We've been out driving looking at lights (to a chorus of Entropy Girl's "oh, wow! wow!"), the kids have been bathed and tucked into their new Christmas PJs (reindeer for the Boy Wonder, snowglobes for Entropy Girl), the Night Before Christmas has been read and the babes are snuggled into their beds after one last check of the Norad Santa tracking radar. As I type this I am nibbling on a carrot trying to make the best reindeer-esque teethmarks I can and being sure to leave as many crumbs as respectable on the cookie plate. The stockings are filled, the presents wrapped and piled precariously below the tree, leaving ample room for train tracks and one slightly too curious cat.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
I don't think I ever told you about the Worst Dinner I Ever Made. No, really, it was. Even Brainiac, who has endless tolerance for the worst of my offerings, shudders when he remembers.
It went like this: We were living in Binghamton, New York during the crazy and extreme winter of 1994/95, an unhappy situation. I was out of work and spent entire days dreaming up dinner menus and shopping for the supplies to prepare them at my first-ever Wegmans (a relationship that has since become an obsession). Anyway, on this particular day I had a raging head cold and decided that I would make a chicken soup the recipe for which I had come across in one or another of the many magazines I read. What's better for a cold than chicken soup, right? It's practically canon.
I had a chicken with which I could made a delicious savory broth, and I also ample supplies of carrots, chick peas, rotini, paprika and dried thyme - the remainder of the princple ingredients. And so I set about making broth and then the soup. I even cooked the rotini separately so that it would not become mushy and gummy in the soup while I was waiting Brainiac's return. So I cooked and tasted, cooked and tasted, producing the most wonderful, succulent, herb-scented chicken soup one could ever desire.
Brainiac ate precisely two spoons-ful, earning an evening's worth of my wrath. Why, I stood over that stove All. DAMNED. DAY. Was he not grateful? It's 10 degrees outside, any other man would be thrilled to come home to...blah blah, it wasn't pretty. I ate three bowls of soup just to show him.
Several days later I was casting about for lunch and came upon the leftover. Yum! I heated it up and sat down with a book to enjoy the remainder of my masterpiece.
You know the punchline, right? It was utterly inedible. In the haze of congestion and cold medications I used waaaaaaaay too much thyme and waaaaay too much salt and waaaaay too much paprika. Of course Brainiac couldn't possibly have eaten it, the soup was totally nauseating. And the poor dear didn't even tell me.
Yesterday I felt the beginnings of a cold that, so far at least, is promising to be a doozy. Ever mindful of the Lesson of the Chicken Soup, I very cautiously prepared tonight's dinner, a variation on coq au vin purportedly derived from the recipe that the Sainted Julia herself once used. Luckily, the dish doesn't call for too much ancillary seasoning, it's pretty much brown the meat, dump the stuff, simmer. Foolproof, even through a Nyquil mist.
Start by cooking about 1/2 cup diced bacon in a wide-bottomed stockpot (Julia's recipe called for lardons, something described as boiled bacon - but I am not Julia, nor Julie Powell, for that matter, and I say to heck with it). Remove the browned bacon, leaving the fat in the pan. Brown four good-sized chicken thighs and a couple legs (I removed the skin from the thighs)in the bacon fat. When nicely browned on all sides, season and add a cup of diced onion, cook until onions are translucent. Sprinkle the onions and chicken parts with two to three tablespoons of flour, stirring and turning the chicken so that the flour is distributed throughout. Remove the pan from heat and add 1/2 a cup of any non-sweet red wine you happen to have lying around, a cup or so of beef broth, two tablespoons of tomato paste and the cooked bacon. Cover and gently simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes.
We ate this wonderful, warming dish with egg noodles to sop up the extra gravy and steamed broccoli. Brainiac, rightfully suspicious of anything I cook while sick with a cold, ate two helpings.
It went like this: We were living in Binghamton, New York during the crazy and extreme winter of 1994/95, an unhappy situation. I was out of work and spent entire days dreaming up dinner menus and shopping for the supplies to prepare them at my first-ever Wegmans (a relationship that has since become an obsession). Anyway, on this particular day I had a raging head cold and decided that I would make a chicken soup the recipe for which I had come across in one or another of the many magazines I read. What's better for a cold than chicken soup, right? It's practically canon.
I had a chicken with which I could made a delicious savory broth, and I also ample supplies of carrots, chick peas, rotini, paprika and dried thyme - the remainder of the princple ingredients. And so I set about making broth and then the soup. I even cooked the rotini separately so that it would not become mushy and gummy in the soup while I was waiting Brainiac's return. So I cooked and tasted, cooked and tasted, producing the most wonderful, succulent, herb-scented chicken soup one could ever desire.
Brainiac ate precisely two spoons-ful, earning an evening's worth of my wrath. Why, I stood over that stove All. DAMNED. DAY. Was he not grateful? It's 10 degrees outside, any other man would be thrilled to come home to...blah blah, it wasn't pretty. I ate three bowls of soup just to show him.
Several days later I was casting about for lunch and came upon the leftover. Yum! I heated it up and sat down with a book to enjoy the remainder of my masterpiece.
You know the punchline, right? It was utterly inedible. In the haze of congestion and cold medications I used waaaaaaaay too much thyme and waaaaay too much salt and waaaaay too much paprika. Of course Brainiac couldn't possibly have eaten it, the soup was totally nauseating. And the poor dear didn't even tell me.
Yesterday I felt the beginnings of a cold that, so far at least, is promising to be a doozy. Ever mindful of the Lesson of the Chicken Soup, I very cautiously prepared tonight's dinner, a variation on coq au vin purportedly derived from the recipe that the Sainted Julia herself once used. Luckily, the dish doesn't call for too much ancillary seasoning, it's pretty much brown the meat, dump the stuff, simmer. Foolproof, even through a Nyquil mist.
Start by cooking about 1/2 cup diced bacon in a wide-bottomed stockpot (Julia's recipe called for lardons, something described as boiled bacon - but I am not Julia, nor Julie Powell, for that matter, and I say to heck with it). Remove the browned bacon, leaving the fat in the pan. Brown four good-sized chicken thighs and a couple legs (I removed the skin from the thighs)in the bacon fat. When nicely browned on all sides, season and add a cup of diced onion, cook until onions are translucent. Sprinkle the onions and chicken parts with two to three tablespoons of flour, stirring and turning the chicken so that the flour is distributed throughout. Remove the pan from heat and add 1/2 a cup of any non-sweet red wine you happen to have lying around, a cup or so of beef broth, two tablespoons of tomato paste and the cooked bacon. Cover and gently simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes.
We ate this wonderful, warming dish with egg noodles to sop up the extra gravy and steamed broccoli. Brainiac, rightfully suspicious of anything I cook while sick with a cold, ate two helpings.
This year's Christmas cookie round-up:
1) Toba Garrett's Butter Cookies in heart and star shapes, decorated liberally with green and red sugar sprinkles, cinnamon red hots and non-pareils.
2) Gingerbread from Christmas Baking with SusieJ. This year, for the first time ever in my cookie baking career, gingerbread cookies will take the shape of actual gingerbread men. I bought a great copper cutter from World Market, prompting Brainiac to demand to know if cookie cutters "always cost this much." Men.
3) Holly Cookies, because no holiday is complete without at least a little marshmallow.
4) Pizelles, the anise kind, although without seeds. Maybe some chocolate, too.
5) Chocolate chip, from the back of the package and with a little Da Vinci Hazelnut syrup.
6) Thumbprints, with candied cherries - the old version.
7) Chocolate Crinkles, because they're festive, fun and easy.
These are the cookies that say "Christmas" to me, the absence of which I'd miss. Sure, if supplied with endless free time I might delve into marzipan (which I adore), tea cakes, or even those peanut butter cookies garnished with chocolate kisses. For now, though, this is enough. My house smells wonderful, my counters are a mess, my sweater is covered in flour and I am happy.
1) Toba Garrett's Butter Cookies in heart and star shapes, decorated liberally with green and red sugar sprinkles, cinnamon red hots and non-pareils.
2) Gingerbread from Christmas Baking with SusieJ. This year, for the first time ever in my cookie baking career, gingerbread cookies will take the shape of actual gingerbread men. I bought a great copper cutter from World Market, prompting Brainiac to demand to know if cookie cutters "always cost this much." Men.
3) Holly Cookies, because no holiday is complete without at least a little marshmallow.
4) Pizelles, the anise kind, although without seeds. Maybe some chocolate, too.
5) Chocolate chip, from the back of the package and with a little Da Vinci Hazelnut syrup.
6) Thumbprints, with candied cherries - the old version.
7) Chocolate Crinkles, because they're festive, fun and easy.
These are the cookies that say "Christmas" to me, the absence of which I'd miss. Sure, if supplied with endless free time I might delve into marzipan (which I adore), tea cakes, or even those peanut butter cookies garnished with chocolate kisses. For now, though, this is enough. My house smells wonderful, my counters are a mess, my sweater is covered in flour and I am happy.
We're at The Other House preparing to leave earlier than expected for Charlottesville - there's an ice storm in the making, apparently, replacing the snow for which we had planned. We're spending the holiday in Virginia because the Boy Wonder has been terribly concerned that Santa won't be able to find us because it's too close to Christmas to be in a new house. Seeing his point completely, we've planned a pre-Christmas week of parties, gingerbread house decorating, cookie baking and carol singing.
I am all kinds of happy because for the first time in months I feel like everything is under control. There was an excellent meeting this morning which brought potentially very good news for the project I'm working on (and enjoying tremendously), work on The Other House is actually progressing much smoother than I had initially thought and my Christmas packages have been mailed. What more can a girl ask for?
So let the ice come. This time tomorrow there'll be a fire burning and I'll be curled up with the cat at my side, tea in hand and reading white papers and drawing process maps while the kids cut snowflakes out of printer paper. Not quite Norman Rockwellian, perhaps, but close enough for me.
I am all kinds of happy because for the first time in months I feel like everything is under control. There was an excellent meeting this morning which brought potentially very good news for the project I'm working on (and enjoying tremendously), work on The Other House is actually progressing much smoother than I had initially thought and my Christmas packages have been mailed. What more can a girl ask for?
So let the ice come. This time tomorrow there'll be a fire burning and I'll be curled up with the cat at my side, tea in hand and reading white papers and drawing process maps while the kids cut snowflakes out of printer paper. Not quite Norman Rockwellian, perhaps, but close enough for me.
Harrowing.
It's the only word that comes close to describing the past six days or so. True, none of us has been lastingly harmed and no blood was shed so perhaps you think me a tad dramatic. No, I say. Any week that involves two children alternating barfy episodes for the entire length of a 250 mile drive (the last of which I marked by pointing out to Braniac, "We're close enough to home that the wet clothes shouldn't be too bad for her and there's no point in changing her again since the car seat is thoroughly soaked in...whatever that is. Just drive.") AND a second 500 mile round trip, rendered pointless by a 6 inch snowfall that was repeatedly and erroneously in my opinion described as a "snow storm" but which canceled the meeting for which I had specifically made the trip AND getting stuck in said snow after the nice man who farms the 50 acres adjacent to what we're now calling "The Other House" plowed the 800-foot drive thereby covering the car with what might have been the entire snowy contents of said drive AND getting sick on the drive back from the second trip with whatever it was that the kids had AND promising and unpromising a friend that I'd babysit for her AND realizing that the guy who is coordinating work on The Other House has ideas about home repair and renovation that depart quite significantly from my own (one word: pressboard), well, I think it could be rightly called harrowing.
There was one quite amusing incident from the first trip that I've been so dying to share. I hope I tell it right, because Brainiac and I cracked each other up referencing the experience for the entire weekend. Really, just too funny. Anyway, we were at Ikea because, as I've mentioned, it's the law to check in with them when moving anywhere within hauling distance. And we're going through obediently following the big blue arrows on the floors and we keep seeing this same man - tall, bald, frowing with a deep furrow between the eyes - who's look of consternation is so encompassing, so total that it's nearly impossible to not notice that this is a man who does not like what he sees. Not at all. At one point, he stood in one of those faux kitchens and sighed, loudly and repeatedly. A fellow shopped asked if he needed any help.
"Any help? Any help?," he bellowed, "Why on earth would you think I need help?" Sir, all 30,000 of us here in the store think you need help, but whatever. We shop on. Finally, at the end of the route and just about heading into the little bistro area Angry Man corrals an Ikea employee and very enthusiastically begins telling him what's wrong with the whole place, "Young man, what kind of store is this? Why is there no inventory? You only have one of every item? How am I to buy anything?" As the hapless clerk struggles to answer Angry Man continues, "And another thing, why are there so few clerks? And why are these pencils so small? I don't understand the names of all the products - why not have names that make sense to your customers? What's this Ukbar?" and on and on. A crowd began to gather - Angry Man was really quite a spectacle - more or less stupefied by his rant. Angry Man finally took a breath and in that split second of time, one of the crowd managed to get a single word in:
"Newbie."
You can't imagine the mirth. The very idea of someone showing up at Ikea and so completely not getting the...I don't know, business model or something and becoming so utterly flustered by it. Well, maybe you had to be there.
It's the only word that comes close to describing the past six days or so. True, none of us has been lastingly harmed and no blood was shed so perhaps you think me a tad dramatic. No, I say. Any week that involves two children alternating barfy episodes for the entire length of a 250 mile drive (the last of which I marked by pointing out to Braniac, "We're close enough to home that the wet clothes shouldn't be too bad for her and there's no point in changing her again since the car seat is thoroughly soaked in...whatever that is. Just drive.") AND a second 500 mile round trip, rendered pointless by a 6 inch snowfall that was repeatedly and erroneously in my opinion described as a "snow storm" but which canceled the meeting for which I had specifically made the trip AND getting stuck in said snow after the nice man who farms the 50 acres adjacent to what we're now calling "The Other House" plowed the 800-foot drive thereby covering the car with what might have been the entire snowy contents of said drive AND getting sick on the drive back from the second trip with whatever it was that the kids had AND promising and unpromising a friend that I'd babysit for her AND realizing that the guy who is coordinating work on The Other House has ideas about home repair and renovation that depart quite significantly from my own (one word: pressboard), well, I think it could be rightly called harrowing.
There was one quite amusing incident from the first trip that I've been so dying to share. I hope I tell it right, because Brainiac and I cracked each other up referencing the experience for the entire weekend. Really, just too funny. Anyway, we were at Ikea because, as I've mentioned, it's the law to check in with them when moving anywhere within hauling distance. And we're going through obediently following the big blue arrows on the floors and we keep seeing this same man - tall, bald, frowing with a deep furrow between the eyes - who's look of consternation is so encompassing, so total that it's nearly impossible to not notice that this is a man who does not like what he sees. Not at all. At one point, he stood in one of those faux kitchens and sighed, loudly and repeatedly. A fellow shopped asked if he needed any help.
