Prose and Potatoes

Rainy Day Windows

2012-01-23T18:51:00.000-05:00

I woke in the middle of the night to a thunderstorm, and I enjoyed celebrating this rainy birthday with lunch with a good friend and an afternoon nap.

On the Changes the New Year will Bring.

2012-01-07T12:31:00.000-05:00

It's a new year and time for change.

As the dwindling number of posts here recently indicates, I've been bored by this blog. It isn't that I don't still love food, cooking, writing, and photography. I do. It's that this blog no longer feels big enough. I want to write and share about things beyond food. I want balance in my life, and that means writing and thinking and photographing things that aren't edible. It means using this space as a place to try out the ideas I'm working on in my literary writing.

2011 was a good year, but when I look back on what made it good or memorable, only a few of those things are food related:

2011 was the year:
Amanda and I started an online cooking show Spatula
I became a regular contributor to Connotation Press.
I grew 50 lbs of sunchokes in my garden
I butchered my elderly backyard chickens

But, it was also the year:
I turned 30
got tattoo #4
took up yoga again
nurtured my spiritual practice as a Quaker
learned how to make make a button hole and machine applique

I'm not sure where I'm going exactly, but I do know that I want Prose and Potatoes to be a bit more visual, and a bit more about the other main interests in my life including cooking, but moving beyond just food. So, this year expect posts about yoga, Quakerism/spirituality, photography (with lots more photos), food, recipes, and sewing projects. Oh, and maybe cats.

This week I adopted Gabby:

Pomegrantes, Chickpeas, and Fairy Dust

2011-11-17T21:13:00.003-05:00

The first time I ate a pomegranate seed I was on a school bus, on the rural back roads of North-Central Nebraska, and Lindsay Wagner was showing off. She was a harmless elementary school social climber because as a fifth grader, she was a year younger than me, she was in the remedial reading class, and she was ridiculous. Her best friend, Sundae, also rode our bus, and they were always bringing toys on the bus and playing elaborate games. One week they brought Barbies even though they were much too old for them, and even more confusingly, the next week, they showed up with a box of Troll dolls, which they used to act out scenarios in different voices. As a sixth grader, I was obviously too mature for that. They annoyed me, and who wouldn’t be annoyed by such desperate arm-flailing, look-at-me stunts? I liked the peace and quiet of the bus ride, but my daydreaming was routinely shattered by shrieking, giggling, and the occasional air-borne Troll doll, with its neon polyester shock of hair.

But one day, Lindsay’s shenanigans did get my attention. She was eating something I had never seen before. On the outside, it looked like a dark red grapefruit, but inside, there were the small tear-drop shaped seeds. The seeds glowed garnet, the juice from them interiors translucent and ready to burst.

“This is a pomegranate,” Lindsay announced. Other bus riders had gathered around her seat. Some turned around to see better.

“You eat it like this.” She plucked a seed from the rind and sucked the juicy pulp, then she spit out the woody, white center of the seed in a paper towel.

“You can try it if you want," Lindsay said as she slowly picked out one pomegranate seed at a time with the edges of her nails, which were polished in baby blue sparkles. As if she were bestowing communion wafers, we waited with palms outstretched.

“You don’t want to eat the seed,” she said. In unison we sucked off the jeweled flesh, and spit out the woody centers, and placed them in Lindsay’s paper towel.

It wasn't until years later I realized Lindsay had it all wrong. Eating the whole pomegranate seed is a delightful study in contrasts. Sure there's the burst of tart juice, but I like it better when it's tempered by the delightful crunch of the white hull. I also think that pomegrante seeds work best with savory dishes, as a garnish on top of a wheel of brie served with ligonberry jam, for instance, or my new favorite lunch dish.

Fairy Dust aka Homemade Chili Pepper Flakes

Pomegranate and Chickpea Salad with Fairy Dust
serves 2 - 3

Fairy dust is simply homemade chili powder. A gracious, gardening friend gave me an entire grocery bag heaping with jalapenos. I put them in food dehydrator, and then when they were dry ground them to a chunky powder. The green, herbaceous notes of the jalapeno carried through the drying, and I'm using this "Fairy Dust" on anything and everything that needs a little heat. You can substitute ground cayenne pepper for the Fairy Dust in this recipe.

1 - 15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 seeds of one large pomegranate
1 small clove of garlic
salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
juice of half a lemon
1/8 teaspoon fairy dust, or to taste (a little goes a long way)
1/4 cup finely grated Asiago cheese

Combine chickpeas and pomegranate seeds in a small mixing bowl. Mash clove of garlic with a pinch of salt, using either a mortar and pestle or the flat side of chef knife. Whisk garlic paste with olive oil and lemon juice. Pour over chickpeas and pomegranate seeds. Add remaining ingredients and toss gentle to combine.

Spatula!

2011-09-09T12:24:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that summer is over. Pumpkins and butternut squash are ripening in the garden, and will soon be roasting in my oven. Still, I think fondly, with a wisp of nostalgia at how I spent this summer.
Here's the data. This summer I:

read 29 books.
taught 90 summer reading classes.
canned 14 quarts of tomatoes.
drank 7 mojitos.
swam at the Quarry 1 time.
butchered 3 chickens.
ate 9 ears of corn on the cob.
co-starred in 3 episodes of Spatula, a new online cooking show.

On the set of "Spatula"

Please click over to Connotation Press to see the Spatula Cooking Show Teaser. Here you will find also find essays by myself and co-star Amanda explaining how we came to be friends, and how we were inspired to do a cooking show. I am so grateful for the wonderful, creative foodie friends in my life, which is what Spatula is all about. I hope you enjoy!

A New Way of Looking at Zucchini

2011-08-08T11:07:00.000-04:00

I hate August. Summer is dying, and the garden is exploding with so much produce that I can't see straight over the steamy fog spewing from the pressure canner in hissing spurts. August is one giant pressure canner in my head (as I prepare for the new teaching term), and even in the atmosphere (as we've had daily thunderstorms all this week and when I step out my front door its like the steamy inside of a pressure canner.)

The only thing that's made me feel better in the kitchen is eating raw zucchini ribbons. It is cliche to discuss the abundance of zucchini right now. Case in point, last weekend I was a speaker on a local food panel at the Lake Erie Yearly Meeting of Quakers, and EVERY single one of us panelists made a joke about zucchini overload. Even so, I'm going to discuss zucchini anyway. This tired, old, boring problem of what to do with summer squash has a simple solution.

Sometimes you only need to change the shape of something to utterly transform it. My f(F)riends, J (author of this awesome spiritual blog) and his fiance, K invited me over for dinner last Sunday night. They served me a raw zucchini salad that was quite like the "salad of raw zucchini, lemon, and toasted Parmesan" that Nigel Slater discusses in Tender I had been reading about one a few days before. Slater writes, the raw zucchini "had the quality of freshly picked wet walnuts."

Rather than cubing it or chunking the zucchini, J and K finely sliced the zucchini. Wispy threads of noodle-like zucchini flesh are surprisingly juicy, succulent and slightly nutty. They drizzled the zucchini with olive oil and lemon juice and a heavy grating of Parmesan cheese. A simple and delightfully refreshing salad that I can't seem to get enough of (though, in my version, I added a sprinkling of pine nuts and used a vegetable peeler--rather than a mandoline--to get the thinnest slices possible.)

When two similar ideas show up in my life from seperate sources, well, rather than coincidence, I believe that some greater good, some divine force, is working, asking me to stop and pay attention. Even to something as simple and mundane as zucchini.

Suddenly, I am MINDFUL of the zucchini now that it has taken on this new shape, taste, and texture. The dish is light and delicate, and I find that I have to quiet myself to really taken in the understated glory of the subtle, shifting flavors. I like everything about this dish. The monochromatic, pale colors are beautiful, the textures, the ease of preparing it. And then there's the fact that I can eat an entire zucchini like this all by myself. Then I don't feel so desperate when there are 10 very large zucchinis, sitting in wait on the bottom shelf of my fridge.

A New Way of Looking at Cucumbers

2011-07-18T11:52:00.000-04:00

She remembers a phrase from the movie Julie and Julia, that movie about that woman that cooked through Julia Child's entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking: "Baked cucumbers are a revelation." She holds this thought in her mind, and like Mark Doty suggests in Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, the mind becomes a Magic 8 Ball. That plastic toy with the floating marble inside of it that gives answers "yes" or "no" or "ask again later." Doty says,

"Now I think there is a space in me that is like the dark inside that hollow sphere, and things float up into view, images that are vessels of meaning, the flotsam and detail of any particular moment. Vanished things.”

In the heat of July, with a pile of cucumbers, things float into her brain. "How can I ever possibly eat this many cucumbers?" The dark solution in her brain sloshes. "Baked cucumbers are a revelation." She decides--even though it is 95 degrees outside--to stoke the oven. The oven, dependable and stubborn, turns the kitchen into an inferno, a wall of heat that can be walked into. She doesn't mind. She crams the oven with a roasting chicken, long-skinny Japanese egg-plant, chunks of beets, and after drying them off with wads of paper towels, the cucumbers.

This dinner, it can't exist on any other day, or any other time. When six pounds of cucumbers arrived in the weekly vegetable box, when the eggplants in the garden reached the heavy purple enamel sheen of ripeness, when the beets heaved their round shoulders out of the soil. While the chicken and vegetables roast, she makes mayonaise. Whisking egg yolk and oil, to a thick creamy dollop, studded with shallots and flecks of dark yellow lemon zest.

She thinks, in her lifetime, she's eaten dozens of cucumbers. But never baked. Never warm. Dispatching the pile of cucumbers, makes her feel effiecent. As if she has somehow arrested decay and age, stopped time for these cucumbers in the oven.

Now they are something else. When they emerge from the oven they are firm, but yielding. Sweet, but slightly bitter. Richly coated with butter. They are not a revelation, exactly. They are more than the sum of their parts, and startling in how the ordinary has been rendered unfamiliar and strange.

She drags a forkful of chicken across a slick of mayonnaise, chews. She takes a bite of cucumber, and she wonders about all these things as the roasted beets bleed across the plate, and the eggplants wait patiently in the kitchen to be turned into baba ganoush. She wonders about the ordinary turning unfamiliar.

** Julia Child's recipe for Baked Cucumbers has been reprinted here.

It Really Gets to the Marrow of Things

2011-07-10T08:45:00.000-04:00

When I go to Bellville Brothers Butcher Shop and ask for marrow bones, the butcher looks at me strangely.
“You mean dog bones?” he asks. “I’ve got those.”
“No,” I say, “not for the dog. I’m going to eat them.”
He shrugs. “Here, I’ll show you what I got.” He walks me away from the glass class of expensive T-bones and filet mignon, so bright red that they look plastic, to the freezer case at the back of the store. “These?” He holds up a 10 inch long bone wrapped in plastic. Then he says, “My dog loves these bones. He’ll work on one for hours.”
I wish that he would get off the dog kick, so I try to get him back on my needs as a customer. “Those bones are too big. Can you cut them?” Then, we have a discussion about how to cut them. I want them cut lengthwise to better scoop out the marrow from the center. He says that he can’t do that. The bones are more fragile than they look. They will splinter too much. So he cuts them crosswise in three-inch long increments. The bones look like a human femur. The marrow is pink and thick. It is at the core, at the very center, of this desire I have. For something rich, nourishing, and out of the ordinary. I take the bones over to my friend Amanda’s house. Whenever I get a craving for foods that push the bounds of cultural conventions, Amanda is my accomplice. I’ve fed her bull testicles and chicken feet, tongue and liver. When I get to Amanda’s, we stand the bones up on end in a cast iron pan, and slide them into the oven. They roast until the marrow has turned a translucent whitish color, with the palest hint of yellow and gray.

Then, we scrape the marrow out of the interior of each bone with silver steak knives and slather the marrow on slices of toasted baguette. The marrow is unctuous. Rich. We sprinkle chopped capers and shallots and parsley over the thick smear of bone marrow.

Amanda’s black lab, Bleu, is jealous. He sits on the floor next to the table, looking expectantly at the stack of bones on the table. Maybe the butcher was right. Still, I am surprised that more people don’t realize that something this tasty, this succulent, this filling could be had for just a couple of dollars. I am satiated in way that most people only associate with those bright red, bloody steaks. Later, after Amanda has used the leftover marrow to roast potatoes, I still can’t stop thinking about marrow. But, now it’s more of an idea hanging in the air. Perhaps it is because the smell lingers. Even after scrubbing my hands with lavender soap my fingers still smell of beef tallow. Like the smell of grease clinging skin, my brain clings to the symbol of marrow. I mull over marrow. It is mysterious in ways that I can’t quite grasp. I look up the word marrow in the OED. Aside from the literal biological definition of marrow, the word can also mean the innermost part of a person’s being. Another less common usage for marrow is as a companion or even an accomplice. If used as an adjective it can denote a resemblance to something of the same kind, and I think of how Amanda and I are the knit from the same foodie cloth. When marrow is a verb, it means to join, and I think of the way the marrow fuses itself to the interior of the bone the same way that a meal brings people together. In the mid 1600s there was also a trend to use the word marrow in titles of books. That way the author could claim that his tome got at the very heart of the subject—that it dug into the deepest part of the issue. Most of these were religious titles like The Marrow of the Oracles of God or The Marrow of Sacred Divinity. In the end, I want to devour meaning just like the marrow. I want to consume it, so somehow, it gets to my essence. When eating marrow, there’s no forgetting that this animal I’m eating is like me with muscles and tendons and bones. Perhaps I eat things that make me think about death because, then maybe, I can understand being alive.

*Note: The recipe photographed and written about here is "Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad" from Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating.
This recipe has also been reprinted all over the web and you can find it here, here, here, and here. There is also a great Mark Bittman video clip with Henderson here.

Infamous Ex-Wife Potatoes

2011-06-16T15:30:00.000-04:00

Exes are strange. They have a way of leaving behind unexpected, haunting memories, or of popping up without warning on Facebook. Many people associate food with seasons or with certain time periods in their life, or with people. Food is a re-creatable autobiography. For my dad, these amazing potatoes will always be connected to his ex-wife, who he married when he was only 20 years old and had two sons with.

When I was out on my own for the first time in college, my half-brother, Andy, (who up to that point I had only seen sporadically at family weddings and funerals) and I started to hang out a lot. I had picked a college that coincidentally was only 15 minutes away from Andy's house. We waited tables together at Chili's and then most afternoons after the lunch shift, stopped by the local watering hole for happy hour with my dad's ex-wife, Debbie. She was gracious, and told me early on that "whatever happened between your father and I is water under the bridge."

I had trouble believing that this woman--who was unlike my mother in every way--had ever been married to my father. Of course strange, unimaginable, things always happen before you're born. She and I had a friendly relationship as drinking buddies. She offered a unique perspective as a psedeo-mother figure at a time when I was testing all the limits of my newly acquired freedom from parental surveillance. The thing that we never talked about though, not my dad, not my dad's ex-wife, not even my mom, was the past. It remained locked up tight.

The only small glimmer of my dad's past romantic life came from these potatoes. When I was little, these potatoes--split in half length-wise and then baked face down in some form of fat until the cut side is golden and crunchy, and the insides fluffy --were always called dad's potatoes. A couple of years ago, I wanted to know the history of these potatoes because they were quite famous in family lore for being the only thing my dad ever taught my mother to cook.

Photo credit: AMR

"Where did you learn how to make the potatoes like that?" I asked him.

"Well," he said, rather bashfully. "Don't ever tell your mother this, but those are Debbie's potatoes. She used to make them all the time when we were first married." I don't know if he was abashed because he had been taking credit for Debbie's potatoes all those years, or if he feared my mother would be jealous, or if he felt guilty that he had clung fiercely to these delicious potatoes even though they reminded him of a disastrous, messy romantic relationship. Really, I don't want to know. I like the mystery of it.

And I like the idea that a damn good recipe will stick around even longer than a lover, and once you try these potatoes, you will want to swear undying love and commitment to them "until death do you part."

Ex-Wife Potatoes

I like to make these potatoes when something else is in the oven--say a roast chicken--as a easy side dish. You want to use a good baking potato here, like a Russet, to get a fluffy texture. Avoid waxy potatoes like Yukons. Also, try to find long narrow potatoes, rather than fat round ones. Thin potatoes create a better crispy surface area to fluffy inside, than fat ones do. Also, be sure to make a wide grid of score marks on the cut surface of the potato (see photo). If the scoring hatches are too close together, the crispy bits will stick to the pan. If you use butter, the potatoes will brown more quickly. If you use duck fat, the potatoes will take more time, but ultimately get crispier than in butter.

6 Russet potatoes, well-scrubbed
6 Tablespoons butter, or enough duck fat for a very thick layer to coat the pan.
salt

Cut each potato in 1/2 length-wise. Score the cut surface with a paring knife. Sprinkle each cut side lightly with salt, and place a 1/2 T. butter on each cut potatoes' cut side, and press cut side down onto a rimmed cookie sheet. (Or coat rimmed baking sheet with 6 T. duck fat). Bake at 350 degrees until cut side is golden brown and crispy, and potato is tender when pierced with a knife. Begin checking for doneness after 20 minutes. Buttered potatoes will take about 30 minutes, duck fatted potatoes will take about 40 to 45 minutes.

Let's Be Frank...

2011-06-06T10:22:00.000-04:00

Let's be frank, when I'm traveling I seek restaurants with local color. I want to dine somewhere I won't find anywhere else. Luckily, when Kent and I were in Pittsburgh last month for a quick over night trip on our way to D.C., we has found great food, and a surprisingly European vibe to the downtown scene. Given a tip from our intrepid food writer and friend, Amanda, we were told to go to Franktuary. Happily, it was within walking distance from our hotel. But, tucked away on a narrow side street, we could have easily missed it.

Franktuary is a hot dog restaurant in a church. It's a bizarre, little gourmet hotdog joint, with black and white tile on the floors, a cooler full of Bolyan’s soda, and red plastic trays. There was a basket of books, including the titles Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog and Horsemen of the Esophagus (which although it was about competitive eaters, had a cover covered in photos of hotdogs.)

I ordered the locavore, which was made from locally sourced grass-fed beef. After choosing the type of hotdog (they also had conventional and vegetarian), I then had my choice of toppings. I chose the Mexican—cheddar cheese, mango salsa, and guacamole. The combination was delicious, the raw red onion in the salsa set off the mango, and the guac gave the whole combination a creamy richness. I decided that the combo really needed the spicy brown mustard and ketchup at the condiment station. The real star of the show, though, was the frank itself. If I can be frank, it was one of the best hotdogs I have ever had. It had that wonderful toothiness, and when I bit into it, the center was gushing with juicy, smoky hotdoginess.

I liked that this hotdog joint was eclectic. We showed up right before closing time, and there was a hipster on his laptop (they offer free wi-fi), a single elderly woman, and a typical nuclear family with teenage kids. The staff was brisk, but friendly at the same time, and clad in a MegaDeath T-shirts. This was the perfect travel eatery because it was the sort of place that you would find nowhere else. We do not have access to a restaurant even remotely resembling this little hole in the wall that we almost missed. So, it had all the wonder of a serendipitous find.

Summer Road Food: Thrown Together, Not Fussy.

2011-05-30T11:35:00.000-04:00

Everyone should have a throw together meal. You know, the type of meal that doesn't even need a recipe, that comes together in a matter of minutes, and is flexible enough to use up whatever odds or ends there are in the fridge. If I was more of a fashionista, I'd make some dazzling simile, explaining to you that having a throw together meal is like having a throw together outfit. That one skirt in your closet that makes you look thin, makes your legs look long, and goes with practically everything else in your closet. It's the outfit that you always pack on trips. I don't know about having a throw on and go outfit, but I do have a perfect throw together meal: Stir-fried Cabbage. And, it seems to go with me on road trips quite frequently, too.

This meal is so easy, in fact, I whipped it up the night before we left for Virginia, and it made a light, healthy, and quick road lunch. Traveling with food is not as difficult as most people think, and it really saves me from eating gas station junk food. I've written about the merits of road-tripping with a cooler stashed in the backseat before, so I'll spare you my diatribe. And, it's not as weird as you think to bring food along with you when you know you can't get good food where you're going. My friend and fellow food writer Amanda, does the same thing. Read about her food-smuggling adventures here. Also, I can't claim complete credit for stir-fried cabbage, as I have adapted a technique that Molly Wizenberg of Orangette wrote about a couple of years ago. At its simplest, Stir-Fried Cabbage is thin slivers of green cabbage, stir-fried in a wok at very high heat until it starts to caramelize a bit around the edges--imparting a lovely sweetness to the dish. Then, it's finished off with a squirt of fiery Siracha and a glug of soy sauce. You can leave it at that, but I rarely do.

For the dish pictured above, I added leftover chunks of roast chicken, some carrots, fresh snipped chives from the garden, and some toasted sesame seeds. A drizzle of sesame oil never hurts either.

The spiciness of the Siracha plays well with the cooling/sweet properties of the cabbage. The sesame seeds/sesame oil imparts a deep roasted, nutty flavor, and the chives brighten the whole thing up. Also, this is the type of dish that is great served at any temperature: hot from the wok, straight out of the icy cooler, or anywhere in between.

I think that this dish's utter unfussiness makes it a perfect summer dish, especially when I'd rather be lazing about in the sun with a guilty pleasure paperback than slaving over a stove.

Stir-Fry Cabbage

This is an infinitely flexible dish. You can add whatever stray veggies you have on hand. I like broccoli or bell peppers in this dish, also, for example. Just remember to add the slower cooking veggies to the wok a minute or two before you add the cabbage so everything will be cooked through at the same time. However, slightly undercooked veggies that have a bit of toothiness to them also taste delicious, so don't freak out about under cooking. Sesame seeds or toasted almond slivers add a nice crunch, but they need to be kept separate until serving or they'll get soggy.

1 cup diced carrots (or other veg) {optional}
1/2 head green cabbage, thinly sliced
1 T. cooking oil (choose one with a high smoke point, like peanut or canola--not olive)
1 cup diced, cooked chicken
dash of Siracha to taste
dash of soy sauce to taste
dash of toasted sesame oil to taste {optional}
small bunch of chives, snipped into 1 inch pieces{optional}
handful of toasted almonds or toasted sesame seeds {optional}

Heat oil in wok over high heat until very hot. Add carrots and other vegetables if using. Stir-fry for a couple of minutes. Add green cabbage and cook over high heat until the edges begin to brown and it's wilted through. Turn heat down and stir in chicken, siracha, and soy sauce, tasting to adjust seasoning. Finish dish with sesame oil, chives, and nuts/seeds.

