe, you've got to buy the cookbook!

Herbed Goat Cheese dip has fresh goat cheese with olive oil and plain yogurt, giving it a lovely lemony taste. Six herbs, all of which I managed to have in my garden!
Thai Apple Salad was the hit of the day--a wonderful fresh combination of unexpected tastes with a secret ingredient!
Pesto Genovese. Oh, pesto. It's a great recipe with the clearest step by step I've seen, but in the way of pesto turned black within seconds. Sigh.

There's a few dozen more recipes in this book! Subscribe to our newsletter at the Peterson Garden Project website to get the updates! So I guess while I'm at it, A is also for Advocate, and Advertise!

Cooperation

2011-07-30T19:19:00.008-05:00

One of the best lessons of a garden is how cooperative it is. Because there were me and all the stinging bugs patiently leaving each other alone. Yellow jackets, honey bees (haven’t seen those in years), fuzzy bumble bees and the big black shiny ones. Wasps, including those tiny iridescent ones that might actually be bees.

White fish with peach curry
1 pound mild white fish

4 medium peaches, peeled (retain the peels)
1 large clove garlic, pressed
1 small onion, diced
1-2 teaspoons honey
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon turmeric
(or you can just use 2 T curry powder. Cheater.)

Put the peach peels in a pot with a cup of water and boil down to 1/4 cup, creating a peach syrup. Strain and set aside.

Put all curry ingredients in a blender and run about 3 minutes, until completely blended. Saute fish until about halfway done, then add half the curry and simmer until fish is done. Just before serving, add the remaining curry to heat it up.

Serve over biryani rice cooked in the peach syrup thinned with the proper amount of water.

Mystery squash

2011-07-30T10:44:00.005-05:00

I grew squash this year.

I wasn't going to, because it's an "off-year" for my squash. I have problems with Squash Vine Borer, and once you've got it, you can't plant again for two years or you WILL have it again.

Well, I've got it again, but I swear it wasn't my fault. The squash just appeared. In my compost pile. I have no idea what kind of squash this was--most of the time when you try to save squash seeds, you end up with these weird hybrids, because it cross pollinates so easily.

This one turned out to be not just a squash hybrid, but as far as I can determine, a summer-winter hybrid, which I though was not supposed to happen, because they aren't the same family. But it had the color and skin of a yellow summer squash, the leaves of a winter squash, the flavor of a mild butternut, and the shape of a Muscade pumpkin.

The first and last of which I did not grow last year.

I managed one large fruit, about 3 pounds, before the SVB killed the plant.

Summer soup
3 cups summer squash, roasted, skinned and cubed
1 pound apricots, peeled
1 large onion
4 T butter

Stock:
3 cups water
leaves of 2-3 leeks, 2 large sprigs each mint and parsley
1/2 T green peppercorns
2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspooon baking soda

Make this in a gallon pot, so it doesn't overflow. To roast the squash-- quarter, scoop out the seeds, and place meat-side down on a rimmed baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray, or lightly oiled. Carmelize the onions in 2T of butter. Set aside. In the same pot, melt the remaining butter then add the apricots (if anyone knows how to peel apricots, let me know, because I don't think I'm doing it right). Stirring constantly, render the moisture out of the apricots, then turn down the heat and add the squash. Simmer until it releases moisture. Add the hot stock and simmer until one cup of liquid has boiled away (about 10-15 minutes), stirring occasionally. Using an immersible blender, blend it to a smooth texture. Add the baking soda, which will mitigate the acid. Stand RIGHT THERE and keep stirring, because it will foam up.

When it has settled back down, add the onions back in and continue to simmer for about 5 minutes. Serve with fresh baking-soda biscuits.

Wordless Wednesday: Bringing the garden inside

2011-07-27T13:00:00.001-05:00

Garden party

2011-07-24T12:00:00.002-05:00

We do a Lammas Festival party every year to celebrate the garden and the first harvest. (Held a little early this year due to other scheduling problems. )

As we were setting up and cleaning up the week before, I started digging around to see what paper plates and plastic glasses and utensils we still had left over from the last one.

Stop.

When you switch over to a more sustainable way of living, it's not just about how you do things and what you buy. You have to rearrange the synapses. It took a slow grinding of the gears for me to absorb the inconsistency of seasonal-local-sustainable served on throw-away plates. So we headed to the thrift store and picked up a giant load of cheap glassware. We got bamboo plates, which we will use til they're unusable, and then compost. We pulled out all of our forks, and just kept washing them all day when we ran out

There are days when I think how silly it is for this one little two-person household to try to save the planet. And then I look at the trash we ended up with yesterday. Namely, none. We gave a party attended by more than 50 people, and did not generate any trash. The food went into the compost. The bottles went into the recycling. The tableware went into the sink. Fifty people from 30 households observed this, including a large percentage of young people, whom we are trying to save the planet for.

Seasonal. Local. Organic. Whole. And trash-free.

Word.

Chamomile-Raspberry-Ginger tea
5 tablespoons chamomile or 6 teabags
1/4 cup fresh raspberries
2 large pieces of candied ginger, diced
4 cups boiling water
2 cups cool water

Steep the chamomile, raspberries and ginger in the boiling water, about 2 hours (until water is cool). Add cool water. pour into ice-cube filled glasses. Garnish with fresh chamomile flowers.

Growing project updates

2011-07-22T12:00:00.004-05:00

I'm participating in three growing projects this year:

I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
I̶'̶m̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶O̶n̶e̶ ̶S̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶C̶h̶i̶c̶a̶g̶o̶
I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Bramki is a huge plant-- already more than 5 feet tall. I like a tomato plant to have 7 to 10 fruits per plant; fewer than that just isn't worth it in my small garden; this one looks like it will make it. On the three plants, there are 4, 5, and 7 fruits, plus at least 2 flower sets ready to go. Because this looks to be such a large plant, I will probably start pruning this to a constant size once I get the fruit that I need ripening.

Ferris Wheel is a moderate height, looks like a slow grower and fruit production is way behind other varieties I've grown, with just 5 fruits among the 3 plants. However, this was also my experience with the Black Krim. After saving seed for 10 years, my Black Krims now give me 10 or more per plant of good sized fruit. So depending on the flavor it might be worth creating my own backyard cultivar.

Blondkopfchen is the most insanely prolific cherry I've ever seen. Too much! Yikes. Kelly, are you sure you want these seeds?

German Pink continues to lag because it was planted so late and small, but it does have two flower sets and should be fruiting within a few days. I think it would be very interesting to find a variety of tomato developed by a Chicago farmer or gardener and do that as an Heirloom project. There must be one.

The One Seed Chicago chard all washed away in the floods; the rest of the chard is doing fine. Does that count?

Just me, the lightning bugs and Son of Rabbit Kong

2011-07-19T21:05:00.005-05:00

He’s not even intimidated anymore particularly. He stays just a little ahead of me on the paths and disappears into the underbrush. I think there must be a wormhole somewhere—he slips into an alternate universe.

But it’s nice being out here with him in the gloaming. The city is very quiet this year; I feel like it’s quieter than usual. It isn’t the heat-here by the lake it isn’t all that hot. There just isn’t any noise this year. If you close your eyes you can breathe in the scent of the dirt and feel a million miles from the city.

The new beans, barely a week old, are sturdy 4-inch high sprouts with 2 sets of leaves. Beans are my favorite sprouts—so sturdy and insistent. The beets are visible to the naked eye, and there are a couple tiny broccoli sprouts, but I’ll wait to log them. Still no sign of the succession carrots, but they take a little longer to germinate; as much as ten days.

Pulled a half-pound turnip with a beautiful waxy sheen and froze the greens for stock. Snagged a few ounces of beans, most of them too small but I’m afraid to leave them for my furry little nemesis. Other than herbs there’s nothing else ready yet. The earliest tomatoes are just starting to pink, the cukes and zukes got their first flowers just this week; the eggplants are still in the blossom-drop stage. Hopefully they’ll settle in and decide to fruit.

I’m sure as soon as I left the little sneak thief snuck back out to snack. His passage through the rustling leaves is the only sound out there.

Late broccoli soup
The last broccoli florets
Large basketful of broccoli leaves (small leaves and large leaves)
Tender stems from the broccoli plants
2 small garlic heads
1 medium onion, diced
2 early carrots
6-8 new potatoes sliced in half or quarters, or 1 large mature potato, peeled and diced.

3 cups stock
1 cup milk or half-half

With the large broccoli leaves, the garlic and onion peel and the carrot greens, make 3 cups of stock. Keep hot. Cook the potatoes about halfway in a separate pot, drain and set aside

Dice the onion, broccoli greens and stems and carrots. While the onions are sauteeing, scald 1 cup of milk or half-half. Saute the onions in butter or olive oil until tender, press and add the garlic and saute for 30 seconds, then add the broccoli and carrots. Saute until the broccoli is bright dark green, then lightly dredge with about 2-3 T of flour. Lightly brown, stirring constantly for 2 minutes. Turn off heat. When it has stopped sizzling add about a quarter cup of the scalded, still hot milk; it will form a thick paste. Turn the heat back on low, and continue adding the rest of the milk, stirring it smooth each time. Add the stock about a cup at a time until the soup is the desired consistency (your call- thin or thick).

For vegan, obviously, leave out the milk.

Serve with baguettes and lots of butter.

You never count your beans when you're sitting at the table

2011-07-17T13:05:00.008-05:00

Last year I lost the entire bean crop to rabbits. This year I'm snagging about half of it. I keep thinking I've sealed off all its little bolt holes, but it just finds another. On the other hand, the furfaces and creepy-crawlies seem to be leaving everything else alone.

The thing about gardening, and life really, is that you have to learn when to just let it go. It's The Gambler, right? Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to pull out the shotgun and fill the little bastards' backsides full of buckshot.

Oops, sorry. I meant "trap it and turn it loose in the forest."

In the spring, here in Chicago, we had to just let it go as we got floods and floods of rain, nearly half the year's total precipitation in just about 9 weeks from March through mid June. Everyone I know planted their carrots two or three times, or gave up on lettuce this year, or didn't plant cucumbers until July. The tomatoes, of course, we fight to keep like little demons, because while they love to GROW in Chicago, they're not so crazy about starting out, so every tomato that makes it past sprout is as precious as a child, and frankly, I treat them better than I treat my children.

I have a beautiful garden. No ugly gardens for me! (ducks.) So I really really don't want to put up chicken wire fencing to keep the rabbits out. It's ugly (whining). It scratches. I can't get into the beds. Of course, if I wasn't so insistent on curvy sexy shapes for my beds it would be easy to put up perfectly decent looking fencing. Anyway, the fencing is up and as the foliage gets more lush you can barely see it.

Problem is, the rabbit apparently barely sees it either, because he keeps getting in there.

Here's what I made today (with ingredients from the farmers market, rather than the garden, since I don't have enough beans to make a salad with them.)

