Book Review: A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove

This book has been on my shelf for a couple of years, but I finally got to it. I'm glad I did, it's a great book. Written by Laura Schenone, the book covers the history of women and cooking. It concentrates on the U.S., but she touches on other cultures, as well, especially at the beginning. After all, the women cooking in this part of the world a thousand years ago, were not - ahem - Americans.

There are lots of pictures and illustrations, bringing to life the clothing, backgrounds, and tools of earlier eras. I love old pictures. I love seeing people of history, going about their daily lives.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of discrimination in our history. Women have rarely been allowed to function to their fullest potential. It almost seems as if the closest culture to come to it, were the hunter/gatherer societies. Once humanity settled into "civilization," women were tied to the service of men.

In ten chapters, Ms. Schenone talks about how women and food figure into creation myths, shows women moving to new lands and learning the plants and animals to use, and always comes back to the female trait of nurturing.  Whatever women faced, in a world over which they had little control, they always made it their duty to feed everyone. I wonder if this is an extension of our ability to provide the first and only food, for the first six months of a human being's life.

Cooking in America is covered in detail, and even here (especially here) women do not escape bondage. Subject to political will (or lack thereof), male business greed, pollution, weather, and war, American women always prepared food.  They tried to recreate the dishes of their native countries, learned how to prepare the strange plants of their new land, turned over their abilities to "the Experts," and embraced technology in the kitchen.

As with any book about food, I found recipes I wanted to try, especially Grandma Louise's Peach Pie Supreme. Not the Scrapple, though.

Wine Misadventures

I like everything about Autumn, and this one is no exception. My mood has been iffy, but the weather and color (and pumpkins) are only helping.

We finished the wine yesterday. The learning curve is steep on this undertaking. I'm glad I did it, and I hope to do it again. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that this attempt will turn out all right.

We had trouble with our bucket throughout the experiment. The spout leaked the whole time. Just a smidge - but every day, more wine escaped around the rim of the spout. We tried to fix it every time we racked the wine, but it did no good.

Nevertheless, the wine tastes good. It's not great...  but I've had worse. It will be really cool if it improves with age.

Bottling wine happens in a series of steps. We had lots of instructions - the book that came with the kit, plus articles I got online - but they all neglected the same step.

How do you get the wine from the bucket... to the bottle?

Siphon, probably. But we could both just picture us holding the hose in the bottle as it fills up, and not being able to stop the flow, and ending up with wine all over the kitchen.

But let me backtrack. First, I've been saving wine bottles, washing them and removing the labels. It turns out we only wanted dark bottles, since our wine is red. In order to sterilize the bottles, I did some dishwasher voodoo, trying to stack as many bottles as possible in positions that would allow them to drain, AND not get hit by the rotating blade.

That was a hassle. But easier than boiling the bottles.

When it came time to fill the bottles, we moved our bucket to the counter, placing it on top of an upside pan, to give us room for the bottles under the spigot (in the sink).

Then I made a mistake - something like the hundredth mistake of the process. I tasted the wine and added sugar to adjust the flavor. It was REALLY tart. It's still tart, but much better. This is very dry wine. But my mistake was that I should have added some potassium sorbate to the wine, before I added sugar.

Once the sugar's in the wine, it's too late to add the potassium. It's purpose is to prevent any further fermentation, but it can't stop it if it's already started. If you add sugar first... well.

So what did I do? Not a damn thing. I'm tired by this time. I'm pretty sure the wine will be a failure anyway. (Perhaps we should refer back to my iffy mood mentioned earlier). So screw it - we're bottling this wine.

We did it the cheating way, by placing the bottles under the spigot and letting the wine run into the bottles. There was no sediment - this wine is lovely and clear. We filled up 13 1/2 bottles. Quite cool.

The next adventure was corking. We had mushroom corks, which came in the wine kit, the kind with a plastic lid attached. Following all the myriad instructions, we boiled some water, removed it from the heat, and soaked the corks for a couple of minutes. Then we began inserting corks into bottles.

The corks came right back out.

Seriously. They just worked their way right up, refusing to STAY in the bottle. Air pressure, y'know. Further research allowed as to how this was quite normal behavior for mushroom corks, and one must apply a "trick". The trick is to place a flexible wire in the bottle (keeping hold of the end), insert the cork, and while holding the cork firmly in place, draw out the wire. This creates a path for the air to escape the bottle, and allows the cork to seal as the air escapes.