Either eat immediately, or stash in the cooler. Serves two very generous servings.

Cloudy Days, Cooking with a Friend, and Panna Cotta

2011-05-20T21:07:00.001-04:00

It's been a strange spring this year. I've felt out of sorts ever since we got back from Virginia on Sunday, and I blame the weather. Until this afternoon, there has not been any sunshine all week. We've had thick, dark, gray clouds that make it dark enough to need a reading lamp at noon. It's also been cold and wet. With the regularity of a lush at 5 o'clock cocktail hour, the clouds dump their burden of rain drops every afternoon. Until today.

This week too, I've been caught in ritual. Every morning, I've spend with a cat on my lap, a good book in hand, and a cup of strong yerba mate tea close by. Every evening, I've been working on sewing projects.

The garden has been languishing, under so much rain, under so little sun. The desire to dig in the dirt, plant and weed, has been choked off by the weather. I've spent a lot of me week inside, looking out windows, but not venturing out.

Although, today began like every other day this week with a thick blanket of clouds, it felt different. My foodie friend Amanda came over in the morning to break me out of my routine and to make rabbit sausage. It was a wonderful cooking project, and as we have the tendency to do, we talk more than we cook. We flow effortlessly into each stage of cooking without any sense of urgency. It is incredibly relaxing cooking with Amanda, yet I love how we still take the food very seriously and the timing always works out, slowly and steadily, like a dance we haven't even learned the steps to. The sausages were delicious, but I don't want to talk about them. Instead, I want to talk about panna cotta.

After fiddling with the sausage recipe for awhile, tweaking seasonings, adjusting texture, we realized that we had an abundance of cream leftover from the sausage experiment. (I will go so far as to say that if you want to make a really decadent rabbit sausage, add some breadcrumbs soaked in heavy cream, a good bit of pancetta, and a drizzle of truffle oil. Yum.)

I had been telling Amanda about the amazing dinner we had in Pittsburgh last week at The Salt of the Earth, a hip, innovative farm to table restaurant. They served a white chocolate lavender-scented panna cotta that was so good, after Kent and I ate it, we ordered a second. We could not get enough. I was still thinking about it today, and immediately, I knew that I could whip up a panna cotta. Our afternoons in the kitchen are like this, we can change directions, add ideas, and it's an effortless collaboration. When we were finished with our cooking, and the last dish was washed, the sun came out. Finally. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden, where the chives are blossoming and the dandelions are globes of fluff.

Panna cotta is an Italian dessert made of cream, milk, and sugar mixed heated together and then mixed with gelatin and chilled until set. It's sort of like a cream jello, though I hesitant to call it that because it's so much better than it sounds. I happened to have unflavored gelatin on hand, leftover from making homemade marshmallows. I didn't have any milk, so I diluted some of the cream with water. Resulting a bit heavier, but still delightful dessert. The panna cotta, though, really is just a vessel for the lavender.

As you may know, I love the flavor of lavender. When lavender melds with the rich creaminess of the panna cotta, it reminds me of the purple-y color you sometimes see at dusk. Lavender actually tastes purple to me and like sunshine on wildflowers. But, you can't have a heavy hand with lavender or it will taste more like you're eating the freshly line-dried laundry.

Lavender-Scented Panna Cotta

Our panna cotta didn't stick around long enough for garnishes. But this would be excellent served with lemon curd, raspberry coulis, or rhubarb compote. Or, for an even easier topping, just use fresh berries. I used a tea ball to infuse the lavender, but there are other options. You could use a bit of fine cheesecloth instead of a tea ball--or in a pinch--you could add the lavender straight into the cream mixture, but strain it carefully before adding the gelatin. For serving options, I used wide-mouthed appertif glasses. But, martini glasses would work well, as would simple ramekins. This should make about 6 portions, but this varies dramatically depending on the size of glass or ramekin you use.

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup of milk, half and half, (or like I did, a mixture of cream and water)
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp. dried lavender
2 tsp. vanilla extract

In a small sauce pan, sprinkle the gelatin over the 2 tablespoons of water. Heat gently, until the gelatin dissolves, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a medium sauce pan, combine the cream, milk, sugar. Add the tea ball filled with lavender and heat over medium heat until it just begins to boil. Remove from heat. Taste. If the lavender flavor is not pronounced enough (and it most likely will not be at this point, so let the lavender steep for 10 minutes.) Taste. Once the lavender is the desired potency. Remove the tea ball of lavender, and bring the mixture back up to boil. Remove from heat as soon as it boils. Stir in the gelatin and the vanilla. Mix well and pour into serving cups. Let chill for 2 hours or longer or until set.

How this Blog Began...

2011-05-16T12:15:00.000-04:00

I'm terribly behind with posting. I know. So until I get more content up, check out this recent article, "Cure for a Bereft Foodie," I had published in Connotation Press. This essay is the story of why I began Prose and Potatoes in the first place. (I suppose it would be cooler if I was a comic book character. Then I'd get bitten by some strange creature or have some radioactive chemical spilled on me, which of course would result in super powers beyond my ability to make homemade mayonnaise without it breaking.) I hope you enjoy!

Earthworms, Rouge Carrots, and May Sarton

2011-04-22T10:15:00.000-04:00

As a bibliophile, I've picked up the habit of reading several books at once. Usually, this creates interesting juxtapositions and I naturally synthesize the ideas I'm reading into my life, into my writing. This week I finished two books: May Sarton's memoir Plant Dreaming Deep and Amy Stewart's The Earth Moved.

In The Earth Moved, Stewart discusses how earthworms intersect with humanity, in nearly always a positive way. She also imbues them with human-like characteristics when she writes:

“Worms are ruminators; they sift through whatever surround them, turn it over, explore it, move through it. They are deliberate creatures, in no great hurry, but always in motion, twisting and burrowing, shrinking and contracting, and eating. They spend their lives in a kind of active meditation, working through the detritus in which they live, the bits of leaves and grass and particles of soil.”

What strikes me most about this image is that worms work incrementally, slowly, getting a little bit done at a time. Working with what they have--the messy detritus of a life. As finals and the semester is crashing down around me, I can't get out in the garden for a long day of work. I can't even make my kitchen cupboards as tidy as I like. We suffered a grain moth invasion, when an unopened package of dried figs in the pantry proved to be a nesting ground, which was just another stressful thing to add to my list. When the pressure of schoolwork builds up at the end of the semester, it feels like everything starts to fray around the edges. At times like this, I must remind myself to have the patience of an earthworm.

It's been a rough spring so far. As typical of Northwest Ohio, spring is fickle. It's cold and wet and gray and it just won't cooperate with our wishes for warm, sunny weather. 4 of the last 5 days have been rainy. The thermometer stalls out at 50 degrees, never higher. Yet, thinking of moving in small increments like the earthworm, I managed to get sugar snap peas, two kinds of radishes, bok choi, dill, and an assortment of lettuces and spinach in the ground. Yesterday, after spending the whole afternoon grading research essays, I know that if I could just a small incremental little bit of gardening done, I would feel better. It made all the difference in the world.

Rouge Carrots (notice the naughty kitten paw in the upper left-hand corner.)

Because gardening is now deep in my bones like writing and reading, I can relate when Sarton writes in Plant Dreaming Deep, “Making a garden is not a gentle hobby for the elderly, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole, and once it has done so he will have to accept that his life is going to be radically changed." Gardening has seized me. Now that I've gotten my fix--during the one dry day this week--I can stop trembling with anxiety. I am hooked on vegetable gardening because I never quite know the joys or sorrows I will discover each time I step foot outside. The garden is a constantly evolving, shape-shifting creature all its own.

Yesterday, when I was planting peas, I found these rogue carrots that had escaped harvest last fall. To my surprise, they were still perfectly fine. And, just to make sure, our new black and white kitten, Tessie made sure to do a thorough inspection while I shot photos. Although, she did a better job of playing with the carrot top fronds.

I chopped the carrots, and ate them for dinner in a lovely chicken curry that surprisingly, has pureed pumpkin (made with frozen puree from last year's pie pumpkin harvest!) as a secret ingredient to give the sauce body, richness, and a wonderful mild sweetness. I found the recipe at Eat the Cookie, a great gluten-free food blog, also based in Northwest Ohio.

So, I will continue to grade essays, read books, and work in the garden as I manage the detritus of my life. And, hopefully like the earthworm, I can manage it with infinite patience so I can be open to the surprise of carrots in April!

Meet your Meat

2011-04-14T10:04:00.001-04:00

Put a face to your food. It’s important to know where your food comes from. If Food Inc, taught me anything, it was that the industrial agricultural system cannot be trusted. Sure, they’re fine if you want hormone and antibiotic laden meat that endangers the well-being of the animal before it was slaughtered, endangers the land and watershed where the animal lived, endangers the workers that took care of it and butchered it, and endangers the person that finally eats it. The only thing that meat like this has going for it is that it is cheap. But even this cheapness is a lie. Industrial meat only appears to be cheap because the true price of a pound of ground beef or of a pork chop is hidden from the consumer. Tax dollars pay for the corn subsidies that allow the beef to get fat quickly and as cheaply as possible on grain, even though cows are ruminants and are not anatomically designed to eat anything but grass. Also, factory farmers receive numerous tax cuts and other government help to increase their profits and to keep food prices artificially low.

All in a day's work for the laying hens.

Last week, I had the pleasure of food transparency. I learned where my chicken and pork chops come from. I took a tour of Graham Farms the home of Omega Meats just outside of Grand Rapids, Ohio. Lindsay Graham is the best kind of farmer: small and sustainable. His farming methods are good for the animal, good for the land, air, and water, good for the workers that produce it, and especially good for the people that eat his meat. Think chicken without dangerous bacteria (something you can’t find at the local Kroger). Think grass-fed beef with a correct and heart-healthy ratio of omega 3 and omega 6. Think rich, golden-yolked free-range eggs that have more vitamin A than their factory farmed counterparts and are free from salmonella. This would be reason enough to support Lindsay’s farm, but the thing is this meat (and eggs) actually tastes better too.

Approximately 5 week old meat chickens

This year, Graham farms will have 25 acres in production. On this amount of land, Graham can more than comfortably raises 400 Golden Comet hens as layers. (These are the same breed as my backyard hens!) And, throughout the spring, summer, and fall, he raises batches of 300 meat chickens at a time, which are a Cornish Cross. These chickens are allowed to express their chicken-ness. When I was saw them, they scratched in the soil and preened. They were able to roam outside for bugs—to get fresh air and sunshine. And because they are housed in movable pens that Lindsay rotates to fresh pasture frequently, there was fresh grass for them to eat, along with their organic grains.

The coyote decoy in the background scares off chicken hawks.

The pigs too, looked happy and healthy. They had their curly tails, which is something you’ll never see in a factory farm. Industrial farmers cut off the pigs' tails because the pigs are under so much stress confined to a concrete crate that they become cannibalistic and would gnaw each other’s tails off. Lindsay’s pigs were down right playful. They oinked and snorted in curiosity as I approached, and one even let me scratch its back.

The cows too, have a good life at Graham farms. Since we’ve had such cold weather this spring, the cows aren’t yet on pasture—the grass isn’t ready for them to eat--so they were still eating organic dried hay. Even though the 10 cows—a mix of Herfords and Angus—the blocky, body type that Lindsay told me produces best on a grass-fed diet--were confined to a large corral around the barn, unlike feed-lot cattle, they weren’t standing knee deep in their own excrement. At this scale, their manure can be safely composted and not turned into a manure lagoon or nitrate laden run off that poisons drinking water.

This is the face that I put to my food. Lindsay is a farmer that I trust to raise food responsibly, ethically, and safely. This is where I want to put my money. And seeing how much this is all worth in terms of my health and the health of everyone and everything on this food chain, I’m willing to pay more for Omega Meats than in the grocery store. When people tell me they’d love to eat local and organic food, but that it’s too expensive, I just want to shrug and say, “It’s where your priorities lay.” My husband is a full time student, and on my teacher’s salary we manage to afford it because we don’t shop at the mall recreationally, we don’t eat out that often, and we grow some of our own food. We might not be able to afford quite as much meat as we would if we were only buying industrial meat from the local Kroger or Walmart, but I'm okay with that. In this case, quality really does win over quantity. Also, I don't feel like I can put a price on my health. Eating meat that won't make me sick or lead to chronic disease, is worth every penny.

Another criticism I hear about eating local is this: “I’d eat locally if it wasn’t so time consuming and inconvenient.” It’s true that Lindsay doesn’t sell his meat 24hrs a day like Walmart, but I’m excited that he’s starting a Meat Buyers’ Club in Bowling Green. For a fifteen dollar annual membership fee and a small delivery charge, members get twice monthly meat and egg delivery to their front door! Orders can be placed quickly and easily online. And, I can leave a cooler on my porch and don’t even have to worry about being home at delivery time. So, if you live in Bowling Green, and you care about where your food comes from, support your local farmer and feel good about where your food comes from. You can sign up here.

The Cupboard was Bare

2011-03-31T11:20:00.001-04:00

"Groceries:

I do not like when our house is jam-packed full of new groceries. There is simply too much good food on hand, too many options. When we consume some of it, I feel better, as if we’ve done a worthwhile, necessary thing. The elimination feels satisfying, not so much in the pleasure of the eating, but in the minimization of what’s available.”--Amy Rosenthal Encyclopedia of an Ordniary Life.

Last week I read Amy Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. The book is a memoir written in the format of an encyclopedia complete with cross-references. Although some entries were the type of random musing that one might find scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin--tainted with slightly drunken hubris--many entries rang with clarity and recognition. For instance, I, too, feel like eating foods from the pantry is a worthwhile, necessary thing. I also find that in the frantic mess of everyday life pulling my thoughts in every direction the "minimization of what's available" is a welcome form of simplicity.

Yet, paradoxically, there is great comfort in having a house full of food. A feeling of security. The comfortable notion that if there's a blizzard or if I get sudden-onset agoraphobia then I can survive quite happily with a pantry full of sun-dried tomatoes, capers, olives, big bags of rice and beans, a gallon of good olive oil. Must of my food buying habits have centered around this premise: You do NOT want to go without a good meal if you are trapped in the house for months at a time. Perhaps part of this comes from my increasing hatred of grocery shopping. Theoretically, if I'm that well stocked, then I shouldn't have to go to the grocery store Every. Single. Week.

Kent went to the grocery store with me the other day, and after I lost him in the produce aisle, I continued on with my shopping. When he finally found me 23 minutes later, I had gathered a whole cart's full of groceries. "You walk so fast. I can't keep up. This is not a sprint, Sarah," he said, angrily tossing the half a dozen cans of garbanzo and pinto beans I asked him to get--which he had lugged across the whole store trying to keep up with me. I've taken to the position that the faster I get in and out of the grocery store the better. Do not get in my way. Last week I put off grocery shopping for almost as long as I could bear it. Until my fridge looked like this:

A raw chicken defrosting for supper that night, a few eggs from the 'girls,' but that was about it. Now the other benefit of letting food stuffs run so low, besides the mental clarity, is the fact that it imposed a forced creativity. That day for lunch I made this rather odd meal:

Leftover roast, lettuces from the cold frame, and the last small bunch of asparagus. I would have never purposely designed this meal unless there were no other options. Yet, it was still good and satisfying in its own strange way. It felt good to be so resourceful. The thing that pulled these rag-tag ingredients together was my favorite and simplest homemade dressing: hazelnut-lemon vinaigrette.

I was turned onto hazelnut oil by Molly Wizenberg's recipe for Celery Root and Apple Salad with Hazelnut Vinaigrette. This salad is lovely in its own way, but the complicated vinaigrette with lemon, vinegar, Dijon mustard, and more, just isn't necessary. I found that all the other ingredients muddied the wonderful (and expensive) flavor of the hazelnut oil. So, I just started making a lemon juice and hazelnut oil dressing that is one of the easiest and flavor dressings I know of. It is worth keeping a bottle of hazelnut oil in the back of your fridge for emergencies just like this.

Lemon-Hazelnut 'Vinaigrette'
Hazelnut oil can be hard to find. Whole Foods seems to be the only place that I can locate it, but I'm also sure you can find it for sale online at Amazon. I've been very happy with La Tourangelle brand roasted hazelnut oil. They also make good truffle oils. It's almost embarrassing writing out a recipe this simple, but here you go:

5 Tablespoons hazelnut oil
3 Tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
pinch of sea salt

Whisk all ingredients together. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

Don't Fear the Bagel Making

2011-03-21T09:32:00.000-04:00

I adore Gretchin Rubin's book The Happiness Project. It's not really a self-help book, instead it's like listening to a friend with wit and wisdom explain in the most down-to-earth way how they're trying to live as happy of a life as possible, and how to spend a year systematically conquering that goal. Of course it doesn't hurt that Rubin writes beautifully or that she seamlessly ties in apt and thoughtful research every step of the way. Really, you should read this book! Rubin also blogs The Happiness Project here.

In one section of the book, titled "Vitality," Rubin makes a list of all the things that would give her more energy. On that list are things like: exercise better; toss, restore, organize; go to sleep earlier; act more energetic; and tackle a nagging task.

I am happy to report that I have "tackled a nagging task" and tackled it well. And, Rubin is right, it did make me happy. I was practically leaping around the kitchen in stocking feet--poppy seeds and sesame seeds scattering across the floor like confetti it was so darn exhilarating. Yesterday morning, I made bagels from scratch. That's right with my own two hands, a little yeast, a little flour, and a little water. In my own kitchen! Bagels like the ones you see artfully stacked in those cute little basket cubbyholes at Panera, except that I MADE THEM--so of course they were a million times better. The outside crusts were the perfect level of bagel chewiness and the insides were light and soft.

I've been saying that I wanted to make bagels since my New Year's Food Resolutions from 2009. That's two years of having this slightly uncomfortable feeling that I should be doing something with this unrequited bagel baking desire yet failing to act on it. This of course has made me think about larger and more meaningful things that we may fail to act on and why that happens. More than anything, the thing that holds us back is fear of failure and just sheer intimidation. We tell ourselves that we don't have the means or the time or the skill set. In my head I was already setting myself up for failure: "I don't have any special equipment, surely, no, no surely, it's not possible for me to make bagels. Don't you need a special oven for that? Won't it take hours? I heard something about having to boil the bagels before you can bake them. Seriously? Do I want to hassle with that?"

The thing is though, that I have a deep, deep appreciation for sesame seed bagels. When I lived in Boise, I used to have one toasted to medium well--to the point that the sesame seeds turned a dark brown--and their flavor turned deep and nutty--slathered with cream cheese nearly everyday. This habit started back in college as an undergrad, when that was about the only thing I'd eat for breakfast at the cafeteria. I'd take my bagel, wrapped in a paper napkin, to my early morning classes to eat while only half paying attention to the lecture. When we moved to Ohio, that habit stopped because I couldn't find a decent sesame bagel anywhere. You see, I take my sesame seed bagels seriously.

I have to admit that it was finally The Wednesday Chef that got me off my procrastinating butt and inspired me. Luisa's wonderful post about making bagels was just what it took to wipe away any trepidation. Interestingly enough, Luisa had been going through the same fear/intimidation process. Like me, she had been meaning to make bagels for a long time. What I've learned here is that like most things, just a little bit of knowledge (reading a recipe), and simply taking the first scary steps of the project are all that I really needed to tackle a nagging task. So, if bagels is one of your nagging tasks, click over to The Wednesday Chef's bagel making post (the recipe Luisa uses, adapted from Peter Reinhart, is foolproof). You'll be happy you did.

Greens and Guinness

2011-03-17T21:20:00.000-04:00

I've never been a big fan of St. Patrick's Day. I read somewhere that there are two types of people in this world: the type that go out and party on New Year's Eve and the type that stay home in pajamas. I'm clearly a stay-at-home-in-my-pajamas type. Big drinking holidays have never really appealed to me. Also, after you've worked in the hospitality industry for years, and you've had to deal with drunken idiots on holidays like these, being a drunken idiot sort of loses all appeal. However, one memorable St. Patrick's Day almost 10 years ago, I was a server at a very Irish Catholic steakhouse. It looked like a throwback from a 70s mafia movie, and I happen to be assigned a private party. The party was a group of about 15 elderly women and their priest celebrating St. Patrick's Day--and let me tell you--watching 70 year old women get hysterically drunk after doing shots of Jameson with their priest, at 11 am, well that's some crazy, wild living!

Today I woke up with no intentions of celebrating the luck of the Irish. But, then the weather gave me a change of heart. This was our first real spring day: 70 degrees and sunny. I took a photography walk and found the most beautiful shade of green in my cold frame.

Arugula and spinach and lettuce that overwintered just fine, snuggled under glass surrounded by straw bales. Then as I was walking, it was apparent that my college town of Bowling Green was reveling in drunken glory. On short walk down College St. and Wooster St., I saw dozens of undergrad party houses--partiers spilled out on the lawns playing beer pong and cornhole. It was sort of infectious.

So, I ran to the store and on a last minute whim, grabbed a corned beef brisket. It was the second to last one in the store. How's that for lucky? And I made this for dinner:

And then, magically four pints of Guinness appeared in my fridge overnight...what mischief lepruchan-like husbands get into after I've gone to bed.

So I washed it all down with this:

Not a bad St. Patty's Day for one that doesn't celebrate such things...

Finding Joy on the Plate

2011-02-27T20:49:00.000-05:00

Years ago, I was obsessed with the author SARK. While a bit new-agey, she was inspiring. Her artistic philosophy centered on drinking life up as fully as possible, imprefections be damned. Her books are full of bright water colors, charming hand lettered text, and positive energy. When I was a sophomore in college, someone gave me a SARK desk calendar. You know the type of calendar that is a chunky block of pages, and you pull off a note card-sized page every day? In this calendar, each day had it's own aphorism and a little sketch in fat purply lines of ink. My favorite day that year had a picture of a flag that read: CRABBY and PROUD. I loved it that that little note gave me permission to be crabby. To literally, let my crabby flag fly. So oftentimes we don't want to sit with our feelings and just be. We want to manipulate them and stuff them down or to drown them by abusing alcohol or food.

But, today I'm trying to sit and be. I've been a bit off. My crabby flag has been wisping, nearly listlessly in the wind, against the cold, dull gray sky. My first reaction at times like these is usually to diagnose the problem, but today I realized that I just needed openness. I needed to let myself be open to this somewhat mysterious mood of melancholy. It will go away soon enough. I have faith. I have that hope. Like anything else, this is a phase, a rhythm.