Peach-cherry chutney
based on the recipe in Jeff Smiths' Our Immigrant Ancestors

1 cup sweet cherries, halved and pitted
3-4 cups peaches, peeled and diced (about 5 peaches)
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 2 Tablespoons)
1 cup any dried berry (dried raisins, blueberries, currants, etc.)
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar or rice vinegar
1 teaspoon each:
cumin, red pepper flakes, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, brown mustard
1/2 teaspoon each:
kosher salt, dried thyme, black peppercorns

Drain the fruit, conserving the liquid.

Combine the honey, vinegar and spices, plus the peach peels and cherry pits in a medium saucepan. Add a little water to thin it slightly. Mix thoroughly and boil gently, until syrup is thick and sticks to the bottom of the spoon, about 15 minutes or so, depending on how much liquid you have to boil away. Strain and return to the saucepan.

Place the drained fruit, plus the dried fruit and optional nuts in a bowl and add the lemon juice. Mix thoroughly. Fold the fruit into the syrup and simmer very briefly (less than a minute). Decant into sterilized jars and refrigerate or preserve using your favorite canning technique. Should refrigerate for a day before serving.

This was way easier when I was 30

2011-07-11T19:28:00.010-05:00

We're rehabbing my husband's home office. For some reason, this room didn't even get painted when we moved in nearly 30 years ago. It's pretty much the room that you close the door on when guests are over.

Since the kids moved out, our rehab mantra has been "do it right." This means proper wall prep, replacing warped moldings, and No More Paint On Wood, i.e. strip the woodwork.

This is the job that I got, while DH worked on the walls.

Think 12 hours over 3 days holding a heavy heat gun at about shoulder height or higher. Pain.

After finishing the main part of this task on Monday night, I was done in, but hungry. Almost almost ordered pizza, but I had these gorgeous 1/2 pound portabellos in the larder, so I made the following casserole, and I am very glad I did, because it was just what the doctor ordered. Flavorful and stick-to-your-ribs. Since I made this up as I went along, and I was way too tired to right it down at the time, I hope I can reconstruct now!

Mushroom casserole
2 large portabello mushrooms, diced
2-3 T butter
juice of 1/4 lemon
1 medium onion, diced
garlic, too taste, pressed
about 1/4 cup celeriac, diced very fine
3 T flour

2-3 cups Half & half, milk, or stock (vegetable or chicken)
1 cup noodles (I used penne, but egg noodles, elbow macaroni or your favorite shape are all fine)
2 medium potatoes, diced
something green- spinach, beans, peas, chard

Boil water for the noodles and potatoes (put the potatoes in first, as they take a little longer than the noodles). Once these are cooked, drain and set aside (or time it so everything is done at once). If you're using peas or beans for your greens, add them about 5 minutes before the noodles are done. Leafy greens can just be added to the casserole and don't need to be precooked.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan, and add the mushrooms. Stir until all the butter is absorbed by the mushrooms, then add the lemon juice. This will release liquid from the mushrooms and give your casserole a wonderful mushroom flavor. If you are using milk, it will not curdle the milk, don't worry. Add the celeriac and onions; you may need to add a little more butter to saute them. Once the celeriac is soft, dredge with flour and saute for 2 minutes. While you are sauteeing, scald the liquid; you'll want it very very hot.

Add a little of the scalded liquid to the vegetables; it will immediately form a thick paste. Continuing adding liquid and stirring until you have a creamy sauce. Prepare a glass or ceramic casserole dish (spray or oil), and add all ingredients together, mixing thoroughly. Sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and a little cheese (vegans--what would you use instead of cheese to make a nice melty crust?).

Bake at 350F/175C for about 25 minutes or until the top is melted and lightly brown.

A day at the Farmers Market

2011-07-07T09:42:00.008-05:00

I spent Thursday working the University of Illinois Extension Plant Clinic booth at the Eli's-Wright College Farmers Market.

From what I hear about the main Plant Clinic at the Ag School it's quite busy, with lots of people calling with questions, but I've only done the off-site clinics, at Garfield Park Conservatory and this one at this small near-suburban weekday farmers market.

We had several questions, including "I haven't planted my garden yet. Will the weather stay warm into October so that I have time for tomatoes?" She seriously seemed to want us to research this. We were also a captive audience for the several salespeople who took advantage of the fact that we were stuck in a booth and too polite to tell them to get lost.

I think these remote clinics could be more interesting--lots of people walked by, but didn't approach because first it's hard to tell what's going on, and second, there's nothing to look at. I bought some unusual vegetables from one of the vendors to use as paperweights, which brought a few people over, but I think there would be more traffic if we had a mini-insect petting zoo, and maybe a plant-a-seed demo for children (or adults for that matter). I'm doing another one in August and I'm extremely tempted to plant some tiny pots of parsley to give away.

My paperweights turned into a wonderful grilled salad.

Grilled summer vegetables with red currant vinaigrette
Golden beets
Summer squash
Cauliflower
Raw peas, chilled

Dressing:
1 pint red currants
2 T sugar
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2+ cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Slice the vegetables very thin (1/4 inch), dredge with olive oil and salt, and grill until al dente (about 10-15 minutes). Serve the peas raw and cold as a contrast. For the vinaigrette, simmer the currants with the sugar until the fruit loses its shape; strain through a food mill to remove stems and seeds. Whip with the vinegar and oil.

Drizzle over the hot vegetables. We ate this as dinner, but it's a lovely side dish as well.

Growing project updates

2011-07-04T07:36:00.003-05:00

Im participating in three growing projects this year:

I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Beautiful plant. Each of the 3 Bramki have at least 3 flower sets, and there are two tiny fruits starting on one. Wish I could find a picture of one. Best I've come up with is a description of "oblate red fruit with good tomato flavor."

The Ferris Wheels have tons of flowers, although the earliest sets all seem to have dropped. Another very sturdy plant, although in general all the tomatoes are really muscular this year. No fruits yet. The Blondkopfchen, from non-SeedBank seeds, appears to be a wildly prolific cherry. Mine is blooming like crazy, but there's also one at the Peterson Garden that we think has about 300 flowers on it.

One Seed Chicago chard washed away in the April Sintflut.

German Pink for One Heirloom Chicago is setting flowers, although still small (latest transplant of all the tomatoes).

I like growing tomatoes, but I wish these community growing projects had a little more community this year.

If I had to depend on my garden for food, I'd be in trouble right now

2011-06-30T09:29:00.004-05:00

Seasons like this one, which cost me crops, make me think about what it must have meant to be dependent on your garden for food. I lost two early crops that normally provide our vegetables for part of May and all of June.

This year my peas, snow peas and chard were a dead loss. The first two plantings of these early crops just washed away in the nearly 20 inches of rain between April 15 and June 15 (half our normal annual precipitation in just 8 weeks); the penultimate of the peas and snowpeas fell prey to the bumper crop of slugs that were a consequence of the weather. I have maybe a single meal’s worth of peas ripening, and I get a meal’s worth of broccoli every four days.

I’m going to have a harvest-free week or two at this point, as the broccoli gears down (if it does) but the beans aren’t quite ready. I still have lettuce, but although it hasn’t bolted, it’s bitter. I’ll have chard, after all, but not until late summer and autumn.

Probably if I depended on the garden for food I’d have fought harder for the lost crops. Rather than weeding the lamb’s quarters and purslane, we would have been eating it. Rather than chasing the rabbits away, we’d have been trapping them.

Appreciate your food supply. Appreciate your farmer, who does have to fight the weather for her crop, which feeds you.

Honey-rosemary roast chicken
Brush a whole chicken with honey (you can thin it slightly with boiling water to make it brush more easily); I then sprinkled it with rosemary salt, but you can also grind some dried rosemary with sea salt and make your own.

Roast according to your favorite cookbook recipe (I use the Woman's Home Companion Cook Book from 1952).

While the chicken is roasting, use the sweetmeats, neck, and skin flaps from the neck, with a cut up onion, some green peppercorns, sea salt and 2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary in 3 cups of water to create a broth-- boil down to 2 cups. Use 1 cup of this plus enough additional water to cook rice; use the remaining broth to make pan gravy with the drippings.

Pan gravy
Pour the drippings into a sauce pan, add about 1 teaspoon of flour per 1/4 cup of drippings (should create a thin paste). Simmer for 2 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly. Turn off the heat and allow to quiet down (i.e. no more simmer). Turn the heat back on and add boiling liquid-- this can be almost anything- wine, stock, broth, fruit juice, milk or just plain water depending on the flavor you want. It will immediately thicken; thin it to the desired consistency with cool water. You can strain this if you want, although I seldom strain my gravy-- I like the little bits and pieces!

I could get used to this

2011-06-16T14:41:00.007-05:00

It's a good thing my husband is well employed doing work he loves, because while I have interesting jobs (yes that's "jobs" plural), you couldn't exactly support a family on my take home pay. I complain about it a lot (I'm sure I'm very boring--sorry).

But last Friday I got to go to the movies at noon, and right now I'm sitting outside in my garden under my new table umbrella gearing up for my day's on line work. It's about to rain, so it's a little bit chilly; I'm wrapped up in a blanket knit for me by a friend and I'm listening to the thunder and watching Rabbit Kong try to breach the defenses.

Beats the heck out fame and riches.

Strawberry cream cheese bread

Adapted from mybakingaddiction.com

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup honey
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 egg + 1 egg white
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream, thinned with a little milk or cream
1 1/2 cups strawberries, and macerated in 1/4 teaspoon vanilla and 3-4T of sugar

Preheat oven to 350/175. Grease and flour a 9×5 inch loaf pan. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cream butter, honey and cream cheese until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Mix in vanilla. Blend flour mixture with butter mixture just until blended. Add buttermilk and only stir until just combined; do not over mix. Carefully fold in strawberries. Dough mixture will be thick. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until an inserted knife comes out clean.

Okay, didn't have any honey (how does this happen?) so I used 1/2 cup sugar, and increased to two whole eggs. Decided it would be more interesting to thin the sour cream with 1/4 cup of homemade strawberry syrup. You could also use orange juice, or just substitute buttermilk, but I can never find anything except an abomination called "fat free buttermilk" at the market-- what is that? It's buttermilk folks, fat is the entire point.

Anyway, the adaptation of the adaptation was also delicious.

June Bloom Day

2011-06-15T00:01:00.002-05:00

I'll start with the tickweed and daisies, and move on to parsnips and chamomile, but mostly this month is about the 100 petunias on my porch. I usually have more exotic items on the porch--palms and licorice plants, gynura, cordyline. Last year I left the pots empty "to fill up with possbilities"

But this year I needed something simple and bright and prosaic. Something that would just widen the pupils and put a smile on everyone's face.

Ah. Petunias.

Tickweed and daisies

Parsnips and chamomile

Petunia Sun Spun "Silver

Petunia "Daddy Strawberry"

Petunia "Cappucino" and Verbena Lanai "Peach"

Petunia "Yellow Madness"

Sour Cream Rhubarb Bread

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground clove

2/3 cup diced rhubarb

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup walnut oil

1 egg

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

Topping

2 Tablespoons raspberry sugar

1 tsp butter

1/4 tsp clove

Preheat oven to 325F/160C

Whisk dry ingredients together. Add the rhubarb and cranberries. Beat the liquid ingredients together until thoroughly combined then add to dry ingredients and mix all bread ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter in a small bowl, combine with the other topping ingredients and whisk until well combined. Grease a bread pan. Pour the batter into the pan. Drizzle the topping over the batter.