"Any help? Any help?," he bellowed, "Why on earth would you think I need help?" Sir, all 30,000 of us here in the store think you need help, but whatever. We shop on. Finally, at the end of the route and just about heading into the little bistro area Angry Man corrals an Ikea employee and very enthusiastically begins telling him what's wrong with the whole place, "Young man, what kind of store is this? Why is there no inventory? You only have one of every item? How am I to buy anything?" As the hapless clerk struggles to answer Angry Man continues, "And another thing, why are there so few clerks? And why are these pencils so small? I don't understand the names of all the products - why not have names that make sense to your customers? What's this Ukbar?" and on and on. A crowd began to gather - Angry Man was really quite a spectacle - more or less stupefied by his rant. Angry Man finally took a breath and in that split second of time, one of the crowd managed to get a single word in:
"Newbie."
You can't imagine the mirth. The very idea of someone showing up at Ikea and so completely not getting the...I don't know, business model or something and becoming so utterly flustered by it. Well, maybe you had to be there.
I am exceedingly happy to report that Thing 1 (organizing my latest contract) and Thing 2 (finding a place to live in the Philly 'burbs) have, by all appearances, been tied up. This leaves, of course, Things 3 through 7 to be dealt with and forthis reason there is very little stress reduction being experienced by yours truly but, well, progress is progress, right?
So it appears that the Hot Water Bath family is relocating - for the sixth time in 13 years - back to the Philadelphia area. Brainiac is in the final lap ("You're graduating soon, right honey? Right? RIGHT?!") of his program here but I need to start work before he'll be ready to move so we're going to be back-and-forthing it for, I dunno, four to six weeks or so. Piece of cake.
The house we've rented is owned by a township and is located in the midst of 76 acres of farmland that the town has found itself managing and trying to turn into a park. In the meantime the parks office has this house, now nestled around these 200 year old barns and brand new community garden plots, which it's restoring and leasing. Enter us. I'm heading up this week to pick up keys, do the basic clean up and get a few necessities in place to make future runs more comfortable. Oh, and of course we'll hit Ikea because it's the law to do so when one moves to within 30 miles of one of the blue and yellow motherships.
So. There we have it. I'm super excited about setting up a new kitchen. I've been very disatisfied with my current cooking space and although the new kitchen is somewhat under-equipped to be sure in terms of outlets and cabinetry, it's a blank slate in terms of what can be done. Basically a large square room with a sink and range on one wall and a fridge on another and a (possibly) working fireplace on a third, the kitchen is certainly spare and altogether an exciting proposition. I've been doing googling "freestanding kitchen furniture" and finding any number of European outlets where this kind of thing is much more common, but not much more than bakers' racks here in the US. No problem, just more thrill to the hunt, right?
On the canning front, I may have to carve some time out to dust off the kettle sooner than I expected. The Boy Wonder is reminding me with mind exploding frequency ("Sweetpea, don't nag me so, I know!") that we're out of mango jam and he is also expressing an interest in not only having access to some pineapple jam but..wait for it...helping me make it. That's right, the Boy Wonder wants to try his hand at canning. Sigh. If that's not a warming thought on a blustery fall day I don't know what is.
So it appears that the Hot Water Bath family is relocating - for the sixth time in 13 years - back to the Philadelphia area. Brainiac is in the final lap ("You're graduating soon, right honey? Right? RIGHT?!") of his program here but I need to start work before he'll be ready to move so we're going to be back-and-forthing it for, I dunno, four to six weeks or so. Piece of cake.
The house we've rented is owned by a township and is located in the midst of 76 acres of farmland that the town has found itself managing and trying to turn into a park. In the meantime the parks office has this house, now nestled around these 200 year old barns and brand new community garden plots, which it's restoring and leasing. Enter us. I'm heading up this week to pick up keys, do the basic clean up and get a few necessities in place to make future runs more comfortable. Oh, and of course we'll hit Ikea because it's the law to do so when one moves to within 30 miles of one of the blue and yellow motherships.
So. There we have it. I'm super excited about setting up a new kitchen. I've been very disatisfied with my current cooking space and although the new kitchen is somewhat under-equipped to be sure in terms of outlets and cabinetry, it's a blank slate in terms of what can be done. Basically a large square room with a sink and range on one wall and a fridge on another and a (possibly) working fireplace on a third, the kitchen is certainly spare and altogether an exciting proposition. I've been doing googling "freestanding kitchen furniture" and finding any number of European outlets where this kind of thing is much more common, but not much more than bakers' racks here in the US. No problem, just more thrill to the hunt, right?
On the canning front, I may have to carve some time out to dust off the kettle sooner than I expected. The Boy Wonder is reminding me with mind exploding frequency ("Sweetpea, don't nag me so, I know!") that we're out of mango jam and he is also expressing an interest in not only having access to some pineapple jam but..wait for it...helping me make it. That's right, the Boy Wonder wants to try his hand at canning. Sigh. If that's not a warming thought on a blustery fall day I don't know what is.
It's the annual Hot Water Bath Self-Serving Plug Fest!
For delicious cranberry chutney that will satisfy everyone but the most die-hard commercial jelly fan, click here.
For chocolate sauce to enhance any number of delicious holiday desserts, click here.
If you're wondering what to do with all that pumpkin puree you either bought or made, click here.
None of these recipes must be canned. The pumpkin butter does well with a little mellowing but will still be delicious eaten right out of the pan on the day it's made. Even better, none of the recipes is cast-in-stone in terms of amounts or even ratios so don't be afraid to just make enough to last a week or so, being sure to keep covered bowls or jars refrigerated. If you've got the time for canning, though, nothing beats facing the coming winter with a shelf full of delicious and festive condiments.
For delicious cranberry chutney that will satisfy everyone but the most die-hard commercial jelly fan, click here.
For chocolate sauce to enhance any number of delicious holiday desserts, click here.
If you're wondering what to do with all that pumpkin puree you either bought or made, click here.
None of these recipes must be canned. The pumpkin butter does well with a little mellowing but will still be delicious eaten right out of the pan on the day it's made. Even better, none of the recipes is cast-in-stone in terms of amounts or even ratios so don't be afraid to just make enough to last a week or so, being sure to keep covered bowls or jars refrigerated. If you've got the time for canning, though, nothing beats facing the coming winter with a shelf full of delicious and festive condiments.
This is also the time of year when I direct any sane person who will listen to Susie J's Christmas Baking. If you try nothing else, make the gingerbread cookies. Hands down, it's the single best gingerbread recipe I have ever made. Oh, and make the mokka. There really are not words for the mokka, it must be tried to be believed. Christmas Baking is nothing short of a public service and I can't speak highly enough of either it or it's founder (hi Sue!).
I know I've written about her before - Sue is a college friend. I knew her and I knew the man who would become her husband, and she knew me and she knew the man who would become my husband but none of us knew that we all knew each other. I don't remember when or how all the relationships were made clear but there you have it. Sue's baby is almost a year old now (born a year and one day after Entropy Girl) and since she has always been very indulgent with the carryings-on my children (primarily the Boy Wonder) have delivered upon her I hope that he grows into the mellowest of toddlers. She deserves it.
We ventured out this morning to Foods of All Nations to procure the fixings for the Boy Wonder's Chinese Feast. He keeps correcting me to say "Ancient Chinese Feast", which prompts me to joke about actual Thousand Year-Old Eggs. He never laughs.
Ahem. Anyway, we've got the dumpling wrappers, the hoisin sauce, the green tea and adzuki bean ice creams and other sundry necessities. The menu as it stands now includes dumplings, rice, stir-fried vegetables, "bbq" chicken legs and the ice creams. I offered to buy a box of fortune cookies, but he declined by admonishing me, "Mom, they're not really Chinese, you know. Fortune cookies are from from somewhere else. I don't know where. Not China, though!" I'm so proud. He's already got his own set of child-sized chopsticks, festooned with Power Rangers, so we're all set, aside from one strategic phone call designed to finalize the guest list.
I'm starting a new project in a couple weeks which brings my run of high-pressure holiday seasons to four. I know that many companies leave stuff until the end of the year because it's all just too much to deal with, bringing in outside people and overseeing them and all the explaining you have to do. And then there's all the stuff that consultants want one to do - analyze this, present that, report on the other. So the needs go unfilled because it's easier that way until the end of the fiscal year comes and someone say, "Crap! We need to spend that money. You know, to do that thing. Better call someone."
As always, I'm grateful for the work and pleased to have a good reputation. Really, it's awesome to know people who advocate for me joining their teams - for however short a time - and really invest in me and value what I can bring to them. I'm not a strategic-type consultant who sits around and thinks big thoughts, I'm more of a tactical kind of girl - the kind who can, you know, get stuff done. My end of the consulting world is by far the less glamourous and so when the phone rings it's a big day. For some reason, December has proven to be my busy season. The work will get done - of that I have no doubt - and my personal life will remain un-neglected, I insist upon that. Come January, I'm going to be shredded.
Who knew? December is my busy season. Wal-Mart, the Post Office, parking lot tree salesmen, and me.
Ahem. Anyway, we've got the dumpling wrappers, the hoisin sauce, the green tea and adzuki bean ice creams and other sundry necessities. The menu as it stands now includes dumplings, rice, stir-fried vegetables, "bbq" chicken legs and the ice creams. I offered to buy a box of fortune cookies, but he declined by admonishing me, "Mom, they're not really Chinese, you know. Fortune cookies are from from somewhere else. I don't know where. Not China, though!" I'm so proud. He's already got his own set of child-sized chopsticks, festooned with Power Rangers, so we're all set, aside from one strategic phone call designed to finalize the guest list.
I'm starting a new project in a couple weeks which brings my run of high-pressure holiday seasons to four. I know that many companies leave stuff until the end of the year because it's all just too much to deal with, bringing in outside people and overseeing them and all the explaining you have to do. And then there's all the stuff that consultants want one to do - analyze this, present that, report on the other. So the needs go unfilled because it's easier that way until the end of the fiscal year comes and someone say, "Crap! We need to spend that money. You know, to do that thing. Better call someone."
As always, I'm grateful for the work and pleased to have a good reputation. Really, it's awesome to know people who advocate for me joining their teams - for however short a time - and really invest in me and value what I can bring to them. I'm not a strategic-type consultant who sits around and thinks big thoughts, I'm more of a tactical kind of girl - the kind who can, you know, get stuff done. My end of the consulting world is by far the less glamourous and so when the phone rings it's a big day. For some reason, December has proven to be my busy season. The work will get done - of that I have no doubt - and my personal life will remain un-neglected, I insist upon that. Come January, I'm going to be shredded.
Who knew? December is my busy season. Wal-Mart, the Post Office, parking lot tree salesmen, and me.
I am most exceedingly happy to report that we seem to have some progress on what will now be termed Thing 1. Nothing's definite yet but we're at about 87% and rising so with some luck we'll be able to put that one to bed and get moving on whatever will bubble to the surface and become Thing 2. There are a few candidates at this point, but I certainly have a favorite.
I've got Thanksgiving on my mind today. My in-laws have announced that they are coming so now that I've got Company-with-a-capital-C coming I'm switching the plans up a bit. I don't have quite the involved thought process that Julia has expressed, but in my own special way I'm a little...let's just say "consumed". There will be turkey, of course, and my own cranberry chutney (I don't care how much that commercial jelly stuff is liked, I simply won't allow it). I'm branching out from my usual pierogies and going with actual mashed potatoes this time, likely with roasted garlic or wasabi or something, and some kind of sausage and sourdough stuffing (without prunes or apples because I don't like them and without nuts because Brainiac doesn't like them). Veggies are green bean casserole (Brainiac's choice), braised carrots with olives (my choice), a relish dish, and possibly something else - a green salad, maybe (out of season here, and my reluctant concession to tradition). Oh, and some kind of rolls - probably bought. Dessert will be a chocolate cheese cake and pumpkin ice cream pie. Coffee and tea to finish, quite possibly liberally augmented by scotch, brandy or Frangelico, depending upon how dinner itself went.
I'm planning another meal for the time of my in-law's visit, one that needs to be handled a little sneakily. The Boy Wonder goes through these crazes, as many kids do, where he wants to talk all about, say, Ancient Egypt. We check out tons of books, watch videos, do activities, all kinds of things and then one day he announces that the time of Ancient Egypt is coming to a close and he wants to have a "feast" to celebrate. So I found online a few recipes somewhat approximating stuff that we could pass off as typical of the Ancient Egyptian table, served them with yogurt, honey, nuts and apples and there you have it, one Egyptian feast.
So lately we've been all about China - I think this was brought on by that new panda cub in Washington. We've determined our horoscopes (he's a dragon, the rest of us are monkeys), made lanterns, read all kind of folk tales and are now fully versed in the history of Shi Huangdi and those terracotta soldiers. And it is time for a Chinese feast. Now, a reasonable kid might allow us to head out to the nearest buffet place and be done with it, but the Boy Wonder requires that we head out to Foods of All Nations and purchase the provisions to make the meal at home. Luckily I already have a wok - he's already inspected it and found it satisfactory.
O.K., so the challenge comes in that my in-laws aren't really adventurous eaters, nor do they feel any call to fake it for the Boy. The Boy really, really wants to share this experience with his grandparents and his grandparents are equally determined to avoid it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to snow all parties and 1) promise the in-laws that the Chinese Feast will go on, with the addition of Lipton rice and meatloaf and 2) somehow convince the Boy that Lipton Rice and meatloaf were not unknown accompanyments to rice balls and crispy noodles with duck. Alternately, perhaps I can persuade them to come to dinner and sit with us, nibbling at the plain rice and then go out somewhere later. This is actually stressing me out more than Thanksgiving. Go figure.
Oh, internet lovelies...anyone see a solution that I'm missing? Something that avoids five-year-old meltdown and encourages grandparental attendance?
I've got Thanksgiving on my mind today. My in-laws have announced that they are coming so now that I've got Company-with-a-capital-C coming I'm switching the plans up a bit. I don't have quite the involved thought process that Julia has expressed, but in my own special way I'm a little...let's just say "consumed". There will be turkey, of course, and my own cranberry chutney (I don't care how much that commercial jelly stuff is liked, I simply won't allow it). I'm branching out from my usual pierogies and going with actual mashed potatoes this time, likely with roasted garlic or wasabi or something, and some kind of sausage and sourdough stuffing (without prunes or apples because I don't like them and without nuts because Brainiac doesn't like them). Veggies are green bean casserole (Brainiac's choice), braised carrots with olives (my choice), a relish dish, and possibly something else - a green salad, maybe (out of season here, and my reluctant concession to tradition). Oh, and some kind of rolls - probably bought. Dessert will be a chocolate cheese cake and pumpkin ice cream pie. Coffee and tea to finish, quite possibly liberally augmented by scotch, brandy or Frangelico, depending upon how dinner itself went.