Excuse me, but you do realize you can't stick any old wire in your bottle of wine? None of the instructions said so, but I wasn't grabbing a wire from the garage and throwing it in my bottle without sterilizing it first. This meant I had to boil more water and cook the wire for several minutes.

I sure hope that damn thing got sterilized.

But it worked beautifully. Except... you know those plastic lids attached to the corks? You can't let stay in the water too long. Or let the water be too hot. Those lids melt. We lost a few corks to this phenomenon. Some of the corks seemed to work okay, but they look strange.

Anyway. We have thirteen bottles filled and corked. Next step: shrinkwrap around the cork and neck of the bottle. These also came in our kit, and it turned out to be the funnest part of the job. We boiled water (again), and placed the gold wrapper over the top of the bottle. A rubber band is attached from top to bottom of the bottle to hold it in place. Then the bottle is turned upside down and lowered into the water for about 3 seconds.

Lessons Learned here: The water must remain boiling the entire time. Cooler water will not work.
The water must be deep enough to cover the entire wrapping. Submerge it all the way.

After a few more "mistakes," our bottles were all filled, corked, and wrapped. They look almost like real bottles of wine!

Last step: the label. Yes, these also came with the kit. They're hokey, but so what. We fiddled around with the idea of writing out our information and printing it on mailing labels to stick on the fancy labels. I think of things like this because I have awful handwriting. Rick has beautiful handwriting, but I felt bad asking him to write out 13 labels.

But in the end, that's what we did. Here's the result:

The labels say:

It's a Marickal!
Plum Wine
2010

"Marickal" is a combination of our names, and a play on the word miracle, which I'm sure you figured out. We were so surprised to get this far. We have a couple of bottles to use as beta testers. If the wine in those holds up (i.e., doesn't grow mold or something over the next month or so), we'll give the wine out as gifts.

Got any wood to knock on?

Fumbling Garden Witchery

I took a break from synopsis writing to play in the yard for a while. I pulled some weeds, watered a little, argued a bit with the crab grass.  It's so wonderful out there. The weather is perfect these days: warm during the day, with bright sun and clear skies. Nights are getting cool.

I can tell the soil is changing, shifting toward its winter softness. It hasn't rained yet, and the soil is still hard as cement, mind you. But its different than it was a few weeks ago. Like it's breathing. Getting ready to wake up. Around here, summer is a time of hibernation because it's too dry and hot for critters to move through the soil. Spring and autumn are the living times, with flowers popping out, and worms working their way through soft, loamy soil.

Time to reflect and admire and yes, work, since it's cool enough to be out there for a few hours.

But look what I found!



There are THREE limes in this picture! Can you see them all? There are five on the tree, for the first time, ever! They are still hard, so I didn't pick them. I'm not sure how they'll turn out - this poor tree has struggled all its life, due to my neglect. For one thing, I've kept it in a pot, and I've been awful about feeding it. In fact, I haven't fed it at all, other than to occasionally throw some diluted coffee water into the pot. There is no doubt I don't deserve these limes. But I jumped for joy anyway, and told the little tree how lovely it was, and took its picture.

Excitement abounds.

Here's a garden question: we have this tree, a silk tree (also called a mimosa). My husband likes it. Me? I admit it's a gorgeous tree in the spring and early summer. Those flowers can't be beat, and the hummingbirds and bees love them.

But the tree does this:



All that Brown Stuff on the ground? Dried flowers and pods from the tree. This is a BIG tree and its canopy spreads over half the yard. This stuff is everywhere, several inches thick. Good mulch, I suppose, but the problem is that it covers all the other plants. It sticks to the leaves and flowers and branches of everything. It looks awful.

I shake, rake, or brush it off (more like pick it off, it doesn't really do "brush"). But it's such a hassle. And until I get to it, it just sits there looking ugly.

Then there's this:



This is my jasmine. As you can see, it's surrounded by the Brown Stuff. It WAS covered with it, but I just finished shaking and picking.  There's still a lot trapped in the inner parts of the plant, but I'm concerned about black widows living in there. Not sticking my hand in.

Anyway, this plant is amazing. It started life in a little pot picked up at Whole Foods. I never water it.  It's now about four feet across and three feet tall. It's a spreading plant and would probably be happier on a trellis. I thought it might climb up the fence, but I guess it wants something to wrap around. So it just sits in a tangled clump and grows bigger. Should I go ahead and give it a trellis and try to untangle some of the branches? Or try to get it to spread out along the ground? Should I rake up the Brown Stuff, or leave it there as mulch? It's okay on the ground, I just hate it covering up the plants.