Bake for 55-65 minutes or until a knitting needle inserted into the center comes out clean. This is a very moist bread. Allow to cool completely before tipping out of pan so it doesn't fall apart.

For a sweeter bread, macerate the rhubarb in a 1/4 cup of sugar for 1/2 hour before adding to batter. If you do this, add the rhubarb last.

Growing project updates

2011-06-13T09:00:00.002-05:00

Im participating in three growing projects this year:

I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Bramki

Lovely plant. Very sturdy; they've doubled in size since I planted them less than a month ago. Bramkis also went to my homeschooling project, a rainbow tomato patch for a friend (a red, a black, a gold, and a green), and the plant sale at Peterson Garden. This and the Ferris have some flowers started, which I've bagged.

Ferris

Again, going strong, nice big sturdy plants. I had only 30% germination on these, so all three that survived went into my garden. Unfortunately, managed to break the central stem on this bagging the first set of flowers. This will weaken the plant, but I guess it just becomes another part of the experiment. There are two additional plants as well.

Blondkopfchen

I have a possibly-bk plant, plus one that I picked up from The Yarden. Per Kelly, I'll save seeds from the Yarden plant for her.

German Pink (One Heirloom)

Planted out the Pink about a week ago, just before the insane heat. It's doubled in size, but unfortunately was not a strong enough, large enough start to really be proof against slugs. Working on some slug barriers for it until it can get bigger. If these folks do this challenge again, I hope they either just distribute seeds, or get it together to have much better or much earlier starts.

Swiss chard

These got a bit drowned by the 6 inches of rain we had in May and none of them came up, along with the other seeds I had in this bed. Think I'm going to need to build a raised bed for this spot next year.

Walnut ginger blondies with chocolate chips

2/3 cup ww pastry flour
2/3 cup finely ground walnuts
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg
3/4 honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup finely chopped candied ginger
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325°.
Mix dry ingredients, including ground walnuts and ginger pieces. In a mixing bowl with hand-held electric mixer on high, beat egg until foamy. Add honey and vanilla; beat well. Stir in flour mixture, then add the chips. Grease an 8x16" pan, spread batter with a spatula. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until deep golden brown. Cut into 2-inch bars; cool in pan. Makes 32 walnut bars.

Ordinary

2011-06-06T08:30:00.001-05:00

One of the things that the online gardening community did for me, or really for my long-suffering plants, was to save my potted plants. Every year I would watch with resignation and rue as my houseplants slowly died each winter, and the idea of plants in containers outdoors just stumped me.

But with the internet looking over my shoulder I felt both encouraged, and slightly embarrassed at accepting my incompetence in this area. It’s kind of like not minding that you’re a bad housewife until guests are coming over.

Of course, the only thing that houseplants and other potted plants need is care and attention, so once I started paying attention the attrition rate plummeted. I’ve got most of the “houseplants” staged around the pond for the summer, and this year I’ve put 90 petunias in pots on the porch.

I usually have a more exotic mix for my porch; somehow simple flowers in containers seems a waste of resources. But I decided to go for metaphor again with the porch pots. Last year I left them empty so they would “fill with possibilities” and they really did, in the form of clients, the Peterson Garden Project, and lots of new students. However, because I really have enough possibilities for now, I decided I needed to go entirely the opposite direction and do something simple and obvious.

So I planted a crayola box of petunias. Simple, obvious, instantly recognizable with color and bloom that will hit you over the head. There are about 80 on the porch, and the remaining ones tucked into various other pots staged around the garden, including a white one in the dragon’s mouth.

I generally avoid such obvious flowers; I like a subtler ratio of bloom to foliage. But the petunias on the the porch make a joyous statement that sometimes life is good without that much effort and that sometimes the obvious is the thing to do.

Chocolate cream cheese cookies
5 oz semi sweet chocolate, chopped (or 2/3 cups semi sweet chocolate chips)
2 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch processed)
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup cream cheese
2/3 cup honey
2 large eggs
1 1/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
optional: 1/4 teaspoon mint, orange, or raspberry extract

optional: 1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350F/177C . Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate in a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from heat and set aside to cool to room temperature.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat the butter, cream cheese and honey until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the melted chocolate and beat until well incorporated. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour in stages, mixing until incorporated. Fold in the the nuts.

Drop in teaspoonfuls onto baking sheet 2" apart (these will spread quite a bit). The cookies are done when they are just barely set in the center. They should still be soft. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 30 large or 40 small cookies.

The city has nature too

2011-05-31T06:00:00.002-05:00

I've been reading Wendell Berry's The Art of the Commonplace, which I picked up (okay, downloaded) because I figured you can't really call yourself an environmentalist or sustainability activist if you haven't read Wendell Berry. He has the most marvelous way of evoking the land that he loves, but as often happens with me with these paeans to wilderness and countryside, I've started getting that niggling, impatient little voice saying, "so what."

Eighty percentage of Americans live in large cities, "urbanized areas," or "urban clusters." While I am somewhat unusual in having urban roots going back 5 generations, I'll bet there are plenty whose closest relatives still on the farm were great-grandparents.

And yet we persist in lionizing the rural-- as though you cannot be, as the internet joke goes, a "rill Merkin" without a hick accent and a dirt road. We sigh over the president who clears brush to relax, and excoriate the one who learns Spanish, or puts in a garden at his urban home.

Cities are also a natural way to live. They are, as the language attests, what civilized us. There might be gold in them thar hills, but there's also nature in them thar backyards. In my own small patch, I've counted a dozen bird species, 9 different bees, 3 different wasps, 5 different worms, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, possums and, once, a coyote. As any urban gardener knows, green will grow from any crack. I take walks not just to people watch and window shop, but also to see what's growing-- in both gardens and cracks.

Wendell Berry's world is gone, if it ever existed. If we want to reconnect with the art of the commonplace, we don't need the Virginia mountains. It's right in our own backyards.

Stuffed roasted salmon
1 (2-pound) center-cut boneless, skinless salmon fillet
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup mayo
chopped fresh spinach
small onion, sliced
Extra virgin olive oil

Seasoning:
ground sage, sea salt, green pepper, about 2 teaspoons

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Saute the onion in butter until it just starts to get transparent. Add the spinach and saute just about a minute, until it just starts to cook. Toss this with the mayo.

Butterfly salmon fillet through the centers and lay the pieces out so the gray underside is facing up; arrange on a clean work surface. Season with salt and pepper then spread fillet with the spinach/onion mixture. Gently fold over the salmon and place in a greased baking dish. Dribble with olive oil, then pat with the seasoning mixture (you can also use dill, thyme, oregano or any of your favorite savories).

Roast until just cooked through, about 20 minutes. Set aside to let rest for 5 minutes then carefully transfer to a serving platter, remove and discard twine and serve.

Serve with couscous or wild rice.

Rainy, muddy and happy

2011-05-28T17:16:00.002-05:00

Is there any other way for a gardener to feel after a day of gardening?

Fantastic time at Peterson Garden today, selling plants, talking to gardeners and wearing my Master Gardener (trainee) hat. Okay, it was a Chicago Botanic Garden hat, actually. Planted a Three Sisters bed, communed with good gardening friends and got very wet and muddy since, as usual it started to rain.

Here's a nice chicken salad from leftovers:

Chicken Salad
1/2 chicken, roasted (in other words, leftovers)
4 hard boiled eggs, diced
pickles, to taste (sweet, kosher or dill)
2-3 small roasted potatoes (again, I used the leftovers from our chicken dinner)

1/2-2/3 cup seasoned mayo (depending on how goopy you like your chicken salad)

Seasoning:
2 T ground rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1-2T crushed or ground sea salt

Cut up and mix the chicken, eggs, potatoes and pickles. Mix the seasonings into the mayo, and then mix it all together. Serve on lettuce or in a sandwich. If it hadn't been so damned cold for the last 6 weeks, I'd have some lettuce in the garden right now.

I used my own homemade crushed rosemary, mayo and pickles, but I'll relent and let you use store-bought as long as it's local and organic.

Sunday Tomato update

2011-05-22T09:44:00.009-05:00

I'll be tracking all my tomatoes on Sundays through the summer.

I've grown the following tomatoes from, and have about 70 starts, 22 of which will go into my garden, 15-20 to various friends and community projects, and the remainder to the plant sale at Peterson Garden.

All plants were started March 20 from seed on grow mats. I used plastic shoeboxes with drainage holes drilled in the bottoms, and set with sterilized TP rolls filled with organic seed starting mix. All trays were covered with cellophane wrap until the seeds sprouted, then kept under grow lights until the first ones were set out on May 1. Lights are kept on for 16 hours per day, within 5" of the top of the sprouts, and a fan is kept blowing on them at all times. I used canister clamp lamps with 150 and 200 watt CFLs.

Growing projects:
Seed saving for Populuxe
Bramki
Ferris Wheel
Blondkopfchen
Unfortunately, of my 70 or so tomato starts, 9 lost their tags, among them the Blondkopfchens. The unknowns are going to the Peterson Garden plant sale to some adventurous gardener willing to buy an untagged tom! The Bramki are the sturdiest starts I've ever grown, and had a 100% germination rate as well. Ferris Wheels had only 30% germination, but are also very good looking starts.

Web community: One Heirloom Chicago
German Pink
This start was much smaller than I'd hoped (still on its cotyledons, no true leaves), so I put it back under grow lights, even though Green Home mentioned it was already hardened. It's now got its first set of leaves, but won't go out until it has at least four sets of leaves (my personal marker for "ready.")

Growing for me and Hipster Supported Agriculture:
San Marzano from saved seeds, original plant from Chicago Botanic Garden, 2010
I have 27 of these, and will plant 5 here. These yielded 70 fruits (you read that right) per plant last year, so this will be the backbone of my winter tomato preserving.

Black Krim from saved seeds, 8th generation, original plant from Gethsemane Garden, 2000. This was the first heirloom I ever planted as well as being the first seed I ever saved. Because I've been saving it from my own yard for nearly a decade, these have more or less adapted to a hyper-local condition and give me amazing yields (up to 12 fruits) from a single plant each season, very high for an heirloom not bred specifically for yield. Again, really nice, sturdy starts.

Goldman's Italian American from saved seeds, original plant from Chicago Botanic Garden, 2010. A fluted paste tomato, large, but small yield. However, I loved the flavor and look.

Unknown gold heirloom, from saved seeds, grown last year at Peterson Garden from a start by The Yarden. A beautiful deep gold, meaty, flavorful tomato. Wish I knew what kind it was!

Pictures of all of these on flickr.

This should probably be a tomato recipe, but I'm too tired to come up with one.