I don't have any recipes for you today. In fact, Kent noted my crabby flag and has been paricularly nice to me. He's making dinner now, frying brussel sprouts in garlic infused butter and they smell divine! He also made what he's calling a "pork mummy" that is roasting in the oven...so stay tuned for a post about that soon.

What I do have to share with you, though, are food pictures that represent happiness to me. I've frequently been a drown your sorrows in a pint of ice cream and a massive bar of dark chocolate kinda gal. Of course that is tempting, but those foods aren't deeply joyful or nourishing, and they lead to regret. So instead of the typical fattening comfort foods, I want to share with you pictures of foods that have made me deeply joyful.

A bright, drenched with color salad eaten at my desk for lunch.


This salad I made with a lemon hazelnut oil vinaigrette: delicious!

Lingering over a bowl of oatmeal and a good book while wearing my pajamas.

Silly black and white kittens that try to steal my coconut-apricot oatmeal.

The most gorgeous shade of magenta imaginable in a plate of shredded beets.


Unexpected beauty.

How about you? What food moments have made you feel deeply joyous and nurtured?

Truffled Wild Rice and a Visit from the In-Laws

2011-02-24T10:21:00.001-05:00

It's easy to get into a cooking rut. I get stuck, but my ruts don't revolve around the food. Instead, my ruts involve who I'm cooking for. My problem comes when I spend day in and day out cooking for Kent and for Kent alone. And, frankly, at this point, after being together for nearly 10 years cooking for Kent is almost like cooking for myself. They only exception is the list of things he won't eat: green beans, kale, shrimp, and offal. I still cook those things sometimes anyway. I've never been the type of cook to shy away from preparing food that solely satisfies my desire--if no one else's at the table--so I suppose you can fault me that selfish, hedonistic indulgence.

This weekend, I've had a chance to stretch my culinary comfort zone a bit. It's not that I don't like having dinner parties or cooking for other people, I really do. But doing so requires more thought than just cooking for my family. Suddenly, I'm wont to examine every culinary decision and over analyze it. After all, it's what English teacher types do.

On Thursday, Kent's dad came in from out of town for a visit. Luckily, I've eaten enough meals with his dad to know his style: Contemporary American. Contemporary American stays true to the meat/starch/veg trinity, but using more exciting flavorings and seasonings, including fresh herbs. This style of cooking relies on traditional techniques and is decidedly against any ethnic fusion (with the exception of French cuisine). Wasabi powder and tahini paste need not apply. Learning the type of food my father-in-law gravitates to reminded me of learning enough about a college professor's speech habits and lecture style to begin imitating it in term papers. Which, but the way, always seemed to help on the grade front.

And preparing a dinner for company is really like any other rhetorical situation. What is your purpose? Who is your audience? What is your focus?

My explicit purpose was given to me: cook dinner for your father-in-law, but I also wanted to hit a few other criteria. I wanted it to be something he'd really like (audience awareness). Sometimes I cook to show off, or cook to add adventure to my diner's experience (AMR's a great dining companion to serve chicken feet, cow tongue, and other more inaccessible ingredients to.) But now was not one of those times. Also, I wanted it to be relatively easy. I'm getting lazier. I recently read about "the minimum effective dose" or MED in Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Body. If I can get away with the minimum amount of work [dose] (throw the dinner into the oven and steam a few asparagus spears and get the same results as from a more fussy dinner, than I'm doing the minimum to still be effective.)

I had one other objective focus for this meal. I wanted to use some of the fancy-pants pantry items Kent's dad gave me for Christmas. Food items make great gifts, but they can also be challenging to use. In fact, sometimes any gift can me a challenge to use. Lenz family-lore has it that whenever Kent's grandmother came to visit, his mom rushed around the house putting out all the tacky items that she made the family as gifts. We're talking things like plastic canvas tissue box covers and gaudy needle points.

This time, however, I relished the little extra push to use some of the items on my pantry shelf that my father-in-law gave me for Christmas. I made Chicken Mirabella, which used up a jar of fancy olives, and then in an inspired moment went for the Christmas bottle of truffle oil in wild rice.

Truffled Wild Rice

I happen to live in area of this country where good bulk sections are non-existent. The only wild rice I can find is Reese brand. Although the quality is fine, it comes in an incredulously tiny box at an exorbitant price. I find it slightly ironic that in this recipe the rice is more expensive than the truffle oil. If you are in this boat, then follow the package directions for cooking. Otherwise, cooking directions follow.

1 cup wild rice
2 1/2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon butter
3 teaspoons black truffle oil (or more to taste)

Combine rice, water, and salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 50 to 60 minutes, until rice is desired doneness. Aim for a nice al dente. If you overcook wild rice, the grains split and look terrible.

Drain any remaining water and immediately toss hot rice with butter and truffle oil. Taste to adjust seasoning, adding more truffle oil if necessary. Serve at once.

Serves about 4 as a small side.

Speculating about Causes: Cupcake Craze

2011-02-08T10:36:00.000-05:00

While some seem to think that the cupcake craze is over and are lobbying hard for the resurgence in pie as the new (old) dessert trend, I'm still standing firm in cupcakes' staying power. I ought to because in the past two days I made 125 cupcakes in 5 different flavors.

I went through:
4 1/2 lbs. powdered sugar
1 lb.margarine
1 lb. vegetable shortening
1/2 lb. cream cheese

And that was just for the frosting alone.

No doubt this trend is reflected in popular media--Cupcake Wars on Food Network is my favorite nod to the cupcake, but if I had to speculate the causes for the cupcake trend, here's what I'd come up with:

1. Cupcakes appeal to our desire for individuality. With multiple flavor/ icing combinations, it's possible to pick the cupcake that most perfectly expresses yourself.

2. Cupcakes are fun, whimsical, and appeal to our inner child. As a culture, we seem to be fearful of growing old or admitting we are grown older, so cupcakes help us maintain the illusion that we are still young.

3. Cupcakes, unlike a layer cake or a cheesecake, do not require sharing, and thus feel extra indulgent.

4. Cupcakes allow for variety and creativity in ways not possible with larger desserts. I see this mostly from the pastry chef's perspective. Cupcakes are a lower risk than a 7 layer cake, and since cupcakes are cheaper, patrons are much more willing to go risky with their cupcake flavors. Bacon Buttercream anyone?

5. Cupcakes seem like a less guilt-ridden choice because they're small and cute. Again, this relates to our self-delusions. It's such a tiny little cupcake, it can't have that many calories, can it?

6. Cupcakes are adaptable to special diets. Due to their small size, cupcakes are easier to adapt to gluten free and vegan recipes without compromising texture than other larger cakes. Plus, add this to the individuality thing, and you can easily accommodate the vegans, celiacs, and omnivores all with their own cupcake.

When my friend Andrew and I discussed having a joint 30th Birthday party (our birthdays are only 3 days, 2 hours, and 17 minutes apart.) I was pretty neutral in the planning. I was only adamant on one thing. There must be cupcakes, lots of fun, frivolous, and fabulous cupcakes. For a cocktail party, cupcakes also make sense because they can be eaten nearly as easily as a canape. As I tend to do, I may have went a little overboard. On the cupcake menu:

Chocolate with chocolate buttercream and chocolate sprinkles
Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting and rainbow sprinkles
Butter Pecan with cinnamon spice cream cheese frosting
White Wedding Cake with raspberry buttercream
Lemon with Lavender scented buttercream

As you may know, I don't like making cake from scratch. All of these were from box mixes. Which was fine because cake from mixes does stay moist longer--essential for the do-ahead magnitude of making hundreds of cupcakes for one event--and they were all of good quality, save for the butter pecan. There was definately a synthetic, nearly bitter aftertaste from the laboratory-created artificial flavoring, which I was able to cleverly disguise with spicy cream cheese frosting. Another benefit to making mix cakes was that I had more time and effort to put into the homemade frosting. And let's just admit it, frosting is where it's at.

My favorite combination was the lemon with lavender buttercream. The dusky, floral kiss of the lavender was perfectly contrasted with the sharp, but sweet tang of the lemon.

Lavender Scented Buttercream Frosting

This recipe calls for margarine, and this is about the only time I EVER use margarine in my kitchen. Here's why, the margarine gives the frosting more stability. So the name of this recipe may be misleading, but most people can't tell the difference between a frosting made with butter and one made with margarine. That said, I have in the past used butter in place of the frosting. It does lend a richer, fuller flavor than margarine, but the frosting will be weepy and may melt.
If you're in the Bowling Green area, you can get culinary lavender at Calico, Sage, and Thyme.
If you want to duplicate the purple color of the frosting, you must use Wilson paste colors as they won't thin the consistency of the frosting. I used christmas red and indigo blue in equal colors to get purple.
I piped the frosting on the cupcakes using a pastry bag with a star tip to get the rippled swirl pattern.
Rarely do I measure the amount of powdered sugar that I add to the frosting. So really, trust your instincts here. If you add too much powdered sugar, you can always add just a tad more milk.

1/2 cup non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
1/2 cup Imperial margarine
approximately 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
approximately 1 Tablespoon milk, soy milk, or rice milk
1 teaspoon dried culinary lavender flowers, ground finely in a mortar and pestle
Wilton paste coloring (optional)

In stand mixer, blend shortening and margarine. Slowly add powdered sugar, half a cup at a time. Then, add milk. Keep adding powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached. Add lavender and mix well. Color with paste coloring if desired.

Makes enough frosting for about 15 cupcakes

Jung and Brussel Sprouts, Synchronicity

2011-01-25T21:17:00.001-05:00

For the past several months, I've been attending Quaker meeting for worship. Quakers have a unique approach to worship. Worship involves sitting in silence, with an attitude of expectant waiting. We sit in silence for an hour and listen for/to God. It is amazing.

I've found that even if at first the silence may be uncomfortable, and I'm distracted, and the chatter in my mind won't turn off, by the end of the hour, I'm renewed. Meetings for worship have taught me to be mindful, to be receptive to God, to NOTICE.

Since I've been more mindfully present in my life and in the mundane daily moments, I'm noticing patterns and coincidences that normally would pass me by. This week, I've had an odd series of coincidences revolving around Carl Jung.

As I reread my journals last week in a personal celebration of my 30th birthday, I thought of my life as a giant spiral. Each year is a loop, like growth rings of a tree, but each ring radiates out from my core personality. Sometimes there are spokes of themes that I revisit again and again, year after year. When I mentioned this to my poet friend, Laurel, who wrote a series of poems on the spiral, she said, "I first came upon that idea when I was reading Jung."

Then the next night Kent and I were watching an old episode of Northern Exposure, and Chris, the radio deejay, was reading excerpts of Jung on the air.

Finally, I went to tutor a high school student this afternoon, and on his mom's coffee table was a copy of The Portable Jung.

I'm not sure that this sure what this all means, except that now I know I've got to read some Jung. So I have reserved copies of The Portable Jung and Memories, Dreams, Reflections from the library. Maybe this is just an odd coincidence. Maybe the Divine is trying to tell me something. Or maybe, and I think Jung might argue, I'm experiencing synchronicity. That is even though these events are causally unrelated, I've put them together to create personal meaning.

Which of course leads me to brussel sprouts. Keep up with me here: causally unrelated things that I'm putting together to create my own personal meaning. We had tempeh reubens for dinner last night. The reubens made me crave brussel sprouts with tahini sauce. It seemed like an odd, and quite unlikely combination. I for one, was baffled at first as to why I would want to mix my brassicas--cabbage sauerkraut and brussel sprouts--with rye bread and sesame seed paste. But, then it hit me, the first time I went through a Tempeh Reuben phase was in Omaha at McFoster's Natural Kind Cafe. Not only did McFoster's make a might fine tempeh rueben, they also made a delcious tahini dressing with--you guessed it--roasted brussel sprouts. So, perhaps my tempeh reuben/brussel sprout connection was not really synchronicity, but it's fun to pretend. And, the pairing of tahini smothered brussel sprouts and reubens? Quite in sync.

Tahini Sauce

This is really Kent's recipe--which is a riff on McFoster's tahini dressing. He worked there as a server for a brief stint when we first met. This is a fine accompaniment not only for brussel sprouts, but all manner of vegetables and salads. It is paricularly delicious as a substitute for tziki sauce inside of felafal pitas. Be sure to use roasted tahini as straight tahini is very bitter.

For the brussel sprouts:
To prepare the brussel sprouts, halve them, and fry cut side down in a generous mixture of butter and olive oil over medium heat until they begin to caramelize and turn golden brown. Watch carefully as they can burn quickly. As soon as they are golden brown, add about a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water and cover. Continue to cook until the sprouts are just tender, and the water is absorbed, about 5 minutes or so. Toss or drizzle with dressing before serving.

For the sauce:
1 large clove of garlic, smashed
1/4 cup roasted tahini
1/4 cup water, or more until desired consistency is reached
juice of 1/2 a lemon
dash of salt
fresh ground pepper to taste
1 T. fresh parsley

With a mortar and pestle, smash the garlic to a paste. Whisk garlic paste with tahini, water, and lemon juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in parsley. Serve.

This will keep in the fridge nicely for a couple of days, although you might have to thin it with more water.

Kissing Frogs and Cleaning Fridges

2011-01-17T17:42:00.000-05:00

I turn 30 this week, and it's thrilling. I've been using this long weekend to wax nostalgic (Happy MLK day!) I have been sporadically re-reading my past 12 years of journals. Rather than feel embarrassment at my naivety or my self-absorption in my early twenties, I'm marveling at how much I've learned about myself, about living, about the person that I want to be, and the world I want to create for myself. This past decade was about learning to kiss my frogs.

Let me explain. In Judy Reeves's book, A Writer's Book of Days, she discusses the importance of kissing your frogs, of admitting that everything you produce is not going to be brilliant. In fact, most of it is not. As I've been approaching thirty, I've slowing been shedding the perfectionism, the fear, the pressure of my twenties--now I don't have to live up to anyone but myself--and I've learned to be pretty forgiving of myself the older I get. And, more than anything, these journals represent all the frogs that I've kissed along the way. All the unpleasantness, pain, mistakes, and junk that I've experienced or created was necessary, was something I needed to go through get where I'm at now.

Even though there's a lot of swampy, murky, crap contained in these pages, there are still some glimmer's of truth and beauty. After all, frogs have been known to turn into princes if a princess is brave enough to kiss it. At times, I'm awed at the mindfulness, the awareness, the thoughtfulness that I managed to pour onto the page. I'm excited to keep observing and thinking and writing about what I see, what I feel, and what I do. I'm looking forward to another decade of earning insight and wisdom and experience.

For a great blog post about how to start the practice of a visual journal/scrapbook, check out this link.

Reading old journals makes me think of the Sarah I was at 19 or 22 or 27. I'm still that same person, but layers of experience, of living life, have obscured exactly who I was back then, like how the color and shape of an object can be obscured by dust or packaging. Today though, I was transported back to my first year of marriage when I dutifully shopped at the Kroger once a week. This was before I had a garden, before the chickens, before I learned to can, and most notably, before I could go a month without grocery shopping and barely notice it. When Kent and I lived on North 33rd Street in Omaha, on grocery day, more often than not, there would be nothing in the fridge that was remotely delicious or edible, so I'd eat lunch out before traipsing to the store.

Today felt exactly like "back in the day." I've been having a rough go lately at cooking things that are colorful or delicious enough to make me want to eat the leftovers. There have been a lot of frogs in the kitchen lately, so I went out for a sandwich at the local vegetarian restaurant, Squeaker's, before shopping. Then, I remembered when I returned home, when I was a newlywed, I would always meticuolously clean out the fridge before I'd put anything new away. This helped me strategically avoid culturing various molds and other science experiments. I haven't been doing that lately.

Today, the chickens got a late lunch of 1/2 lb of silken tofu that had developed a yellow scum, 1/2 bunch of kale that had developed fuzzy spots, the remains of a homemade batch of ranch dressing, a charturese bunch of Italian parsley, and the rest of the froggiest dish I made last week: cannelini bean and cremini mushroom in a red wine sauce.

Now, I have a fridge full of fresh groceries, a week of meals planned, and a gorgeously cleaned and organized fridge.

Germ-Killer Spray

This spray is simple to make, and it has the benefits of containing no carcinogenic or otherwise harmful chemicals like lysol and chlorine bleach do. It has antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties, and it smells really good too!

2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon tea tree oil
1/4 teaspoon lavender oil

Mix ingredient in a spray bottle and shake well before using. Spray on inside of fridge or anywhere else you want to de-germify.

I've come down with the Januaries...

2011-01-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

I have a bad case of the Januaries. If December is a rich, buttery, sugar cookie, smothered in buttercream frosting and glittery sprinkles, then January is a bowl of drab lentil soup. Not any lentil soup, but the lentil soup I made tonight for dinner. This soup was an unappetizing greyish yellow color, and even though it was studded with sweet, earthy carrot slices, the shock of those bright, orangey rounds couldn't buoy the soup's spirits.

Even though it was fairly tasty and satisfying, it was drab, January soup.

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive because even though my resolution to use up pantry items and freezer inventory is going well, there has been quite a depressing run of dull, drab, ugly, and bland food around here. I do not think it's the food's fault either. I seem to be lacking inspiration. I'm choosing recipes based on healthiness and the ingredients I already have on hand, rather than jazzy, showy, and impressive dishes that have, oh say taste, because they're full of fat and sugar.

This week's meal plan was lacking in color, lacking in flavor, having textural problems, or just plain lackluster. This recipes were the ho hum, worn out, put on sweatpants and crawl under a blanket and don't come out until spring sort of dishes. Here's the list of blah January food I've made lately that seems to mimic the gray, cold, days of January.

1. Seitan and Polenta Casserole

This recipe came from Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet. It's a goregous book and makes excellent points about the benefits of a vegan diet, but so far the recipes--many of which lean toward a microbiotic slant--have been lackluster. In this casserole, you layer a mixture of polenta and mashed cauliflower over a bed of sliced seitan, frozen peas and frozen corn. These are all ingredients that I like --the only thing that wasn't from the panty/freezer was the fresh cauliflower--but together all of these ingredients were incredible blah. I dutifully chipped away at the leftovers, making them palatable only by large doses of ketchup and barbecue sauce.

2. Bean & Farro Stew
This recipe again seemed like a good idea, it seemed like the sort of dish that a Tuscan grandmother would make on a cold day. The cabbage and potatoes and beans and farro were indeed hearty, nearly gut-busting hardy, which was surprising for a recipe that was vegan and low-fat. This recipe came from 101 Cookbooks, and I felt betrayed by an old friend because I consistently find such great recipes there. However, just like the polenta casserole, even though I liked each ingredient on its own, the whole was not even close to the sum of its parts. Even worse, with a full pound of beans and nearly a pound of farro, this would have fed a small (disappointed) army. It wasn't awful by any means, just blah. I did foist a lot of the leftovers on my unsuspecting friends and neighbors, with the warning that as long as they added a good dose of sriacha or hot sauce to each bowl, it would be fine.

3. Multigrain Bread

I love baking bread, and over at Ruhlman.com, it is bread-making month. Bread-baking, for me, is the quintessential winter homebody activity. It's an excuse to turn on the oven and bask in the heat, it's an excuse not to leave the house, what with attending to the bread as it needs periodic attention every couple of hours, it makes the house smell great, and it's an activity that is best performed during a pajama day. So on a whim, I made this multigrain loaf, reveling in how it called for 3 different kinds of flours, one of which was buckwheat, and I had all the ingredients in the pantry. I even used all of my flax seed stash! However, the recipe said this was not a typical heavy multigrain loaf, but boy oh boy, it was positively leaden. The crust was delicious, and we've been dutifully eating toasted slices of the bread with butter and honey, but it just compounded the already dismal cooking that's been coming out of my kitchen lately.

4. Arabian Lentil Soup

This soup comes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new book Appetite for Reduction. It's very similar to Melissa Clark's Red Lentil Soup, which is in heavy rotation around here, but by wrongly thinking change is good and even exciting, I tried this variation. In this application, ground coriander is toasted along with the cumin, and the tomato paste is omitted. Losing the tomato paste was a fatal error in this case. Rather than a orangey, rosy glow, this soup looked like a bowl of congealed oatmeal. Not only that but it suffered from the sweet yet tangy flavor the tomato paste gives. Kent took one bite and grimaced. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Ugh. I think it's the color getting to me," he said as he choked down the rest of his portion. "But, it used up a bunch of things from the pantry," I claimed. He looked at me with an expression of pity, openly showing his disdain for my recent kitchen ineptitude. "You're going to be saying that a lot aren't you?"

So, here's to hoping that I can find better ways, more tasty and colorful ways to use up the pantry goods, otherwise it's going to be a very long winter indeed.

Generosity: Ham and Bean Soup

2011-01-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

My theme for 2011 is simplicity. I have the tendency to get overwhelmed by the things in my life, even the things that I love and enjoy like cooking and gardening. I find myself grabbing and wanting and feeling like I never have enough. This is why my pantry bulges with bag after bag of lentils, beans, rice, asafoetida powder, nigella seeds, sumac, silver ear white fungus, fermented black bean paste, salt-packed anchovies, truffle oil (2 kinds), flake sea salt, pink salt, Kosher sea salt, non-iodized sea salt, coarse Kosher salt. I have shelves of home-canned tomatoes, salsas, pickles, relishes, jams. I am a food hoarder of the worst kind. The gourmand/DIY food preserver hybrid.

I suffer from muchness.

So, among my New Year's Resolutions this year, I have vowed to eat through my pantry and freezer before the new canning season arrives in about six months.

I hope that this makes me hunker down and enjoy--relish even--the things that are abundant in my life. Conversely, it will make me cherish those things that I can't have all the time, year round, all the more.

My friends know that in addition to being a gourmand/DIY foodie hoarder, they also know that I can pretty resourceful--and that I save any food item that could be used by freezing it or turning it into something delicious, rather than giving up and sending it straight to the chickens or the compost. Once, at my mother's house, I wouldn't let her throw away fresh broccoli stems because they could be used in egg foo young style vegetable pancakes if they were peeled and julienned. She sort of just shock her head at me. "Really? You want to save that?" But by the end, I won her over by the crispy, savory little vegetable pancakes.

Since my friend S. knows that I've a food-saver, she offered me the ham bone from our Easter celebration. I jumped on the chance. So this was one of the first things that I decided need my attention. This ham bone was huge. I trimmed enough ham off it to make a big batch of Hoppin' John for New Year's, and then, I used the bone to make a huge pot of Ham and Bean soup. (I've written about Ham and Bean soup before, and you'll find the recipe here.)