Wine Report

It's been three weeks since we racked the plum wine, so it was time to re-rack, and lose some sediment. It was also the Big Check - is it wine, yet?

Oh, yes.

After we siphoned it into a new bucket, we took a taste. It's very dry, which I think is wonderful. I prefer dry wines, and I was afraid this would be too sweet, since it started with plums.  But, no. It's VERY dry.


I think it's almost perfect, but Rick wasn't sure. According to the instructions, if we want it sweeter, we can add sugar just before we bottle it. So we'll decide then.

It's also done fermenting. The SG is 1.006, which means there's almost no sugar left. What's the alcohol content? Well, that's an inaccurate guess, due to my faulty record-keeping. We need to know the starting SG, and I forgot to write that down.

But I do know it was in the normal range for starting wine. So we have a range of 7%-12% alcohol. I think it's at a reasonable level, because what we tasted (about a 1/4 cup each) was enough to provide the beginnings of a tipsy feeling.

I'm excited about it. We'll let it sit for a month or two more, to get rid of more sediment. Depending on how clear it looks at that point, we might bottle it.

Next year, I'll make an effort to use all our plums and make a bunch of wine. This is great stuff.

Even Better Pickles

My pickle kick is continuing unabated. We eat a little bit every day. But I've discovered that I'm not quite on the right track with the pickle thing.

Pickled foods are the right idea, but the REAL idea is fermented food. The vinegar-sugar route is a short-cut.

So I'm trying it the old-fashioned way.

I sliced up some cucumbers, onions, and carrots. These were all mixed together in a bowl with 2 tbsp sea salt, a few cloves of garlic, and some mustard seeds. The idea is to mix and mash for 4 to 10 minutes, until the vegetables have reduced and let off a lot of their juices.

Then I packed them into jars (which I first sterilized). I filled the jars to the top, making sure there was plenty of the liquid covering the veggies.

Aren't they beautiful? The jars are left on the counter for three days, with a loose lid. After that, they can be stored a few more days in a cabinet, then refrigerated.

I really want to be able to store these things in a cabinet, to have veggies throughout the winter. In the past, I think people kept them in their basements or someplace very cool. Perhaps I can keep them in our garage. It stays plenty cold in the winter. But for now, I think the jars have to be refrigerated, which is disappointing.

The quandary is, the vegetables are in season now, so now is the time to ferment them. But I don't have a cool place to keep them.

I'll have to work on that.

Oh, and one tip I found out about: putting a grape leaf in the jar keeps the vegetables crisp. So I "borrowed" a few leaves from our neighbor's vines that grow over our fence.  We'll see if it works.

Wind Dancer Ranch

I've been waiting to write this entry because I wanted to give it the time and attention it deserved. I need to get to it, before I forget everything that happened.

A few weeks ago, I went up to Wind Dancer Ranch in Yolo County, to "cut and wrap" my portion of a pig. I split the hog with two other people from the Bay Area Meat CSA. One person took half, the other half was split between me and one other person.

This was such an incredible experience! I feel bad, because I don't have the pictures I wanted. This is my fault - I've got to learn to be better about that. But I didn't get any pictures of the farm itself, despite the fact that the owners, Lisa and Jim, took us on a grand tour.

These two people are amazing - working regular jobs in addition to fixing up and running this old, abandoned farm. We could see how much they've accomplished, and how much they still have to do! But they just jump in work until its done. These are the real heroes of American life.

Wind Dancer has several animals: the pigs, of course, and chickens, turkeys, sheep, rabbits, horses... I had one of their turkeys for Thanksgiving last year, and it was wonderful.

They also have a garden, of course, but don't grow crops to sell. They do grow feed for the animals.

It was a hot day, which made it difficult for the weak city dwellers to concentrate. I brought my 14-year old grandson with me, and he was very impressed. He'd never been exposed to this kind of thing, but he loved it. He even asked if he could come work with them next summer! He couldn't do it this year, because he has a broken arm.

The highlight of the day, was learning to cut the hog. They had already cut it into quarters, so we dealt with the front and hind quarters of our half. We all gathered in Lisa's kitchen, where she has a marvelous wooden table.

She supplied us with cutting boards and knives, and with Jim helping, we proceeded to trim away the rough, pinkish remainder of skin from the fat areas. This was a very thin layer - you can sort of see it along the edge of the fat in this picture.

Jim gave us lots of direction as we sliced, and helped quite a bit with the hard parts. Strength-wise, I'm a wash.






We made sausage with a lot of the meat, using spices we brought from home. Lisa contributed any extras we needed.