Chicken Salad
1/2 chicken, roasted (in other words, leftovers)
4 hard boiled eggs, diced
pickles, to taste (sweet, kosher or dill)
2-3 small roasted potatoes (again, I used the leftovers from our chicken dinner)

1/2-2/3 cup seasoned mayo (depending on how goopy you like your chicken salad)

Seasoning:
2 T ground rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1-2T crushed or ground sea salt

Cut up and mix the chicken, eggs, potatoes and pickles. Mix the seasonings into the mayo, and then mix it all together. Serve on lettuce or in a sandwich. If it hadn't been so damned cold for the last 6 weeks, I'd have some lettuce in the garden right now.

I used my own homemade crushed rosemary, mayo and pickles, but I'll relent and let you use store-bought as long as it's local and organic.

I'm hunting wabbits

2011-05-18T10:38:00.002-05:00

I don't really like this blog to be a gardening blog; there are plenty of gardening blogs around, plus I like the web to be a friendly place, and man those gardeners get into it on line. Latest dust-up seems to be over whether accepting advertising and giving endorsements is equivalent to selling your soul to the devil. Do these people understand how the entire magazine publishing industry works?

I can't be pure anyway, as long as I'm harboring murderous thoughts regarding the local wildlife. Last year, they decimated my bean crop-- 200 baby plants down the gullet of rabbits. Part of the problem is that I love the way my garden looks-- it's all swoopy and artsy, and putting up chicken wire just destroys the aesthetic.

But this year I bit the bullet and put it up around the most vulnerable crops. Of course, you can't make it pretty very easily (because of the curves), and you don't want it too sturdy, because then the OTHER evil furfaces, namely the squirrels, climb over it. I think they view it as a challenge.

In the meantime, we're working our way down the 70 foot long cyclone fence on one side of the yard, and cinching hardware cloth to it-- 1/2" grid. Not even mice are getting through that puppy. We've got the bottom buried and garden-stapled into the ground so that they can't dig under it. Right now 3 of the 12 sections are done, and the rest of the fencing is tied temporarily the rest of the way, with some bricks and logs blocking the bottom. I have a temporary barrier at the sideyard that seems to be working. Daddy Wabbit can't get into the yard anymore, although I'm still seeing the baby.

Well, it isn't pretty, but I do seem to have peas this year.

In the meantime, the raccoons are unstoppable. For one thing, they're the size of small cows and they travel in packs. I'm not getting between them and their desire. One of the things they desire is our fish. We cover the lower pond, where the fish are, at night with corrugated plastic sheets, so they've taken to displaying their wrath by flinging the plants out of the upper pond, and last night also actually got INTO the pond and dug up a lotus-- took it right out of the pot. Then for good measure, they knocked over a bird bath, the malicious little bastards.

Maybe these guys can stop them:

Walnut-wheat crackers
1 1/3 cup wheat flour
3 T corn meal
1/3 cup finely ground walnuts
1 teaspoon sea salt (ground or whole, depending on personal preference)
1 teaspoon ground pepper
2 tablespoons softened butter

1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup honey

walnut oil as needed

Combine the dry ingredients, cutting in the butter until it's completely mixed. Because of the butter and the walnut meal, this will be slightly damp and crumbly. Whisk the milk, sour cream, and honey together to form a little more than a cup of thick liquid. Slowly mix in the liquid to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.

Divide the dough into three to four portions and roll out one at a time, until paper thin. Some people recommend a pasta press, but I did it fine with a rolling pin. Keep turning the dough over, and lightly coating it with flour so it doesn't stick to the pin or the board.

Lightly brush the sheet with oil, then grind sea salt onto it. Using a sharp knife or pizza roller, cut the dough into 1" square crackers. You can do this directly on a parchment-lined cookie sheet or on a cutting board, and transfer the crackers to the sheet.

Bake at 300 for 20 to 25 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp. Allow to cool on the tray and then store in an air tight container for up to a week. This recipe made about 200 1" square crackers.

Growing for the community

2011-05-16T15:53:00.004-05:00

I'm participating in three growing projects this year:

I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project

Populuxe Seed Bank
This is my second year growing seeds for Populuxe. This is serious seed saving, with isolation bags to make sure they don't get cross polinated. Last year I grew Roma VF, a tomato which I didn't really like very much, but Kelly has her seeds now!

This year's toms were started indoors on March 20, and they're looking gorgeous. The Bramki in particular are a marvelously sturdy, hardy seedling. They've been outside in cold boxes for about 2 weeks, through some very low nighttime temps, and are thriving. I have nine of these, so in addition to the 3 I'm planning to plant, I'll be donating a couple to a Plant a Row project, and to a homeschool group, as well as selling some at the Peterson Plant sale. It's impossible to find information on this tomato. Hilariously, nearly the entire first page of Google hits are either me or Populuxe.

The Ferris Wheels did not germinate as brilliantly as the Bramkis, but I have three strong seedlings. These are liking the cold less, even in the cold boxes, but are still healthy. All of these will go into my own garden.

The Blondkopchens were fine last I found them, but it was freezing cold and pouring rain when I looked for them in the cold box just now, so we'll have to take this on faith.

Find Populuxe on Twitter as @seed_bank and @xitomatl and on Facebook.

One Heirloom
A new project this year, modeled on the One Seed Chicago (itself modeled on One Book Chicago), I got involved in this through my friend Gina at My Skinny Garden (which was also the very first garden blog I ever followed--if you want to b̶l̶a̶m̶e̶ thank someone for all this crazy blogging I do, blame, um thank her). Green Home Experts is supplying everyone with inexpensive 4" seedlings; they'll go into the cold box next week. (I never plant out my toms until the first week of June, because you just never know in northern Illinois. Today, for instance, the low was 44°F/7C.)

One Seed Chicago
Kinda of the local granddaddy of growing projects, this is the brainchild of Neighbor Space and MrBrownThumb (you can blame him for the blogging too). My choice of eggplant didn't win, but I love chard too, so this will go in this week (since the rabbits ate all my early chard).
Find the project on Facebook, and on Twitter (@oneseedchicago), and join all of us on Mondays and Wednesdays on Twitter for #gardenchat and #seedchat.

Bloom Day May

2011-05-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

After a lovely warm start to the month, it's back in the 40s today. Thank goodness for flowers.

Check out all the Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posts over at May Dreams!

Toasting eggshells

2011-05-11T06:31:00.009-05:00

This is going to have to be the title of my gardening memoir, as a metaphor for some of the crazy things I do. Not that I think they're crazy. My garden friend Jen knew exactly why I was toasting eggshells the other day. My husband, on the other hand, gave me one of those "there's probably a good reason for this that does not involve an adjustment to her medication" looks.

Anyway, in case you haven't figured it out I was toasting eggshells to dry them out, so that I could grind them fine and put them around my broccoli. Well, for heaven's sake, so the slugs will leave them alone!

Just looking around from where I'm sitting I see the following slightly odd bits of evidence that a gardener lives here:

• hot peppers soaking in oil (anti-rabbit spray)
• pop bottles cut in half (for wintersowing, duh)
• saved broken pieces of ceramic pots (plant labels)
• seed heads in the blender (It's pretty much all I use the blender for)
• frozen used coffee grounds
• cut up mini-blinds
• boxes of drier lint

This does not even begin to cover the things that anyone could figure out-- windowsills devoted to seedlings, grow lights clamped to every available location, bags full of unidentified green things in the freezer, piles of rocks on the porch to throw at the rabbits.

What do you have in your house that a non-gardener just wouldn't understand?

Blueberry thumbprint cookies
1 1/2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese, softened
1 c granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/3 c blueberry syrup
zest from 2 limes
3 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 salt

Whisk dry ingredients together, In another bowl cream butter and cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in juice and zest. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined (over mixing will make this dough tough). Cover and chill until dough is firm.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll into balls using about a tablespoon of dough for each. Place on cookie sheet. Make indent with thumb in center of each cookie and fill with blueberry jam. (Yes, make your own)

Bake 12 to 15 minutes or till edges are just turning a light golden brown.

I accidentally made these with 1 1/2 CUPS of butter. They're okay, but a little rich, and they don't have the buttery shortbread texture that makes these cookies so wonderful. Also, the blueberry syrup makes the dough a lovely blue, but it "bakes out" leaving the cookies slightly gray looking. I'm thinking food dye.

Early spring garden eating

2011-05-05T07:19:00.002-05:00

This is the cruelest time of the year in the garden-- everything is really green, but nothing is big enough to eat yet.

Or is it?

Here's what I've got growing, that's large enough to harvest:

Lovage
This celery-like perennial is already 18" tall and lush. I can get a couple of quarts of greens and tender stems from this per week, enough to add fresh greens to stir fry, stew or soup.

Garlic
It's green, and small, but I've got 90 bulbs going, enough to sacrifice one every now and then to eat before it's mature enough to store.

Parsley and oregano
My perennial herbs can also be trimmed up to about a cup a week, again to use not just as a garnish, but as a green in soups, stir fries and stews

Reseeded spinach and lettuce
Let some of your spinach go to seed each year, and you'll get early tender shoots. Pull and eat the whole plant, and plant new at the same time.

Stuff I missed
Carrots, turnips, parsnips are coming up where I missed last year's harvest.

Wild forage
Green onions, lamb's quarters, sorrel are all mature enough to harvest.

Weeds

2011-05-02T06:34:00.001-05:00

I think weeding is probably the garden task I spend the least amount of time on.

For annuals and veggies, I always mark where I’ve put seeds. With large seeds like beans or squash I mark each seed individually, smaller seeds I mark out the area. Tiny seeds like lettuce and carrot are going to be immediately obvious as desirables because you’ll have tons of tiny identical seedlings, all the same size coming up at exactly the same time. The “weeds” in these squares, beds or rows are the ones that look different.

The thing with weeds is that they won’t grow where they aren’t welcome. In a mature vegetable garden, one that’s been weeded, planted and amended for years, you simply won’t have much of a problem with extraneous plants, because you’ll never have let the undesirables go to seed in these beds. In perennial/ornamental beds, your plants should provide enough ground coverage and shade that the opportunistic weeds will just have too much trouble grabbing hold. Even lawn will need only minimal weeding, without chemicals, if you properly aerate, mow and reseed.

If you are amending your soil and avoiding compaction, weeds are easy to remove, because you’re not fighting the texture. You can let them get large enough to ID (a few inches) and still have time to pull them before they either develop a monster taproot, or go to seed. I have accidentally pulled plants that I thought were weeds, later realizing that they were cultivars, but you know what? No biggie, shit happens. You’re unlikely to accidentally pull something really mature, because first, you’ll remember it, and second, it’ll look big and important so you’re unlikely to pull it without thinking twice.

Not all weeds are undesirable, just as not all cultivars are good. I happily let the wild onions go crazy, and the lambs quarters, but I’d give anything to be able to get rid of the ground phlox, Queen Annes Lace and Knotweed that some idiot planted in our neighborhood on purpose.