Ham and Bean soup is a close cousin to Turkey and Rice Soup in that it's a homey, dish made after a big celebration, which leaves lots of leftovers in danger of going to the compost pile. My mother would make both when I was growing up, after Easter and Thanksgiving respectively, so that I've begun to associate these dishes with celebration and delight rather than miserly penny-pinching.

Ham and Bean soup is one of the heartiest, belly-warming soups I know. The beans ground the soup and make it taste earthy, the ham--especially the marrow from the bone-- lends richness and smokiness. In many Ham and Bean soups, the beans are left whole, but in my version, I puree the beans for a smooth, creamy texture without any dairy. Although, this dish takes time, it's worth it, especially if you don't have to go to the grocery store to make it.

In the end, I was delighted by the soup, by the resourcefulness of it, and by S's. generosity that made it possible. I was experiencing abundance, and I had to share it. So, I delivered a big container of Ham and Bean soup to S., who in the midst of meeting a big deadline for her dissertation, needed something comforting that didn't require any cooking. I hope it helped.

Ringing in the New Year with a little Tongue

2011-01-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

New Year's Eve has always been a problematic holiday for me. Honestly, by the time I've made it through Thanksgiving, several rounds of Christmas parties, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day celebrations, my digestive track is uttering a sigh of relief that the season of gluttony is almost over with New Year's.

Don't get me wrong, I do love New Year's because I love the ideas of a new start, wiping the slate clean, and starting a new year with the right foot and the best intentions. Since I've been on an academic schedule my whole life, I've come to really appreciate the week between Christmas and New Year's as sort of a magical week to reflect upon the whole year. I've made it a yearly ritual to read through all my journal entries of the year, the blog entries, and to write and reflect on what I've accomplished this year and what I hope for the next. I also fess up to last year's resolutions triumphs and failures.

But, all this reflection still does not solve the problem of what to do on New Year's Eve, when frankly drinking too much (or eating too much) sounded awful. This is not to say that we weren't a little bit tempted to ring in the new year at Revolver, devouring a multi-course dinner of exquisitely prepared local food paired with all the best wines. However, last year when we were in Omaha, we had an extravagant tasting menu dinner with wine pairings at The Boiler Room, and I was so disgustingly full and tipsy after that, I went to bed at 10 pm. Kent woke me up to get his kiss at the stroke of midnight.

As I read through everything I wrote in 2010, the theme of simplicity kept coming up again and again. Last year, I made the resolution to not be such a perfectionist, and as a result, I was more productive in everything I did from cooking to writing. At times, I was so productive I stretched myself thin and had too many pots on the metaphorical stove. So for 2011, I want to work on simplifying my entire life. Simplicity in the kitchen is hard for me as much as I love cooking complicated 25 ingredient recipes. But, at the same time, I 've realized that the effort isn't necessarily worth the output. I overwhelm myself with too many complicated cooking projects and have a pantry stocked with 9 different kinds of rice and 5 different kinds of salt. Another foodie resolution I have, is to eat through my freezer and pantry before the 2011 canning season begins. (So be prepared for some recipes using ingredients dredged up from storage in the coming weeks.)

From all this reflection, I figured out the perfect dish to make for New Year's Eve. Pickled Cow's Tongue. I've had a cow's tongue moldering away in my freezer for the past year. (It was a Christmas present in fact. When you're a foodie, with foodie friends, you tend to get some interesting presents, like offal and duck fat.) Ever since I tasted Chef Michael Bulkowski's Pickled Cow's Tongue at Revolver this fall (I've had it three times since), I've fallen hard for it. In fact, I ate Pickled Cow's Tongue on the night of my 5 year wedding anniversary, and again the night we celebrated my new job at BGSU in the General Studies Writing department. So, it seemed fitting to end the year with this landmark dish AND to honor my my resolution of cleaning out the freezer.

For the squeamish, the skin, and therefore the taste buds, are removed before eating.

Tongue is rich, but if prepared improperly can be tough, stringy, and grisly (such as some langua tacos I choked down in a sub-par Mexican restaurant). Not so with Bulkowski's cow's tongue. It was sliced thin, across the grain (not to mention well-trimmed), and literally was melt-in-your-mouth quality. Served with a soft boiled egg, a bit of lemon juice-dressed arugula, and some roasted beets, this was a dish of delicately composed balance. Hmm. Sort of like the balance of simplicity I'm trying to strike in my life. No? I was so enthralled by the dish, that when we ended up shutting the restaurant down that night, I introduced myself to the chefs (who by this time were sitting around the bar drinking beer), and they gave me a verbalized crash course in tongue cooking.

Here's what I came up with:

Pickled Cow's Tongue
Serves 8 as an appetizer or 4 as an entree

Feel free to change the accompaniments here. For instance, you could 86 the soft-boiled egg without major repercussions if you wanted a less rich dish, and even the beet for that matter if you really wanted to simplify. However, the arugula and lemon are key. The tongue is unctuous and rather fatty in such a way that the peppery arugula and lemon juice cut through it and balance the flavors nicely. I also imagine that the pickled tongue would be amazing in a sandwich with a bit of arugula and mustard. One final note, while this seems complicated because there are so many parts to it, each individual item is prepared simply and roasting the beets can be done ahead of time.
For the Pickling Brine:

1 beef tongue

3 cups water + water for cooking
1 cup cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon coarse Kosher salt (if using regular tablesalt increase the amount of salt slightly)
2 bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns, slightly crushed
1/4 teaspoon whole mustard seed, slightly crushed

For the Accompaniments:
1/2 to 3 tablespoons butter, divided
1 baguette, sliced
3 eggs
2 small beets, peeled
2 handfuls of arugula
juice of 1/2 a lemon

To prepare the tongue:
Place tongue in large stockpot and cover with water. Simmer for 4 hours. Watch that the tongue does not go to a hard boil, as it could be tough if boiled too hard. Add more water as needed. When the tongue is cooked, remove to cutting board and let cool until cook enough to handle.

Meanwhile, combine 3 cups water, vinegar, salt, bay leaves, peppercorns and mustard seeds in a pot and heat to a simmer. Remove from heat.

Peel skin off of tongue. Slice tongue crosswise into thin (1/4 inch thick) pieces. Trim any grisly parts around the edges. Place tongue slices in a non-reactive container, pour brine over, cover, and refrigerate at least overnight or for up to one day.

To prepare the accompaniments:

Wrap beets individually in aluminum foil and roast for about 30-45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, brush baguette slices with melted butter or olive oil and bake in oven with beets for about 10 to 15 minutes or until slightly crisp, turning once.

Prepare soft boiled eggs. In a pot, cover eggs with water by at least one inch. On medium heat, heat eggs until water just begins to simmer. Meanwhile, prepare a bowl of ice water for eggs. Once eggs come to a simmer, remove from heat and cover for EXACTLY 2 minutes. Then, drain, and transfer eggs to ice water. Wait a few minutes for them to cool, and then peel as normal.

Finally, remove tongue slices from brine. Heat butter in skillet over medium heat. Fry tongue slices in butter until brown, about 2 minutes each side.

Plate with accompaniments and squeeze arugula with lemon just before serving.

Visions of Dutch Babies Danced In My Head

2010-12-22T18:06:00.000-05:00

I dream about food. Not only do I have waking daydreams of lentil stews and fresh baked bread and kale and a million other foods I love. Not only does my mind wander to delicious meals when I'm driving or trying to meditate, but my sleeping dreams are also quite often invaded by visions of sugar plums and other such fancies.

Last night, well, last night I dreamt about Dutch Babies. It was delightful waking up and realizing that I could turn this dream into a reality with relative ease and that I had the perfect excuse to do so as well. E., my brother-in-law, has been our houseguest for the past few days. Today, before he departed for Chicago, I wanted to give him a proper breakfast as a send off.

E. is an enthusiastic, voracious eater, with an excellent palate and a sense of adventure. (Apparently, these traits are not inheritable as Kent, E.'s younger brother, does not share the same appetite for culinary novelty.) Among E's other admirable qualities is the fact that he's a breakfast eater. I haven't cooked breakfast for someone in years because Kent did not inherit the breakfast-eater gene either.

Enter Dutch Babies.

Dutch Babies are in the pancake family, but are much less fussy to execute than an average flapjack. They are eggy like French toast, custardy like bread pudding, and puffy like a souffle, but start with a batter that resembles a crepe batter. Somehow, though, a Dutch Baby does not suffer an identity crisis, and the whole is greater than the sum of its separate virtues. The Dutch Babies are light and tender, but still satisfyingly cakey. Traditionally, Dutch Babies are served with lemon and powdered sugar. I do not recommend that you skimp on this step. As E. said after his first bite, "The lemon really ties everything together." I feel that same. The contrast of lemon and sugar punctuate the rich-eggy 'pancake' in a complimentary way, that without which, the Babies would feel naked.

In a pre-coffee, dreamy state, I managed to cobble together two recipes for Dutch Babies with the ingredients I had on hand. Making Dutch Babies was simple, homey, yet also special enough for company. The results so good that even avowed breakfast avoider, Kent, couldn't resist one. However, he refused the lemons and sugar and preferred a heavy dose of maple syrup with his, which was almost as good.

Dutch Babies (slightly adapted from Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life and Marion Cunningham's Fannie Farmer Cookbook).

3 Tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup whole milk

1/2 cup all purpose flour

3 eggs, room temperature *

1/2 teaspoon salt

fresh lemon

powdered sugar

*If using eggs straight from the refrigerator, place eggs in a bowl and cover with very hot tap water until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 425.

Melt butter in 10 inch, cast iron skillet, or similar vessel that can go from stove top to oven. Swirl butter to insure sides of skillet are well coated with butter. Set aside.

In small mixing bowl combine milk, flour, eggs, salt, and melted butter. Blend with immersion blender until well mixed and slightly frothy. (Alternately, you could use a regular blender or a whisk and lots of upper body strength.)

Pour into prepared skillet and bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden brown around the edges. (The middle will also puff slightly.)

Squirt with fresh lemon juice and sprinkle with powdered sugar just before serving.

Add a fried egg (from the backyard chickens) and toast with mulberry jam (from the neighbor's mulberry tree) if you're feeling particularly decadent.

Pumpkins with a story to tell...

2010-11-30T14:55:00.000-05:00

We like backstory around here. I don't know if it's just because Kent and I both have degrees in creative writing, or if it's just a way to be playful, either way, we like to tell stories around here. Mostly, the backstory involves the chickens or Mattie, Kent's cat. For instance, before Mattie came to us, she was a lounge singer in New York City. She had a bit of a problem with drinking too many martinis, so when she hit rock bottom --she doesn't like to talk about it--she somehow made it to the Omaha Nebraska Humane Society where Kent adopted her.

Mattie after her lounge singer days.

I guess backstory is a way of making sense of things and a way of letting your imagination run wild. For local foodists, for people that care about where their food comes from and if animals or people or the environment were harmed along the way, then backstory becomes important, an inextricable part of the eating experience.

We made pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving that had quite a backstory. The organic, heirloom sugar pie pumpkin seeds I bought in spring of 2009 online from Heirloom Seeds. But in 2009 the pumpkins all succumbed to squash vine borers. This year, I planted the squash in a new location, slightly sandier soil on the south side of my garden. We dug out a new garden bed in the spring, and had to dig out huge chunks of limestone and add lots of compost and horse manure to make the area friable. I wised up to the vine borers, too. I squelched the glutinous little worms with an organic canola oil based bug spray. While I was on the road teaching reading classes all summer, Kent watered the squash, keeping them alive. In the early fall, the new neighbor kids, the four-year-old and I in particular, had a lot of conversations about pumpkins. Finally in late October, harvest 2010: 7 gorgeous pie pumpkins.

Pumpkin Pie making is chaotic.

These pumpkins had to make our obligatory Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Since I was out of town the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Kent was also put on the job as sole pumpkin puree-er. The problem was that Kent was a little too over zealous in his pumpkin pureeing. We made two lovely pumpkins, one a traditional, the other based off of this recipe from Bon Appetit, but we still had pumpkin puree left.

On left: Pumpkin Pie with Pepita, Nut, and Ginger Topping

But this blog post is not about pie, it's about what to do with 3 1/2 cups of pumpkin puree that has a backstory, and therefore is too precious to just feed to the chickens. Perhaps you have a can of pumpkin puree moldering about your cupboard that you don't know what to to with. This soup would put it too perfect use.

Pumpkin Curry Soup with Mark Bittman's Chickpea Flatbread

Pumpkin Curry Soup

2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 small onions, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 T. brown sugar
1 can full-fat coconut milk (15 oz.)
3 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1 to 2 cups vegetable broth (if you use sodium-free broth, you'll need to add about a teaspoon of salt)
1 Tablespoon lime juice

Heat olive oil in large soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and saute until soft and translucent. Add garlic and cook for several minutes. Have coconut milk close at hand. Add spices, quickly, and saute until they begin to release their fragrance. Cook for just a minute or so, you want them to be slightly toasted, but not burnt. Then quickly pour in coconut milk to deglaze the pot. Add pumpkin puree. Add vegetable broth, starting with a cup, until soup is desired consistency. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Taste, adjust seasonings. Finish with lime juice. Serve with chopped cilantro on top, if desired.

The Leftovers: Henry's Last Meal

2010-11-07T22:21:00.000-05:00

Friday morning we buried our cat Henry under the forsythia bush on the south side of our house. I cried a lot.

Henry had simple, but fine tastes. He couldn't resist roast chicken of any kind, and he loved a good head cheese.

And when I cooked pissy beef kidneys for an authentic medieval feast, that turned out inedible to humans, Henry was the only one that would touch them.

He also, Kent argues, had good taste in beer, as well as a bit of sweet tooth for fresh pears.

In his last few days, he was so weak and sick that he could barely eat, so we nursed him with syringes full of homemade chicken stock and maple syrup.

If there was ever an important reason to make chicken stock, this was it. Luckily, I had a chicken carcass in the freezer, which I had froze several weeks ago when I didn't have time to make stock. More than anything I wanted this food to heal my dear, feline companion of eight years. But sadly, he was just too sick. Now that he's gone, I am left with an empty spot on the comfy chair that was Henry's favorite napping spot, and 2 quarts of homemade, organic, free range chicken stock.

I also understand now why it's a cultural practice to bring casseroles and pies to the bereaved. While I didn't expect any condolences, friends leaving messages on Facebook have been incredibly kind. I know the next time someone in my life has a major upheaval, I'll be the first to bring food. I went nearly a whole five days without cooking a single thing except Henry's chicken stock. There were nights of greasy General Tso's Tofu, nights of even greasier leftover General Tso's Tofu and even a night when, after spending several hours at the vet, we stopped by Kroger on our way home for hotdogs, buns, and a can of chili for dinner. We have not had a pleasant week.

But finally, yesterday, I picked up my chef's knife and a few pots and pans and got back into the rhythm of the kitchen. I wanted to do something with the leftovers from Henry's last meal. Grief makes me feel like I'm moving through my life in slow motion, but the routine of cooking was a relief, a familiar pattern that I could lose myself in.

Every time I roast a chicken, I make a stock, and then soup. While chicken noodle or chicken dumpling is a traditional standby, it seemed too much like sick food. Instead, I made Thai Coconut Soup. This soup is rich and complex, and overall, deeply satisfying. I think that this is in part because of the contrast of flavors. The sweetness of the coconut milk hits the front of your tongue, while the sourness from the lime tickles the sides, and deeper in your throat you feel the power of the chiles. The fish sauce and mushrooms add unami to contrast with the sharp, bright zing of fresh cilantro. This soup has a lot going on, but it's incredibly simple to make.

Thai Coconut Soup

A couple of notes. First, I am not picky about stock making techniques as long as it's homemade and is a true stock, which means it must be made with bones. I just covered the entire chicken carcass with water (which I did not salt), brought it to a boil, and simmered for about an hour or so. Then I removed the carcass, chilled the stock, and skimmed some of the solidified fat off the top. If you boil the stock hard, it will become cloudy, but here that doesn't matter as the coconut milk hides any imperfection in the stock.

Second, I used dried lemongrass, which I found in a specialty Asian market. It is worth seeking out because it is so much cheaper than fresh lemongrass, and it's easier to work with. If you can't find it though, a 4-inch piece of fresh lemongrass would work. Simmer it whole, and then remove before serving.

Finally, do not even think about substituting light coconut milk here. If you do, you'll be terribly disappointed in the flat flavor.

2 quarts chicken stock
1 t. dried lemongrass
3 (1-inch) pieces lime peel
4 (1-inch diameter) pieces thinly sliced fresh ginger
2 hot chiles (thai chilis, serrano, or similar), seeded and halved
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 (15 oz.) can coconut milk
4 to 5 thinly sliced crimini (baby bella) mushrooms
1/2 green bell pepper, cut into 1 inch strips
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into 1 inch strips
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup diced cook chicken
4 limes, juiced
handful of chopped, fresh cilantro

Bring the stock to a boil in a large soup pot. Add the lemongrass, lime peel, ginger, chiles, and garlic. Simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes.

Add the coconut milk, mushrooms, bell peppers, fish sauce, sugar, and chicken and continue to simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until mushrooms are cooked through.

Remove from heat stir in lime juice. Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more sugar or lime juice as needed.
Garnish with cilantro. Warn diners of the lime peel and ginger coins, as they won't want to eat them.

Scary Things for Halloween

2010-10-31T22:51:00.001-04:00

I hate being scared. The thought of sitting through a horror movie makes my skin crawl and those little hairs on the back on my neck cringe. The last thing I want to do as recreation is feel tense and anxious about seeing violent, gory things. However, I like Halloween because I love coming up with creative costumes and eating fun size candy bars. I also realize that scary is a relative term. There is gross-scary, politically correct-scary, and just plain nail biting-scary. Here are some scary things from today that are horrifying for completely different reasons.

Gnarly mold attacking 50% of my heirloom Potimarrion squash harvest. (Squash Vine Boers attacked the other half.)


My Halloween costume, which is the scariest food I know, factory farmed ground beef, tainted with e.coli.

A very sick (possibly diabetic) Henry Miller cat on heavy sedatives.

Approximately 50 lbs. of winter squash from Friendship Farms' CSA Program this season.

Okay, so the last thing isn't really that scary unless you have a serious phobia regarding pumpkins, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, and butternut squash. So for the next few weeks, I'll need to try to use these beauties up before they go the way of the gnarly mold.

Here's a round up of some of the recipes I may be using:

Squash Boats with Quinoa from Sprouted Kitchen. With a filling that has basil, spinach, and pears to complement the nutty, earthy flavor of quinoa, this is at the top of my to-make list.

Adzuki Butternut Squash Soup from 101 Cookbooks. This hearty soup calls for one of my favorite flavor boosters: chipotle peppers in adobe sauce. These little babies pack spice and smokiness.

Pumpkin Soup in a Pumpkin from Savuer. I'm a sucker for lavish presentations, and this one, as soup baked and served in the pumpkin shell is no doubt impressive. The last time I tried this, however, we used a jack-o-lantern pumpkin and NOT a pie pumpkin--and in this case bigger was not better. Big pumpkins are watery and flavorless. So, if I make this it will be redemption.

So as I plot my squash attack plan and nurse my cat back to health, please let me know, what's your favorite way to use winter squash?

Tomato Season: The Twilight Days

2010-10-17T21:19:00.001-04:00

If tomato soup were an article of my wardrobe, it would be like a ratty T-shirt from college that I keep only for sentimental value. Tomato soup held a special place in my life in my early twenties, particularly when I lived off of a college meal plan. Tomato soup--the generic Campbell's kind straight from a number 10 can with a side of grilled cheese--was one of the most consistent and reliable meals offered at the cafeteria. Even after I moved out of the dorms, canned tomato soup was in heavy rotation during my undergrad years. And, then I forgot about, figuratively shoved it to the back of the closet.

But October tomatoes got me thinking about tomato soup again because these are exactly the type of tomatoes that need to be simmered slowly because fall tomatoes are ugly. They crack and wrinkle. Their bottoms get soggy, and their shoulders stay green. These aren't the gorgeous slicers of August. October tomatoes are not trendy now at the farmers market by any means. In the local food scheme of things, they should be shoved aside this time of year for butternut squash and sage and hearty fall brassicas like brussel sprouts and cabbage. Yet my 24 tomato plants keep on slowly producing fruit, too little to justify canning but too many for straight eating, and I can't bear to euthanize them before the first killing frost. By now, though, the tomatoes are cantankerous geriatrics, they have all the intense wisdom of the taste of a tomato, but they've lost the beauty of youth with its firm, unblemished wrinkle free skin and firm, hard bodies. These are soup tomatoes.

I took 8 lbs. of ugly, cracked tomatoes and made a lovely simple soup, and I realize I've come a long way since my Campbell soup days, just as these tomato plants have come a long way since May. And, I'm still not willing to throw out any memorabilia, ratty or otherwise.

Simple Tomato Soup

This recipe calls for Better than Bouillon Vegetable Base, but feel free to substitute your favorite bouillon or even straight table salt. I like Better than Bouillon because it doesn't contain any MSG, and it's cheaper than buying straight vegetable stock. It yields a quality flavor, and it lasts indefinitely in the refrigerator. In my dream world, bouillon concentrate wouldn't be necessary because I'd have a troop of Ommpa Loompa kitchen helpers (but without that whole indentured servant thing) that would make stock for me from scratch while I slept at night. But I don't feel too guilty because many of the upscale kitchens I've worked at over the years have "cheated" with commercial soup bases from time to time. Here, the bouillon actually works to boost flavor without diluting the tomato essence like a straight vegetable stock would.

8 lbs of geratric tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 T. olive oil
1 t. dried oregano (or more to taste)
1 t. dried basil (or more to taste)
1 t. Better than Bullion Vegetable Base

To peel tomatoes, in batches of two or three, blanch in boiling water until skins loosen (about 30 seconds), and then plunge in cold water. After this, skins should slip right off. To seed, cut tomatoes around their equator and squeeze seeds out into a fine mesh strainer, reserving the liquid for the soup pot.

In a large soup pot, heat olive oil over medium high heat and saute onion until translucent.

Add tomatoes, oregano, basil, and Better than Bullion, and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or until tomatoes are cooked down.

Puree with immersion blender for a smooth soup or leave chunky for a more rustic style.

Makes One Big Pot of Soup (ample for several days of lunches)

Simplicity Itself: Rice and Lentils

2010-10-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

Life has gotten more complicated than I would like. School started, and six weeks passed in a flurry of lesson plans, lecture notes, and term papers to grade. The last two days, I've been on fall break and recovering from a previous week of 90 individual student conferences and grading 90 essays, not to mention a week chock full of obligations: individual reading tutoring, gardening tending, and dinner making.