This was an incredible experience. Lisa and Jim are working on a real "butchering room" which will have tables, large sinks, commercial refrigerators, and all the huge equipment this job requires. Including, hopefully, a commercial-grade food wrap machine. The little one we used kept stalling, and stretched things out far longer than we'd planned on. But they're talking about having classes for butchering or canning... whole weekends when people can stay in a guest house at the farm and spend time with others who want to learn these important skills. Or who just want to have fun with others while they work!

I had such a great time up there, and I hope I get back. It will take us a while to use all the meat we got. But I do need variety - some lamb, perhaps, or a rabbit or two. Maybe chickens. Another turkey, for sure! But thank you, Jim and Lisa, for all your hard work and help. Good luck to both of you!

Yum Wine

The plum wine I started last week has been merrily fizzing and popping away in the guest room, with lovely scum appearing in the mixture. The bacteria are growing!

Yesterday, we washed and sterilized our equipment in preparation for our first racking. Assembly of the wine bucket was not an easy thing. The silly nozzle that goes in the hole near the bottom of the bucket just would not stop leaking. We did all we could, which involved tightening the bolt with pliers, taking it apart and putting it back together, then attacking it with pliers again. All of this required that we sterilize the bucket again, just to be safe.

It still leaks at a very slow rate - maybe a couple of drops a day. I'm not happy about this.

But we went ahead and siphoned the wine into the new bucket. First we lifted out the bag of pulp and squeezed out as much liquid as we could.  Then with the new bucket on the floor, we lifted the mixture onto a desk and siphoned away. This went much faster than I thought it would.

The wine is a lovely pink-red color, sort of like punch. We each took a taste and oh... this stuff is gonna be good. It's sweeter than a typical red wine, but it's not too sweet... I'd put in on a level with a dry Riesling, perhaps. We'll see what it's like after several months in the bucket.

For now, we wait about three weeks, then test the specific gravity. If it's where it should be, or whenever it's ready (I don't have the number in front of me right now), then we do a second racking. This will be done about every two months for six months. Then it can be bottled. It should be ready to drink at that point, but aging will only improve it.


Unfortunately, this means it won't be ready for Christmas presents. But if it's good enough, family and friends can look forward to a bottle or a chance to share it. Salud!




For the record: yesterday's SG was 1.020. According to our recipe, it should have been about 1.040. So we let it go a bit too long in the bucket, I guess. It appears I've made nearly every mistake in the book, but if yesterday's taste was an indication, everything is all right. Keepin' the fingers crossed!

Let's Make Pickled Vegetables

I'm not a big pickle eater. Loved them when I was a kid - the big, sour dills, and even then I preferred the crunchy kind.

But as I've gotten older, I've found the taste too tart, and mostly I've avoided them. I've considered making them myself, and I did pickle some beets last year. I also made some marinated vegetables for a buffet - spicy ones to go with Mexican food.

Then, last week, I had someone's homemade pickles, both sweet and sour.

Oh, boy. What I've been missing. Like anything else, Industrial Food has ruined our pickles for us. The homemade variety are outstanding.

But I didn't run out and buy a bunch of pickling cucumbers. No, if I can pickle cucumbers, I can pickle anything. And I've got vegetables to use up!

It bears saying that pickled foods are good for you. Pickles used to be served at the beginning of every dinner, as a way to prepare the digestive system for a meal. The bacteria in the vinegar are the kind that do good things for us.

And it's ridiculously easy to make.  Follow along.

Step 1: Cut up your vegetables. I used carrots, Armenian cucumbers (didn't have the pickling kind), red and yellow onions, and garlic. They're all tossed together in a big bowl.

Step 2: Stuff the veggies into jars. Really cram them in there. You'll still have lots of unused space.

Step 3: Here's the rest of the ingredients. Simple, right? This is a Cooking Light recipe for pickling zucchini, but I figured it would be good for anything. It's a not-too-sweet and spicy brine. I love the taste.

I'm afraid I can't find the recipe online, but it was in the August issue for this year. For 4 cups of vegetables, boil 1 cup of vinegar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp. mustard seeds, 3/4 tsp red pepper flakes, and 3/4 tsp salt. Just bring it to a boil, then pour it into the jars. I had to quadruple the recipe for what I had.

The result: gorgeous, delicious, crunchy vegetables!

I'm Not Lost, I'm Making Wine

Which is a real adventure.

I have to tell you, it's not easy decoding all the instructions for making wine. Maybe it's my age. I just can't comprehend things like I used to.