Lemon-lavender syrup
3 lemons
1/4 cup dried lavendar flowers
2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar

Ream the lemons-- get as much of the juice and pulp as you can-- into a small sauce pan. Dump everything else in there too and bring to a boil. Turn heat down to a simmer, and reduce to 2 cups, about 10-15 minutes.

Wealth

2011-04-25T07:49:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, a friend who's into feng shui pointed out to me that the "wealth" bagua in the southeast corner of my garden was a big mess, and might be affecting our family's chi in that area. So we got serious and reconfigured the whole area, putting in a round patio (round is a good symbol for money), planting a lot of gold and yellow plants (same reason), and keeping it groomed. Lo and behold, we had several good years in the income/career success department.

Well, once again, it's gotten neglected, and frankly, the income thing isn't doing so well, so one of my tasks this year is to get this area back under control. I've put in a lot of sturdy perennials, and will fill the messy dumping area with some white sunflowers, (white is the color for metal in feng shui, a good augur for the money bagua). We've also got a cheminee in this area, which is probably not such a good thing in the wealth area (you don't want to burn your wealth), so I'll have to think about what to do with the cheminee.

What works about feng shui is not magic, or directing the chi, or whatever it is that it's supposed to do. It's that it makes you observe things. I always stop "seeing" that part of the garden, and some of that probably translates into parts of my life that I don't "see."

So this year I'll try to make my wealth bagua beautiful and cared for. After all, to be beautiful and cared for is what we all want.

Pork hash
2 pork chops
3 medium russet potatoes
3 small yellow onions
4 T butter
1 T honey
fresh herbs and dried spices- your call. I used basil and coriander
salt and pepper to taste

Bone the chops and dice the meat and rind. Slice the onions, dice the potatoes. I like to salt the potatoes now. Saute the onions in 2 T of butter over medium heat, when they are very limp and starting to carmelize add the pork and pork fat, stirring frequently. When the fat is fully cooked/rendered add the potatoes and the rest of the butter. Saute until potatoes start to brown, maybe 5-8 minutes, then add the honey and incorporate it thoroughly. Add the herbs and spices, and saute another 10 minutes, then turn the heat way down (I used the intermittent setting), cover and let it simmer about 15 minutes.

Wow.

S-s-s-so C-c-c-cold

2011-04-22T09:27:00.003-05:00

Earth Day. I'd rather it was warm and sunny so I could go plant a tree or smile at a child or something, but it's 40 and raining (again). It's amazing the bad mood that extended unseasonably cold weather can put you in. And it's not just the cold, it's the lack of sun. We've had maybe 3 days where it was sunny all day in the past 2-3 weeks.

Part of my spring recharge ritual, since I work in isolation in my house and never get to talk to live human beings, is to take little walkabouts in my garden. I've substituted this for obsessing over the seedlings in my basement, but somehow it isn't the same.

On one of my basement walkabouts I excavated eggplant, tomatillo paste, tomato paste and frozen tomatoes from the deep freeze and made this wonderful portobello chili.

Eggplant-portobello chili
1 eggplant, roasted
2 quart bags (or 2 cans) whole peeled tomatoes
1 pint tomato paste
1 quart bag roasted tomatillos
1 pound portobello mushrooms
Olive oil
1 1/4 cup black beans
1 cup corn niblets
1 T (or to taste) chili powder
salt to taste

If using dried beans, bring to a boil in a large pot of water, then simmer for one hour; allow to soak until water is cool. Just before making the chili, boil again, for 20 minutes. (I think this yields a softer, better bean than the "soak overnight" method.)

Dice the mushrooms, and saute in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. When all the oil has been absorbed by the mushrooms, squeeze a quarter lemon on it; the mushrooms will release some moisture; sautee until they are quick limp. Cut up and then add the eggplant. Cook these together until the eggplant has lost all structure. Add the tomato and tomatillo and cook this down to a thick sauce. Add the beans, corn, chocolate and spices. Adjust spices to taste.

Empy nest

2011-04-19T10:33:00.002-05:00

The nest was really empty over the weekend. Husband on a tour to New York, son on his world tour (I think they're in Texas today) and daughter on her way to Florida for spring break, (no, not like that, she has grown-up friends who live there, and she's going to do some figure skating training at the local rink).

What I should be doing is finding some friends and getting some girl-time with them, but what I'll actually do is hole up in my cocoon here. If I'm ever really single and retired I'm going to have to get a dog or it's doubtful I'd ever go out at all.

And in case you haven't noticed: this week Palm Sunday | Passover | Earth Day | Easter. Dye some eggs.

Root vegetable soup
1 celery root
4 medium potatoes
1 large parsnip
1 head of garlic
1 small yellow onion
1 T butter

2 cups vegetable stock

Garnish:
chopped fresh basil and chives
half-and-half

Peel and cut all vegetables into small pieces and boil until they are very very soft. Drain and return to pot. Add butter and mash. Add the hot stock (I used some chard stems I had frozen to make the stock-- 1 quart of stems, 1 quart of water, 1 T mixed white & green peppercorns) and blend using an immersible blender (or place into a blender or food processor, but really, invest in the immersible kind, they're great). Blend until very smooth. Thin with a little milk or more stock.

Add fresh chopped herbs and serve with crackers or biscuits.

One of those weeks

2011-04-17T16:15:00.002-05:00

First the most annoying person you work with decides that he's just the one to tell you everything he's so much better at. Then your husband goes on a business trip, so you're all alone, which is boring. The bank messes up a deposit, and you find out your dad was in the hospital and no one remembered to call you. Then you say something stupid to a friend, who now won't talk to you, and the local skate shop ruins your figure skating blades (or equivalent). To top it all off, it's April 16th and snowing.

Yeah, one of those weeks. These were the highlight of it, and they were amazingly delicious:

Glazed pan-fried fish
Per diner:
1 filet
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1 small red onion, sliced
1 1/2 T butter

Melt the butter in a cast iron pan. Caramelize the onions (cook slowly over low heat-- about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally). Add the salmon, and sear both sides, about 2 minutes per side. Add basil and continue to saute about 10 minutes. Add orange juice and simmer 1-2 minutes, then turn down the heat to very low (I used the intermittent setting and a burner ring to keep it from burning) and cover. Leave for about 10 minutes, until the juice has reduced to a sweet thick sauce. Add a little extra liquid if needed.

Serve with wild rice and spring vegetables.

Baking for a friend

2011-04-15T10:30:00.002-05:00

I love doing things for people. This is one of the things that continues to annoy me about my son, who resists having things done for him. My daughter is not so reticent, and is perfectly willing to accept help in cash or in kind.

I started doing things for my young friend Kristen, and lo and behold, she started doing things back (really, I wasn't expecting anything, but in case you need to know, I wear a large and I like the color pink). I've been promising her these brownies for a couple of weeks.

Apricot cornmeal brownies
1/2 cup butter
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 eggs at room temp
2-3 T honey
1/2 cup apricot (or other fruit) compote

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup white flour
1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal

Glaze:
1/2 cup apricot compote
1 teaspoon corn syrup
1/2 cup crushed nuts

Melt chocolate with butter with a double boiler or microwave oven, combine with honey and compote and allow to cool. Beat eggs till foamy, then add to chocolate mixture by hand. Sift flour with cornmeal, salt, and baking powder and fold into the chocolate mixture. Before completely mixed, add nuts if wanted. Turn into a greased cake pan.

Heat the compote and corn syrup for the glaze until pourable, then spread over top of brownies. Cover with the the crushed nuts. Bake 20-25 minutes at 350F, until an inserted knife pulls out clean. Cool completely before cutting.

What to do with Mahlzeit

2011-04-08T19:17:00.009-05:00

Mahlzeit started as an online cookbook of family favorites for my kids, and then I discovered that I really like blogging, so I kept it going.

But it's never really found its voice. It's been a cooking blog and a gardening blog. Sustainability, editorializing, this that and the other thing. So I'm permuting again; we're going to try just free associating here. So now this is just about what I do on any given day-- empty nester, working mother, athlete, gardener, artist. Days in the life of a Renaissance woman.

I made the following crackers last week for a friend whom I forgot does not eat land-based meat. So then we had to eat them all ourselves.

Darn.

Bacon Cheese Crackers
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup corn meal
4 oz. of cheese (cheddar, gruyere or Parmesan) grated
6 T (3/4 stick) of unsalted butter, cut into pieces
about 3 T heavy cream
8 slices thick bacon (pastured pigs, please)

Cut the bacon in small pieces and slowly fry it until it is quite crispy. Drain well.

Mix all ingredients except cream in a food processor; run the machine until dough forms a clump, adding the cream a little at a time to get a nice maleable texture. (I only have a 3 cup foot processor, so I have to divide the dough into thirds). Form into logs about 1 1/2 x 8" each, roll in plastic wrap or wax paper and place in freezer until firm (a couple of hours). Slice into 1/4" or thinner rounds. Only have one log out at a time; leave the others in the freezer until you're ready to use them. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Update (thanks barrel-racer) Refrigerate in a closed jar. Don't leave these out, not sure if the bacon will keep.

First and last

2011-04-06T10:09:00.000-05:00

I never started preserving in a major way before last year believe it or not (right? I talk like I've been doing it from the cradle).

I have always preserved the food I grow--I made and froze tomato paste, I dabbled a bit in heat canning, I've put away dried beans, and made jam from my raspberries. But pretty much I used to only grow what we could consume fresh.

Then I started realizing that even this basic approach was taking us well into the fall, so I started tweaking the garden to see if I could make it to November. Last year, after joining in on Eat Real Food at Not Dabbling Normal (where I am now also a contributor), I decided to see if I could make it all the way to January on food preserved from my garden. We bought an 8 cf chest freezer and resurrected my son's little dorm fridge. I increased the number of shell beans I was planting, and learned a lot of pickling recipes.

I cheated a little by purchasing farmers market in-season fruit and veggies to preserve (notably eggplants and peppers, since mine did not produce very well last year), but everything in my larder was preserved in-season and guaranteed local and organic, which is important to me.

I'm still somewhat dependent on the grid, inasmuch as most of what I preserved I did by freezing, but there's really nothing like "shopping" in your own basement. What I found was that there was hardly anything you need to buy to eat a varied diet all winter, including all the main vegetable types--tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, heavy greens like kale and chard, legumes, beans, corn--are all easy to grow and to preserve. I didn't grow potatoes or onions so I bought those (I never seem to be able to grow onions), but I made it into December on leeks, and I still have some parsnips.

Yesterday, yes well into April, I made the following Xanish rice (can't call it Spanish rice, since I did not actually refer to any references to find out what that really is). The stock, tomatoes, peppers, corn, and carrots where from my garden.

Xanish rice
1 cup white, brown or basmati rice
cups broth or stock per package directions, less 1/4 cup
1 quart bag whole peeled tomatoes (about 3 medium tomatoes, equivalent to a can)
3 chopped shishito or other hot pepper (to taste)
handful of frozen peas
handful of frozen corn
1 cup dry beans

Tomatoes should be room temperature, or even hot. Boil the beans in a small sauce pan for about 30 minutes, or until tender. Cook the rice in the stock according to package instructions, cutting the water by about a quarter cup (the tomatoes will add the additional water). When the rice is about half-way cooked, add the tomatoes and peppers and continue cooking. Before serving mix in the beans, corn, and peas. If the corn and peas are frozen, no need to cook them, just throw them in. The hot rice will warm them sufficiently.