Now midterms are done. I look up and life has gone by fast. Too quickly to savor, too quickly to be calm, grounded, or centered. So swiftly, that it felt like I wasn't even present.

My bookshelf is littered with books like The Simple Living Guide and The 50 Best Ways to Simplify Your Life. Although I read them, and they do make a lot of sense, I have trouble executing a truly simple life. It's because I just want to DO so much. The piles of books to read, the piles of fabrics to sew, the piles of vegetables to cook sitting at the bottom of the fridge. How does it become too much so quickly?

Systematically weeding the categories of my life down to the essential seems to be the best way for me to balance. So lately, I've been thinking about the complexity and chaos of my kitchen. The piles of veggies get canned or frozen or turned into vegetable soups and eaten. But the urgency of it all is stressful. I have to remind myself that it is okay of some of those piles of veggies get turned into eggs. The chickens don't mind eating wilted, soggy-around-the-edges lettuce. I also remind myself that this vegetable anxiety is seasonal. This week is the last week we'll receive our CSA box for the year, so the stream of local veggies will ebb to a trickle. We haven't had a frost yet, so my garden is still producing, but as the days get shorter, it takes the tomatoes longer to ripen. I welcome the slower pace the winter will bring.

My other problem with kitchen complexity is in what I choose to cook in the first place. Somehow my cooking repertoire has revolved around the 2 hour, 20 ingredient recipe for far too long. Now I'm concentrating on simpler, easier recipes for awhile. I don't want to dabble in the occultish realm of recipes requiring frozen tater tots, Miracle Whip, and cream of mushroom soup though. Instead, I want to focus on quality ingredients (not too many) prepared in just a few simple steps.

The simplest dish that I make on a regular basis is mujadara. Mujadara came on my radar in two different places last winter. First, a local coffee shop served it on its lunch menu, and second, Orangette wrote about it here. While I like the Orangette version just fine, I've simplified it even further. Rather than cook the onions, then the lentils, and then the rice, clocking in at about an hour and a half of attentive stove time, I cook it all at once in three separate pans. This dirties more dishes. (But like Kent says, my greatest talent is dirtying a large amount of dishes in a short amount of time.) The problem with cooking it all in one pot is that it becomes a finicky, nearly risotto like dish. And, I have had issues with risotto trying my patience in the past.

I'm not going to give you a recipe here because you don't even need one. Cook a pot of basmati rice. Cook a pot of lentils. (You'll be fine following the directions on the packages of both.) And, then caramelize 3 or 4 large onions in olive oil. Mix all together and salt to taste.

Do not be deceived by the simplicity of this dish. With only 5 ingredients including salt and oil, it seems as if the flavor would be blah, but it's not. The secret is in the onions. Caramelized onions make this dish spectacular because they are the perfect fall flavor: rich and hearty but still sweet, with a calm mellowness. Sort of like the weather right now, sunny but punctuated by a chill in the air. The caramelized onions also play off of the other flavors here: the bright, slightly fruity, nuttiness of the basmati rice, and the deeper, earthier taste of the lentils.

Caramelized Onions

4 to 5 large onions, chopped
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil

Chop onions and cook in oil over medium heat until they begin to brown. The goal is to brown them to a deep caramel color without burning them. So, if they start to brown too quickly, or blacken around the edges, you need to turn the heat down. Stir occasionally. Depending on the natural sugar level in your onions this could take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes.

I have come to enjoy the soothing patience that these onions require. They don't need as much attention as a risotto, (I can still do dishes while caramelizing onions without disaster, which is important in my household!) I only have to focus on one pan, while the rice and lentils cook away on their own.

Here's the finished dish, which is great eaten hot, cold, or even at room temperature. The caramelized onions are incredibly versatile as well. They are great on sandwiches or tossed with pasta.

"What to Drink with What you Eat" or Becoming my own Sommelier

2010-09-19T15:04:00.001-04:00

There are lots of things I like about living in a small college town, but the dining options are not one of them. It seems that most restaurants in Bowling Green cater to the beer-drinking, fried-food and pizza loving undergrad, frat boy. Not that there is any thing wrong with any of those things, especially when the pizza front is highly competitive in this town. However, when Kent and I want to celebrate with a SERIOUS dinner, say for our 5th wedding anniversary, our choices are restricted.

Luckily for us, there is Revolver. Revolver is 25 miles down the interstate, but worth the 50 mile drive round trip for sure. Locally owned by Chef Michael Bulkowski, Revolver is the closest restaurant I know that takes culinary skill seriously. You won't find anything that comes premade and frozen in a box, for instance. What you will find is local, seasonal, freshly prepared food--from the inventive-- squash blossoms stuffed with zucchini bread --to the comfortable--a grass-fed strip steak with a big bowl of creamy, cheesy polenta.

We made our rezzy and were looking forward to dinner at Revolver all week. When I got home after class, I found that a copy of What to Drink with What you Eat arrived in the mail.* I was thrilled. What to Drink with What you Eat by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page is the 2006 prequel to The Flavor Bible, which as you know I love. Like The Flavor Bible, What to Drink with What you Eat, is a reference book. The first four chapters of the book introduce the concept of pairing food and wine (or other beverages). I particularly liked the how Dornenburg and Page emphasize that "enjoying good food and drink goes hand in hand with living a pleasant life." They also encourage readers to think of the beverage as the final seasoning or condiment that elevates the dish to something magical.

So, I showed up to dinner with the hardcover book under my arm, and Kent humored me. (Although I agreed not to take pictures of each course--as it is his pet peeve--and I tried to be on my best behavior for our anniversary.) While I don't recommend making a habit of bringing reference books to dinner, I felt okay about it for a couple of reasons. Revolver's waitstaff is familiar with us. Plus, even though it's the closest thing you can get to fine dining around here, it's still a small, laid-back restaurant. I referenced WtDwWyE as I perused the menu and the wine list. I wanted to see if the book could replace a sommelier, and it did. Revolver does not have a sommelier on staff, although their waitstaff is generally knowledgeable about wine recommendations, and its wine list is small but serviceable.

Usually, my pairing method is brash--even after the years of wine seminars I had when I was a server working in fine dining--I stuck to the basic conventions of red wine with red meat and white wine with chicken and fish. When I created pairings for myself, that's what I would follow. I also knew what MY palate liked, and usually didn't deviate from it. I was in a bit of a rut, or as Donrenburg and Page would say I've been a "comfort seeker" rather than an "adventure seeker" with my wine choices.

I've put a lot of faith in The Flavor Bible in the past, so I had no trouble giving WtDwWyE my trust. Rather than order a large entree, I created my own tasting menu by only ordering first course dishes. I began with the Sweet Corn Bisque topped with crispy, fried pancetta, ricotta, and drizzled with white truffle oil. I knew the bisque would be rich and a bit sweet. I looked up both CORN and CREAM and cross referenced. Champagne and sparkling wine both came up--so I started with a glass of Cristalino, Brut Cava from Spain. The Cava was dry with a yeasty, fresh bread bouquet. This pairing worked because the soup was so rich it was like velvet, so the dryness and bubbles from the Cava refreshed the palate after every bite of soup without fighting with it.

My second course was the most difficult to pair. I ordered the Pickled Cow's Tongue served with a soft boiled egg, arugula, and roasted beets. In the past, I would have rashly ordered a softer, lighter red to go with it, but I was worried about pairing a red wine with egg. When I cross referenced EGGS and BEETS, I found a Riesling would work with both. I was convinced because in hierarchy of references (determined by bold fonts and capital letters, under beets the listing said, "RIESLING, ESP. GERMAN, ESP. WITH ROASTED BEETS." Normally, I would not have ordered a reisling because I feel they can be too sweet. The Loosen Bros., "Dr. L." Riesling from Mosel, Germany was no exception. Alone, I would have regretted this choice, but with the roasted beets, it truly was dynamic. The sweetness in the beets and the sweetness in the wine seemed to mingle to create a richer, and earthier taste in the beets. The rich custard of the soft boiled egg yolk further helped the synergy. I was shocked at what a surprising and delightful combination this was. The beef tongue, which is rich and succulent, didn't suffer at all from being made to consort with a white wine.

My third and final course, was a Housemade Duck Sausage with a Buttermilk Biscuit, Cinnamon Poached Pears, and Milk Foam. By now, getting a bit tipsy, I had less finesse. I only looked up DUCK, saw PINOT NOIR, and went for it. The Rascal Pinot from Willamette Valley, Oregon, was amazing. After my first sip, I was enchanted by the flavor of vanilla and maple syrup. This also turned out to be a perfect pairing because the duck sausage and biscuit was incredible reminiscent of breakfast, so the hints of maple in the wine made me very happy.

Kent and I went on a wine tasting tour of Sonoma on our honeymoon, and brought back a case of wine, one bottle to open for every anniversary up to our twelve. For our fifth anniversary, we had squirreled away a bottle of 2003 Seghesio Aglianico from Alexander Valley, California. Because liquor laws in Ohio do not allow outside liquor on premise, we decided to pop the Aglianico the next night. This time instead of looking up food and finding wine to match, I looked up wine first. Aglianico is a full-bodied wine. This particular vintage was rich in tobacco notes. At the end of the listing, it read: "TIP: Aglianico goes perfectly with a spicy sausage pizza." So we ordered in from the best pizza place, Myles Pizza Pub, in Bowling Green. Kent was more impressed with the pairing than I was, but after trying the combination, it made sense pair a robust wine with fatty, spicy pie. They were equally matched.

I highly recommend What to Drink with What you Eat because it offers a pragmatic, yet non pretentious approach to wine pairings. Even though it's sophisticated, it's never snobby. In fact, it even recommends pairings for Doritos and Big Macs just in case you're interested.

*Full Disclosure: I received What to Drink with What you Eat as a free review copy.

Kale Butter Step 1: Admitting I Have a Problem

2010-09-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

I am obsessed with kale. I'm slightly worried that perhaps like a drug addiction, I'll wake up one morning, semi-clothed in a strange bathtub with a bottle of cheap olive oil, a butcher knife, and a new tattoo that says: Eat More Kale, and wonder how did I get here?

Lacinato Kale (aka dinosaur kale, Tuscan kale, or Cavolo Nero)

Without even realizing it, my addiction for kale has caused me to wake up from a peaceful slumber, in my own bed (no stranger's bathtub, yet) with a jonesing for kale so strong that even before coffee was made I was out in the garden picking kale to eat for breakfast. Without being fully awake, I did not notice all the tiny aphid-eating white spiders that I was bringing into the house on the kale leaves, but even with the spider infestation, it was worth it. (As a kale kale addict I only cared about getting my next fix, so I could care less that the spiders all drowned in the sink when I washed off the kale leaves.)

Lovely field of kale in my front yard.

If I look back, I'm not even sure how I got to this point. I don't even clearly remember the first time I ever ate kale. I do remember that it first came on my radar when we lived in Boise. The brother of our neighbor across the street would stop by our house when he visited his sister. He was a bit earthy-crunchy, and he had a lot of experience with organic vegetable gardening. He'd come by with extra seeds, take a look at our garden, and offer advice. He was raving about the dinosaur kale he grew, how it wouldn't get bitter or bolt in the heat like other greens, and how it produced like crazy. So somewhere between the summer of 2008 and the late 2009, I have developed this kale "problem".

Kale addiction sneaks up on you because that's the thing about kale, it goes from being benign, vapid, non impressive, even to something you need to eat immediately, right this second, can't get enough of, have eaten so much of in the past 48 hours your poop turns green, obsession.

That's exactly what happened with my newest method of getting high on kale: kale butter. At first it was eh, nothing special. But then, I ate a whole batch by myself in a matter of hours and had to make another batch the next day, which I also polished off in less than 48 hours. Then, two days later, my friend AMR, made invited me over and had made a batch, which I also put quite a dent in.

Kale Butter

I'd like to think that if I can't seem to get enough of such a super powerhouse of nutritional density that it's my body simply telling me what I need. Surprisingly, 1 cup of steamed kale has nearly the same amount of calcium as a cup of whole milk. Kale is also choke full of Iron, Fiber, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Folate, Magnesium and Phosphorus, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Potassium, Copper and Manganese, and even Protein.

But who cares about the nutriton when kale just tastes good?

Kale Butter
This kale butter recipe came to me via my CSA weekly newsletter, along with a big baggie of Russian Red Kale. Although I hate reprinting other recipes here, I'm going to give my interpretation of it. Originally, this recipe came from Rip Esselstyn's The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plane that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds. I highly recommend this book. Not only is it a compelling story of a group of firefighters that went vegan when their cholesterol levels were dangerously high (and as a result their levels dramatically dropped), but it is full of delicious, healthy, and easy to make recipes. So, go make this kale butter and then get your hands on a copy of The Engine 2 Diet.

This is hardly a recipe, but a technique for mainlining more kale. Here's my intrepretation of it:

Steam a big bunch of chopped kale (don't even worry about destemming it) in a metal steamer basket for about 5 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, toast a handful of walnuts on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes or until golden brown.

Puree steamed kale and walnuts in food processor, adding the green steamer water if the mixture is too dry.

Add salt to taste.

Eat massive amounts on crackers, crostini, pita, sandwich bread, rice cakes, or straight from the bowl.

Rottenly Written Recipe, but Deliciously Roasted Potato Dish

2010-09-03T14:33:00.000-04:00

I've had some crabby, rotten, no good days lately. This is normal for me this time of year. As a bit of a control freak, I do not do well when my schedule changes. Even if it is a good schedule change. The new fall semester has brought a new, nearly ideal, job (one with benefits and without a commute-- I walk to work most days!) But I've found myself reeling from the low level stress of adjusting to new bed times and alarm times, new students, and new department policies. This leaves me exhausted and cranky. Oh, I'll snap out of it in about another week. This always happens.

But, since I'm talking about things that make me feel crabby and rotten, like adjusting to a completely new schedule...I might as tell you my big pet peeve: poorly written recipes.

Now some poorly written recipes are benign. They are so terribly conceived that a simple glace warns away any cook. Those are not the recipes I want to talk about. I want to talk about the more dangerous, more subtle poor recipe.

A couple of days ago, I began stalking the internet for a way to use up some CSA fennel. I stumbled upon this recipe for Garlic-Roasted Potatoes and Fennel. It looked perfect. Roasted potatoes, fennel, garlic seasoned with fennel seeds, coriander seeds, Spanish smoke paprika, and saffron. I felt it would go well with a tomato/bean casserole I had leftover. (And I must say, the flavor combination was dynamic.)

What should have been as simple as throwing everything in a roasting pan and baking became an annoying, illogical progression of steps. First, the recipe said to prep the fennel, but the fennel was used last. Second, instead of starting by heating the broth and steeping the saffron (which takes at least 15 minutes), the recipe has the cook complete that step AFTER all the other chopping, mincing, and seasoning took place. So, I found myself, with all my veggies chopped, waiting while the saffron steeped all while the temperature in my kitchen climbed as my preheating oven rumbled away.

But, I finally got everything in the oven, the final straw was imprecise cooking times. After 30 minutes, the recipe says to add the fennel. (Which makes no sense because fennel is the hardest, densest ingredient, with the longest cooking time. But, I was obviously too tired from new early alarm clock times to think this through, so I followed the directions, and my fennel was undercooked and rubbery.) Not only that, but the recipe said to bake an initial 50 minutes after the fennel went in OR until the broth mixture evaporates. My broth mixture evaporated in 15 more minutes NOT 50, which seems like a significant difference. But, as the potatoes were browned nicely, I didn't want to cook any longer to risk burning the other ingredients.

I think the reason that I'm so pissed off about this terribly written is because it was such a tasty dish. I even ate leftovers straight cold, and they were delicious. The broth makes the potatoes taste rich. The fennel seed and coriander give the whole dish the spicy savoriness of sausage without any of the fat or cholesterol. Add the subtle smokiness from the smoked paprika, and the dish comes together in an elegant way. You could do away with the fennel bulb here all together and not be dissapointed, I'd just add more peppers instead.

I want to make this dish again, but it is just down right idiotic in it's methodology. So here's how I would re-write it for an easy, stress free assembly:

Garlic-Roasted Saffron Potatoes and Fennel
*rewritten from myrecipes.com, originally a Cooking Light recipe.

1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1/8 teaspoon saffron threads
2 pounds small red potatoes, halved
2 large green bell peppers, cut into 1/2 inch strips
2 fennel bulbs, core removed and thinly sliced
10-12 whole cloves of garlic, peeled
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly crushed in mortar and pestle
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, lightly crushed in mortar and pestle
1/2 teaspoon Spanish smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Heat vegetable broth in saucepan until warm. Remove from heat. Stir in saffron. Let stand 10 minutes. Set aside.

Meanwhile, arrange potatoes in a single layer in a large roasting pan coated with olive oil; drizzle with more oil. Finely chop 1 garlic clove; sprinkle over potatoes. Add peeled garlic cloves, pepper strips, fennel, fennel seeds, coriander, paprika, salt, and black pepper to potatoes; toss well to combine.

Stir in vinegar into saffron broth; drizzle broth mixture over potato mixture. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes. Stir mixture. Return to oven; cook an additional 15 minutes or until the broth mixture almost evaporates and potatoes begin to brown.

I get a lot of recipes online, but have found that I need to be incredible judicious about which ones I'll try. The that end, I avoid allrecipes.com and cooks.com like the plague. How about you do you have any recipe sites you avoid or sites that you always trust for good recipes? Do share!

Garlic in my Garden is Barbara Kingsolver's Fault

2010-08-11T20:48:00.001-04:00

Books hypnotize me. If I read a book that I like, I am susceptible to any idea that I come across on the page.

At the Institute of Reading Development (my summer teaching gig), we talk about how kids need to acquire absorption, that is the ability to be so immersed in the world of the book that it's as if the child becomes the character that they are reading about, and there's no conscious thought of "I'm reading this." If a kid can become absorbed, then they will most likely become a lifelong reader. Absorption is that lightening strike experience that turns a reluctant reader into bibliophile. Absorption gives literature its brilliant power. As for myself, I can't remember a time that I didn't ever love books. I do, however, remember the first time that I was susceptible to the suggests in a book.

But perhaps at first I aimed for emulation rather than absorption. When I was 4 or 5 years old, certainly before I was reading on my own, I wanted to do everything possible in my play world to act and dress like the characters from my picture books. The name of the book and character that I first emulated eludes me, probably because I felt mislead by the character in the end. But I do remember that the main character had a doll. At one point in the story, she mistreats the doll. A mud puddle was involved. In a stunt of pure immitation, I dressed my best doll up (in purple gingham) and then dashed her directly into a giant mud puddle. The stains didn't wash out later when I tired, and I felt bitterly betrayed by the character because in the book the mud stains on her dolly's dress washed out, and she evades punishment. I did not.

This is just a really long way to say that Barbara Kingsolver is the reason why I plant garlic. I may be older and wiser now, but I still want emulate those that I admire when I read them on the page. When people talk about life-changing books, they usually say something along the lines of: it was exactly the right book at exactly the right time. There is serendipity if life's journey coincides perfectly with the ideas, knowledge, and creativity contained on the pages of the right book. Barabara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was a life-changing book, but serendipitous it was not. I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle at completely the wrong time.

This book chronicles Kingsolver's year-long experiment to only eat local food, most of it home-grown. I read this book in the fall, at the end of the growing season, right before gardening was ending for the entire year, at at time when it would be at least a good six months before I could start my own garden in Ohio when the only thing I wanted to do was plant a garden *sigh*

2010 Garlic Harvest

Toward the end of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver and her husband are about to embark on a trip to Italy in just a few hours, but rather than packing, she contemplates planting garlic bulbs before they leave. I admire this impulse to tie up loose ends before traveling. (As my itinerant reading teacher schedule has made for strange mid-week "weekends" in which I spend 12 or 14 hours in the kitchen canning veggies and performing other such produce triage as the garden's harvest threatens to over-ripen and expire.)

Garlic Braid: No vampires here!

So I found myself imitating Barbara Kingsolver. That late September when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I realized I could plant garlic to harvest the next summer. So that's why garlic was the first thing I ever planted in Ohio.

Chinese Noodle Making Adventure

2010-08-04T16:34:00.000-04:00

A recipe is its own language. With a reliable standardized set of precise measurements and concise directions a recipe will yield a consistent result, if applied accurately. This terrifies some people.

This perhaps is why there are 3 types of people in this world: those that follow recipes, those that don't, and those that don't cook at all. Changing the way I make food is just far enough out of my comfort zone to feel thrillingly adventurous.

I am a recipe cook. It's a cliche to admit learning cooking "at grandmother's knee." But I really wonder how many people really do learn how to cook from an older relative. (Which I should mention that most of my grandparents' and great grandparents' generation never used a recipe, and as a consequence, took the secret code of their dishes with them to the grave.) I didn't learn much about cooking from the older relatives.

My mom did, however, teach me how to read a recipe through a 4-H project. The first cooking project that I took was called "The Road to Good Cooking." The manual explained good cooking habits, especially measuring and food safety by using traffic sign metaphors.

This is why I am a recipe cook. (Perhaps this is also why I'm a good driver.)

Even when I'm creating my own dish, the urge to write it down, to record the precision of how the ingredients merge and emerge into a coherent dish is strong. So, when Chen told me that there is no recipe for Chinese noodles, that you only mix together water and flour, I was skeptical. When he explained that the technique to make them involved hand stretching, as he gestured a stretching motion with his hands I thought that I'd never be able to master noodle making. If you can't write it down into a recipe, how can I translate it? Sometimes a word by word recipe isn't strong enough to convey the technique. Sometimes you need hands or practice by the side of a master.

Chen started the Chinese noodles by adding water to all purpose flour. With incredible dexterity, he mixed the dough with chop sticks until a stiff dough formed.

Then, we kneaded the dough for about 20 minutes. This is the stiffest dough that I have ever worked with. The kneading the dough though develops the strands of gluten, which allows the dough to stretch with the elasticity of a fat rubber band.

This dough is about twice as stiff as an average bread dough. It begins rough, but as it's worked developed a smooth solidity. Here is Chen and me getting a bit of a workout kneading the dough.

Next we patted the dough into flat disks about 1 inch thick and 8 inches in diameter.

Then, the Chen cut the dough into 1 inch wide batons.

Next, he coated the dough batons in vegetable oil, then wrapped then in plastic wrap. It is important to let the dough sit for at least two hours, so we had plenty of time to sit and drink tea and eat silver ear mushroom soup.