I'm planning another meal for the time of my in-law's visit, one that needs to be handled a little sneakily. The Boy Wonder goes through these crazes, as many kids do, where he wants to talk all about, say, Ancient Egypt. We check out tons of books, watch videos, do activities, all kinds of things and then one day he announces that the time of Ancient Egypt is coming to a close and he wants to have a "feast" to celebrate. So I found online a few recipes somewhat approximating stuff that we could pass off as typical of the Ancient Egyptian table, served them with yogurt, honey, nuts and apples and there you have it, one Egyptian feast.
So lately we've been all about China - I think this was brought on by that new panda cub in Washington. We've determined our horoscopes (he's a dragon, the rest of us are monkeys), made lanterns, read all kind of folk tales and are now fully versed in the history of Shi Huangdi and those terracotta soldiers. And it is time for a Chinese feast. Now, a reasonable kid might allow us to head out to the nearest buffet place and be done with it, but the Boy Wonder requires that we head out to Foods of All Nations and purchase the provisions to make the meal at home. Luckily I already have a wok - he's already inspected it and found it satisfactory.
O.K., so the challenge comes in that my in-laws aren't really adventurous eaters, nor do they feel any call to fake it for the Boy. The Boy really, really wants to share this experience with his grandparents and his grandparents are equally determined to avoid it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to snow all parties and 1) promise the in-laws that the Chinese Feast will go on, with the addition of Lipton rice and meatloaf and 2) somehow convince the Boy that Lipton Rice and meatloaf were not unknown accompanyments to rice balls and crispy noodles with duck. Alternately, perhaps I can persuade them to come to dinner and sit with us, nibbling at the plain rice and then go out somewhere later. This is actually stressing me out more than Thanksgiving. Go figure.
Oh, internet lovelies...anyone see a solution that I'm missing? Something that avoids five-year-old meltdown and encourages grandparental attendance?
First things first: My sincere apologies to you lovely people who send me such nice e-mails, only to wait eons for me to respond. Really, I'm sorry. No elaborate excuses, just sorry and, well, you know.
Second, the Things are becoming ever murkier. Kind of like yarn or embroidery floss that gets all knotted up and you pull a strand thinking that you might be able to discern a way to detangle the mess but you only succeed in pulling it ever tighter and more relentlessly knotted. Yeah, just like that. And, just last night, I received an e-mail that while lovely and fun and really, really good news and from someone who I admire deeply, served only to murkify the already murky situation.
So I've decided to distract myself by jumping headlong into a lot of really domestic-y stuff. I'm braiding and beading hemp bookmarks for Christmas gifts, making count-down-the-day chains out of green and red construction paper with the Boy Wonder, sewing patchwork pillows out of old Laura Ashley fabric squares pilfered from the store where I worked back in 1997 when those patterns were discontinued (we were supposed to have thrown them out but I just couldn't - not only were they perfectly good 4 X 4 inch squares, they were so pretty and I've carrying them around with me ever since....that would be three moves ago for those of you keeping track), making bean bag stocking stuffers, planning a Thanksgiving menu, waiting for boxes to arrive from various online purveyors of toys, books, clothes, CDs, DVDs, tools and other sundry acquisitions that then end up being hidden where no one will ever look for them (with the cleaning supplies), wrapping presents in preparation for sending to parts far and wide and forgetting to order stamps from the Postal Service. It's a busy life.
Here is where I would love to post a Halloween pic of my handsome little pirate and adorable dalmation, all suited up and ready for trick-or-treating. Alas, I cannot because here is instead where I confess to having forgotten to take pictures, thereby neglecting to memorialize Entropy Girl's first door-to-door candy extortion. I can tell you, however, that she did beautifully rushing up to the door with the other kids in our party (three of the four of whom were pirates - I kind of wished I'd had her a parrot instead of a dog, but oh well). When she got to the door, though, she'd inevitably turn around and look at me as if to say, "Well then, now what?" and come back down empty handed. Didn't seem to bother her a bit to be walking up and down peoples' front steps for no apparent reason. In fact, I'd say she got kind of a chuckle out of it.
Second, the Things are becoming ever murkier. Kind of like yarn or embroidery floss that gets all knotted up and you pull a strand thinking that you might be able to discern a way to detangle the mess but you only succeed in pulling it ever tighter and more relentlessly knotted. Yeah, just like that. And, just last night, I received an e-mail that while lovely and fun and really, really good news and from someone who I admire deeply, served only to murkify the already murky situation.
So I've decided to distract myself by jumping headlong into a lot of really domestic-y stuff. I'm braiding and beading hemp bookmarks for Christmas gifts, making count-down-the-day chains out of green and red construction paper with the Boy Wonder, sewing patchwork pillows out of old Laura Ashley fabric squares pilfered from the store where I worked back in 1997 when those patterns were discontinued (we were supposed to have thrown them out but I just couldn't - not only were they perfectly good 4 X 4 inch squares, they were so pretty and I've carrying them around with me ever since....that would be three moves ago for those of you keeping track), making bean bag stocking stuffers, planning a Thanksgiving menu, waiting for boxes to arrive from various online purveyors of toys, books, clothes, CDs, DVDs, tools and other sundry acquisitions that then end up being hidden where no one will ever look for them (with the cleaning supplies), wrapping presents in preparation for sending to parts far and wide and forgetting to order stamps from the Postal Service. It's a busy life.
Here is where I would love to post a Halloween pic of my handsome little pirate and adorable dalmation, all suited up and ready for trick-or-treating. Alas, I cannot because here is instead where I confess to having forgotten to take pictures, thereby neglecting to memorialize Entropy Girl's first door-to-door candy extortion. I can tell you, however, that she did beautifully rushing up to the door with the other kids in our party (three of the four of whom were pirates - I kind of wished I'd had her a parrot instead of a dog, but oh well). When she got to the door, though, she'd inevitably turn around and look at me as if to say, "Well then, now what?" and come back down empty handed. Didn't seem to bother her a bit to be walking up and down peoples' front steps for no apparent reason. In fact, I'd say she got kind of a chuckle out of it.
Remember those number puzzles where the goal is to get all the numbered tiles - 15, of them, I think, in order by sliding them around one by one? I always enjoyed those when they showed up in birthday party goodie bags or in Halloween swag, they appealed to my OCD/Type A side (if I may grossly generalize for a moment), my enthusiasm for imposing order over chaos and the rush I feel in putting something all messed up to rights.
Lately I've come to realize that the things that make a childhood game fun and compelling are much less so when applied to real life.
In other words, we continue to make progress on The Things, inch by inch and tile by tile. Moving one issue closer to resolution requires making a mess of three or four (or more!) other issues, which then require their own triage to figure out what needs to be done with them which hopefully won't undo the progress we made on the first thing. Most frustrating.
One of the more regrettable side effects of all this is that I've put the canning kettle away for a bit. I've always taken the position that canning doesn't require all the huge blocks of time that people remember their great-aunt Sally taking to put up some tomatoes and I stand by that stance, so to speak. Aunt Sally was likely trying to put up enough to get her through the winter, with no Wegmans or other nifty market to fill-in for any shortfall she failed to consider. For most of us, canning and preserving is frugal on the one hand (I can put up four pints of bourbon marinated mushrooms for two-thirds the cost of buying them!) and fun on the other - but not quite as necessary for most as in by-gone years. So, theoretically and according to my own long-professed beliefs, I should be able to zip up six pints of cranberry chutney in an odd hour in between work on The Things.
And yet. We've had to think long and hard about what is dispensible for the time being, what can be set aside and packed up to make room for The Things and other activities. I confess that there's a part of me that is reliving childhood fingers-crossed/say the opposite wishcraft that says just writing about putting my kettle away will result in some kind of magically appearing hours here and there where I have nothing else to do and chutney, jam or pickle ingredients suddenly appear. Hope, as they say, springs eternal.
Lately I've come to realize that the things that make a childhood game fun and compelling are much less so when applied to real life.
In other words, we continue to make progress on The Things, inch by inch and tile by tile. Moving one issue closer to resolution requires making a mess of three or four (or more!) other issues, which then require their own triage to figure out what needs to be done with them which hopefully won't undo the progress we made on the first thing. Most frustrating.
One of the more regrettable side effects of all this is that I've put the canning kettle away for a bit. I've always taken the position that canning doesn't require all the huge blocks of time that people remember their great-aunt Sally taking to put up some tomatoes and I stand by that stance, so to speak. Aunt Sally was likely trying to put up enough to get her through the winter, with no Wegmans or other nifty market to fill-in for any shortfall she failed to consider. For most of us, canning and preserving is frugal on the one hand (I can put up four pints of bourbon marinated mushrooms for two-thirds the cost of buying them!) and fun on the other - but not quite as necessary for most as in by-gone years. So, theoretically and according to my own long-professed beliefs, I should be able to zip up six pints of cranberry chutney in an odd hour in between work on The Things.
And yet. We've had to think long and hard about what is dispensible for the time being, what can be set aside and packed up to make room for The Things and other activities. I confess that there's a part of me that is reliving childhood fingers-crossed/say the opposite wishcraft that says just writing about putting my kettle away will result in some kind of magically appearing hours here and there where I have nothing else to do and chutney, jam or pickle ingredients suddenly appear. Hope, as they say, springs eternal.
I fear that I've been neglecting you, my internet friends. The thing is this: there's this thing that may or may not happen and then there's this other thing, which is definitely going to happen but how and when it happens will depend upon whether or not the first thing happens. There are other things, too, of course, but they're not nearly so interesting or compelling. And, no, I can't share the first two things yet. As Brad Pitt's character said in a very fun movie, "Look, it's not in my nature to be mysterious, but I can't talk about it and I can't talk about why" except he was talking about Julia Roberts (sort of) and I'm talking about the things.
In compensation, I will instead talk about the Boy Wonder's fifth birthday party - actually, his fifth birthday altogether, which for some reason we've been celebrating for a week. The first celebratory installment came last week at his friend J.'s house. J. couldn't make it to the party, but his mom suggested we come over for a playdate instead. Somehow the playdate evolved into a private party including cupcakes, streamers, candles, singing and cake. It was very sweet and the Boy was thrilled to have special time with J. And then came the official party attended by five boys, each of whom apparently consumed several liters of rocket fuel prior to arrival.
In case it's not evident, the party theme was "knights and castles".
This is the cake. Damn something must be wrong with my camera (no way I'm admitting to poor skills, not at this juncture). Anyway, it's a castle, on a field complete with moat and matzoh drawbridge. Brainiac made the flags and bridge - I think he was happy to have a creative job to do rather than the usual pre-party, "Honey, can you take out the trash?" stuff I generally ask him to do. This cake was kind of unique because I didn't use every color in my arsenal of pastes, although that really was an awful lot of green, eh? And I"m not so happy with the highlighting on the castle itself. For some reason I used a glaze and not a buttercream, but that's water under the drawbridge now and every kid at the party ooohed and ahhhed appropriately. And isn't that really the goal?
I made a couple dozen shield cookies, as well. I used the same cookie recipe as that for the egg hunt cookies from earlier this year, which I was so satisfied with then and haven't managed to improve upon. They haven't let me down yet, so why muck around with it, you know? Every shield was unique to my great pride - imagine the disconcertion when every.single.child wanted to know why I had not managed to ice fleur-de-lis or rampant lions. Buggers.
Still, a good time had by all. The adults consumed much wine, beer and spirits. I have two rules for successful birthday parties - first, serve real food (in this case barbecue and pesto salad) and have lots of alcohol on hand for the adults. The booze serves multiple purposes: it keeps the adults from - horrors! - dropping the kids off and leaving, and although the parents are present the actual parenting is somewhat relaxed and the kids end up having a really great time. We had an outbreak of King of the Hill that harkened back to the days pre-helicopter parents and a rousing game of croquet that I'm pretty sure did not adhere to any, you know, official rules. In short, a lovely evening.
Then finally because of Brainiac's travel schedule and dealings with the aforementioned things we enjoyed the Birthday Dinner just last night, although the anniversary in question actually happened on Tuesday. When asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner, I - who had visions of easy grilling or take-out pizza - was somewhat shocked to hear the Boy Wonder express a fondness for broiled salmon, couscous, braised carrots with olives, and wilted lettuce salad. And so it happens that more than a week after the first "happy birthday to you" was sung I still am cleaning up from celebratory events.
It has been a long week.
In compensation, I will instead talk about the Boy Wonder's fifth birthday party - actually, his fifth birthday altogether, which for some reason we've been celebrating for a week. The first celebratory installment came last week at his friend J.'s house. J. couldn't make it to the party, but his mom suggested we come over for a playdate instead. Somehow the playdate evolved into a private party including cupcakes, streamers, candles, singing and cake. It was very sweet and the Boy was thrilled to have special time with J. And then came the official party attended by five boys, each of whom apparently consumed several liters of rocket fuel prior to arrival.
In case it's not evident, the party theme was "knights and castles".
This is the cake. Damn something must be wrong with my camera (no way I'm admitting to poor skills, not at this juncture). Anyway, it's a castle, on a field complete with moat and matzoh drawbridge. Brainiac made the flags and bridge - I think he was happy to have a creative job to do rather than the usual pre-party, "Honey, can you take out the trash?" stuff I generally ask him to do. This cake was kind of unique because I didn't use every color in my arsenal of pastes, although that really was an awful lot of green, eh? And I"m not so happy with the highlighting on the castle itself. For some reason I used a glaze and not a buttercream, but that's water under the drawbridge now and every kid at the party ooohed and ahhhed appropriately. And isn't that really the goal?
I made a couple dozen shield cookies, as well. I used the same cookie recipe as that for the egg hunt cookies from earlier this year, which I was so satisfied with then and haven't managed to improve upon. They haven't let me down yet, so why muck around with it, you know? Every shield was unique to my great pride - imagine the disconcertion when every.single.child wanted to know why I had not managed to ice fleur-de-lis or rampant lions. Buggers.
Still, a good time had by all. The adults consumed much wine, beer and spirits. I have two rules for successful birthday parties - first, serve real food (in this case barbecue and pesto salad) and have lots of alcohol on hand for the adults. The booze serves multiple purposes: it keeps the adults from - horrors! - dropping the kids off and leaving, and although the parents are present the actual parenting is somewhat relaxed and the kids end up having a really great time. We had an outbreak of King of the Hill that harkened back to the days pre-helicopter parents and a rousing game of croquet that I'm pretty sure did not adhere to any, you know, official rules. In short, a lovely evening.
Then finally because of Brainiac's travel schedule and dealings with the aforementioned things we enjoyed the Birthday Dinner just last night, although the anniversary in question actually happened on Tuesday. When asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner, I - who had visions of easy grilling or take-out pizza - was somewhat shocked to hear the Boy Wonder express a fondness for broiled salmon, couscous, braised carrots with olives, and wilted lettuce salad. And so it happens that more than a week after the first "happy birthday to you" was sung I still am cleaning up from celebratory events.
It has been a long week.