The means of production

2011-04-01T09:10:00.001-05:00

We think of sustainability as going "back to the land," and "real" as attaining the rural ideal that is so central to our American mythos.

But in fact, what differentiated us from our uncivilized origins was our invention of the city--a settled collection of people, working together for the common purpose of survival. In many ways, cities and towns are more "natural" places for us to live-- after all we are social creatures, suited by biology to living in groups. City dwellers are just as real as anyone else, and there are a lot more of us. And it's going to stay that way, whether you like it or not. It used to be that you lived on a farm, or in a small town. And then it was your parents who lived there. Then a generation came where they would just visit their grandparents on the farm. Now there's been a couple of generations for whom the farming past is out of living memory, and the family farm is a trip down an unfamiliar country road "I think it's around here somewhere."

Cities are where we live. And cities do a lot of things better-- diversity, economies of scale, specialization, cultural life. What we don't do, what we can't do, is grow things in concentrated farms. Based on our current food system, cities need to import their food. The very things that make cities attractive make food production expensive and cumbersome. In our current food system, cities have to import their food.

During and after the Great Migration when rural southerners moved to northern cities, during the waves of European and Chinese migration, and after the Dust Bowl which displaced hundreds of thousands of farm families, new city migrants brought their farming and gardening traditions with them. Unfortunately, as noted, that rural past is now so far past that it's barely even family story anymore, and the practical knowledge is lost in many families.

About 15% of any given city's land is "vacant." In cities suffering depression this number may be higher (hence the Urban Farm movement in Detroit). As far as I can find out about 16% of urban dwellers have access to enough yard to put in a garden. Doesn't sound like enough space to grow food for a million people, does it?

But in 1943, Chicagoans grew all the produce they needed, in vacant lots and backyards, as did many other large urban centers, through the Victory Garden movement.

We don't need to put in farms to be able to grow food in cities, of course. Everyone with a yard can have a garden. It doesn't even need to be your own. Lots of people join community gardens, although there is way more interest than there is land for this use and new regulations are starting to discourage the start of new ones on public land in some places. But while there are lots of gardeners with no land, there are even more private landholders with no gardens. There is a small but growing local industry in hiring out your gardening--someone else puts a garden in your yard. In exchange for the land, you get some of the harvest. Or do what The Peterson Garden Project in Chicago did-- find some vacant, privately-owned land, and talk the landowner into letting you put in a garden, even if just for a couple of years until the land sells.

Everyone should grow at least some of their own food. I come from five generations of city dwellers myself-- not a gardener in the bunch. If I can learn to garden, anyone can. Taking back control of this most basic need, even if it's just tomatoes or blueberries in a pot on a porch, is reconnecting urban Americans with the land that is so important to our psyches. And it's giving us back the means of production, giving ordinary people control of this most basic need.

Cucumber-corn chowder
1 quart cucumber, cubed
2 cups corn
1 large carrot, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
10 small new potatoes, halved (or equivalent red or yukon)
2 cloves garlic
1 T chopped fresh parsley
4 T butter
2T flour
2 cups stock (chicken or vegetable; make sure it's a "white" stock or the soup will be ugly!)
>1 cup milk
1 cup half-half
2 yolks eggs
pepper and salt to taste

Cook the potatoes separately in water or the microwave, until al dente (a little underdone; they'll finish cooking in the soup). I used frozen cukes, but if you have fresh, peel, seed and dice. Dice onions and garlic (or use a garlic press) and saute in 2 T butter with the parsley and dill seeds in the soup pot about 5 minutes (the cukes will turn a bright light green). Heat the stock to a simmer. While it's heating, add the additional butter to the vegetables, melt, then dredge with the flour, letting it simmer, but not brown, about 2 minutes. Add half the stock about a quarter cup at a time, allowing mixing it well with the dredged vegetables. It should thicken each time. Add the rest of the stock, simmer 20 minutes. Add the potatoes, carrots, corn and milk, bring to a light simmer. Continue to simmer until it thickens slightly. Allow to cool to just a little too hot to eat.

Lightly beat the half-half and egg yolks, pour a little boiling soup on to them, stirring at same time, then return it to the hot soup, stirring constantly; it must not boil again or it will curdle. Season to taste with white pepper and salt. Thin with a little half-and-half just before serving.

You can add a little sauteed andouille sausage to this for the carnivores among you.

The things we carry

2011-03-31T14:19:00.002-05:00

At Earth Hour dinner the other night, my hostess Holly sent us all home with slices of chocolate chip date cake. I didn't realize how deeply I had internalized the idea of avoiding one-use plastic until I felt myself cringe as she casually pulled out a ziplock bag to wrap it in. I didn't say anything, but that ziplock bag is sitting on my counter still, several days later, like Banquo's ghost.

Holly is about as green as they come--active on the American Institute of Architect green design committees, spearheads construction debris reuse for a department of the city of Chicago, an avid cook. But she didn't think twice about pulling out that ziplock bag.

We pack a lot of things in throwaway wrappers that we ought to be reusing. How many times have you gone to the grocery store and left your 14 canvas bags in the car? And you get to the check out, and just say, oh they're in the car I'll just use plastic today. But why not go back out to the car and get the bags? Or put the groceries back into the cart and bag them when you get to the car. I shake my head in wonder every time I see some young mother, of a generation who should know better, and in affluent areas of the city where one assumes a degree of awareness and buy-in, leaving the grocery store with groceries stuffed into 20 or 30 petroleum-based plastic bags. What will it take to create awareness and a willingness to act when mothers like that don't even understand that what they're doing is wrong.

Doggie bags made of styrofoam. Lunchboxes made of plastic. When will we learn that avoiding these things is easy, cheap and necessary. We simply cannot keep casually wrapping in plastic a piece of cake that's going to be consumed 10 minutes later.

We need to teach our children to be thoughtful and planning-oriented. We need to train ourselves to stewardship; to bring the bags in from the car, or go back out for them if we forget. We need to pack our fruit in paper bags, and never buy another ziplock again. Or at the very least, to wash them.

Green isn't just reading the proper blogs and donating to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Green is getting to the point where you cannot bring yourself to use plastic when there's an alternative, and to have the courage to tell your friend, "just wrap it in wax paper."

Another risotto
1 cup Arborio rice
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup raisins (they can be crusty old dry ones, which is what actually inspired this)
1 medium onion, diced
1 eggplant, roasted (or from frozen preserved)
2-3 cups broth
salt and pepper to taste
grated hard cheese

Remember, you cannot leave risotto for even a minute--keep stirring or you'll be scrubbing a burnt pot later.

Heat the broth to a simmer, and keep it there. Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the raisins and saute about a minute, add the onions and saute until they just start to go transparent. Add the rice and saute about 5 minutes, until they start to look a little toasted (not burnt).

Start adding the simmering broth 1/2 cup at a time. It's important to add the broth in small amount and allow it to absorb into the rice completely before you add more. When the first 1/2 cup is absorbed, add another, and allow it to be absorbed. When you've used half the broth, add the eggplant, stirring thoroughly. The eggplant adds a lot of moisture, so allow that moisture to be absorbed as well.

Continue to add the simmering broth 1/2 cup at a time, until the dish is sticky but not glutinous. I've never used all the broth, the one I made last night used only 2 cups because of all the moisture in the eggplant.

Serve hot, sprinkle with grated cheese. This dish does not keep well.

How did Earth Hour go untweeted?

2011-03-29T14:46:00.004-05:00

or How I almost missed Earth Hour and made friends with a scary dog

Holly, owner of Skye the Corn Dog called me last week to come over for an Earth Hour meal. Right. Earth Hour, whatever happened to that?

I believe this happens the last Saturday of March each year, and was started in 2007 in Australia. Last year there were ads on buses, and blogs and billboards. This year, nothing. If Holly hadn't called I'd never have even noticed.

Then on the day, Saturday the 26th, here's what happened:
I borrowed Bill's car, only to discover that the clutch is a mess. I couldn't put it into reverse. Unfortunately, I did not discover this until I needed to get out of a parallel parking place (it hadn't been parallel when I parked there-- I just pulled up to the curb. Then a car parked in front and another behind me.) Had to reverse by taking it out of gear and rolling it with one foot sticking out the driver's side door.

Once I did manage to get home, I wrote one of those wonderful blog posts which apparently had some hinky code in it, because when I hit "publish," instead it "wiped out entire post."

Since taking the bus seemed in keeping with the spirit of the day anyway, at the appointed time I walked the 5 blocks to the nearest bus stop, only to discover that I didn't have enough money on my bus card. You can't use cash on the bus, so I thought, okay, I'll just turn around and walk to the train. It'll mean a transfer, but her house is only 2 blocks from the station at the other end.

I didn't make it to the train, stopping off at home first, which was good because I discovered that I didn't have any cash anyway, and you can't use plastic to fill the public transit card in Chicago (not kidding).

Since I also had had a rather awful week at work I almost pooped on Earth Hour. Fortunately, I came to my senses, Holly came and picked me up, and Skye the Corn Dog was so excited to see me that she pee'd. Since we had anticipated this, we had the greeting take place outside.

I met Holly's delightful tenant. We cooked shrimp creole with cornbread, which we ate with steamed green beans and the following salad.

And I put Earth Hour in my calendar tickler for next year.

Spicy salad with early greens and late apples
any early greens
small endive
onions, cut in rings
2 T sesame oil
1 teaspoon honey
1-2 apples , peeled and sliced thin
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 cup frozen peas, uncooked (just let them thaw)
optional: wasabi peas, crushed

Dressing
Juice of 1 1/2 limes
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sesame oil
1 T wasabi paste

Toss the apples in lime juice, add the endive (slightly crushed, so it doesn't "spoon" together). Caramelize the onions in sesame oil and honey (cook about 10 minutes over low heat, until onions are very limp and golden in color). Toss all with the greens and frozen peas. Don't forget to zest the limes and reserve the zest for the larder (dry it in the microwave- place on paper towel and zap on high in 30 second bursts until dry).

For dressing, add all ingredients and emulsify in a blender, or with a hand-held blender. Dribble a couple of tablespoons over the greens mix and let sit a couple of hours. Add the crushed wasabi peas and additional dressing (if desired) just before serving.

Changing the value equation

2011-03-27T09:50:00.009-05:00

I heard the phrase "changing the value equation" last week at the Family Farmed Expo, a local food and sustainable agriculture event. I'm apparently the last person in America to hear this phrase, as it pops up on Google in all sorts of contexts (I'm just not up on my jargon), but I think it's particularly apt when it comes to our food choices. Is it really cheaper, in dollars and time, to purchase packaged, processed poison compared to what we lose?

Cost + Convenience ≠ Health + Heritage + Hospitality.