Finally, we patted each baton flat with our fingers, and then rolled it out with a special Chinese-style rolling pin.

From there, the dough stretched and snapped like elastic as Chen pulled both ends.

Then the noodles were cooked. Instead of timing the cooking Chen showed me how to let the noodles come to a boil, and then add cold water until it stopped boiling. Repeat this twice, and then by the third time to pot of noodles comes to a boil, they are ready.

The noodles were fresh, pleasantly chewy, and readily absorbed the spicy/salty toppings both Lan and Chen had made.

From top, clockwise: pork and peppers; ground beef, potato, onion mushroom; fried tomato and egg with ginger.

My Chinese noodle-making adventure showed me a new way to learn a recipe. And, I am richer for the experience because not only did Chen share food, but knowledge of how to make that food which will stick with me long after I've eaten.

How about you? How have you learned to cook? Do you know any special techniques that can't be learned by a recipe? Who taught them to you?

My Garden Grows Friendships

2010-07-24T21:37:00.000-04:00

It started when I planted garlic in my front yard. You see, my backyard is full of shade trees, so the only logical place to plant vegetables on my rental property is the front yard. Luckily, I live in a college town, on the student side of the railroad tracks, so ripping up front lawns to grow food goes over well. No homeowner's association is going to be suing me.

When you grow vegetables in your front yard, though, your gardening is on display for the whole neighborhood. This openness, this crack of vulnerability, has created a space for me to build bonds, to build my little community. People walking by stop to chat about vegetables, about a favorite grandma/uncle/cousin who used to garden. People stop to ask questions about what is growing or want advice about how to grow their own. Friendships, like the plants, are nurtured in this green, growing space between my front door and the sidewalk.

In the fourth grade reading classes I teach this summer, we read The Cricket in Times Square. This classic children's novel is all about forming unlikely friendships. In one class period, I ask students how did you meet one of your friends? Then, I share this story.

One day Chen, who lives in my neighborhood walked by my house and saw my garden. "Very nice garden," he said. The next day he walked by again and this time he noticed the garlic growing in my yard. "No can buy here," he said pointing to the garlic. "We have in China, but you can't buy it here in the stores." The garlic was young, still green. It was the size of gigantic scallions. The bulbs hadn't formed yet. He was so interested in the garden, I gave him a tour (it's not hard to convince a gardener to show off her labors.) I also sent him home with a bag of green garlic.

A few days later, Chen was back with his friend Lan. They stopped by on their evening walk to admire my garden. Perhaps it reminded them of China, or perhaps they, like me, have a passionate love for all vegetables. From this, a friendship was formed as we began talking about food. It was decided that Chen would teach me to make Chinese style noodles.

From my garden, I have harvested an unexpected and delightful new friendship with two generous fellow food lovers. This week I spent an afternoon with Chen and Lan making Chinese noodles (will post the details soon) and drinking tea. And, if you've read The Cricket in Times Square, know that I was in as much awe over the Chinese food Lan and Chen made for me as Mario was when he and Chester Cricket visit Sai Fong for dinner! I'm sure this is just the beginning of the many food adventures we'll share together. All of this came from a few cloves of garlic and some vegetables seeds planted where most people just have lawns.

I started my garden because I care deeply about the food I eat. I want my food to be organic, not grown with dangerous chemicals that could harm me or the animals, soil, air, and water around me. And I don't want my food to have traveled more miles than I have in the past week. I want food that is fresh, flavorful, and fits my budget. I want the pride that comes with turning a seed into a carrot or watermelon. I want to be outside and watch how the garden unfolds, grows, changes, and dies a little bit each day. I wanted all of these things when I began this garden this spring, but I didn't realize that I would get so much more than that.

This garden has rooted me, quite literally, in place. I have met my neighbors and have had meaningful exchanges because of this garden. I have built a small community of food lovers, gardeners, and curious passerbys because of a shared interest in this garden. I have inspired neighbors to plant a few vegetables of their own. And, I've had the opportunity to share the bounty of the garden. As it produces copious vegetables, I am delighted to pass the abundance forward.

Sure, it's just a vegetable garden, but it's also a whole lot more.

The First Garden Tomato of 2010

2010-07-21T12:42:00.000-04:00

Guilty Pleasure Dining: Raw Kale Three Ways

2010-07-13T22:24:00.000-04:00

I try on average 3 to 4 new recipes a week. Mostly, I am just cooking for myself and my husband, Kent. I enjoy cooking for Kent, not only because cooking is a form of endearment, but because he also happens to be a pretty darn good guinea pig. (Not to say he has any other traits resembling a guinea pig. He doesn't have buck teeth or smell funny, for instance.) For as much harassment I give Kent for the foods he doesn't like, I don't give the man nearly enough credit for the experiments he endures because he married a foodie. He takes my culinary whims in stride. He never complains about dinner. At worst, he just doesn't eat it, and then he sneaks junk food later after I've gone to bed.
Here's a partial list of things my culinary martyr has endured:

*Strange Salad Dressings involving Hazelnut oil and too much lemon
*Dry Pasta Dishes without marinara sauce (marinara is Kent's favorite)
*Bitter greens (mustard, kale, collards) sneaked into soups and casseroles
*Three months of no yeast/bread/dairy in the house while I completed a Candida Cleanse
*Swiss chard gone wrong with soggy walnuts
*Watching me eat animals that he thinks should only be known as pets (rabbit)
*Waiting for at least 20 shots of any meal to be taken before eating

Even though I realize I'm lucky because Kent is so agreeable, I admit I feel the freedom to indulge in all my guilty food pleasures when he's not around. This habit started the first year we were married when he was completing a low-residency Master's degree. Twice a year he'd be out of town for a couple weeks at a time for his residencies. I could cook whatever I wanted with no sighs or eye rolling.

This week Kent's been out of town, and I've been trying hard to get the more Kent offensive food items into my diet so that he won't have to stomach them. So I polished off the tilapia in the freezer (he has a minor food allergy to fish), and then I moved on to the grass-fed, organic beef liver (like so many others, he has an aversion to liver.) But, the highlight of this week's guilty pleasure dining has been the ability to eat kale at almost every meal without feeling guilt and without being ridiculed. It's as if Kent covertly planned his trip to coincide with the kale harvest so he could avoid his number one most hated vegetable.

I mostly enjoy my kale fixes as Molly Wizenburg of Orangette suggests in her article "How I Learned to Love Kale": hot pan of olive oil and butter, a quick saute, finished by a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of sea salt.

But it's summer, so as temperatures soar I've turned to raw kale. I know. It's sort of scary. Almost like admitting you eat raw liver (although I'd never go THAT far.) Frankly, raw kale has a lot going against it. Its rubbery, garbage bag texture, and it's grass clipping aroma. I wasn't brave enough to experiment on my own, so I perused the Internet for, what I felt were, the most promising raw kale recipes out there. Please feel free to post your own links or recipes if you have a raw kale recipe I missed. What follows are the three that I tried this week.

The best part of these three recipes is shredding the kale. The best way to do this is to chiffonade the leaves after de-stemming them. Bundle the leaves into a big fat, cigar-like roll, and slice as thinly as you can. This is the most satisfying knife skill I know.

Dr. Dick's Kale Coleslaw the first recipe I tried comes from Diana Dyer, a nutritionist who writes 364 Days of Kale, which is a great resource for the kale obsessed. This recipe is entry level kale eating. Most people hate kale because it's bitter, but this recipe has a whooping 1/3 cup of brown sugar in its balsamic vinaigrette dressing to counteract kale's bite. In all honesty, this was too much sugar for me, but I took this to a 4th of July BBQ, and it a hit. (More popular than the Mulberry Jam Thumbprint Cookies I made and nearly as sweet!) However, this kaleslaw is beautiful because of the contrasting colors: red peppers, purple red onions, and orange carrots. I think the amount of sugar in this recipe could be cut in half with no repercussions.

If we were playing Goldilocks, I'd say the first salad was too sweet, and the second salad was too salty. This Raw Kale Salad with Avocado from Tara Weaver of Tea & Cookies is composed of kale, cabbage, red onion, and a garlicky, lemon miso dressing. The miso was overpowering, but this could be my own damn fault because I used Red Miso instead of Light Miso, but either way, go easy on the miso and taste as you go. Because if you get the balance of right, the miso makes the creaminess of the avocado sing. The cabbage also added a nice counterpoint, and although it seems strange, the onion powder gives the dressing a craveable flavor. I will definately make this again.

Finally, I ended this raw kale bender with Sesame Kale Salad. This last recipe, while not necessarily "just right," was a good base salad to add other ingredients to. On it's own it, it just didn't have enough pizazz even though the sesame seeds and sesame oil played well with the sweet roasted red bell peppers. I jazzed it up with a few blanched green beans, some garbanzo beans, and a little leftover rice I made a meal of it.

The great thing about all these kale salads is that the kale leaves are so sturdy that once you make up the salad and dress it, it will keep in the refrigerator for several days. So, when you find yourself alone, at midnight with a hankering for kale, you can indulge your guilty pleasure.

So what do you eat when your picky family members are not around?

No Grocery Store Challenge Wrap Up

2010-07-09T19:00:00.002-04:00

So, the no grocery store challenge has ended. We went three and a half weeks only spending $12.94 at Meijer Supermarket. This challenge was a way for us to save money while our budget was temporarily tight. Many advocates of food storage cite natural disasters as a reason to be well supplied but fail to mention that food storage can be extremely helpful during times when the pocketbook is lean.

Here are some of the things I learned about myself in the past weeks:

1. I am a food hoarder. My pantries bulge. I collect staples. The problems is while Webster's defines a staple as "a basic and necessary food item" my definition is quite broader. I shop at grocery stores and ethnic food markets like most people shop malls and antique stores. (Case in point: On our recent trip to Omaha, the only shopping I did was at Whole Foods and various ethic food stores. Yes, I was a tourist at a Whole Foods. If you happen to live near one, don't take it for granted!) I’m always in search for the seeds, nuts, legumes, pulses, beans, grains, ect. that I can’t get in my limited Bowling Green grocery stores, and I buy up. I also buy up whenever I see something on sale. In fact, pantry space has overflowed to the laundry room. Shelves are heaped haphazardly with bags of lentils, rice, beans which threaten to avalanche at any moment.

2. The No Grocery Store challenge made me less of a hoarder. I HAD to use what was on hand. Many times I have the tendency to save the good stuff for a special occasion, but that occasion never comes. It didn’t occur to me that this was the case until I started buying groceries again. Yesterday, I was prepping to make a beet and lentil salad. I only have French lentils on hand (from Omaha’s Wholefoods, before that I got them at Cleveland’s West Side Market because I can't get them in B.G.). I thought, I can’t use these in this recipe—it’s my precious stash—so I sent Kent out to buy regular brown lentils. So it's great to collect uncommon grains and beans, but I need to stop saving them up. Perhaps this is why I find the urgency of using fresh, seasonal produce so compelling.

3. I didn’t make much of a dent in my pantry or freezer. See two previous items. I really must do better with this. So, while Kent’s gone next week, I should make sure to eat all the frozen food that he won’t normally eat: KALE. FISH. But, at the same time, if it's not in danger of spoiling, it IS comforting to have extra food on hand.

4. I liked the limitations of using what was on hand because I didn’t feel overwhelmed with too much food to cook. While I think I do a good job of not letting food go to waste, I still overbuy. Or I let the CSA box get the best of me, and can't seem to use up everything before it goes bad. I hate feeling anxious about having TOO much food!

5. Limitations make even small treats feel decadent. After awhile, the limitations did begin to feel spartan. We ate a lot of peanut butter in 3 weeks. But, when we sprung for Parmesan, it felt lavish. I forget how easy it is to be jaded by over saturation of something. Which again, brings me to Alice Waters’s quote “The things most worth having are not available everywhere all the time.” Because if they were, they wouldn’t be worth it.

6. I appreciated and celebrated the food that I did have more. I felt grateful for the soups I had frozen this winter and thawed. I felt thrilled that I was able to cobble together healthy, delicious meals from what was left in the pantry. I was even prouder of the vegetables from my garden (if that's possible).

7. I had more free time because I wasn't obsessing over grocery shopping. This challenge made me realize that I don’t like going to the grocery store. Submitting weekly to a crowded big-box store, with it's onslaught of heavily marketed packaged food, not to mention the plethora of decisions about what to buy and not buy, makes me a little crazy. I’d rather not have to deal with it. It's more manageable for me to stay out in the farmer’s markets, CSAs, my own garden, and the underground food network I’ve made for myself here, and to go to specialty markets for special treats. Of course, I can't stay out of the supermarket forever, but at least during the summer, I don't need to rely on it nearly as much for my food.

What about you? How do you approach food storage? What is your pantry like?

* I forgot to give photo credit where, credit is due. Kent took the two grocery store shots in this post. Good job, honey!

Friendship Farm Friday: Snap Peas and Sage (!!!)

2010-07-02T14:49:00.000-04:00

This week's CSA box: (clockwise from top left) Sugar Snap Peas, Lettuce, Beets, Kale, Sweet Banana Peppers, Jalapenos, Ponna Kheera Cucumber, Italian Parsley, Green Onions.

Sometimes eating seasonally means dealing with a glut. While Alice Waters said it quite poetically: "The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time." There's more to it than that. For instance, the past three weeks are the only weeks of the entire year that I can eat local, fresh, organic, sustainable sugar snap peas. Then they will be gone until next season. This fleeting window presents challenges. On one hand, I'm tired of dealing with my 6th pound of peas in 21 days, but on the other hand, I am desperate not to let them go to waste.

Snap peas are brilliant. Here is a pea that can be eaten pod and all! They do require stringing, though. This is not nearly as tedious as shelling, and because the pod is succulent and tasty, there's less waste both in prep time and in product. For the first few weeks, I prepared the snap peas with Asian flavors. I highly making Sesame Orzo Salad from Sarah's Cucina Bella Blog. However, substitute the orzo for a whole grain, as the refined flour in the orzo is not very healthy. I substituted short grain brown rice. The flavors that really pull through in this dish are ginger, sesame, and garlic. I like this recipe because it uses the snap peas raw, which makes them particularly crunchy. Plus, they look really cute when they're thinly sliced crosswise.

The other recipe that I adapted for snap peas is Rice Noodle Salad, which I found on Dorie Greenspan's blog. This salad is Thai inspired so it's got some heady flavors: fish sauce, GARLIC, chili. (I LOVE garlic, but 1 1/2 tablespoons called for in this recipe is overwhelming. Start slow with a 1/2 tablespoon at a time.) You'll also notice that this recipe doesn't even call for snap peas, but they were a lovely addition. Simply string the snap peas, and blanch them in a huge pot of boiling water for about a minute. Then drain and pour cold water over to stop the cooking. Do not over cook!

After these two recipes, I was out of ideas for snap peas, so I turned to the handy dandy Flavor Bible. Which I can't sing the praises of enough. At the end of each ingredient entry, there is a list of "Flavor Affinities" defined as "what herbs, spices, and other seasonings will best bring out the flavor of whatever it is you're cooking." Most ingredient entries have long lists of Flavor Affinities. Snap peas had one: snap peas + brown butter + sage. Sage? WTF?

The Flavor Bible was recommending that I use an earthy, woodsy, Thanksgivingy herb to season the sweet, delicate, springy, and succulent snap peas? It was too strange of a suggestion not to try it. Oh my goodness! I've never had snap peas more delicious. The sweetness of the snap pea seems to intensify as it lingers with the brown butter, perhaps because the brown butter oozes notes of caramel. And the sage is the bass line. It's deeper than either of the other flavors, but rather than overwhelming them, it lets all the other flavors sing.

Brown Buttered Snap Peas with Sage

This recipe would make a great side dish with any chicken dish or even incorporated into a pasta dish.

1 lb. sugar snap peas, strings removed

4 T. butter

1 to 2 teaspoons fresh minced sage

Bring large stock pot full of salted water to a boil. Add snap peas, let cook for about 1 min. Drain and set aside. In stainless steel pan, (not dark nonstick) melt butter over medium heat. Continue to heat until milk solids in butter turn dark brown, but not black. Remove from heat immediately. (This should only take a minute or two. You can also judge doneness by the photo above.) Toss together snap peas, brown butter, and sage. Season to taste with salt. Devour.

Mulberries and The Kindness of Strangers

2010-07-01T22:17:00.000-04:00

Food foraging can be nerve wracking. Soon after picking, doubt begins to set in. Is it really edible? Am I really, truly, sure that this plant/berry/mushroom is the right species and not an evil, poisonous doppelganger?
On the other hand, food foraging to feels exhilarating. It’s the culinary equivalent of dumpster diving. Getting luscious berries like this for free isn't a bad deal at all.

When foraging for mulberries, I have no worries about getting the genuine thing. I've been picking wild mulberries for as long as I can remember. In fact, even before my little sister was born, I remember family foraging trips, down dusty dirt roads to find the best road-ditch mulberry trees in the county. When I was 5, I thought it was quite spectacular to watch mulberry picking. Mulberry picking is best accomplished by laying out a large sheet under the tree and shaking the branches until it rains mulberries. Quite an exciting affair, especially compared to buying a can of pie filling at the grocery store.

My mulberry picking adventure this year was still exciting. I've been scoping out the trees in my neighborhood for the past few weeks. Waiting for ripeness. I finally found the perfect picking tree two blocks from my house: a large specimen with low hanging boughs. The only problem was that it is very much on private property. I decided to Blanche DuBois it and "rely on the kindness of strangers." I knocked on the tree owner's door and asked if I could pick mulberries. The gentlemen that answered the door said yes. (Sometimes loving an unappreciated fruit can have its benefits. I don't think I'd have been nearly as lucky had I tried the same thing with a backyard cache of raspberries.) Though mulberries are under appreciated, I find that I like them precisely because of how common, how pedestrian they are. Here is a delicious berry that nearly goes unnoticed. I also admire that fact that they seem to thrive in countryside road ditches as well as they do in my urban neck of the woods.

Mulberries make a lovely pie filling. In fact, that's the only use my mother ever had for the berry after my dad had shimmied and shaked the tree free of all its fruit. She was on to something. Mulberries are best cooked to draw out the most flavor. Mulberries are like blackberry’s shy, younger sibling. They're much more dainty in flavor, and delicate in physique. Mulberries are juicy like blackberries, but they have the earthy humility of a blueberry, but without the tartness. They aren’t as tart as blackberries, either, and they aren’t nearly as aggressive with their seeds—which is particularly appealing.

For the pie, I made a butter crust this time because I didn't want to buy lard. I used Michael Ruhlman's 3-2-1 Pie Crust from his book Ratio. At first I was nervous that I had added too much water because the dough was a bit sticky when rolling out—so I used a lot of flour—and had to roll out each piece of dough twice because the first time it stuck to the table. Even so, the crust was not overworked. It was impeccably tender. More tender than any lard crust I had ever made before. I loved how the butter flavor complimented the berry filling. Although I love a lard pie crust for robust and spicy apple pie, that would have overwhelmed the flavors here.

I also made a batch of jam. Another life lesson taught by cooking: everything gets easier with practice. Putting up a batch of mulberry jam took less than an hour today.The jam is brilliant—dark and shinny—mostly purple, with deep garnet undertones. I added cinnamon and just a pinch of ground clove to the jam. While the cinnamon is less detectable than the clove, the two spices would fall under the realm of secret ingredients because without knowing they're in there, you just can't quite put your finger on what the flavor is. But the spices round out the flavors, bringing the floral notes of the mulberry forward. The jam has commercial powdered pectin in it, which is easy to work with. I simply followed the package directions, no recipe needed. The pectin, which naturally occurs in many fruits, especially unripe fruits, works to thicken the jam. Using powered pectin means that the jam doesn't have to cook for hours, just a couple of minutes on a good rolling boil.

All in all, a gratifying day. Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, I was able to make these mulberry treats.

Friendship Farm Friday: Arugula Development Time

2010-06-25T22:21:00.086-04:00

Here are this week's glorious vegetables. From left to right and top to bottom: Italian parsley, arugula, knob onions, Sugar Snap peas, mint, Spicy Mesclun greens, lettuce, broccoli, Swiss Chard.

My friend Babs coined the term "Development Time" as a pseudonym for "acquiring a taste." Development Time is the process of going from hating a food to loving it. The first time I tried arugula, I was not keen on it. The fierce peppery bite nearly knocked my socks off. When I found out that in some countries it's called rocket, I thought this makes sense because it has the power to blast off taste buds. But, I'm not one to ever give up easily, especially regarding matters of food. I was certain that arugula had virtues, even if it's virtues were an acquired taste.

My Arugula Development Time was short. In fact, I hit on a great recipe right away. (Don't just try to use arugula willy-nilly in any old salad. I used this recipe for Giant Black Bean Salad from 101 Cookbooks. In this particular salad, a vinaigrette dressing with lime juice, jalapeno, garlic, and honey is tossed over arugula and black beans (feel free to substitute regular black beans as I did) and then topped with toasted almonds and cheese (I used goat cheese instead of feta). What I found was that the spice of the jalapeno was brightened by the peppery arugula. But even more, the contrast of the sweetness from the honey and the almonds had my taste buds singing. Finally, I reveled in the textural contrast of the crunchy almonds and creamy goat cheese. Now I can eat arugula in any setting.

So for all you arugula virgins out there, make this your gateway arugula recipe. You won't regret it.

Rainbow Chard Saute

2010-06-25T22:19:00.000-04:00

My household is undergoing a financial experiment. Hypothesis: How long can we go without buying groceries? (We got back from our trip to Nebraska on June 8th, and aside from a minor slip up to buy butter and maple syrup when Kent surprised me with a pancake dinner, we've not bought any food since.) This is partly frugal necessity, and partly foodie challenge. Although I'll spare you the details, let's suffice it to say we've had a lot of expenses this first part of the summer. Plus I've had a 6 week gap in paychecks due to the early end of spring term teaching and the late start of summer term teaching. We are broke.

However, on the bright side, I look at this experiment as a fun cooking challenge. We will hardly be going hungry. I collect pantry items like most 3rd graders collect Silly Bandz, and I have a freezer stocked with produce from last year's garden. Add to that a garden that's just coming into harvest season, an already paid for weekly CSA subscription, and four feathered egg-makers in the backyard, and I have a lot of ingredients to work with without needing to grab a shopping cart.

I see this as a chance to be creative, to improvise for ingredients I don't have on hand, and to find new ways to cook what I do have. Which is why I've been cracking open The Flavor Bible frequently. The Flavor Bible is a reference book for anyone who wants to abandon cooking with recipes or wants to make up their own recipes. Working with what you have, instead of rushing out to buy a long list of ingredients from a fancy new recipe can save anyone money.