Entropy Girl sick, this time with something called Roseola, a viral illness common in children under two years of age (although I have no memory of the Boy Wonder ever having suffered it). Many of the internet resources on the subject point out the afflicted babes may be "irritable". It is to laugh - Entropy Girl has been hell on wheels and "irritable" would be a day of wine, roses and sunshine, a full college scholarship, a self-cleaning cat box that actually works and takes the collected refuse down to the curb all by itself, a Maybach without payments and with a free unlimited gas card. In other words, a much higher plane then where we currently find ourselves.
Which is a shame, because I have so much to share. In addition to the applesauce and jam posts, this week begins preparations for the Boy Wonder's birthday party. I have a castle cake to bake and decorate, a menu to plan (discouraging the birthday boy from an all-pork meal), shield-shaped cookies to cut and ice and party boxes to assemble.
Try and hang in with me if you can. Not only have I located the camera's memory card, but I also know where our little external storage thingie is so I can get the pics loaded quicker. So if/when the fog of illness finally leaves our little corner of the internet for good I'll be chock-full of good times and fun stuff.
Which is a shame, because I have so much to share. In addition to the applesauce and jam posts, this week begins preparations for the Boy Wonder's birthday party. I have a castle cake to bake and decorate, a menu to plan (discouraging the birthday boy from an all-pork meal), shield-shaped cookies to cut and ice and party boxes to assemble.
Try and hang in with me if you can. Not only have I located the camera's memory card, but I also know where our little external storage thingie is so I can get the pics loaded quicker. So if/when the fog of illness finally leaves our little corner of the internet for good I'll be chock-full of good times and fun stuff.
O.K. First I was sick, then the Boy Wonder was sick. Then I was sick again. And then we went to Philadelphia. And then Brainiac was sick. This week it's been Entropy Girl's turn. Really, September has not been the bang-up month for which we hoped. Tonight brought renewed appetite to Entropy Girl which is a good sign. If all is well tomorrow and/or this weekend I will be more than thrilled to tell you about the latest batch of cranberry chutney and this year's applesauce production. Based on the last two weeks, though, that's a mighty big if!
I have (mostly) written and deleted maybe a score of posts about Katrina. But I just can't, not yet. Too many friends, friends-of-friends, relatives-of-friends not yet accounted for. Too many mamas searching for their babies, and for every one my heart shatters into a million pieces. Too many mamas who wonder how and what their babies will eat. So much loss, it cannot be taken in.
Red Cross
Oxfam America
Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus. (Proust)
Red Cross
Oxfam America
Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus. (Proust)
Been very Ma Ingalls here lately, what with the tomato canning, jam making, bread baking, pesto grinding. What? Ma Ingall's never made pesto?
The jam making was a bit of an experiment. I had a bit of each blackberries and blueberries but not enough of either to make a full batch so I mixed them together and went along on my merry jam-making way. I used a commercial pectin for this which included directions for a mixed-berry jam, but they included strawberries which I did not have and was not about to buy. So we'll see how it turns out. Pre-set it tasted great and the set up seems to be fine, a little firmer than I usually like which is what you get with commercial pectin but I can live with out. If the jam is yummy I'll post the procedure because I think that would be a great thing to remember for those inevitable times when one has a bit of this fruit and a bit of the other.
An old friend of ours used to put his leftover berries into one of those water cooler jugs, emptied and upended and topped with an airlock. Every addition was sprinkled with a bit of sugar and closed up again. After some time - I don't remember how long - the berries disintigrated into the most delicious and potent liquor. I drank the concoction neat, but he - being of hardier Polish stock - cut his with vodka. One day after we left his house he gave me an old Grolsch bottle full of the stuff and I felt as if he had given me jewels. Someday, I think, someday I will make some of this and share it with all my friends. Someday has not yet come and another berry season as come and gone. Ah, well. There's always next year.
The jam making was a bit of an experiment. I had a bit of each blackberries and blueberries but not enough of either to make a full batch so I mixed them together and went along on my merry jam-making way. I used a commercial pectin for this which included directions for a mixed-berry jam, but they included strawberries which I did not have and was not about to buy. So we'll see how it turns out. Pre-set it tasted great and the set up seems to be fine, a little firmer than I usually like which is what you get with commercial pectin but I can live with out. If the jam is yummy I'll post the procedure because I think that would be a great thing to remember for those inevitable times when one has a bit of this fruit and a bit of the other.
An old friend of ours used to put his leftover berries into one of those water cooler jugs, emptied and upended and topped with an airlock. Every addition was sprinkled with a bit of sugar and closed up again. After some time - I don't remember how long - the berries disintigrated into the most delicious and potent liquor. I drank the concoction neat, but he - being of hardier Polish stock - cut his with vodka. One day after we left his house he gave me an old Grolsch bottle full of the stuff and I felt as if he had given me jewels. Someday, I think, someday I will make some of this and share it with all my friends. Someday has not yet come and another berry season as come and gone. Ah, well. There's always next year.
Yet another squash-and-tomato dish.
Yes, it's that time of year, when you neighbors won't answer the door for fear of having a wiffle-ball-bat-sized zucchini thrust into their arms, when the receptionist at your local chiropractor's office says thanks, but no thanks to the lunch sack of tomatoes you thoughtfully brought to your appointment (most assuredly not to influence the favorable timing for future visits) pointing to the three already taking up valuable desk space, when even your resident rodent and deer pests tire of the offerings and repair back to the forest to browse on wild berries and seeds.
If you are, as I am, experiencing diminishing results in your efforts to share your garden surplus now is the time to reach for your great-grandma's recipe box. Because it has been only fairly recently that it's been possible to eat produce out of season, older cookbooks and recipe collections are a treasure trove of use-it-or-lose-it ideas for whatever vegetable or vegetables is most vexing at any given moment.
I remember my paternal grandmother making a dish similar to the one above. I couldn't have been more than 8 or 9 when my family visited her at her home south of San Francisco and I learned what tomato surplus really means. She and her husband planted probably a hundred or more tomatoes of varying kinds on their farmette (along with all kinds of nut trees, fruits, berries and more - a great place to visit as a kid, and all the better with a grandmother who loved to cook and preserve) and every night we ate some variation of this, a kind of tian.
The basic procedure is simple and one I've remembered for these decades after my grandmother's initial lesson, and even better it can be utilized with virtually any vegetable. For the dish pictured above, I sliced up two largish yellow squashes and a number of roma tomatoes and layered them in the gratin dish along with maybe a quarter cup of fairly finely diced red onion and a couple cloves of diced garlic. Next, I poured a bit of chicken broth over and topped with about half a cup bread crumbs (I'm one of those cheapies who make my own with the stale remains of my bread, biscuits and pizza doughs) seasoned with a good amount of black pepper, some salt and basil and a few tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese.
Baked in a goodly hot oven (maybe 375 or even 400) until the veggies are soft and the topping well-browned, this is a delicious addition to any summer meal or even a meal in itself with a salad and a glass of decent white wine.
We've had tian in one form or another several times a week all month. If you've got eggplant, potatoes, squash, onions, herbs, tomatoes or, you know, whatever, you can do what you like and it will still be delicious.
In other news, we've fired the realtor and the new prospect for representation is here so I've got to run. A friend once told me that selling a house is the most painful thing you can ever do yourself willingly and for which there is no "it was all worth it" ending. At first I thought she was being a bit dramatic, but lately I'm definitely inclined to believe her.
We're back from Buffalo and I feel obligated to report that both the trip and the weather were glorious. This makes the third year in a row that our little family has decamped to Western New York in search of at least one decent summer week and we were thrilled that the city of my youth delivered once again. What more can you ask than a full week of the grandparents picking up lunch bills, dinnertime cookouts with all the cousins/grandchildren, two birthday parties, golf every day for the Boy Wonder, playtimes in the park, a pickup softball game, running through two big jugs of blowing bubbles, a whole bagful of Lilly Pulitzer dresses handed down to Entropy Girl from her older cousins and daily HGTV-fests for yours truly? Every vacation should be so.
And now, to business. A reader asks:
How do you scald tomatoes? Do you just boil them?
Pretty much. I just put on a large-ish pot of water to boil and then when it reaches a decently active stage reduce the heat slightly and pop in three or four tomatoes. After a few minutes their skins will split and they can be removed with a strainer to a collander to drain and cool.
As they cool, they'll resemble sad little deflating balloons. I don't bother touching mine until they've pretty much lost all their heat, but if you're in a hurry you can move forward as soon as you can handle them without too much pain. If you're going to puree instead of dice the tomatoes can be dealt with much more quickly since you can just dump them into a food mill skins and all and turn the crank. I have a mill but prefer my tomatoes in a dice.
As I've said, I generally dump my prepared tomatoes into a freezer container until I have enough to can maybe a dozen or more half-pints at once. Other people can as they go and do just two or three jars at once. Whatever makes you happy.
And now, to business. A reader asks:
How do you scald tomatoes? Do you just boil them?
Pretty much. I just put on a large-ish pot of water to boil and then when it reaches a decently active stage reduce the heat slightly and pop in three or four tomatoes. After a few minutes their skins will split and they can be removed with a strainer to a collander to drain and cool.
As they cool, they'll resemble sad little deflating balloons. I don't bother touching mine until they've pretty much lost all their heat, but if you're in a hurry you can move forward as soon as you can handle them without too much pain. If you're going to puree instead of dice the tomatoes can be dealt with much more quickly since you can just dump them into a food mill skins and all and turn the crank. I have a mill but prefer my tomatoes in a dice.
As I've said, I generally dump my prepared tomatoes into a freezer container until I have enough to can maybe a dozen or more half-pints at once. Other people can as they go and do just two or three jars at once. Whatever makes you happy.
If you dropped in hoping I'd have a visually stunning and technically engaging treatise discussing the finer points of canning tomatoes I am deeply sorry that I (or rather blogger, or maybe my computer) will be letting you down. It was here and then it was not and I don't have the time, what with tomorrow's embarking on a nine-plus-hour car trip with the kids and all, to recreate the entire post.
And so not to make this all a complete loss I will share the following:
1) The USDA no longer recommends water bath canning for tomatoes on the grounds that many of the newer varieties have been bred to be much lower in acid than their love apple ancestors. I, myself, continue to do so although of course I cannot and will not suggest to you, my bloggy friend, that it's a good idea. I plant primarily Amish Paste and Roma varieties and since these are considered heirloom (i.e., pre-technological intervention in tomato breeding) I throw caution to the wind.
2) However, I do add salt and lemon juice to each jar thereby hopefully bringing yet more safety to my devil-may-care approach to the whole affair.
3) Because garden tomatoes tend to come in two or three at a time (at least in my garden), it can be tricky to have enough at any given time to actually can anything. I can almost everything in half-pints and even these smallish jars might require 8 to 12 (or more) Romas to fill. My somewhat unorthodox approach is to scald, peel, seed and dice the fruits as they are ready and freeze them in a large container until I have enough to actually make it worthwhile to get out the kettle. Not only is this tidier (good for when your house is on the market, for example) and more efficient, but the outcome is no less tasty than if you bought a bushel at the farmer's market and canned them all at once.
4) Although I am pretty picky about using only absolutely ripe tomatoes, I have no problem with cutting off a bad spot and scalding the remainder. Some people get all antsy about it and say that you're watering down the flavor if you scald cut tomatoes but I figure mine are going into soups, stews, and chillies anyway so it's not like that's a big deal. I'm totally onboard with seeking prime tomato taste for your tomato sandwiches or your tomato-mozzerella salads, but no one is going to get me all flipped out about tomatoes that will end up having a quarter cup of chili powder, a pound of beans and a cut-up steak all mixed up with them.
5) Scalding is easy and I recommend that you sever ties immediately with anyone who tries to scare you into thinking otherwise. Bring a large pot of water to boil, add the tomatoes a couple at a time and simmer away until their skins split and/or start to look kind of wrinkly. Remove them with a slotted spoon to a collander to drain and cool. When they're good to handle (that is, you won't burn yourself), peel away the skin - it should slip right off - cut away the ends, slip the seeds out with your hands or a spoon and dice right into a bowl. I don't sweat getting all the pieces uniform in size, but if that's important to you then by all means sweat it. If I have enough to can, then I do. Otherwise, the pieces are dumped into a large freezer container until I have enough to can (see above).
6) I tend not to get fancy with these and don't add herbs, onions, garlic or anything else to make them "recipe ready" as they say in the packaged food biz. Such ammendments really are more suited to pressure canning and, despite my apparent cavalier attitude toward the USDA's recommendations for tomatoes, including them runs counter to my risk-management philosophy.
And that's it. In a good year I have enough tomatoes to see us nearly through the winter. In a not-so-good year I have to start buying commercially canned tomatoes sometime in February or March. Despite our slow start to the season, this is looking like a better than average tomato year; we eat our fill with plenty left over for the no-fresh-tomato months.
And so not to make this all a complete loss I will share the following:
1) The USDA no longer recommends water bath canning for tomatoes on the grounds that many of the newer varieties have been bred to be much lower in acid than their love apple ancestors. I, myself, continue to do so although of course I cannot and will not suggest to you, my bloggy friend, that it's a good idea. I plant primarily Amish Paste and Roma varieties and since these are considered heirloom (i.e., pre-technological intervention in tomato breeding) I throw caution to the wind.
2) However, I do add salt and lemon juice to each jar thereby hopefully bringing yet more safety to my devil-may-care approach to the whole affair.
3) Because garden tomatoes tend to come in two or three at a time (at least in my garden), it can be tricky to have enough at any given time to actually can anything. I can almost everything in half-pints and even these smallish jars might require 8 to 12 (or more) Romas to fill. My somewhat unorthodox approach is to scald, peel, seed and dice the fruits as they are ready and freeze them in a large container until I have enough to actually make it worthwhile to get out the kettle. Not only is this tidier (good for when your house is on the market, for example) and more efficient, but the outcome is no less tasty than if you bought a bushel at the farmer's market and canned them all at once.
4) Although I am pretty picky about using only absolutely ripe tomatoes, I have no problem with cutting off a bad spot and scalding the remainder. Some people get all antsy about it and say that you're watering down the flavor if you scald cut tomatoes but I figure mine are going into soups, stews, and chillies anyway so it's not like that's a big deal. I'm totally onboard with seeking prime tomato taste for your tomato sandwiches or your tomato-mozzerella salads, but no one is going to get me all flipped out about tomatoes that will end up having a quarter cup of chili powder, a pound of beans and a cut-up steak all mixed up with them.
5) Scalding is easy and I recommend that you sever ties immediately with anyone who tries to scare you into thinking otherwise. Bring a large pot of water to boil, add the tomatoes a couple at a time and simmer away until their skins split and/or start to look kind of wrinkly. Remove them with a slotted spoon to a collander to drain and cool. When they're good to handle (that is, you won't burn yourself), peel away the skin - it should slip right off - cut away the ends, slip the seeds out with your hands or a spoon and dice right into a bowl. I don't sweat getting all the pieces uniform in size, but if that's important to you then by all means sweat it. If I have enough to can, then I do. Otherwise, the pieces are dumped into a large freezer container until I have enough to can (see above).