In fact, Cost + Convenience < Health + Heritage + Hospitality.

Our myths of origin are full of parables about food. Philemon and Baucis achieve immortality because they feed the disguised god Zeus. Jason learns the route to the golden fleece because he saves blind Phineaus from the monsters who are stealing his food. Hospitality centered on food rituals is part of every culture. Do we really want a culture whose food rituals are invented by a creative team at an ad agency?

The mythos of food preceeds the meal itself. Preparation is a powerful binder of souls--setting small fingers to shelling peas, or measuring ingredients, or mixing batter not only puts families in community with each other, it's how we pass the heritage of our food traditions. How many of us have strong, fond memories of cooking with a mother or grandmother? I can't imagine that it's the same to remember your mother pulling a frozen entree out of the fridge and plunking it into the microwave. Children shouldn't to learn to cook by reading the edge of the box.

The idea that our time and our intellect is too valuable to "waste" on cooking is presumptuous, misogynist, and anti-historical. It's also wrong. It is not less time consuming to drive through MacDonald's than it is to cook the recipe below from scratch.

Many creative pursuits have been described as the "first art"; I've heard both dance and communal singing (Glee for Ug The Cavedweller, anyone?) referred to this way. But I would suggest that our earliest rituals and arts centered around food--identifying it, following it, gathering it, preparing it. We're replacing a rich heritage with a pursuit of perpetual toddlerdom--want it NOW. YOU fix it.

Much has been written, better, elsewhere on the health costs we are paying for our processed diet. But it's not just about how it's affecting the health of our individual bodies. Replacing humanity's rich and millennially ancient food cultures with the simplistic ideas of "cheaper" and "more convenient" is costing us in the health of our cultures and our relationships.

Spicy dirty rice
1 cup butternut squash, cubed
1 red onion, sliced
2-3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon honey
2-3 chorizo links
Any green vegetable like peas, green beans, snow peas, broccoli, or chard
1 cup white or brown rice

Cook the rice according to package instructions. In a large frying pan, caramelize the squash and onion in the butter and honey. Remove the chorizo from the casing, break into small chunks and sautee with the caramelized vegetables. Cook til the chorizo is thoroughly done. When rice is cooked, add it to the meat mixture. Stir thoroughly, then add the green vegetables (these can be frozen or fresh, no need to pre-cook them).

Please listen

2011-03-20T10:32:00.008-05:00

I always find it interesting when the two seemingly completely different parts of my life converge. Wearing my other hat, I'm a figure skating coach, and I blog at Xanboni about being not being insane (unfortunately endemic with skating parents).

Seems like gardeners can be pretty insane, too, and, unlike skating moms, not afraid to call each other names right to your face, or to question, variously, your sanity, knowledge, antecedents, and intelligence based on the proximity of your home to a Big Box store.

I write lots of posts on Xanboni about how to talk to skating coaches, skating directors, skating parents and skaters. And it always starts with Respect. Assume that the tweeter, blogger, or commenter could be you and analyze how you would feel if you were the target of these comments.

Here's the drill:

Don't say anything at all
If you read something you disagree with, look it up through other reliable sources. This was my mistake. I heard something I disagreed with and jumped in with both feet.

Ask to be sure that you heard what you thought you heard (see "Active Listening" steps, below).

Know what you're talking about
Nothing disappears on the web. It's ridiculously easy to find the information you're commenting on. Don't accept just one version of it, and don't assume that the haterz are right. Do the research. Don't make a comment that you wouldn't say to a person's face. (Really, folks, this is Internet 101, and it starts with avoid words like "twitterhead." Seriously.)

Assume the most positive motivation
No one steps into dog poo on purpose.

Use active listening
Active listening is a standard negotiating technique that helps everyone understand exactly what the problem is and why you're concerned. It's a little slower on the web, because you have to give the person you're talking to time to respond, but it still works:

Frame every concern as to how it affects you: "If I follow your advice, I'm afraid my plants/meals/family will suffer."
Use "I" statements, not "you" statements. Wrong: "You're a twitterhead." "You don't know what you're talking about" Right: "I read your statement on line and I need you to clarify" or "I'm concerned that your advice won't work for me."
Repeat the response and then rephrase it as to what you think it means "You think I'm a twitterhead because you feel that I made a statement without thinking about it." (Get the feeling I don't like being called names by total strangers who haven't done their research?)
Don't have an outcome in mind, and don't take sides. If you make up your mind about a single acceptable position before you start the conversation, you will not be able to hear the discussion.
Don't use threats or namecalling.

Avoid blame
Controversies are no one's fault. They are simply ordinary situations that slipped under the radar and got out of hand. Go back to the origin of the problem, find out how the problem affects you, and have a discussion from the outset that gets you not vindication, but resolution.

Update: Always respond. This is good internet etiquette and good marketing, and it forces the commenters to see the blogger and each other as people.

Here's the Xanboni post that inspired this essay. Just in case you're both a gardener and a crazy skating mom.

UPDATE: I wasn't going to name names, but looks like I need to: This post is an example of someone who tried, a bit, to make amends for bad advice, but the comments quickly devolved into fanboyism, with no one going back to see what she was talking about. Here's one where the blogger stuck his neck out, and then basically went through the steps above, to keep the discussion civil while letting everyone get in their point.

One of them's a blogger. The other one's a journalist.

No recipe today. Just some advice:

Be Excellent to Each Other

Real Food- the dilemma of Whole Foods

2011-03-19T08:21:00.011-05:00

The big grocery store chains-- Safeway (called Dominick's here in Chicago), Jewel, and their like-- are getting better. They all have certified organic store brands, and certified sections in the produce aisle, as well as the next step up from horrendous meat (i.e. free range, raised without antibiotics, etc. not that I trust the labels). Unfortunately, the big boxes like Target, Meijer and Walmart have stepped right in with grocery sections that are wall-to-wall processed foods at seductively low prices.

Enter Whole Foods. Designed to look like the authentic local groceries that they put out of business, they are staffed by engaged, activist, educated individuals. They are wonderful corporate citizens, proactive not just for local food and green initiatives, but in arts, education, science and civic engagement. They have trustworthy brands, and hard-to-find organic and unprocessed items.

Except.

When Whole Foods moved into Chicago, they appeared to be doing it right. They held meetings. They were accessible. They promised not to shut down locally owned organic grocers and coops. But those shops are gone anyway. And I would have been fine with that, if these shops had closed simply because they couldn't compete with the better selection and prices at Whole Foods (yes, even Whole Foods was cheaper than some of the organic markets, because of the quantities they can buy).

But Whole Foods didn't leave it at that. They bought the organic markets saying they weren't going to shut them down. And then they shut them down.

When some of the food co-ops stubbornly held on, being immune to buy out, since no one owned them, Whole Foods stepped in and got zoning laws changed, forcing them out of their neighborhoods.

Whole Foods is great-- I trust their products. Their prices, while high, are in line with what food should cost, without the Big Ag subsidies that put small farmers out of business. They are one of the last national companies left who put their charity dollars into their local communities. They have amazing staff. They have items available that real food junkies like me simply can't find anywhere else (organic, preservative-free chocolate chips anyone?). It's not so easy finding real food in the city; the mercados and asian markets have wonderful produce, but if it's organic I'll eat my non-organic hat.

In fact, I'm in big trouble right now, because Whole Foods gives charitable support to three of my clients.

But I can't forget that when they moved into the community, they acted like the corporate bullies that their clientele abhor.

Do you shop at Whole Foods? Help me feel better about them!

My good friend Patte brought me this delicious, sauce? soup? side dish? when I badly sprained my ankle last month. I love people who save old copies of Gourmet! I wonder if she got the ingredients at Whole Foods?

Pasta e Fagioli
from Gourmet | October 1993
Reprinted without permission
Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.
Yield: Makes about 3 cups, serving 2 as a main course

2 slices of bacon, chopped

1 small onion, chopped fine
1 garlic clove, minced
1 small rib of celery, chopped fine
1 carrot, sliced thin
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
16-ounce can white beans, rinsed well and drained
16-ounce can tomatoes, drained and chopped
1/3 cup tubetti or other small tubular pasta
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
freshly grated Parmesan as an accompaniment

In a heavy saucepan cook the bacon over moderate heat, stirring, until it is crisp, pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat, and in the remaining fat cook the onion and the garlic, stirring, until the onion is softened. Add the celery, the carrot, and the broth and simmer the mixture, covered, for 5 minutes. In a bowl mash 1/3 cup of the beans, stir them into the bacon mixture with the remaining whole beans and the tomatoes, and simmer the mixture, covered, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Stir in the tubetti, simmer the soup, covered, for 10 minutes, or until the pasta is al dente, and if desired thin the soup with water. Let the soup stand off the heat, covered, for 5 minutes, stir in the parsley, and serve the soup in bowls sprinkled with the Parmesan.

Patte’s Note: I cooked the pasta separately to the al dente stage and added it as I needed it. Any small pasta will do. I also ditched the parsley and added 3 c. fresh baby spinach (chopped) at the very end of the boil.

Inexpert

2011-03-14T16:15:00.001-05:00

I have not gardened all my life.

I point this out because I just emerged from several lectures by gardeners who all wanted the audience to known that they had gardened all their lives. Gardening lectures and books are full of heart warming stories about gardening with gramps and diggin' fer worms, about earliest memories of harvesting the peas planted with their own grubby, chubby little fingers at the age of 4.

I don't know why garden speakers seem to feel that this is somehow a credential, I mean, I've been banging on things since I was 3, that doesn't make me a drummer. What if lawyers had to have this credential--"I've been trying criminals all my life. Why, I remember researching precedents at granddaddy's firm when I could barely walk."

I find it off-putting. While I understand that the impulse comes from a good place in the heart-- the lifelong love of gardening-- it seems superfluous. Does it really matter that you've always been a gardener? Perhaps it's because everyone really can learn to do this-- since in the not-too-distance past everyone did do this, and in fact everyone learned it from gramps--the largely self-taught experts want to establish their bona fides. The statement of an expert: "I've been doing this my whole life" suggests that if you have not been doing this your whole life, you cannot possibly aspire to the depth of knowledge, not to mention the degree of cool, that the speaker evinces.

Well.

I have not been gardening all my life. My mother was not a gardener. My grandmother was not a gardener. I come from a long line of non-gardeners. I taught myself to garden as an adult. I also went to college as an adult. I learned to drive as an adult (well, if you count 16 as adult). I never had sex until I was an adult. I never had a job until I was an adult. I learned to skate as an adult. I learned Spanish as an adult.

You don't have to have gardened as a child to be a gardener. You don't have to come from a family of gardeners. Your mother needn't be a gardener and grampa doesn't have to own a farm. You can always learn something new, about gardening, or cooking, or anything that interests you. Today, for instance, I learned to make lemon curd from a book. Sorry, grandma, missed that lesson.

Of course, I'm just as guilty of the pointless stories about how I started to garden. I love to tell people how I started, what the first thing was that I grew, how the garden expanded over the years.