The Flavor Bible reminds me of a thesaurus. You look up an ingredient and under that ingredient's listing, there is a list of other ingredients that play well with it. So when I looked up Chard here were some of the listings: garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, raisins, balsamic vinegar, red wine, eggs, pasta, polenta, red pepper flakes, Parmesan, and so on. The most challenging thing about using The Flavor Bible is that you must show some restraint--trying to create a dish that has too many flavor pairings could be disastrous.

For me, the dish that follows is a classic and easy way to work a bunch of Swiss Chard. Keep in mind that it is flexible. I used pine nuts and currants just because I happened to have some in the pantry. You could easily omit them, or use raisins instead of currants. Also, it would be fine to riff on this dish, adding a fried egg would be splendid or a heavy grating of Parmesan.

Rainbow Chard Saute

1 large bunch rainbow chard
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. olive oil

1/4 cup currants (or raisins)
splash of balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
Separate chard stems from leaves. Finely chop the stems, and coarsely chop the leaves. Heat olive oil in saute pan over medium-high heat. Add chard stems and cook for 5 minutes or until tender, stirring frequently. Add garlic and saute for one minute more. Add chard and cook until completely wilted. Remove from heat. Add a small splash of balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with pine nuts before serving.

Friendship Farm Friday

2010-06-23T13:01:00.000-04:00

Like last year, Kent and I are members of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. In the early spring, we buy a "share" of the farmer's projected harvest from Friendship Farms, which entitles us to a box of fresh, organic vegetables every Friday for the entire 20-week growing season. The first week this was the haul, pictured above from left to right, top row: Easter egg radishes, spicy mesclun mix, arugula, spring mix lettuce. From left to right, bottom row: rainbow chard, baby turnips, broccoli, bok choy.

If you want to eat locally and sustainably, CSA is the way to go. There are many reasons why I love being a member of a CSA, let me count the ways...

1. I know exactly where this food was grown, how it was grown, who grew it. My farmers, Susan and Laura, (yes, I like to think of these incredible women as MY farmers.) are incredibly transparent about their farming practices and members are allowed to tour the fields anytime. I'm assured that this produce is grown in ways that is not harmful to the environment or to the farm workers.

2. I know how fresh these veggies are (not picked more than 24 hours, before they get to my kitchen), and how many miles they traveled from farm to plate (17.5 miles). Try getting that information from your Kroger produce manager!

3. Working with vegetables this fresh makes cooking easy. I feel like a giddy Alice Waters every Friday when I unpack my box of veggies. The veggies are so flavorful because they're fresh and organic, and as a result, they don't need a lot of fussing over to taste good. The mesclun mixed greens, for instance, have a lovely spicy complex flavor. A short saute in good olive oil is all they need to be incredibly fabulous! Getting unusual or unfamiliar vegetables in my box is inspiring--it pushes me to be a more creative (and more healthy) cook. But, I also like the the using the recipes that Friendship Farms staff share in the weekly newsletter.

4. CSA subscriptions are an economical way to get high quality produce. Each week's veggie box costs about $20. I know I'd be hard pressed to buy this much organic produce in the grocery store at that price, and even if I did, it most likely would be grown industrial scale in California and shipped thousands of miles to me. I know for some budgets paying several hundred dollars at once for food you don't see for weeks could be problematic, but I've found it evens out in the long run. I have a very well stocked pantry, and I haven't went to the grocery store in 3 weeks!

5. My CSA food dollar supports the local economy, rather than large conglomerates thousands of miles away. In economically depressed, Northwestern Ohio, this is important.

Restaurant Review: Jim Dandy's Family BBQ- Cincinnati, OH

2010-06-14T21:43:00.001-04:00

I’m in Cincinnati tonight finishing up a three days stint of teaching summer reading classes, and I went out to eat at the closet non-franchised restaurant from my hotel: Jim Dandy’s Family BBQ. I know next to nothing about BBQ, and most people are so vehemently opinionated about BBQ that I’m almost afraid to weight in here. So BBQ fans out there, let me know by what criteria you judge a good BBQ joint. Jim Dandy’s did not disappoint me, yet I’ve lived too far North most of life to claim any authority on the matter.

I ordered the pulled pork sandwich combo ($8.50). The pork was juicy, tender and nicely smokey. I chose the mild sauce instead of the hot sauce. I think that was a mistake because I found myself wanting more heat; however, if I had ordered the hot I’d be eating Tums by the handful right now.

I was impressed with the many choices of sides: red beans & rice, baked beans, coleslaw, collard greens, green beans, mac & cheese, potato salad, apple sauce, bead pudding, and Saratoga chips. I had collard greens, which were tangy—and as I understand it—cooked respectably in the Southern style, which is to say the greens were cooked down within an inch of their life. The result: greens that nearly melted in my mouth. But what I’ll be craving after I leave Cinicinati is the Saratoga chips. These are housemade potato chips seasoned with Dandy’s proprietary rub—giving the chips just the right hint of spice. Plus, they're just a bit thicker than commercial potato chips giving them a very satisfying toothiness. Comparing Dandy’s chips to BBQ-flavored Lays like comparing a Twinkie to Julia Child’s crème filled yellow sponge cake. The meal came with a little square of cornbread, which was moist and heavily tasted of milk and butter with a sweet finish.

Jim Dandy’s also seems to have a pretty simple, take on things. Here’s their slogan:

Work hard. Play harder. Count your blessings. Eat Jim Dandy's BBQ. Love God, Country, Friends, and Others Madly!

Travelling Companions: Quinoa, Beans, and Lentils

2010-06-02T17:35:00.000-04:00

I am a strange road tripper because I'm particular about the food I eat, not because I'm a picky eater, but because I care about food and what I eat too much to leave it up to chance encounters in a drive through stall at McDonald s. This week, Kent and I drove 14 hours straight through from Northwest Ohio to Omaha, Nebraska. We didn't stop for food once.

I spend the day before we left cooking up road trip worthy foods. When I'm looking for road food, I have a simple set of criteria. First, it must be sturdy--dishes that get wilty, soggy, or mushy after a few hours in the cooler are not candidates. In fact, the type of dish that is better the second day, after flavors have mingled are ideal. Second, it must taste good at any temperature. I love hearty grain and bean salads that taste great both chilled or at room temperature.

The three dishes I choose for our trip were: Heather's Quinoa Salad, Carrot, Dill, and White Bean Salad, and Red Pepper and Red Lentil Dip with whole wheat flatbread. (The first two recipes are from 101 Cookbooks blog, which I am obsessed with because the recipes are healthy, emphasize whole grains/beans/veggies, but don't taste like commune food. The day's cooking spree culminated in a lunch with the best cat/chicken/garden/house sitter we've ever had as the guest of honor and there were plenty of leftovers for the next day. The Quinoa Salad was earthy and toothy in a nice way, punctuated with the sweetness of roasted tomatoes (preserved from last year's garden), and kale (from this year's garden), and held together with pesto (also preserved from last year's garden). The Carrot, Dill, and White Bean Salad is slightly sweet and tangy. Ever since the first time I made it, it has been in heavy rotation at our house. I usually serve it with rice to make a complete meal out of it. Finally, the Red Pepper and Red Lentil Dip, I created as an alternative to hummus. Because even though I love hummus, I've managed to burn myself out on it.

Red Pepper and Red Lentil Dip

This dip is smoky from the roasted peppers and smoked paprika, and it gets its zip from lemon and garlic. Serve it with pita or use it as a sandwich filling. Using an immersion blender to puree the lentils makes clean up a breeze.

1 1/2 cup red lentils
3 red bell peppers (or a mix of red, yellow, and orange peppers)
scant 1/4 cup of kalamata olives, minced
1 clove garlic, smashed to a paste
juice of half a lemon
1/2 t. smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

In a 2 qt. saucepan, cover lentils with at least 3 inches of water and bring to a boil. Boil over medium-high heat until tender, about 30 min. Drain.

Meanwhile, cut bell peppers in half, and seed. Place cut side down on baking sheet and broil until skin is blackened, about 10 min. Remove from oven and cover with aluminum foil, let stand for 5 min, then peel skins off. Mince peppers.

Mix lentils, garlic, lemon juice, and paprika in a large bowl, and blend together using immersion blender or food processor. Fold in peppers and olives. Adjust seasonings.

Allow to chill for several hours before serving to allow the flavors to develop and mingle.

Wild Onions

2010-04-21T14:35:00.002-04:00

One of the big items on my garden to-do lists is working horse manure into the soil as fertilizer and soil amendment. The new garden beds that I'm double digging on the south lawn are sadly, quite sandy, which is something I hope a good dose of horse poo will fix. I tested my soil ph levels today: a solid 6.5 and veggies need to be in the 6 to 6.8 range...yay! As with many of adventures, the first step is finding the needed materials.
Serindepidously, I found a woman, M. on Craigslist who was giving away horse manure AND her horses happen to live less than one mile away AND she was gracious enough to help me both load and unload not one, but three loads of manure. Three loads of manure in my front yard look like this:

Minnow (my Geo Metro hatchback) was an amazing trouper, and even though I put a big tarp down in the back of the car it got a bit messy. This was nothing that a good vacuuming couldn't fix. Most people think that manure smells like an outhouse. But, this was fairly old, mostly composted manure. If it smelled like anything, it had the rich musky smell of dirt.

Is that my poop, you're shoveling into the back of your car?

On our last trip unloading manure, M. met the chickens, and I gave her a dozen eggs for her kind help.
On our last trip to the pasture, M. pointed out that there were some suspiciously onion-like plants growing in the pasture that the horses wouldn't eat. I took my trowel and dug them up: wild green onions!

Although they look just like a supermarket green onion, wild onions are incredibly spicy. In fact, they are almost closer to garlic in taste than onion, yet they have undertones of leek and shallot as well. Perhaps wild onions are the bastard children of the allium family. Flavorwise, they are a bit rowdy. But that makes them all the more fresh and cheeky, and for that, I love them. The flavor is complex and exhilarating, but not overwhelming. So for dinner tonight, I riffed on Heidi's asparagus with tobasco butter from 101 Cookbooks blog. And here's the quick and staisfying dish I came up with.

Peas and Barley with Siracha Butter
Most people avoid cooking with whole grains and beans because of the long cooking times. While this is true, with a little advance planning, you can take the hands-on time out of the equation. For the barley, I simply brought 1 cup of barley and 2 cups of water to boil. I boiled it for 10 minutes, turned off the heat, covered the pan, and let the barley stand overnight. In the morning, I had steamed barley that just takes a quick 5-10 minute reheat with a splash of water before it's ready to serve. And, if you don't want to cook it right away for a delicious alternative to oatmeal, refrigerate it for later.

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 t. siracha (or to taste)
2 t. dijon mustard
2t. lemon juice
1/4 t. salt
1 cup barley, cooked
5 oz. frozen peas (1/2 a bag)
15 oz. cannellini beans (1 can)
1/4 cup wild onions minced
1 cup toasted almond slivers

Using a food processor, blend together butter, siracha, dijon mustard, lemon juice, and salt. I do not reccoment using a stick blender here--as I tried to use my Cuisinart and the butter simply stuck and them molded to the blade in a melted mess. Set aside.

Add about 1/2 cup of water to the pre-cooked barley and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for about 5 mins and then add the peas. Cover and cook over low heat for about 3 minutes until the peas are cooked. Add beans and continue to cook until heated through.

Drain any excess water from the barley and peas and stir in 3 T. siracha butter until melted. (There will be extra butter, which is fine becasue the leftover butter works great on fried or scrambled eggs.)

Stir in onions and top with almonds.

Serves 4.

Rabbit: Pet or Provision?

2010-03-20T20:25:00.001-04:00

I ate a rabbit. A whole rabbit. All by myself. Granted, it took me four days to accomplish this feat, but I did it because it turns out, in my household, I am the only rabbit eater. Well, the cats eat rabbit too but again, Kent tells me I have to question their judgment because they also eat spiders. Even though I logged time researching how on earth to breakdown a rabbit, (you don't cut it apart anything like you would a chicken because it has a part called a saddle, which is sort of like rabbit tenderloin) and spent hours braising the thing and making a very French cream sauce, my companion, or rather my unwilling companion, would not eat it. Not even a single bite. Now I know that I shouldn't be so hard on Kent. I've put the man through some trials--the whole hog's head soaking in our kitchen sink, the deep fried bull testicles, the sauteed chicken feet. But I honestly thought rabbit was benign. In fact, prepared rabbit looks and tastes quite a bit like chicken.

But, I guess it has to come down to a personal food philosophy to determine how you approach certain vittles outside the realm of the standard American diet. Eating rabbit really riles some people up judging from the comments on a recent New York Times article. But I'm not upset at my unwilling dining companion. His position on the matter mirrors most Americans' view. However, it's not just that eating rabbit goes beyond the normal dining conventions. No, for Kent, it's personal.

In his defense, he cites that he could never eat rabbit because rabbits are cute and cuddly. Then, he tells me sappy, sweet tales of HIS pet rabbit, Eight-Ball. When Kent's high-school garage band practiced, Eight-Ball had a habit of sitting by the kick drum, and get this, would even thump his hind leg along with the beat. Eight-Ball died a tragic death from a stomach tumor, apparently a side effect of eating ChemLawn grass. Kent tells me this as I'm devouring a thick, juicy rabbit thigh which is surprisingly whiter than a chicken thigh, but still rich, and strikes me as an invigorating change from poultry.

I suppose Kent's story is a thinly-veiled guilt trip. Our marriage is rife with such exchanges. (Note exhibit A: You just spent how many hours rearranging your comic book collection?, I asked.) And, now at the dinner table spread with braised rabbit in cream sauce, if I looked closely at Kent, I saw it, that withering glance that said I feel sad for you, look at how far you've stooped.

But the guilt-trip is lost on me. I, too, had a pet rabbit when I was a kid. Unlike black, lop-eared Eight-Ball, my rabbit, B.C. was a white New Zealand, bred to be a MEAT rabbit. B.C. was short for Buttercup, a name that was lifted straight out of one of my picture books featuring a rabbit, who gets lost one spring afternoon and after a climatic twist of plot is rescued from under a bush. B.C. was a fortuitous name. B.C. was ~~rescued~~ prevented from living a posh life getting fattened up for slaughter, at my great aunt Corrine's farm. My great aunt Corrine raised rabbits not as cute, cuddly pets, but as yummy provisions. So instead of living peacefully at Aunt Corrine's, B.C. was terrorized by my 5-year-old-self who wanted to love, cuddle, and squeeze this fur ball. B.C. had other ideas. This imprisonment was just too much for him, and he soon escaped his hutch. He was seen around the farm, as a brief flash of white running from one hiding spot to another. A few reconnaissance missions determined that B.C. had taken up residence under the garden shed. My uncle, Corwin, choreographed elaborate strategies for capturing B.C., which required lots of running and a large minnow net. While a couple of these missions worked, it wasn't long before B.C. was successful in another jail break. Eventually, the rabbit went completely feral. After he disappeared completely, we assumed he had probably been eaten by coyotes. I don't think the coyotes could have given B.C. as dignified a death or appreciate his meat as much as I would have. Which, is why, ultimately, I have no problem eating rabbit.

Braised Rabbit adapted from Amanda Hesser's The Cook and the Gardener.

2 T. butter
1 rabbit, cut into pieces
1 onion
2 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Prosecco (any white will work. That's what I happened to have on hand.)
3 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
4-5 springs thyme
16 pitted prunes
3 T. heavy cream

Melt butter in saute pan. Season rabbit pieces with salt and pepper and saute in butter until rabbit is browned on all sides. Remove the rabbit, and sprinkle the flour in the pan. Stir into a paste, cooking until the mixture is a golden brown color. Add the wine, stirring to incorporate into the flour mixture. Then add the rabbit pieces, bay leaves, thyme, and stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. Cover and simmer gently over low heat for 1 hour. Add the onion, and continue to cook for 30 to 40 more minutes or until the rabbit is tender. Remove the lid from pan, add the prunes and cream and cook until heated through.

Mac from Scratch

2010-02-22T15:23:00.001-05:00

I never did go out and buy that box of Kraft Mac and Cheese that I've been dreaming about because when I found the dregs of a bag of macaroni in my cupboard, I was perfectly content to make my own from scratch.

Incidentally, I just re-watched Food, Inc. last week, and I'm always struck by the brilliance of Micheal Pollan, who luckily, is given ample screen time in the documentary. Pollan's been vocal about all the reasons Americans don't eat healthier, but rather than just lament the problem, he also gives reasonable, easy solutions. I just finished reading Pollan's Food Rules: an eater's manifesto. This slim pocket volume is a series of adages that are quippy, easy to remember, and incredible wise, which if followed, would improve the average American's diet by leaps and bounds. Pollan divides these 64 rules into three categories: What should I eat? (Eat Food); What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly plants.); and How should I eat? (Not too much.)

These rules are easy to apply and remember, but for my mac and cheese musings, I just want to focus on the first category. Eat food. Sounds obvious, right? But so much of what is on supermarket shelves is what Pollan has described as "edible, food-like substances." You can tell you have an edible food-like substance on your hands if you follow the rules. For instance, rule 2 states, "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." Would Nanna believe that Easy Mac is something you can eat after only adding water and nuking it in the microwave? Or, consider Rule 3: "Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry." I don't know about you, but I don't keep my kitchen stocked with phosphate, lactic acid, or yellow 5 and yellow 6, all of which are ingredients in Kraft Mac and Cheese. And finally, if you're still in doubt about the food in question, refer to Rule 7: "Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce." My guess is an average third grader would have problems with sodium tripolyphosphate, also found in commercial mac and cheese.

So, now that I know Kraft Mac and Cheese is an edible, food-like substance, the alternative is to make my own, from scratch. One of the most common excuses people make for not eating better is that it's too time consuming and too complicated. But I was able to whip up this from dish in about 15 minutes, and it took ten minutes just to cook the pasta--the same amount of time that it would have taken to cook macaroni from the box. While this still isn't health food by any means, I do feel better about eating it, because I know exactly what's in it.

Scratch Mac

1 cup elbow macaroni
1/4 cup butter (preferably organic and from grass-fed cows)
2 T. flour
1 cup milk (preferably organic and from grass-fed cows)1 cup grated cheddar cheese (preferably organic and from grass-fed cows)
salt and pepper to taste

I cooked the pasta in a large pot of bowling water. While it cooked, I grated the cheddar cheese. When the macaroni was finished cooking, I drained it in a colander. Then, I melted the butter in the empty pot, and added the flour--forming a thick paste. I cooked it for a minute or two, over medium heat, stirring constantly, and then slowly whisked the milk in. Once the milk was incorporated, I cooked it until it thickened nicely, another couple of minutes. Then I dumped in the cheese, stirred it in until melted and added the drained pasta. A quick shake of salt and pepper and that's it. Easy!

(I also was inspired by the rosemary plant sitting on my kitchen table, and decided to add about a 1/2 t. of fresh, minced rosemary to the mac and cheese. It was delicious, but completely optional.)

The First Cadbury Egg

2010-02-22T15:22:00.000-05:00

Of all the seasonal candies, I think I love Cadbury's the best. Perhaps this is genetic because my mom and sister share my fanaticism. In fact, every year there's a sort of race to see who can procure the first Cadbury egg of the season. My sister, Holly beat me last year, but this year, on February 6th, I managed to score the first Creme Egg. Of course I text messaged Holly immediately, but she claimed she needed visual evidence. So here it is. (Last year, she sent me a photo of herself glee fully clutching the candy.)

Although Halloween is nice and all, it's ordinary. The same Snickers and Reese's is just scaled down into a "fun-size." As far as candy goes, I like to put my faith in the Easter bunny. There is nothing quite so extravagant as an Easter basket loaded with candy. A basket of nothing but candy versions of eggs would satisfy my cravings--jelly beans, malted milk balls, Cadbury Mini-Eggs, and Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Of all of these, though, Creme Eggs are the most alluring because of their textural contrast. The milk chocolate shell is smooth and rich but still thick enough to actually handle a good, solid bite. The fondant center is gooey without being runny but still luxuriously silky. It is a bit cloyingly sweet, but that's the whole point, I think, and it punctuates the depth of the chocolate. The only caveat I have about Creme Eggs is that you really do have to get them while they're fresh. Because they're only delicately wrapped in a thin layer of foil, if the integrity of the candy shell is in any way compromised, the fondant will dry out and will be hard, chewy and nearly chalk-like. So, I suppose when it comes down to it, that's why my mom, sister, and I are so desperate to get our hands on them.

What's your favorite seasonal candy?

'Drates

2010-02-05T15:22:00.001-05:00

There comes a point each winter when uncontrollably, and quite unapologetically, I crave carbohydrates. Last night I had a very seductive dream involving me and a bowl of Kraft mac and cheese. Somehow, this makes me seem weak-willed, as if I'm some addict strung out on mashed potatoes. Perhaps this guilt comes from the Atkin's diet craze. After nearly a decade, American culinary consciousness is still recovering from that time in history when a large percentage of the population pounded down steaks and bacon while shunning all breads and pastas. About this time, humorist Dave Barry, wrote a column about carbohydrates, entitled "Carbohydrates Pose Major Threat to Mankind." Barry describes carbs as if they were a highly illicit drug and coins the term 'drates, conveying the idea that we, do indeed need street slang for complex carbohydrates. My household ever since has called any form of starchy food a 'drate. I've even gone so far as to say, "I really need some 'drate-y 'drates" with the edgy desperation of a junkie.

So, before I run to the store for some boxed macaroni and cheese, I wanted to share with you the link to my latest essay published in Connotation Press, which is about another glorious form of 'drate, the homemade noodle. Handmaking noodles at home is not nearly as complicated as it sounds. In fact, I might whip up a side of noodles to eat with my mac and cheese. A 'drate junkie knows no limits.

Cloudy Days and Pimento Cheese

2010-01-24T20:56:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about light lately. Or more accurately the absence of light. It's been nine days now without a sunny day. I thought I'm lucky because I haven't plunged into a desperate gloom even though everything is gray. I thought I've been doing well to avoid the winter ick. I've been working out nearly everyday. I've been eating plenty of oranges. But sometimes, the winter ick gets a hold of me no matter what. Sometimes I just snap. Sometimes it's been cold and cloudy for days on end, and someone puts an empty bowl back into the fridge.

And sometimes I am enraged. You see, the empty bowl had contained bright, creamy, spicy pimento cheese. When it's bleak and rainy, well, a bit of orangey cheese and pimento dabbed on a cracker is quite nice.