6) I tend not to get fancy with these and don't add herbs, onions, garlic or anything else to make them "recipe ready" as they say in the packaged food biz. Such ammendments really are more suited to pressure canning and, despite my apparent cavalier attitude toward the USDA's recommendations for tomatoes, including them runs counter to my risk-management philosophy.
And that's it. In a good year I have enough tomatoes to see us nearly through the winter. In a not-so-good year I have to start buying commercially canned tomatoes sometime in February or March. Despite our slow start to the season, this is looking like a better than average tomato year; we eat our fill with plenty left over for the no-fresh-tomato months.
The first tomato salad.
But not the last! The yellow pears are coming in fast and furious now so every night sees us with some kind of salad on the table. This one had a bit of plum tomato, mozzarella and green bell pepper dressed in black pepper, salt, olive oil, red wine vinegar and basil. Last night's had no pepper, but more red tomato and an addition of very finely diced red onion. What tonight's will bring remains to be seen. Brainiac thinks I ought to save some for pickling. Perhaps.
I don't think I'm ready for canning the tomatoes just yet. I like to save that until I simply cannot fathom eating another fresh off the vine, which probably won't happen for another two weeks or so. Then I will start to can as a defense mechanism.
In the meantime I've got a loaf of white bread in the oven. I'm so not a good bread baker, but I gladly suffer through for a tomato, mayo and basil sandwich. One a year is usually enough. And then there are tians, fresh tomato pastas, tomato pies (there's a great sounding tomato pie in one of Laurie Colwin's books that I've meant to make for years), tomatoes just eated with a sprinkling of salt, fresh salsas and so much more.
In addition to tomatoes I seek out other signs of long, hot summers.
I'm kind of suprised this and its twin bloomed. We bought them at the very tail end of last summer from a local nursery's scratch-n-dent shelf. They looked wretched all winter and through the spring but I think the payoff is worth a bit of unsightly foliage.
But not the last! The yellow pears are coming in fast and furious now so every night sees us with some kind of salad on the table. This one had a bit of plum tomato, mozzarella and green bell pepper dressed in black pepper, salt, olive oil, red wine vinegar and basil. Last night's had no pepper, but more red tomato and an addition of very finely diced red onion. What tonight's will bring remains to be seen. Brainiac thinks I ought to save some for pickling. Perhaps.
I don't think I'm ready for canning the tomatoes just yet. I like to save that until I simply cannot fathom eating another fresh off the vine, which probably won't happen for another two weeks or so. Then I will start to can as a defense mechanism.
In the meantime I've got a loaf of white bread in the oven. I'm so not a good bread baker, but I gladly suffer through for a tomato, mayo and basil sandwich. One a year is usually enough. And then there are tians, fresh tomato pastas, tomato pies (there's a great sounding tomato pie in one of Laurie Colwin's books that I've meant to make for years), tomatoes just eated with a sprinkling of salt, fresh salsas and so much more.
In addition to tomatoes I seek out other signs of long, hot summers.
I'm kind of suprised this and its twin bloomed. We bought them at the very tail end of last summer from a local nursery's scratch-n-dent shelf. They looked wretched all winter and through the spring but I think the payoff is worth a bit of unsightly foliage.
Has it really been a week since my last post? I'd been thinking it's just a couple days. What have I done with this week? There was the visit to the pool, Entropy Girl being stung by an unidentified insect, company for dinner. These things must have comprised the week because I'm coming up with nothing else.
The garden situation has stabilized somewhat. Judicious applications of a calcium ammendment seems to have mitigated the blossom end rot problem so I'm now getting more and better tomatoes, both of the roma and amish paste varieties. Beefsteaks aren't behind and some kind of unknown yellow pear variety is doing well, too.
I'm also getting a good deal of summer squash. I'm going to have to cancel my long-planned zucchini post (if you were waiting with breath held for it, see Meg who will hook you up - I'm making her slaw tomorrow) because all of the zucchinis died, each and every one. In their place grew up vigorous yellow squashes which I have decided to treat as though there were zucchini. I had always thought of summer squash and zucchini to be kind of flip sides of the same coin, produce aisle twins sold separately more for aesthetic reasons than anything else. So color me suprised to fine that one can thrive in the same garden where one utterly perishes.
Let's see...what else? Oh, yes, bell peppers doing marginally well. I've harvested three so far and it looks like there may be more yet. The corn is corning and the horseradish is settling in nicely. This weekend I'm going to clear out the lettuce bed and prepare for more radishes and something else, but I haven't decided what yet.
In other news, I also unboxed my sewing machine to get to work on a Christmas gift for my aunt. I really, really needed to have some kind of forward motion on something and decided to spend some time on this countryish-looking stuffed snowman. While I had the machine accessible I also fixed two pairs of the Boy Wonder's pajamas, on which the elastic had completely given way (such is the nature of hand-me-downs). I managed to turn down the existing waistband and thread new elastic through, delighting him thoroughly. He had watched every step of the process, actually sitting still at the kitchen table while I worked and asking all kinds of questions ("Why is the round thing going so fast? Where does the needle go when it goes down like that? Can I touch the thread while you sew?").
I feel good to have just punted already. Sure, we're trying to sell the house but somewhere we've forgotten that we still are living in it. It's not some kind of diorama play-acting the part of a family home, it actually is a family home and if that means the needlepoint is left on the ottoman before a showing, so be it.
The garden situation has stabilized somewhat. Judicious applications of a calcium ammendment seems to have mitigated the blossom end rot problem so I'm now getting more and better tomatoes, both of the roma and amish paste varieties. Beefsteaks aren't behind and some kind of unknown yellow pear variety is doing well, too.
I'm also getting a good deal of summer squash. I'm going to have to cancel my long-planned zucchini post (if you were waiting with breath held for it, see Meg who will hook you up - I'm making her slaw tomorrow) because all of the zucchinis died, each and every one. In their place grew up vigorous yellow squashes which I have decided to treat as though there were zucchini. I had always thought of summer squash and zucchini to be kind of flip sides of the same coin, produce aisle twins sold separately more for aesthetic reasons than anything else. So color me suprised to fine that one can thrive in the same garden where one utterly perishes.
Let's see...what else? Oh, yes, bell peppers doing marginally well. I've harvested three so far and it looks like there may be more yet. The corn is corning and the horseradish is settling in nicely. This weekend I'm going to clear out the lettuce bed and prepare for more radishes and something else, but I haven't decided what yet.
In other news, I also unboxed my sewing machine to get to work on a Christmas gift for my aunt. I really, really needed to have some kind of forward motion on something and decided to spend some time on this countryish-looking stuffed snowman. While I had the machine accessible I also fixed two pairs of the Boy Wonder's pajamas, on which the elastic had completely given way (such is the nature of hand-me-downs). I managed to turn down the existing waistband and thread new elastic through, delighting him thoroughly. He had watched every step of the process, actually sitting still at the kitchen table while I worked and asking all kinds of questions ("Why is the round thing going so fast? Where does the needle go when it goes down like that? Can I touch the thread while you sew?").
I feel good to have just punted already. Sure, we're trying to sell the house but somewhere we've forgotten that we still are living in it. It's not some kind of diorama play-acting the part of a family home, it actually is a family home and if that means the needlepoint is left on the ottoman before a showing, so be it.
Last night I made it clear to Brainiac that I had no intention of cooking dinner. None whatsoever. And I didn't want take-out, either, because take-out still means that someone has to clear-up and deal with leftovers and possibly even wash dishes and in our house that someone is almost always me. Since I had spent the day with Pouty McPouterson and Whiny McWhinerson (otherwise known as the Boy Wonder and Entropy Girl, respectively) I wanted nothing more than to sit in a nice air-conditioned booth with a magically refilling diet coke and I would gladly pay virtually any amount for the privilege of not cleaning up. That's how much I needed to relax and what we ate wasn't nearly as important as where we ate it.
No relaxing was to be had, but it was all my fault.
Early in the meal, I offered Entropy Girl what I thought was a piece of bell pepper from the pizza. She loves bell pepper. But she doesn't love jalapeño, which is what I actually gave her.
You can imagine the happiness that ensued. Entropy Girl pawed frantically at her mouth, trying to get the hot out. She refused her sippy and our entreaties to eat some bread and the tears...the tears they were copious. But I was confused....I couldn't imagine where she got a hot pepper, until at least I picked up and tasted the remains of the bell that she spit out.
It was the hottest jalapeño I've had in a while - a fresh one, which are always hotter than jarred. And thickly cut, with seeds and ribs removed it looked for all the world like a sweet bell.
Oh, the guilt.
No relaxing was to be had, but it was all my fault.
Early in the meal, I offered Entropy Girl what I thought was a piece of bell pepper from the pizza. She loves bell pepper. But she doesn't love jalapeño, which is what I actually gave her.
You can imagine the happiness that ensued. Entropy Girl pawed frantically at her mouth, trying to get the hot out. She refused her sippy and our entreaties to eat some bread and the tears...the tears they were copious. But I was confused....I couldn't imagine where she got a hot pepper, until at least I picked up and tasted the remains of the bell that she spit out.
It was the hottest jalapeño I've had in a while - a fresh one, which are always hotter than jarred. And thickly cut, with seeds and ribs removed it looked for all the world like a sweet bell.
Oh, the guilt.
A good part of my recent malaise is connected to the difficulties I'm having indulging my creative impulses. Because our house is for sale (wait - did I tell you this? I don't think so. More later, 'cause selling the house is a big ol' Dead Deer on the Front Lawn) I don't really feel free to start the kinds of projects that would leave a canning kettle simmering away on the stove or sewing machine mid-stitch on the kitchen table while potential buyers pick their way through the house criticizing my taste in furniture and analyzing what the book selection on my shelves means about my intellectual life.
Aside for a true house selling story: When selling our last place to move here we had great numbers of people through the house in the weeks leading up to Christmas. One of them left a note in my stocking - discovered Christmas day - telling me that he or she felt my collection of Italo Calvino's works indicated a desparate need to be thought of as smart. I'm willing to consider this, and I also wonder what leaving a note in a total stranger's Christmas stocking evaluating her emotional attitude towards intellectual acceptance indicates. Prickishness perhaps? Academic sanctimoniousness?
Anyway, the point here is that not being able to do the things that really make me feel settled is very, uh, unsettling. Once the house is sold I will feel free to willy-nilly go about with three projects underway, all interspersed with story time, play-dough sculpting, conference calls and dinner preparations. The pressure I feel to complete something in a single sitting - an entire batch of jam or a complete pair of pants to a Halloween costume takes away a lot of the joy I feel in meandering my way through. And so I haven't done much of anything. And I'm really, really sad about it. Even needlepoint isn't so satisfying to me if I can't leave it out and stitch here and there throughout the day. Soon, I hope, I will once again be at liberty to move about my day without worrying what someone might think of my very untidy hemming skills if the Halloween costume were to be left on the table.
Aside for a true house selling story: When selling our last place to move here we had great numbers of people through the house in the weeks leading up to Christmas. One of them left a note in my stocking - discovered Christmas day - telling me that he or she felt my collection of Italo Calvino's works indicated a desparate need to be thought of as smart. I'm willing to consider this, and I also wonder what leaving a note in a total stranger's Christmas stocking evaluating her emotional attitude towards intellectual acceptance indicates. Prickishness perhaps? Academic sanctimoniousness?
Anyway, the point here is that not being able to do the things that really make me feel settled is very, uh, unsettling. Once the house is sold I will feel free to willy-nilly go about with three projects underway, all interspersed with story time, play-dough sculpting, conference calls and dinner preparations. The pressure I feel to complete something in a single sitting - an entire batch of jam or a complete pair of pants to a Halloween costume takes away a lot of the joy I feel in meandering my way through. And so I haven't done much of anything. And I'm really, really sad about it. Even needlepoint isn't so satisfying to me if I can't leave it out and stitch here and there throughout the day. Soon, I hope, I will once again be at liberty to move about my day without worrying what someone might think of my very untidy hemming skills if the Halloween costume were to be left on the table.
This has been the Summer of My Discontent so the progress (however slight) made on the muse hunt is heartening. With luck, she'll be back bags unpacked and laundry washed in the not too distant future.
Entropy Girl had fever this morning giving me an excellent excuse for skipping Too Perky's aqua aerobics class, although I would have liked to have done my usual weights routine. The feeling of becoming physically stronger is new to me - strength usually comes to me in the form of I am Woman Hear Me Roar-type emotional outbursts, not in actual muscular enhancement. But no children are allowed in the gym's superbly-appointed "Kidz Zone" for 24 hours after a fever, messy diaper, or vomiting - reasonable policy, although some parents seem to have difficulty in applying it to their own children - and so I had to pass on my entire workout. Perhaps tomorrow. Then again, the planned roster of yard maintenance activities (down dead pine, spread a few thousdand yards of mulch, remove errant and unwanted rose bushes, pull weeds that have suddenly become taller than the Boy Wonder and so on) might just fill the exercise bill for the weekend.
Entropy Girl had fever this morning giving me an excellent excuse for skipping Too Perky's aqua aerobics class, although I would have liked to have done my usual weights routine. The feeling of becoming physically stronger is new to me - strength usually comes to me in the form of I am Woman Hear Me Roar-type emotional outbursts, not in actual muscular enhancement. But no children are allowed in the gym's superbly-appointed "Kidz Zone" for 24 hours after a fever, messy diaper, or vomiting - reasonable policy, although some parents seem to have difficulty in applying it to their own children - and so I had to pass on my entire workout. Perhaps tomorrow. Then again, the planned roster of yard maintenance activities (down dead pine, spread a few thousdand yards of mulch, remove errant and unwanted rose bushes, pull weeds that have suddenly become taller than the Boy Wonder and so on) might just fill the exercise bill for the weekend.
Congratulations! You've just started your Tuesday in the best possible way!
So chirped the way too perky instructor at the conclusion of my aqua aerobics class this morning.
Funny. My version of the best possible start to my Tuesday involved less chlorine and fully made-up, bejeweled fellow exercisers and a whole lot more Pierce Brosnan and mimosas.
Too Perky and I are clearly working with different methodologies.
So chirped the way too perky instructor at the conclusion of my aqua aerobics class this morning.
Funny. My version of the best possible start to my Tuesday involved less chlorine and fully made-up, bejeweled fellow exercisers and a whole lot more Pierce Brosnan and mimosas.
Too Perky and I are clearly working with different methodologies.
An Eddie Albert Memorial Post.
Gather 'round the campfire, boys and girls. Auntie Marsha would like to tell you a story about innocents abroad. Well, not abroad exactly, but certainly in unfamiliar parts. And what happened to them in their ignorance.