But I don't mistake childhood memory for expertise, or nostalgia for knowledge.

Lemon Thumbprint Cookies
1 1/2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 c white sugar
2 eggs
1/3c lemon juice
zest from 2 lemons
3 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 salt

Whisk dry ingredients together, In another bowl cream butter and cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in juice and zest. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined (over mixing will make this dough tough). Cover and chill until dough is firm.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll into balls using about a tablespoon of dough for each. Place on cookie sheet. Make indent with thumb in center of each cookie and fill with lemon curd. (Yes, I'm going to make you make your own. It's easy.)

Bake 12 to 15 minutes or till edges are just turning a light golden brown.

The Chicago Flower and Garden Show

2011-03-12T17:28:00.008-06:00

To sum it up-- fantastic speakers, terrible exhibits, same old marketplace.

But still totally worth going, because I get to see all the people that I talk to on line all year, all the gardeners who have made such a difference in my life.

In general, the show was poorly lit, unimaginative and focused on hardscaping rather than plants. There were very few plants that even a casual gardener wouldn't recognize, and those weren't identified (in fact almost no plants were identified). The theme of "sports" was not well conceived, and for the most part poorly executed. (There was a pond that looked like an ice rink; really really want that.)

I managed to make it to four seminars, although I missed three that I was hoping to attend as well (stupid job). Got a great lecture about using the web as a resource from Mike Nowak, another on sustainable garden design and a presentation by Chicago Gateway Green about converting highway spaces, and responsible, workable corporate sponsorships, and I finally got to hear Lamanda Joy's wonderful talk on Chicago and the World War II Victory Garden movement.

Sadly, there was no edible garden at the show. Again. Okay, there was one, but it wasn't using the plants as edibles, but rather as ornamentals. Why is the garden show so averse to edible gardening? I don't get it. The landscape awards were all for professionally designed and installed mega-gardens in rich peoples' houses. At the very least, there should be a display featuring Mayor Daley's Landscape Awards.

Ah well. Kvetch kvetch kvetch. I rescued a lost child and I did score some wonderful dried fruits from Lehman's Orchard, with which I made these scones, and some wasabi peas, which I used in the following potato salad.

Wasabi potato salad
10 red potatoes
2 russet potatoes, peeled
1 large carrot, shaved and chopped fine
1 hard boiled egg
1/2 red onion, sliced very thin
1/2 cup dried wasabi peas, crushed

1/4 cup mayonnaise
Juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 teaspoon wasabi (less or more, depending on your heat tolerance)
1 teaspoon finely chopped basil

Cut the potatoes into bite sized pieces and boil until just done. Set aside to cool (do not put boiling hot potatoes into the mayo). Using a vegetable peeler, shave the carrot down, then finely chop the shavings. Cut up the egg, and mix everything together, no finesse needed.

I had this with crab cakes. Make your own mayo.

Does anyone actually follow a recipe?

2011-03-06T09:02:00.012-06:00

Or is it just me.

I picked up some cashew butter from the Lehman's Orchard booth in the Marketplace at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show yesterday (along with dried fruits and INCREDIBLY DELICIOUS dried, deep fried green bean crisps. Not kidding. These things are so good we had an 8 year old eating them.)

So this morning I decided to try cashew-butter cookies. I don't like things baked with peanut butter, for some reason, or peanut butter candy. Love peanut sauce, love peanut butter sandwiches. Spoonfuls of plain peanut butter are one of my go-to snacks. But somehow sweetened peanut butter treats make me gag.

So I started hunting around on line for a recipe. Martha Stewart has one. Epicurious has one. All-recipes has one, but all of those use vegetable oil, which just sounded nasty. Orangette did not have one (!) and neither did Coconut and Lime (No way. She steals all my ideas, and then publishes them years before I have them), but Chocolate and Zucchini has a recipe for the cashew butter itself. Most of the recipe I found were for butter cookies with finely ground nuts in them.

So I pulled out my trusty Woman's Home Companion Cook Book and adapted the peanut butter cookies. (I guess that makes this an original recipe.)

And as I was doing this I realized how much cooking "on line" is like cooking with a friend, or trying your mother's old recipe for the first time, solo. You follow the recipe, up to a point, and then realize you don't have some ingredient that's listed, or you never really liked that flavor in there, or that your mother (caution, heresy follows), never really got those noodles right.

So you start to tweak.

And that's what recipes are like on the web. You'll find the same recipe a dozen times (sometimes clearly cut-and-paste; Epicurious recipes in particular show up all over the place), but with a little tweak here and there. Honey instead of sugar, or sugar cut back. More chocolate, less chocolate, more yeast or substitute whole wheat for white flour. The most common phrase on one-off recipe sites is "adapted from Better Known Blog."

Here are my cashew butter cookies with dried cinnamon apple pieces (also from Lehman Orchards). Adapted from the Woman's Home Companion Cookbook.

Cashew-butter cookies with dried fruit
1 cup white flour
1/4 + 3 T cup whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup cashew butter
1 cup granulated sugar + 1 Tablespoon molasses
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 dried apples or other non-acidic fruit, chopped fine (acidic ones like berries will overwhelm the delicate cashew flavor. I also think these would be delicious with white chocolate or caramel chips.)

Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine the dry ingredients with a whisk. Mix the sugar and molasses with a fork until it resembles light brown sugar. Cream shortening and nut butter; slowly beat in the sugar until thoroughly combined. Add the beaten egg. Combine the dry ingredients one third at a time; dough will be very dense and soft. If dough is too crumbly, add a tablespoon of heavy cream or cashew oil. Mix in the dried fruit.

Chill for about 10 minutes, then form into 1-inch balls and flatten with two fingers (sorry, can't use the fork-crisscross, that's for peanut butter!). Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Makes 3 to 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

You can substitute almond or hazelnut butter, and substitute honey for the sugar. If you use honey, increase the flour by about 1/4 cup and add more fruit, because you'll have a little more dough.

What recipes have you adapted? And how guilty do you feel when the recipe is from your mother?

Leisure Time

2011-03-03T16:42:00.003-06:00

I spend at least one day a week cleaning.

No, wait, cooking I mean I spend a day a week cooking.

It just seems like it's a day spent cleaning.

Make the bread dough, wash the dishes. While the bread is rising, make cookies, scones or crackers; while they're baking, wash the dishes. Make stock items- baking powder or trail mix or mayo, and then lunch. Wash the dishes. (As you may have realized by now, I don't have a dishwasher. For my soapbox on appliances, see here.)

I'm not sure what it was I used to do with my "leisure" time. Did I go shopping? Walking? I never had a dog so it wasn't that. I suppose I used to spend this time with my kids, but doing what? Shopping? Playing? Commuting from lesson to lesson (not so much, actually- we never got caught onto that particular treadmill, thank heaven).

Once upon a time, we didn't have "leisure" time-- all of our time was spent householding. The cooking and washing and making and growing. The funny thing is, these activities are not unenjoyable. Yes, there's drudgery. The fourth time I have to wash the dishes, I'm thinking a little true recreation might be just the ticket. But cooking, and gardening, is fun, and everything has some level of drudgery to it. Humans are simply not designed for non-stop fun, Charlie Sheen notwithstanding.

What we have done in our society is replace these creative activities with so-called "leisure" where we do nothing but consume. Leisure time now is intimately associated with spending money: movies or shopping or water park or theme park. It's about gratifying personal desires that are disconnected from personal, family or community needs

Our leisure time is now spent consuming and extracting instead of creating and nurturing.

So here's your next challenge: next time you have "free" time, don't go to the mall, or flick on Netflix. Make some crackers.

Sourcream-honey crackers with cranberry
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon seasalt
2 tablespoons softened butter

1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup honey
2-3 tablespoons of cranberry sauce

seasoning: 1 teaspoon each seasalt, white peppercorns

Preheat oven to 150'C/ 300'F.

Grind the seasonings together in a mortar; whisk the milk, sour cream, cranberry sauce and honey together to form a little more than a cup of thick liquid. Add the salt to the flour, and in a mixing bowl or food processor, cut the butter in until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. (I start this with a knife or pastry cutter, then finish it with my hands.) Slowly mix in enough liquid to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.

Divide the dough into three to four portions and roll out one at a time, until paper thin. Some people recommend a pasta press, but I did it fine with a rolling pin. Keep turning the dough over, and lightly coating it with flour so it doesn't stick to the pin or the board.

Lightly brush the sheet with oil, then grind sea salt onto it. Using a sharp knife or pizza roller, cut the dough into crackers. Line cookie sheet with parchment (or just put them directly on an ungreased sheet), then transfer crackers to the cookie sheet if you rolled it out on a board.

Bake for 20 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp. Allow to cool on the tray and then store in an air tight container for up to a week. This recipe made about 200 1" square crackers.

What I didn't buy

2011-02-28T06:46:00.002-06:00

Every time I thought of something I want/need this month, I wrote it down. Here's the tally:

Week one:
A new throw rug for the kitchen $40; gift for a friend, just because $40; black skirt $70; Funnels $12; Shark Steamer $60; Egg beater (mine broke) $12. Total: $244
Week two:
Cute note cards for mailing swapped seeds $15 (Fail. Bought them after all); those neat cloth boxes at Target to sort my mittens, scarves and hats $60; Kindle cover $28. Total: $88
Week three:
Books! Seven new novels by my favorite trash authors (perpetually out at the library), Ripe by Arthur Allen, Word Press for Dummies, $68; soda siphon (for making carbonated water) $93. Total $161
Week four:
Fell off the wagon: $35 for a jacket from the resale shop; Computer mouse: $25. Lost my favorite travel mug, new one $20. Total $45.

Total cost of things that I didn't buy: $538.00. We did go out to eat five times, and went to the movies twice. Oddly, this is more than we normally eat out or go to the movies. Not sure how that happened.

Some of these things I wouldn't have bought anyway. My family doesn't tend to accumulate stuff, on the "we've lived without it this long" principal. Some things we didn't buy we really do need, and will now buy. Some of them we really don't need, or could get free, or have an adequate alternate already. But because we don't tend to buy stuff, even though I imposed the proscription on myself, I found myself arguing-- "not fair, I never buy anything, it's all those people with the $7,000 credit card debt that need to stop buying stuff."

There are pages and pages of articles, digests, and scholarly works on how to reduce credit card debt, avoid credit card debt, make credit card debt work for you; about what the average debt is, or what a "typical" family's average monthly credit card payment is. You can find out how much the average family spends on housing, or food, or clothes.

Nowhere can I find a statistic on how much NEW debt people are adding to their balance each month, or how much they are spending in cash. It's like we don't even think about what we are spending, but only about what we owe. You can find out what we buy and when we buy, but not how much it's costing us. We have accepted it as normal to be owned by someone else. We have little or no concept of doing without anymore.

Our culture has trained us to consider shopping as a right, if not a patriotic duty. We have elevated immediate personal gratification over community health and called it "personal responsibility." We need a new paradigm, one that rewards creation over consumption, and tribal or familial relationships over the superficial relationships of the marketplace.