Pimento, I know, sounds strange. It is a sort of retro-throwback. It reminds me of my father's longtime favorite lunchmeat: pickle and pimento loaf--a type of bologna studded with tiny flecks of pickles and pimentos or "p&p" as we affectionately called it. And, this pimento cheese spread, well it's really no different, something rather humble, but absolutely delisious and known to always hit the spot. Which is why, I suppose, it did not survive midnight snacking at my house.

I first had pimento cheese at Johnny's Cafe when I was waitress there. The chef used to make pimento cheese for wine tastings. It was a perfect compliment to the 70s style iceburg lettuce wedges with bleu cheese and the prime rib Johnny's is famous for. Of course, the chef would gussy up the pimento cheese by laying it on a bed of Bibb lettuce and serving it with crustinis. People loved it. They always wanted to know what was in it, but we were sworn to secrecy.

I had forgotten all about it until this December. Andrew Knowlton, the BA Foodist, recommended it to a reader as a economical crowd-pleasing canape, and he was spot on. Luckily, I attended a party this week in which the hostess was savvy enough to make pimento cheese from Knowlton's recipe.

Oh my goodness, I didn't realize how long it's been. I was so enamored with the delightful spread, my hostess even sent me home with the leftovers. (And we know how that worked out, so I'll stop now.) Anyway, I didn't stay angry long because this spread is a cinch to make. It's a quick mixture of shredded cheddar, mayo, and pimento. So, click on over to Bon Appetit and grab the recipe. Whip up a batch, and your day will feel sunnier even if the weather doesn't cooperate.

"Core Attachments" Regarding Soup

2010-01-15T18:07:00.003-05:00

I just finished reading Up in the Air to prepare for watching the film adaptation that just hit theaters. (Yes, I know that I'm a English Lit. geek through and through, and I have the student loans to prove it.) The book is good, but not great. To me, it seems like Walter Kirn is trying much too hard to channel Chuck Palaniuck. I'll probably still go see the movie because I did like the ever-so scathing criticism on the consumer-driven corporate world. Plus, what's not to like about George Clooney? While I think Kirn's best work to date is still Thumbsucker (which was also adapted for film), Up in the Air was still an enjoyable read.

What really struck me about the novel, though, was this short passage:

"The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible. Sally will not wear synthetics. That's who she is. Billy won't touch eggs. That's Billy for you. To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your "Core Attachments," means apologizing for your very existence" (Kirn 39).

While picky eaters drive me nuts, they are perhaps those in the food world that have the most "Core Attachments." Sometimes I have trouble understanding them. My "What do you mean you don't like kale? You just haven't had GOOD kale. Let me cook you some." approach has failed to work on Kent. I have lost the kale wars.

So, while it unnerves me to no end that he won't eat a vegetable I love, I do like the idea of having strong and potent virtues regarding what you eat and what you will not eat. Even though these "Core Attachments" are indefensible, they are still to be respected. No matter what I do to prepare kale, he will not like it. No matter how closely the kale tastes to brussel sprouts (which, by the way, he loves), he will not like it. Kent is attached to hating kale. It's taken a long time, but I respect that.

When you start learning a lot about your food, like how it was raised/grown, where it came from, what conditions the laborers work under, what damage it does to the environment and to your body, the list of "Core Attachments," the list of things you absolutely will not eat can grow rather quickly. For instance, my friend AMR, won't eat fast food anymore. After I saw this video clip on battery caged produced eggs, I resolved that I would never buy another factory-farmed egg. Shortly after, I got the Girls, and now I have all the fresh, safe, and humanely-produced eggs I can use.

Sometimes, I have simpler core attachments that manage to infiltrate my life almost without my noticing. For example, I realized that I have not bought a can of soup in 3 years. I LOVE soup, and this amorous desire is based on the fact that I enjoy making homemade soups and stocks from scratch. I can't go back to store-bought canned soup because for minimum effort, I can achieve a cheaper and higher quality soup than I can buy off the supermarket shelves. There's only one drawback: homemade soup does take some time. Not a lot, but none the less it takes more time than opening a can, except when you make miso soup.

This has been the first full week back in school, and I've been spending 12 hours or longer on campus at a stretch--which is great for productivity, but hell on home cooking. So, this afternoon, I needed something warm, quick, and healthy to cook. And, in a matter of minutes, I whipped up this soup.

Miso paste should be a staple in everyone's refrigerator because it has such a long shelf life and can add a salty-smoky-unami zing to all manner of soups, sauces, and spreads. There are all several styles/flavors of miso, from mildest to most intense they are: white, yellow, red, and brown. Feel free to use any miso paste for this soup. I'm partial though to the stronger red and brown varieties.

Better than Canned Miso Soup
(serves 1)

2 cups water
1 oz buckwheat soba noodles (they come with three bundles to a package, you'll want to use a scant half a bundle)
2 mushrooms, sliced (I used one cremini and one white button).
2 handfuls fresh spinach
2 t. red miso paste
1 green onion, sliced

Bring water to boil. Add noodles and mushrooms and cook for about 4 minutes, or until noodles are soft. Add spinach and cook for 30 seconds more. Remove from heat. Stir in miso until dissolved. Ladle into bowl and sprinkle with green onion.

Works Cited

Kirn, Walter. Up in the Air. New York: Random House, 2001.

What would you eat for your last meal?

2010-01-12T20:23:00.000-05:00

This semester, I've decided to teach 3 sections of College Composition II using a theme. That theme: Food. While we'll do lots of academic writing and research over the semester, for the first day ice-breaker I wanted to complete a fun prompt.

What would you eat for your last meal? Why?

While I haven't been through all the results yet (there are 75 of them after all), I am fascinated by the repeated themes. People choose their last meal based on memories and on relationships with other people. While the food is described in great detail, it becomes beside the point. Food, what we choose to put in our bodies, connects us to, quite literally everything. As a class we began brainstorming issues related to food and we came up with an impressive list:

politics
social class
popular culture
economics
art
identity
health care
religion
environmentalism
technology
agriculture
animal rights

just to name a few....

One thing I try to do throughout the semester is write along with my students. And, like my students, I was no exception to choosing a last meal based on memories of family. Here it is:

I would choose comfort food for my last meal and chicken and potatoes with gravy is comforting in a homey, rural way. I wan my last meal to go like this: it is summer. I am barefoot, but seated at the dinner table because we always sat down as a family at the dinner table.

The chicken is fried. Simply dredged in flour, salt and pepper and cooked in Wesson oil in my mom's beat up electric skillet. The lid of the electric skill is dinged and dented, and the original knob long gone. My dad replaced the broken knob with an empty thread spool. In this way, the skillet shows my family's values of resourcefulness and problem solving, and our talent at fixing things with our hands. After cooking, the meat falls in slivers from the bone and the skin would be crispy and brown, nearly caramelized in places. I eat the breast, which my mom always cut just to encompass the wishbone. I make a wish with my father, cracking the wishbone. One of us tries to cheat by chocking up to far on our half of the bone, but it doesn't matter because we would both wish for the same thing.

There are potatoes, too. Boiled not mashed. My dad preferred them boiled--so that's the way my mom always made them, even though my sister and I liked mashed. Now, I realize that the boiled potato is superior. It is more flavorful. It is unadulterated, so the potato tastes faintly of earth from which it came. Also, the boiled potato allows for maximum gravy absorption. I press firmly on the potato with the back of my fork until it gives way in moist crumbles, and the tine marks leave a solid imprint--then I dump as much white country gravy over it as it could bear. Crisp chicken-skin cracklings stud the gravy, and it's dotted with lots of black pepper.

The meal is rounded out with fat slices of juicy beefsteak tomatoes, plucked from the vine only moments before hitting the table. Sprinkled with only a bit of salt and pepper, these tomatoes are a flavorful dance of acid, sweet, a textural tango of toothy skin and seeds and pure juicy flesh. I might eat sweet corn, too. The ear inundated with butter--butter shoved into every crack and crevice between each kernel.

When I think about why it has to be this meal, ultimately it's because its this meal that defines us as a family, and therefore defines who I am. This was years before I realized there was anything wrong with my parents' marriage. Years before I thought about us as "country folk." This is a meal that sets us in a time, in a place. The food was ours. Homegrown. Together we raised and butchered the chicken. Together we planted and watered and weeded the garden. I would want this to be my last meal because it reminds me of simplicity and innocence. It brings me back to a time when the dinner table was a safe haven. These meal that my mother prepared, nearly unchanged, for years became the basis of my food philosophy long before the term locavore was coined. The idea of knowing where your food comes from and preparing it from scratch have stayed with me all these years, so that's part of it too. But, finally, this meal is a communion between my body, the food, and the people I share it with.

So now I want to hear from you. What would you eat for your last meal? Why?

To a Messy, Imperfect, and Hopeful New Year

2010-01-05T20:01:00.005-05:00

For this year, I have decided to be okay with failure, with imperfection, and with a sink full of dirty dishes. But, I will never be okay with giving up on living a passionate, inspired life. I will not stop working to live the life that I want.

I've been in New Year purgatory, that space between New Year's and the beginning of the spring semester this week. It's an odd place, both exhilarating for its newness and exasperating for the pressure to live up to a new year's worth of expectations. This week is a space to wax nostalgic and indulge in my favorite weakness--reminiscing about "the good old days."

But, as I reflect 2009, I begin to find a theme: perfectionism is getting in the way of my life. So for 2010, there is no list of resolutions, no "I will be betters," no promises. Another thing I realized during all my holiday travels and visits with family and old friends, is that I am truly happy with who I am and where I'm at with my life right now. This is huge.

It's taken me a long time to be happy in Ohio. For the first year I was here, I had these incredibly sad, longing-filled dreams in which I yearned to be back in Omaha. I would dream the details of the apartments I left behind, the slant of sunlight from the kitchen window, the lime green painted living room, the backyard where I planted my first garden.

Over Christmas it was great to be back in Omaha, but it also made me realize that even if I did want to move back, I wouldn't quite fit anymore. In fact, I felt like a walking ghost. The term "old haunts" rang true. My nostalgic ache vanished, and realized I am content.

I'm content even if my 2009 Food Resolutions didn't pan out like I hoped. Here they are:

1. Make my own ricotta and mozzarella cheese. (And hopefully taste raw milk for the first time.)
Sort of. I made ricotta, and I tasted raw goat milk for the first time, but I never got around to ordering the rennet to make mozzarella cheese.

2. Make homemade sesame seed bagels.
Nope.

3. Learn to can tomatoes from my garden.

Yes!

4. Make dandelion wine and Lemoncello.
Sort of. I made dandelion wine, and it was a disaster. I used balloons for the off-gassing of the fermentation process and the wine ended up tasting like latex. Yes, the finish of my dandelion wine was condom-flavored. After that I didn't risk Lemoncello.

5. Cure my own corned beef.
Nope. I found a recipe from Martha Stewart, but ultimately it was too pricey for my budget when I wanted to try it in March for St. Patty's day.

6. Cook and eat beef tongue.
Not yet. Stay posted! I got a frozen beef tongue as a Christmas present!

7. Make pirogi.
Nope.

8. Make coffee can ice cream.
Sort of. After finding a cheap electric ice cream maker at a yard sale, I've never looked back. Salted caramel ice cream was the best result so far!

9. Make Baked Alaska and other frivolously retro desserts.
Nope.

10. Make something with dried lavender flowers.
Yes. Made a lavender vinaigrette to serve with a goat cheese and candied pecan salad.

Here's hoping that you are content where you are now in your life. I also hope you're thrilled with all the possibility the next twelve months hold.

The Chard is Dead, but Bugs Bunny Envies Me

2009-12-05T20:47:00.005-05:00

It is winter...finally.

This morning when I let the chickens out of their coop, there were slivers of ice cracking across the surface of their water. Next, I went to check the garden. I knew the gang busting run that my Swiss Chard had this year had to come to an end. The leaves had a pleather texture. Frost killed. This did not, of course, deter the chickens from eating the frozen, stiff leaves. In fact, if their reaction was any indication, this might be the chicken equivalent of gelato.

The kale, like the chard, seemed similarly synthetic in texture. The Red Squire Kale has all but given up its ghost. Later this morning, I took kitchen shears and my bright red vegetable colander to harvest the last bit of lacinato kale. It had snow puddling in its dimples. I wasn't sure if it was salvageable or not. Happily, it revived in the kitchen, and was quickly dispatched in a pan of hot butter and olive oil. I ate a big plate of kale for lunch AND for dinner. I'm telling you, a girl's craving iron. If you like kale, you'll have to try it the way Molly Wizenburg suggests in this Bon Appetit article. Saute on high heat, finish with salt and lemon. That's it.

I also dug my entire carrot harvest, over 5 lbs. Since they seemed small earlier in the season (although they ARE Danver's Half-Long), and since I've heard that carrots get sweeter after a frost, I've waited for as long as possible to harvest them. It's true. Carrots do, indeed, get sweeter with a frost. They were practically carrot candy sticks. The entire time I was digging carrots in the snow (just flurries, but still). I kept thinking of Bugs Bunny. But, I suppose now I can understand his addiction.

This carrots were gorgeous. Luminescent even. Their smell was intoxicating. Bear with me here, but really fresh carrots smell like earth and soap. Yes, soap. Their aroma is deliciously clean, like crisp sheets that have been dried on a clothesline.

I blanched and froze most of the carrots. That was my big afternoon project today. I suppose most of them will be made into soup. I seem to have an addiction to soup that rivals Bugs's addiction to carrots.

But, I'm open to suggestions. What would you do with 17 cups of carrots in your freezer?

Autumn Means Soup

2009-11-18T19:55:00.004-05:00

I went to several workshop discussions at Winter Wheat. The most amazing, though, was a poetry-based writing workshop which explored visual imagery as a prompt for writing. During part of the workshop, the facilitators handed out abstract black and white images. I loved how my subconscious was drawn to create meaning from meaningless black and white swirls. The image I fixated on was a circle. It reminded me of our dented, beat-up tea pot or a deep pot of soup. During the writing, here's roughly what I wrote based on an abstract image:

I tell him, "It's soup season."

He says, "There's a soup season?" a bit startled like he was unaware that we were supposed to celebrate a national holiday.

I put the garden to bed in November, poke little thumb-shaped nubbins of garlic into the deep, brown earth. It smells like moldy leaves, and the sun glows with a peculiar slant. I wonder, where do the earthworms go in December when the earth is hard like stone?

I take the teapot out of the cupboard. Like so many of our kitchen things, it has outlived it's original owner, but the stainless steel reflects us. In January, as the trees get brittle and grayer than the sky, my life feels narrow. I make Chamomile tea every night. I stare into the tea pot's chrome, the shiny glare, and try to imagine a world outside this bleakness. Beyond us. Beyond this kitchen with the stained, green striped dish towel. The kitchen is sunny, but cold. Crystals of ice like trapped, lost snowflakes coat the windowpanes. The tea kettle is an orb, a globe. It contains warm, rotund comfort.

As winter approaches, I find myself drawn to soup and tea. Liquid warmth that my very pores can soak up. Soon I'll tell you about all the fabulous soups I've been subsisting off of these past few weeks. But you tell me, what foods do you crave when it gets cold?

Pawpaw Adventure Part Three: Pawpaw Faux Pas

2009-11-17T20:32:00.004-05:00

In theory, community cookbooks are a brilliant concept. Community groups, like the Ladies’ Auxiliary, the St. Francis Catholic Church, the Helping Hands 4-H club are all respectable groups that sometimes need to raise money. To raise funds, they just might compile a spiral bound cookbook for resale.

At its best, a community cookbooks is a contest of one-up-manship. Betty’s brownies are better than Mavis’s. But, man can Mavis bake a mean muffin. For years, my go-to cookbook for any baked good was the local 4-H club’s cookbook. Its cover was yellowed, and the green comb-tooth binding had a bit of a jack-o-lantern look from missing teeth, and the pages were splattered with batter stains, grease, and residual powdered sugar. That, my friend, is the sign of a good cookbook. A rare find indeed. Dozens of cookbooks later, I have Grandma B to thank for this wisdom.

Grandma B had a cookbook buying habit. This habit was fed solely by Morrispress Cookbooks. Morrispress is the country’s largest publisher of community cookbooks. Their corporate headquarters are in Kearney, Nebraska, a 45 minute drive from where my grandmother lived. Anytime any sort of significant shopping needed to be done, my grandparents drove to Kearney. It also just so happens that Morrispress has a discount show room that sells remainder copies of community cookbooks. Coincidently, this cookbook show room also happens to be next door to Cabela’s Outdoor Outfitters. So, grandpa would drop grandma and me off at the cookbook store, while he shopped for hunting gear. This was dangerous.

Sure, the {insert ridiculous club name here} cookbook was only $2.00! But, the thing is, without any connection to the community or the people who wrote the cookbook, you were usually left with a book of sub-par, plebian recipes. It was hit or miss. Cooking through amateur cookbooks like these was a veritable landmine of fallen cakes and dry cookies.

Still, I have a soft spot for these cookbooks, perhaps because the first cookbook I ever owned was a three-ring bound United Methodist’s Women’s Club cookbook, straight from Morrispress, compliments of my grandmother.

So, when I Dave Reese of Kaleidoscope Farms, handed me a spiral bound copy of the Pawpaw Grower’s Association Cookbook, it had all the appeal of a Morrispress cookbook. But, instead of being judiciously cautious, I dove headlong, quickly agonizing over which of the pawpaw bread recipes I should make. There were 4 of them, named simply Pawpaw Bread One, Pawpaw Bread Two, and so on. The Pawpaw Buckwheat Bread recipe called to me. Pawpaws united with a bag of local, stone ground buckwheat flour, and eggs from Franny and Zooey, would be a true testament to the grand heights of localvorism I sought.

Instead, I baked three brown loaves that smelled like burnt fruit loops and tasted even worse. When I tried to feed the loaves to the Franny and Zooey (and Kent’s chicken Scrambly) they only looked at me out of the corner of their eyes with distrust, as if I were trying to poison them. I knew when my chickens, those garbage disposals covered in feathers, who eat out rotten produce out of the compost heap wouldn’t touch it that I had failed.

I was bitterly disappointed.

In my excitement, I forgot discretion and a critical eye. I should have know that a bread made with 100% buckwheat would not rise well or be light enough for the flavor of pawpaws to shine through. I was more angry at myself than the Pawpaw Grower’s Association Cookbook. I knew the risks involved when cooking from community cookbooks, but I was reckless anyway. And after two or three days stewing over my failure I realized one of my favorite things about cooking is that, as Judith Jones wrote, “Food has the tact to disappear, leaving room and opportunity for masterpieces to come. The mistakes don't hang on the walls or stand on shelves to reproach you forever.”

So somewhere in my compost pile are three loaves of pawpaw buckwheat bread quietly becoming worm food.

Winter Wheat Festival

2009-11-15T10:40:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I was part of a panel presentation discussing food writing with Amanda and Karen. It was exciting to meet other writers who were interested in writing about food, and it was also enjoyable to create a brief moment of community over shared food.

Part of our presentation included a writing prompt based on food we shared. The menu included:

Homemade Ricotta Cheese with Fresh Thyme
served on Garlic Crostini or Baguette

Zucchini Bread

Marscarpone served on Crackers
with Tomato Preserves or Love Apple Jelly

Roasted Red Squire Kale Chips

Local, Organic Apples, Assorted Varieties

So, I'm really curious. If you attended our panel, what inspired you? Did you discover anything by writing about these foods?

Please share your writing exercise by commenting on this post. I can't wait to read it!

Bone Marrow--"Light of my life, fire of my loins."

2009-10-09T22:39:00.005-04:00

For fall break Kent and I went to Cleveland solely to eat. First and foremost, we wanted to eat at Micheal Symon's Lolita. Our expectations were high, and after rereading Micheal Ruhlman's write up of Symon in "The Soul of a Chef," I was ready to visit a place I'd only read about in a book before.*

I believe that a truly incredible restaurant experience should expose you to something new and inspiring. You might also say it should be innovative. Of course Revolver delivered that with the pawpaw creme brulee. And when I went to Lolita tonight, there was also a revelation, in the form of Bone Marrow.

The first thing to remember when going to a restaurant, is that you must know how to order correctly. For me, ordering correctly involves being slightly daring, but also knowing what fits my mood. Luckily, I ordered well. I was torn between two appetizers: the fried chicken livers with oyster mushrooms and polenta, or the bone marrow with grilled baguette.

Usually in these situations, it is wise to defer to the server. As a former server, I know that I was always honest with guests, and that I developed a good palate because of the exposure to new dishes I had at the restaurants I worked at. My server, who was impeccable by the way, was ecstatic about the bone marrow when I asked. Sure, I've had sauces infused with bone marrow. It's a classic French technique, one that Julia Child herself was proud of. But to have it served straight, when it's known mostly for it's gelatinous qualities, intrigued me.

In this particular presentation my server explained to me, the bone marrow was served in the bone, split. The marrow is to be eaten "like tapanade" but without the olives. So, I ordered it.

Another part of ordering well, is rationalizing against the dishes you don't order. I began stacking up the cons list for the chicken livers. First, one of the only decent dishes Easy Street restaurant back home in Bowling Green makes is fried chicken livers. I order it all the time, so I supposed I could forgo livers this time. Plus, I need to make chicken livers for Amanda soon to make up for the chicken feet disappointment.

The bone marrow was delightful. Marrow is incredibly rich and really fatty. It's also sort of sludgy and gray. Like I told Kent, the secret of a good chef is finding a way to make pure unadulterated fat palatable. Think pork belly, think duck confit, absorbing impossible amounts of fat as it poaches. Or now, think of bone marrow.

It arrived at the table as promised, an eight inch long bone, split in half. The marrow was sprinkled lightly with a salsa verde: a mixture of poblano chilis, green onions, cilantro, and tomatillos. The result was a dish that was carnal, and as barbaric as digging marrow from the bone can be, but also refined, by digging it out with a demitasse spoon. The salsa verde, with its bright acids balanced and rounded the richness of the marrow, and the baguette, scored with black grill marks, and which was slavered with olive oil and rubbed down with garlic, lent a spicy smokiness to the dish as well. As a garnish, slices of sweet pickled onion further played with the slight spiciness of the salsa verde. It was bone sucking good.

* "The Soul of a Chef" is the best place to read about old school Symon. This was back before Lola, Symon's first restaurant, moved downtown, and Lolita took its place. So, technically they're not the same restauarant, but Lolita today is closer to the Lola that Rhulman writes about.