Now then. A few weeks ago my husband began scratching at what seemed to be bug bites. No See 'Um bites, to be specific. I've suffered No See 'Ums in the three summers we've lived here and it seemed odd to us that he'd only begun to be afflicted now. But then again, he's been getting allergy shots and he's a bit thinner so perhaps, we figured, his blood chemistry had changed just enough to be attractive to the little beasties. Eventually we all exhibited signs of attack. Huge welts, creeping hives, and the tell-tale scratch marks of attempts at self-relief.
Now the thing about No See 'Um bites is that they are killer. They itch for weeks and make welts much larger than the size of either the bug or the bite itself may seem to warrant. Sometimes there are little blisters along the bite site, which can pop open and spread the bite love around. It's not unknown for people to die from (large numbers of) No See 'Um bites, a fact that has given me more than one shudder over the past couple weeks.
Over the period of about a week our bites got worse and worse and more and more numerous. In an attempt to keep them out of the house we caved to the heat and upped the A/C, closed the doors and windows (the bugs can fit through the little squares of screening mesh) and sprayed both us and our bedding repeatedly through each day. We burned gallons of citronella oil. To no avail. Sleeping became an bleary ordeal possible only with copious amounts of benadryl and calamine.
And then we bombed the house. I hate the idea of bug killers in general. But I hate itchy welts covering my kids' bodies more. So we vacated the house for a dreadful four hour outing and returned to wash the bedding anew and hope for a better night and more sleep (that, ultimately, was not forthcoming).
Flash forward a few more itchy, scratchy days. So we had a guy over earlier today to help us prioritize some DIY home repair stuff. As he and my husband (hereinafter referred to as Brainiac) were walking along our picturesque brick path he pointed to a lovely groundcover (that we inherited from the house's previous owners) and said, "With a little one wandering around, you're gonna want to get rid of this poison ivy as soon as possible."
Let's pick up the convo from there, shall we?
Brainiac: Uh, poison ivy? There, bordering the walk?
The Guy: Yeah, all that stuff here, and there and there and there. All poison ivy. What did you think it was?
Brainiac: Uh. Um. Hm. Poison ivy, eh?
The Guy: Do you have stuff to deal with this?
Brainiac: Uh, sure. Let's go inside.
So they came inside where The Guy took one look at the welts and hives along my legs and forearms and said, "See. Poison ivy. Wow. You got it bad."
And so, little ones. The innocents in the country believed their poison ivy patch to be a lovely little groundcover. Green Acres, indeed.
RIP Eddie Albert. ...just give me that countryside
Turns out I don't have a new job, as the hiring manager and I were unable to come to terms on the details. I won't say more, mostly because I have reason to believe that part of the background check involved a lengthy examination of this here, my little corner of the Internet. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that everyone who works at the University of Virginia ("The #1 Public University in the Country!"), especially those in the Human Resources office, are not only exceptionally bright and good looking, but they sure know how to keep a little red tape from getting in the way of a good time.
Still here.
Things have been very, very, uh, odd around here, in the Chinese curse kind of way. I may have been offered a new job or maybe not. I may be going to Minneapolis tomorrow or I may not. We may be listing our house or we may not. I may keep my new shoes or I may not. You see where I'm going with this, right?
The only thing even remotely on topic you're going to get from me today is that I am actively looking for and evaluating dilly and/or spicy (or both) zucchini relish recipes. Most of the relish recipes you find are sweet-spicy, which I hate and not just in zucchini. Any kind of sweet pickle offends me tremendously and no matter how much other people might like them I simply will not make any. Even for gifts. That's just the kind of girl I am.
Luckily I've come across a whole subset of preserving that is completely new to me and may be just the ticket for avoiding sugary pickle abominations: Atkins canning. I know of the basics of Atkins, of course - eliminate and/or reduce dietary carbohydrates (i.e., sugars) and increase intake of proteins and certain vegetables (which, regretably, often leads to the attempt to camouflage cauliflower as rice).
Anyway, my point is that there are lots of Atkins-ites out there who are working out all kinds of recipes to meet their new found dietary and nutrional needs. Within their ranks I have found dozens of recipes for non-sweet relishes. Finally! It took Atkins-mania to do it but I think I can reasonably say that I am freed of Piccallili forever!
Things have been very, very, uh, odd around here, in the Chinese curse kind of way. I may have been offered a new job or maybe not. I may be going to Minneapolis tomorrow or I may not. We may be listing our house or we may not. I may keep my new shoes or I may not. You see where I'm going with this, right?
The only thing even remotely on topic you're going to get from me today is that I am actively looking for and evaluating dilly and/or spicy (or both) zucchini relish recipes. Most of the relish recipes you find are sweet-spicy, which I hate and not just in zucchini. Any kind of sweet pickle offends me tremendously and no matter how much other people might like them I simply will not make any. Even for gifts. That's just the kind of girl I am.
Luckily I've come across a whole subset of preserving that is completely new to me and may be just the ticket for avoiding sugary pickle abominations: Atkins canning. I know of the basics of Atkins, of course - eliminate and/or reduce dietary carbohydrates (i.e., sugars) and increase intake of proteins and certain vegetables (which, regretably, often leads to the attempt to camouflage cauliflower as rice).
Anyway, my point is that there are lots of Atkins-ites out there who are working out all kinds of recipes to meet their new found dietary and nutrional needs. Within their ranks I have found dozens of recipes for non-sweet relishes. Finally! It took Atkins-mania to do it but I think I can reasonably say that I am freed of Piccallili forever!
Today's order of business is to congratulate Owen Linderholm on the publication of Digital Dish, the first offering from his new publishing company Press for Change. Naturally, this accomplishment in itself is noteworthy for I am in awe of anyone whose passion and commitment manages to get a business off the ground but that Owen is taking on the notoriously tough nut of the publishing biz, well, I find that just really amazing.
I'm especially excited about the arrival of Digital Dish because Owen included several of my essays from Hot Water Bath, an unbelievable honor given the company those essays are keeping and thrill quite unlike anything else I have experienced. I'm about halfway through the finished book and I am so pleased and proud to be a part of such a delightful collection. Hopefully, I'll have some permanent links up soon - pending me wrapping my little head around the code - but for now if you'd like more information just head on over to Press for Change's Digital Dish pages.
Congratulations, Owen. I hope that Digital Dish is but the beginning of a long and happy publishing career. I look forward to being able to say someday that I was there at the start.
I'm especially excited about the arrival of Digital Dish because Owen included several of my essays from Hot Water Bath, an unbelievable honor given the company those essays are keeping and thrill quite unlike anything else I have experienced. I'm about halfway through the finished book and I am so pleased and proud to be a part of such a delightful collection. Hopefully, I'll have some permanent links up soon - pending me wrapping my little head around the code - but for now if you'd like more information just head on over to Press for Change's Digital Dish pages.
Congratulations, Owen. I hope that Digital Dish is but the beginning of a long and happy publishing career. I look forward to being able to say someday that I was there at the start.
Every now and again when doing time on a treadmill, step climber machine thingy or bike I take advantage of my gym's incredible array of entertainment magazines to distract me from the thoughts of what I really want to be doing, which is sitting in the cafe having a chai latte and chocolate chip muffin. This reading, which my husband has called mind candy, I defend by pointing out that it has provided me with the following useful knowledge:
And finally, in a somewhat different vein,
It would appear that I either need to start reading these mags a lot more or just stop altogether.
- 1. Dylan McDermott and Dermot Mulrooney are not, in fact, the same person. I've been conflating them for, I don't know, a decade or so.
2. Mira Sorvino and Mena Suvari are not, in fact, the same person. Ditto.
3. Colin Firth, Colin Farrell and Will Ferrell are not, in fact, the same people. Ditto again. (Go on, tell me that you weren't a little confused, too.)
And finally, in a somewhat different vein,
- 4. Mischa Barton is not, in fact, a man. All I can say about this is, Baryshnikov anyone?
It would appear that I either need to start reading these mags a lot more or just stop altogether.
In my opinion, tomatillas are a drastically underused vegetable (or are they fruit? I can never keep this stuff straight). Some of the best sauces I have ever had have had tomatillas at their base and I'm sure an imaginative person could probably think beyond the sauce for even more wonderful stuff - chopped into crepe batter? In a savory muffin with a bit of queso fresco and chives? The possibilities, I believe, are endless.
For now, though, I'm sticking with the easy stuff. Tomatilla salsa is a fairly expensive condiment and one that has me dipping into principle on a regular basis so when I noticed my local Giant offering tomatillas at a very reasonable $.99/lb. I figured making my own would be worth a try. And it was. And so it shall be for you because, after reading scores of recipes and eventually going my own way, I've decided it's pretty foolproof (my favorite kind of recipe). Here's how I went about it:
After removing the papery husk and washing the tomatillas of their slightly sticky coating I chopped off the stem end, not worrying at all about a core. Once stemmed, I processed the lot with the steel blade of my food processor, which I think saved a good deal of mess because these creatures get very watery, but a knife I'm sure is fine - as it was for the centuries before our friends at Robot Coupe came on the scene.
Anyway, for each pint of pulp, a diced extremely fine a quarter cup each of red and yellow onion and added that to the mixture. To bring in some heat, I used the last of my supply of frozen fire-roasted poblano, but you could probably use just about any pepper you like - fresh or pickled jalapeño would be nice. Next, add a bit of salt (maybe a teaspoon per pint of prepared salsa) and some cider vinegar (a teaspoon or two per pint should do it). As always, feel free to mess around with these ingredients, keeping the product fairly acidic. Add more pepper, if you like (hey! I wonder how it would be with a couple different kinds of pepper...hmm, food for thought) or a bit more salt or even more vinegar. Remember, the salsa will be very liquid - much more so than tomato salsa.
Once you're satisfied, pack the salsa into sterilized jars - as always, I used half pints - and process for 15 minutes. I'm going to let my jars sit for a couple weeks before I open them just to let everything mesh but I can tell you that the bit of salsa that was left after filling the jars and I ate fresh was very, very nice. If I can keep myself from eating it with a spoon, the canned salsa would be great with a firm-fleshed white fish or in enchiladas or, let's just say it, with chips.
Yes, I'm still here. I appreciate the e-mail check-ins and have no real excuse for this latest gap in posting except that for the first time in my life I am being walloped by unrelenting allergies. I feel as if I am enveloped in water and have a near constant cough. Stealing my husband's various prescription medications isn't helping much - the only thing that has was yesterday's 16-hour excursion to Philadelphia. Once north of D.C. I found that I could breathe easier and coughed much less. As soon as I hit I-495W on the trip home the cough returned. Living in the south can really be a kick in the butt sometimes, you know?
Today we harvested the last of the radishes to accompany the latest lettuce clippings. The Boy Wonder helped with both, guaranteeing consumption of his evening salad (like most kids, he'll eat just about anything he has a hand in preparing). This weekend I'll sow green beans in the radishes' space - I should be able to fit 8 or 10 plants, which will hopefully all germinate and go on to supply plenty for our table and lots of leftovers for pickling.
My husband and I had a slight garden-related miscommunication. I planted four Roma tomatoes and a variety of yellow grapes, the name of which escapes me. In discussion what more I wanted him to get while I was away somehow I either communicated that I needed him to buy tomatoes when what I was trying to get across was that I wanted room for zucchini, cilantro, horseradish, two bell peppers and some scented geraniums.
I arrived home (from the aforementioned Philadelphia trip) to find the new garden extension already planted with four Big Boy tomatoes, three cherries, a cucumber and...eight corn transplants. I've never been big on corn on the cob but the men around here seem super excited about it all so if that means I have to be less of a garden control freak in the name of familial happiness so be it. I don't have to mention the dozens of squash, hundreds of tomatoes, or many pumpkins we could grow in that space, right?
Finally, I made the tomatilla salsa last week and it came out very well. I'll be transcribing the recipe over the next couple days in between a couple new products and will post a pic as soon as I can find my little external storage thingy.
Today we harvested the last of the radishes to accompany the latest lettuce clippings. The Boy Wonder helped with both, guaranteeing consumption of his evening salad (like most kids, he'll eat just about anything he has a hand in preparing). This weekend I'll sow green beans in the radishes' space - I should be able to fit 8 or 10 plants, which will hopefully all germinate and go on to supply plenty for our table and lots of leftovers for pickling.
My husband and I had a slight garden-related miscommunication. I planted four Roma tomatoes and a variety of yellow grapes, the name of which escapes me. In discussion what more I wanted him to get while I was away somehow I either communicated that I needed him to buy tomatoes when what I was trying to get across was that I wanted room for zucchini, cilantro, horseradish, two bell peppers and some scented geraniums.
I arrived home (from the aforementioned Philadelphia trip) to find the new garden extension already planted with four Big Boy tomatoes, three cherries, a cucumber and...eight corn transplants. I've never been big on corn on the cob but the men around here seem super excited about it all so if that means I have to be less of a garden control freak in the name of familial happiness so be it. I don't have to mention the dozens of squash, hundreds of tomatoes, or many pumpkins we could grow in that space, right?
Finally, I made the tomatilla salsa last week and it came out very well. I'll be transcribing the recipe over the next couple days in between a couple new products and will post a pic as soon as I can find my little external storage thingy.
I think I've got the comment problem solved, fingers firmly crossed.
Big things on tap for this weekend: the long-awaited tomatilla salsa production, dinner with my parents (who are vacationing nearby), a short visit to the farmer's market and a quick drop into the new toy store on the Downtown Mall so my husband can buy my mother a mother's day present (my present was the Beethoven action figure, and we also picked up Ben Franklin for the Boy Wonder). With some luck, the weather will hold - still cold and misty - and I will be able to get tomatoes and peppers in.
We had initially planned to spend a good chunk of at least one day removing sick and dying foliage and removing some of the more oddly placed shrubbery - some volunteer, some actually planted by a person. With the weather as it's been, though, we just don't have the heart for a lot of outdoor work so we're instead going to approach the weekend in a more much pleasure-oriented fashion. Hence the culinary- and consumption-based activities. Chainsawing and digging can wait for a day when we aren't wearing turtlenecks (in May! In Virginia!) and scavenging for firewood. By the way, feel free to laugh at me if I end up complaining about heat in July.
Big things on tap for this weekend: the long-awaited tomatilla salsa production, dinner with my parents (who are vacationing nearby), a short visit to the farmer's market and a quick drop into the new toy store on the Downtown Mall so my husband can buy my mother a mother's day present (my present was the Beethoven action figure, and we also picked up Ben Franklin for the Boy Wonder). With some luck, the weather will hold - still cold and misty - and I will be able to get tomatoes and peppers in.
We had initially planned to spend a good chunk of at least one day removing sick and dying foliage and removing some of the more oddly placed shrubbery - some volunteer, some actually planted by a person. With the weather as it's been, though, we just don't have the heart for a lot of outdoor work so we're instead going to approach the weekend in a more much pleasure-oriented fashion. Hence the culinary- and consumption-based activities. Chainsawing and digging can wait for a day when we aren't wearing turtlenecks (in May! In Virginia!) and scavenging for firewood. By the way, feel free to laugh at me if I end up complaining about heat in July.
1) In every relationship, no matter how much you might like or love someone, no matter how much regard you might have for that person, there is always something that you could do without. Something baffling, irritating and getting-you-to-the-end-of-your-roping. I have no idea what it is about me that does this to my husband because he doesn't talk of such things. He's a burier - covering the negative with so much emotional and intellecutal flotsam and jetsam that whatever it might be will likely never see the light of day.
I, on the other hand, am an obsessor and will give the irritant so much mental bandwidth that it builds and builds, swelling like a blowing-up balloon until POP! it finally bursts and covers everyone nearby with a fine coat of spit.
And so it is now with our clocks. We have Living Room Standard Time, two varieties of Kitchen Standard Time, Laptop Central Time (not to be confused with Desktop Central Time), Bedroom Standard Time and Basement Standard Time. This bothers me To. No. End. I have a deep need to know what time it is exactly. I suppose I'm very American in this regard, but there you are. My husband has an equally great need to know approximately, within three or four hours or so, what time it might be. Clearly this is not a deal breaker between us, as we have been together for almost 14 years now but I am reaching one of my bienniel outbursts on the subject. These are never pretty and my insistence on temporal consistency is not nearly as endearing to my husband as my tendency to drop a bit of dinner down the front of my shirt every night. (Aside: my dearest would like me to point out that part of the problem is that two of the computers in question have their own minds on the subject and resist attempts to reset them to something resembling accuracy. He is right, but that doesn't explain the remainder of the problem, now does it?)
2) The above picture notwithstanding, today (and many days before this) is a gray, cool, rainy, miserable mess. Again. Still. Always. I seem to spend a lot of time complaining about the weather (and, alas, never doing anything about it) so today I decided to try something new, at least for what is ostensibly mid-spring. We are having a pajama day, refusing to change into day clothes and casting about for a few remaining logs leftover from winter with which to have a fire. I am rereading Amanda Hesser's Cooking For Mr. Latte. Although I do not know Ms. Hesser, reading her book is comforting to me because it reminds me of cooking and eating for friends and, especially, the cooking I did for my husband when he was just a guy I was seeing. I haven't found any friends here in Charlottesville who like to shop, cook or eat the way I do. A fun outing for me is to walk around the farmer's market deciding what to buy and eat later that day. I like to buy a vegetable I've never seen before and figure something to do with it, or browse around a wine shop debating for an hour what bottles we should buy to go with dinner. So that's a part of my life that I miss, but reading this book kind of brings it back for me, or rather reminds me of what it's like to be with people who think about food and ingredients and have fun with it all. It's a nice book for a rainy and kind of lonely day.
3) It feels like a baking day to me. I have a pound of butter softening but do not yet know what I'll make. Maybe some cookies or a cake. Maybe cookies and a cake. I've been feeling brioche-y lately but it might be too late in the day to start something like that.
4) Warning: I am about to type what has to be the most obnoxious statement in the English language. Ready? The Boy Wonder has been accepted into our first choice kindergarten. Oh, for the love of God. Not sure if we're going to take them up on it yet, because we have a lot of issues surrounding buying-in to this whole business. Still, I'm a little proud (o.k., a lot) that they recognized his Ability to Engage in Dramatic Play and Creative Expression to be as wonderful as I know it is.
I have returned from producing the children for grandparental inspection in Buffalo. I am tired (it's a nine hour drive - about 475 miles or so - even when taking the speed limit along I-81 as more a helpful suggestion than mandate) and my fellow travelers are wired. It might be all the cherry licorice I tossed over the seat in an effort to keep them occupied or maybe it's just the entire day spent confined in their car seats but if the day keeps up the way it started I may have to look into padding the living room walls. A goodly supply of bubble wrap would keep them somewhat safe while I see to the distressing amount of laundry that needs attention.
The Boy Wonder and Entropy Girl are both decent enough on long car rides. We have a few toys that are available only in the car, which keeps them special and usually grants us two to three hours of happiness. After that, we break out the home toys and books and start singing songs. The only real disruption was that our satellite radio docking station (our car predates factory-equipped) broke and I had no NPR during the long stretches through the mountains and the kids had no Kids' Stuff. (An aside: when I was a girl my parents used to pack us all up and take two- to three-week car trips all over the country. For every trip my mom would put together little amusement bags to help keep us calm and busy during the driving stretches. One year the bags included Silly Putty - a huge hit with us girls. It was less popular with my Dad who faced picking melted putty off the velour seats after our trip to southern Florida. He still complains about "ruining his resale" as if a while Bonneville with laundau roof and powder blue interior had much resale value in the first place.)
I see that my comments are gone. Obtaining a new comments feature now added to the to-do list. I suppose I could use bloggers, but I hate using it on other peoples' blogs and I'd rather not spread what I see as kind of a hassle. Then again, it's not like I have a lot of time to evaluate the blogosphere's comment offerings.
Before I left last week I found an amazing price on tomatillas which I ground up and froze. With luck I'll be getting canning a couple pints of tomatilla salsa sometime this week. I should have a better idea of what the end of the week will hold tonight, after my husband meets with his students and puts together his own schedule of projects, papers and lab time.
The Boy Wonder and Entropy Girl are both decent enough on long car rides. We have a few toys that are available only in the car, which keeps them special and usually grants us two to three hours of happiness. After that, we break out the home toys and books and start singing songs. The only real disruption was that our satellite radio docking station (our car predates factory-equipped) broke and I had no NPR during the long stretches through the mountains and the kids had no Kids' Stuff. (An aside: when I was a girl my parents used to pack us all up and take two- to three-week car trips all over the country. For every trip my mom would put together little amusement bags to help keep us calm and busy during the driving stretches. One year the bags included Silly Putty - a huge hit with us girls. It was less popular with my Dad who faced picking melted putty off the velour seats after our trip to southern Florida. He still complains about "ruining his resale" as if a while Bonneville with laundau roof and powder blue interior had much resale value in the first place.)
I see that my comments are gone. Obtaining a new comments feature now added to the to-do list. I suppose I could use bloggers, but I hate using it on other peoples' blogs and I'd rather not spread what I see as kind of a hassle. Then again, it's not like I have a lot of time to evaluate the blogosphere's comment offerings.
Before I left last week I found an amazing price on tomatillas which I ground up and froze. With luck I'll be getting canning a couple pints of tomatilla salsa sometime this week. I should have a better idea of what the end of the week will hold tonight, after my husband meets with his students and puts together his own schedule of projects, papers and lab time.
A Not-So-Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Lime Chutney
On Saturday I had finally come around to squeezing the juice out of my key limes (more on this later) in preparation for salting and crushing. I was sitting at the kitchen table in front of the limes, a cutting board and a small bowl just making the first slice when I heard Bang! Smash! Boom! from the family room. Then silence. The screaming.
Rushing in, I saw Entropy Girl face down on the floor in front of the kids' play table, an up-ended bin nearby and a dozen or so toy airplanes strewn about. Without looking I picked her up, held her to my shoulder and began comforting her, patting her back and murmuring, "Oh, sweetie! That's it...get all the hurt out...mama's here." The crying abated and so you can imagine my surprise in looking down to see the front of my shirt covered in blood.
And that is how I came to spend Saturday evening-into-night in the ER rather than making chutney. Entropy Girl is fine. She bit her lip and the lip is, as they say, highly vascular (which explains the horror-movie gushing) and there is no permanent damage done despite the depth and breadth of the injury. Luckily, the cut did not cross the (new vocab for me here) "Vermilion Border" - where your lip ends and the regular skin begins. If it had, she certainly would have needed stitches but now will only require them if the wound reopens, which seems unlikely at this point.
My juiced limes now reside in the freezer pending another chutney window of opportunity.
In the interests of moving this chutney thing along, though, there are a few things that I feel I should share:
Once the limes are juiced and seeded, marinate them in a couple tablespoons of salt (table or kosher is fine) overnight. If you can do this in a glass or glazed bowl so much the better. Then cut then into little strips or - if you're pressed for time - process them (but only if you've got a super powerful processor). Then you're ready for cooking.
Like the spiced lemons, chutney is a good project for a beginning canner because the ingredients and proportions are entirely up to personal taste. I use two pounds of the limes (prepared, they weigh somewhat less), a cup or so of mixed raisins, a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger, a couple tablespoons of regular old cider vinegar, a one-pound box of brown sugar, and some red pepper flakes. This all cooks down to an unlovely mass that is very, very delicious. And I make sure to taste liberally during cooking (the cook's prerogative). If it's too hot, a few more raisons. Too sweet? More pepper or vinegar or ginger (or all three). If you don't like raisins, then currents might be the ticket. Some people dispense with the flakes and add fresh pepper. Or might prefer a fancier vinegar or more ginger or less ginger or...really, whatever you like is fine. Feel free to play it fast and loose with the ingredients and the texture. With more pepper and vinegar it's kind of like Lime Pickle, with more sugar or - hey, why not some molasses? - it's more jam-like.
Once you're satisfied with the taste, pack into prepared jars (I use half pints) and process in a boiling hot water bath for 15 minutes. Cool on a folded tea towel and let cure for, say, 6 to 8 weeks before you even think of opening. This is delicious on a the cold leftovers of a roast, spread with cream cheese on a bagel, with peanut butter in a celery stick or just on a spoon directly out of the jar.
On Saturday I had finally come around to squeezing the juice out of my key limes (more on this later) in preparation for salting and crushing. I was sitting at the kitchen table in front of the limes, a cutting board and a small bowl just making the first slice when I heard Bang! Smash! Boom! from the family room. Then silence. The screaming.
Rushing in, I saw Entropy Girl face down on the floor in front of the kids' play table, an up-ended bin nearby and a dozen or so toy airplanes strewn about. Without looking I picked her up, held her to my shoulder and began comforting her, patting her back and murmuring, "Oh, sweetie! That's it...get all the hurt out...mama's here." The crying abated and so you can imagine my surprise in looking down to see the front of my shirt covered in blood.
And that is how I came to spend Saturday evening-into-night in the ER rather than making chutney. Entropy Girl is fine. She bit her lip and the lip is, as they say, highly vascular (which explains the horror-movie gushing) and there is no permanent damage done despite the depth and breadth of the injury. Luckily, the cut did not cross the (new vocab for me here) "Vermilion Border" - where your lip ends and the regular skin begins. If it had, she certainly would have needed stitches but now will only require them if the wound reopens, which seems unlikely at this point.
My juiced limes now reside in the freezer pending another chutney window of opportunity.
In the interests of moving this chutney thing along, though, there are a few things that I feel I should share:
- 1. Some limes you will find marked on the package as having been coated with "vegetable or petroleum-based wax for freshness". Others are marked with one or the other. For obvious reasons, purchase the vegetable waxed (since we are eating the rind after all) and use one of those fruit and vegetable cleaners. I normally hate those cleaners but make an exception in this case and I'll even give a pass on the use of wax. Key Limes are very fragile and if I am going to be greedy enough to want to buy some as far north as I am then I have to make peace with its use. This opens up a host of other food-related issues that I have neither the knowledge nor time to explore adequately so we'll just have to leave it there.
2. Most chutneys use only the zest - the colorful part of the fruit's peel, discarding the bitter white pith. Key Limes, though, have a very thin peel so I just crush up the whole thing. I can't even imagine trying to use a zester on a fruit so little.
3. To prepare the limes, cut them in half and squeeze the juice out into a small bowl. Key Limes have a great many seeds, so be sure to remove them as well. The juice can be strained into an ice cube tray and the frozen cubes removed to a freezer bag for longer-term storage. This juice is a fun byproduct and may be used in drinks (alcoholic or non-), mixed with sugar to glaze an angel food cake, in a pie, and so on. I actually think that lime sugar cookies are among the most perfect confections going and there are few things more wonderful than lime sugar. You, no doubt, have your own preferences in this regard, which I'd love to hear. Hmmm...I wonder what key lime jelly would be like?!
Once the limes are juiced and seeded, marinate them in a couple tablespoons of salt (table or kosher is fine) overnight. If you can do this in a glass or glazed bowl so much the better. Then cut then into little strips or - if you're pressed for time - process them (but only if you've got a super powerful processor). Then you're ready for cooking.
Like the spiced lemons, chutney is a good project for a beginning canner because the ingredients and proportions are entirely up to personal taste. I use two pounds of the limes (prepared, they weigh somewhat less), a cup or so of mixed raisins, a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger, a couple tablespoons of regular old cider vinegar, a one-pound box of brown sugar, and some red pepper flakes. This all cooks down to an unlovely mass that is very, very delicious. And I make sure to taste liberally during cooking (the cook's prerogative). If it's too hot, a few more raisons. Too sweet? More pepper or vinegar or ginger (or all three). If you don't like raisins, then currents might be the ticket. Some people dispense with the flakes and add fresh pepper. Or might prefer a fancier vinegar or more ginger or less ginger or...really, whatever you like is fine. Feel free to play it fast and loose with the ingredients and the texture. With more pepper and vinegar it's kind of like Lime Pickle, with more sugar or - hey, why not some molasses? - it's more jam-like.
Once you're satisfied with the taste, pack into prepared jars (I use half pints) and process in a boiling hot water bath for 15 minutes. Cool on a folded tea towel and let cure for, say, 6 to 8 weeks before you even think of opening. This is delicious on a the cold leftovers of a roast, spread with cream cheese on a bagel, with peanut butter in a celery stick or just on a spoon directly out of the jar.
I've had a hard time getting into blogger to update in the last couple days and just now lost a long - and brilliant - post about "supporting our troops" as a function (or not) of supporting the war and which also included a short note on chutney.
Well, it's gone and I'm tired and we're just going to have to wait now. If I had any sense I'd write the posts in Word and then save them so I wouln't fret so about hitting the publish button but it's now clear that I have no sense and, at my advanced age, I'm unlikely to acquire any. So here we are without a decent post and me too frustrated to try again. I'm filling out and addressing shower invitations tonight so perhaps tomorrow I'll try again.
Well, it's gone and I'm tired and we're just going to have to wait now. If I had any sense I'd write the posts in Word and then save them so I wouln't fret so about hitting the publish button but it's now clear that I have no sense and, at my advanced age, I'm unlikely to acquire any. So here we are without a decent post and me too frustrated to try again. I'm filling out and addressing shower invitations tonight so perhaps tomorrow I'll try again.
Tulip: Extreme Close-Up
Over all, we had a very nice weekend and are feeling the warm glow of accomplishment. We weeded, mulched (the county has a great free mulch program of which we have gratefully availed ourselves), trellised and more and even saw the first glimpses of what we're hoping will be a nice harvest of radishes, lettuce and snap peas. We laid grass seed on what had been a muddy pit in front of the house. I also pushed the season a bit and planted pots for the front steps and installed a few new creeping phlox around the front bed.
And the Boy Wonder tried climbing a tree.
Then there was the cooking, which nearly ruined everything. I can't remember the last time I had such a string of unqualified kitchen failures and I'm more than a little discouraged.
First there was the baklava. I started with this recipe but lost faith when I realized that the pan in the pictures was not the jelly roll pan specified in the recipe. Further, the money shot at the end seemingly shows a finished pan of something resembling a kind of albino variety, not the usual golden, honey-tinged (literally and figuratively) to which I am accustomed. So I checked out a few other recipes and, in a fit of hubris, decided to make up my own using the commonalities of ingredient and technique evidenced across the sample.
Phyllo and I have an uneasy relationship under the best of circumstances but now I wouldn't be surprised if it stopped speaking to me altogether. I used too much honey syrup and not enough phyllo, resulting an a doughy mess - not at all gooey in the good way, as baklava should be. We've eaten about a third of the pan, more in an effort not to waste rather than out of any real enthusiasm. Once nice thing I'm happy with and would likely do again - rather than use vanilla in the honey syrup as many of the recipes do, I substituted almond which blended very well with the honey and was a nice counterpoint to the more mundane walnut. Just another point in my long running campaign to put either almond or lime anywhere I think I might be able to get away with it.
I also made strawberry
There were a few other, more minor, cooking disappointments. The yogurt didn't set up, the pizzelles aren't crisp and my omelets turned out to be more like Scrambed Eggs With Stuff In Them. As much as I believe that sometimes things just happen, that there isn't always some grand message or supreme guiding hand I'm pretty sure I'm seeing a lesson here. Step back. Take some time. Quit rushing so. Maybe if I hadn't walked away from the omelets or the jam they would have turned out differently. Then again, maybe not.
Hey, J...it's been a year now since you left us and I still can't quite keep from crying whenever I think too close about it. The Boy Wonder named one of his "sleepy toys" after you, telling me that maybe a "new" J. would help me miss you less. Sweet in the way that only a four year old can be, but I can't think of a thing that would stop me from missing you. Not even time, apparently.
I wrote that terrible priest a letter after your funeral, you know. I'm convinced he was more concerned about his tee time than you or the hundreds of people who came to say good-bye to you. I never got a response, but never really expected one, either. He probably didn't appreciate the "alternate" homily I included or the suggestion that he substitute it for the one he used. Well, that and the recommendation that he learn people's names before conducting their funerals. Just as a basic courtesy and all, right? What a tool.
I drank a toast to you last night, as we all promised to do evermore. It wasn't an Alabama Slammer, of course, because I had to drive home. Besides, Slammers were always your department and we're not ready to fill the position yet. So you have to settle for the cheap Chardonnay available at Baja Bean. I know, I know. I'll plan ahead better next year. Planning was your department, too.
We're not going to the beach this year. We went last year because you had made the point of organizing R.'s birthday celebration and we all wanted to be there for him. I couldn't bear the thought of going this year, though. I know you believed that ocean air and a good swim could cure just about anything but we never tested it against a broken heart, did we?
I wrote that terrible priest a letter after your funeral, you know. I'm convinced he was more concerned about his tee time than you or the hundreds of people who came to say good-bye to you. I never got a response, but never really expected one, either. He probably didn't appreciate the "alternate" homily I included or the suggestion that he substitute it for the one he used. Well, that and the recommendation that he learn people's names before conducting their funerals. Just as a basic courtesy and all, right? What a tool.
I drank a toast to you last night, as we all promised to do evermore. It wasn't an Alabama Slammer, of course, because I had to drive home. Besides, Slammers were always your department and we're not ready to fill the position yet. So you have to settle for the cheap Chardonnay available at Baja Bean. I know, I know. I'll plan ahead better next year. Planning was your department, too.
We're not going to the beach this year. We went last year because you had made the point of organizing R.'s birthday celebration and we all wanted to be there for him. I couldn't bear the thought of going this year, though. I know you believed that ocean air and a good swim could cure just about anything but we never tested it against a broken heart, did we?
In this month's Vogue, Plum Sykes describes NYC night life queen Amy Sacco as having a "rigorous aesthetic." I like the sound of this and have decided that I, too, should enjoy a rigorous aesthetic. Starting now. Don't say you weren't warned.
Despite high winds that gave our landscape a rather Whomping Willow effect we had a lovely day. We took a little drive, starting with a quick trip to the Plow and Hearth outlet tent sale and ending with a tasting at Barboursville Vineyards. And, because I announced that I was disinclined to cook tonight (well, really to clean up from cooking but whatever) we had a lovely meal at our favorite Mexican place. There's nothing like a couple of enchiladas verdes, you know? With a lime iced tea they're probably just about one of the most perfect things you could ever eat.
Once Entropy Girl went to bed I set about going through today's coupons and sale circulars to figure out what I should buy this week and where I should buy it. Depressing. If I were given to "add water" rice mixes, frozen peanut butter sandwiches in doughy envelopes, and cheese snacks cut in ocean-themed shapes I'd "save" a good deal of money this week. But as I am in the market for a few onions, some barley, a decent blue cheese and rice milk it appears that I will be paying full freight.
I remember my home economics class back in the day (1983, to be exact) didn't use a textbook. Instead, every week we received a 8- or 10-page leaflet produced by a major packaged foods company that included a few coupons and "recipes" using the company's products. One such recipe I remember vividly instructed students to add a can of mixed vegetables to a prepared box of macaroni and cheese for a "healthy, attractive one-dish meal." You can imagine how I feel about this these days.
I understand that it's not really in packaged food companies' best interests for anyone to really learn how to cook. And I'm not talking about the kind of cooking that we do to impress, where we look up recipes on Epicurious for when some college friends are coming to dinner. No, I mean instead the kind of cooking one does every night for oneself and/or a family, where you broil a chop or two and serve with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli (and the chop doesn't come prebreaded/cooked and the mashed potatoes aren't generated from flakes or - worse - come already mashed in a zip closed poly bag). So I guess if, when you're growing up, the cook in your house makes lots of boxed rice mixes and augments them with pre-cooked sliced chicken breast and your school's cooking curriculum (assuming one is offered at all) offers the same, you're unlikely to be able to roast a chicken and boil up a pilaf of your own making. And so you buy...boxed rice mixes and pre-cooked sliced chicken breast and the cycle is complete and the companies are secure in the knowledge that you have none, not about everyday wholesome cooking, anyway.
Writing about this is difficult because of all the many social and economic issues that come along for the ride. I understand that most high schools have dropped cooking and shop classes to make room for ever more academic subjects. I have to wonder though, and this is from someone who enjoyed Moby Dick as much as the next person, if we wouldn't be better served as a nation in the long run if kids learned how to feed themselves and if doing so isn't more useful than any number of things I, at least, learned in high school. We may be living in a time when no child is to be left behind but I can't help but wonder what will happen when these kinds of life skills are completely extinct from our educational priorities. I fear that we may just be graduating class after class after class of future "cooks" who know nothing besides "Boil 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine with two cups of water and...".
And all the while our food pyramid gets revised again to account for less and less nutritional knowledge and the AMA rings its figurative hands about diabetes and heart disease. How much of this could we avoid if only we taught our 18 year olds how to broil a chicken breast and steam some broccoli, remembering to point out that doing so is often faster and cheaper than one thinks.
Despite high winds that gave our landscape a rather Whomping Willow effect we had a lovely day. We took a little drive, starting with a quick trip to the Plow and Hearth outlet tent sale and ending with a tasting at Barboursville Vineyards. And, because I announced that I was disinclined to cook tonight (well, really to clean up from cooking but whatever) we had a lovely meal at our favorite Mexican place. There's nothing like a couple of enchiladas verdes, you know? With a lime iced tea they're probably just about one of the most perfect things you could ever eat.
Once Entropy Girl went to bed I set about going through today's coupons and sale circulars to figure out what I should buy this week and where I should buy it. Depressing. If I were given to "add water" rice mixes, frozen peanut butter sandwiches in doughy envelopes, and cheese snacks cut in ocean-themed shapes I'd "save" a good deal of money this week. But as I am in the market for a few onions, some barley, a decent blue cheese and rice milk it appears that I will be paying full freight.
I remember my home economics class back in the day (1983, to be exact) didn't use a textbook. Instead, every week we received a 8- or 10-page leaflet produced by a major packaged foods company that included a few coupons and "recipes" using the company's products. One such recipe I remember vividly instructed students to add a can of mixed vegetables to a prepared box of macaroni and cheese for a "healthy, attractive one-dish meal." You can imagine how I feel about this these days.
I understand that it's not really in packaged food companies' best interests for anyone to really learn how to cook. And I'm not talking about the kind of cooking that we do to impress, where we look up recipes on Epicurious for when some college friends are coming to dinner. No, I mean instead the kind of cooking one does every night for oneself and/or a family, where you broil a chop or two and serve with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli (and the chop doesn't come prebreaded/cooked and the mashed potatoes aren't generated from flakes or - worse - come already mashed in a zip closed poly bag). So I guess if, when you're growing up, the cook in your house makes lots of boxed rice mixes and augments them with pre-cooked sliced chicken breast and your school's cooking curriculum (assuming one is offered at all) offers the same, you're unlikely to be able to roast a chicken and boil up a pilaf of your own making. And so you buy...boxed rice mixes and pre-cooked sliced chicken breast and the cycle is complete and the companies are secure in the knowledge that you have none, not about everyday wholesome cooking, anyway.
Writing about this is difficult because of all the many social and economic issues that come along for the ride. I understand that most high schools have dropped cooking and shop classes to make room for ever more academic subjects. I have to wonder though, and this is from someone who enjoyed Moby Dick as much as the next person, if we wouldn't be better served as a nation in the long run if kids learned how to feed themselves and if doing so isn't more useful than any number of things I, at least, learned in high school. We may be living in a time when no child is to be left behind but I can't help but wonder what will happen when these kinds of life skills are completely extinct from our educational priorities. I fear that we may just be graduating class after class after class of future "cooks" who know nothing besides "Boil 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine with two cups of water and...".
And all the while our food pyramid gets revised again to account for less and less nutritional knowledge and the AMA rings its figurative hands about diabetes and heart disease. How much of this could we avoid if only we taught our 18 year olds how to broil a chicken breast and steam some broccoli, remembering to point out that doing so is often faster and cheaper than one thinks.
We have just returned the Boy Wonder's play observance related to one of our kindergarten options for the fall. He had a wonderful time, no doubt due in large part to the school's fairly relaxed atmosphere and the genuinely delighted welcome he received in the playground. Entropy Girl and I played in a sandbox off to the side while her brother had the run of the place along with a few other "rising kindergarteners".
This particular school is turning out to be the favorite of both parents and child in our house due to the proudly casual stance toward academics in pre-K and K, as well as their very groovy play areas, filled with all manner of open-ended toys made of natural materials. (As I said in response to a recent comment, I do expect my children to receive quite rigorous educations although I don't feel they need to start when they're four years old.) Because the Boy Wonder is picking up quite a bit of basic reading and math on his own I'm very comfortable continuing what we're doing at home while simultaneously providing him with his own social space. So far, this school seems a very nice fit. I also enjoyed meeting the other parents present, and sensed no competitive vibe from them - a pleasant surprise. We talked and laughed and watched the kids play, enjoying lemonade and cookies. Entropy Girl was the only sibling and she quickly became the parental mascot and enjoyed walking from adult to adult seeking cookies and hugs. An altogether lovely afternoon.
This is what, for lack of a better term, I'm calling spanikopita pie.
I started to make spanikopita as one of the egg hunt refreshments, using this recipe. Although I have made spanikopita before, I've never made it in the kind of little triangle style (like you see at weddings and corporate holiday parties). Turns out, making those little triangles is a huge hassle (I guess there's good a reason you can buy them in your freezer section for $5.00/dozen after all) and something that I have to confess utter failure at. So, faced with all this filling mixture and more phyllo dough than any American kitchen outside of Northeast Philly but only an hour until guests arrived, I decided to layer them in a pie plate and See What Happened.
What happened ended up being pretty nice. Quite delicious and not so messy to cut and eat. Basically, I followed the recipe up until folding time and then brushed some of the melted butter in a pie plate, placed two pieces of phyllo followed by a quarter cup or so, spread around, of the spinach mixture. Repeat until the spinach has been used up, and top with phyllo brushed with butter. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes or so (watch carefully), until the pie is puffed a bit and top phyllo layer is golden. Allow to cool, then slice and serve.
The result is something that would be good for lunch, with some fruit salad and an iced tea or even as a side with chops or a roast. I'm guessing that the pie would have been even better after a day's rest, but there was none left so I don't know for sure. All things considered, not a bad way to spend the last hour or so before a party and even better for not wasting the ingredients.
This particular school is turning out to be the favorite of both parents and child in our house due to the proudly casual stance toward academics in pre-K and K, as well as their very groovy play areas, filled with all manner of open-ended toys made of natural materials. (As I said in response to a recent comment, I do expect my children to receive quite rigorous educations although I don't feel they need to start when they're four years old.) Because the Boy Wonder is picking up quite a bit of basic reading and math on his own I'm very comfortable continuing what we're doing at home while simultaneously providing him with his own social space. So far, this school seems a very nice fit. I also enjoyed meeting the other parents present, and sensed no competitive vibe from them - a pleasant surprise. We talked and laughed and watched the kids play, enjoying lemonade and cookies. Entropy Girl was the only sibling and she quickly became the parental mascot and enjoyed walking from adult to adult seeking cookies and hugs. An altogether lovely afternoon.
This is what, for lack of a better term, I'm calling spanikopita pie.
I started to make spanikopita as one of the egg hunt refreshments, using this recipe. Although I have made spanikopita before, I've never made it in the kind of little triangle style (like you see at weddings and corporate holiday parties). Turns out, making those little triangles is a huge hassle (I guess there's good a reason you can buy them in your freezer section for $5.00/dozen after all) and something that I have to confess utter failure at. So, faced with all this filling mixture and more phyllo dough than any American kitchen outside of Northeast Philly but only an hour until guests arrived, I decided to layer them in a pie plate and See What Happened.
What happened ended up being pretty nice. Quite delicious and not so messy to cut and eat. Basically, I followed the recipe up until folding time and then brushed some of the melted butter in a pie plate, placed two pieces of phyllo followed by a quarter cup or so, spread around, of the spinach mixture. Repeat until the spinach has been used up, and top with phyllo brushed with butter. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes or so (watch carefully), until the pie is puffed a bit and top phyllo layer is golden. Allow to cool, then slice and serve.
The result is something that would be good for lunch, with some fruit salad and an iced tea or even as a side with chops or a roast. I'm guessing that the pie would have been even better after a day's rest, but there was none left so I don't know for sure. All things considered, not a bad way to spend the last hour or so before a party and even better for not wasting the ingredients.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)