Anyway, I spent days reading various instructions, including the ones that came with the wine-making kit I ordered. But it took deeper research into the internets to find definitions and instructions. I mean, I need wine-making for dummies. For instance, exactly HOW does the airlock fit into the bucket? They assume I just know this.

I hate to disappoint them, but I've never attached an airlock in my life. Good thing my husband's an engineer.

Anyway, the whole point of this was to use up some of the millions of plums my trees have produced. I pulled twenty pounds from one tree yesterday, which was about all I could reach. But that's enough for five gallons of wine. Perfect!

So I carefully washed the equipment, then washed and pitted the plums. That's when it got fun. Perhaps I should mention that I had to change my blouse three times. And I WAS wearing an apron!

Too many instructions have a downside, and that's contradicitons. So some places said to boil the water, others seemed to indicate the water was cold (room temperature). This may be where I really screwed it up, but I won't know until later. It seemed to me that cold water would never dissolve the sugar, so I went and heated up the water. I put it all in a large bucket, with the addition of things like peptic enzyme, yeast energizer, and other mysterious stuff. Then I faced another challenge.

You're supposed to put the fruit in a mesh bag and submerge in the water mixture. Hey, you know mesh bags have holes in them, right? So how do I pour the (extremely juicy) fruit into the bag and transfer it to the bucket?

Yes, I did think about putting the empty bag in the bucket and pouring the fruit in. But the bag wouldn't stay open - it just wanted to fold over and lay in the water. My bowls of fruit were BIG and HEAVY. And I have arthritis.

The lesson: it's a two-person job. But I managed: I put the bag in my biggest skillet (large, with reasonably high sides), then poured one bowl of fruit into the bag. All the liquid immediately poured out of the bag of course, but the pan (just barely) contained it all. I transfered the bag and liquid to the bucket. With the weight of the fruit in the bag, it stayed upright in the water, and I was able to hold it open and pour in the second bowl. This involved not a little bit of pain in my hands, and just a little bit of spillage.

But it worked.  Here it is:

Does this look strange? I hope it doesn't. There's about three or four gallons of water with maybe 4 cups of juice and 7 1/2 pounds of sugar in that bucket. Along with all the pulp in the bag, of course. The big white spot is a reflection of the light in the ceiling.

Right now, the wine is in the guest room, where the temperature can be somewhat controlled. It's covered with a thin towel while the juice is sterilizing. This afternoon, I add the yeast. Then I wait a few days, I think. Back to the instructions!

As usual, I forgot to take pictures of each step. But honestly, this was MESSY! Taking pictures would have been difficult to do. Fun, though. Can't wait to taste the wine.

Crunchy Goodness

I had a treat for dinner the other night. Fried (as in baked) polenta sticks. Doesn't get much better.

As you can see, I served them with deviled eggs. Also carrot soup, which is one of my favorites. This is all part of my attempt to eat less food. This meal was quite filling and satisfying. I served a crisp Riesling along with it, and felt like I wasn't hurting myself too much.

Saving Money

I downloaded a few great recipes here. These are delicious Mediterrean meals, healthy and cheap. The idea behind them is to eat fresh, local food for under $2.00 per meal. I'm always looking for ways to cut my food costs without giving up the Real Food, so this is perfect for me.

I will say, that the prices for ingredients probably don't reflect organic prices. I mean, where are you going to find local, organic asparagus for $1.69 a pound?

You aren't.

So in that sense, this isn't useful. Frankly, I don't know where to shop in the Bay Area to find "cheap" organic, local food. Everywhere I look, it costs a fortune, even at my local farmers market. Maybe, especially at my local farmers market.

But that's okay. As Alice Waters has said (paraphasing), "Good food is not supposed to be cheap." It's only in America, in the last 50 years or so, that we've latched onto the idea that food should cost practically nothing. It's another way we bury our heads in the sand and pretend The World According to Us has no problems at all.

Ouch. Didn't mean to jump on the soapbox. It happens so easily! The basic thing is that if we eat Real Food, mostly plants, not too much (thank you, Michael Pollen), and if we cook it ourselves, our meals don't have to break the bank

Frugal is good.

A Low-Cal Meal Jenny Craig Can't Come Close To

Here's a simple, low-calorie dinner that is, nevertheless, amazing. The secret is fresh, local ingredients at their prime. Once again, this meal is a result of needing to use up my CSA veggies, although I confess to buying the tomatoes at Whole Foods.

The carrots are a Moroccan Carrot Salad from my Green's cookbook - just carrot curls tossed with a bit of lemon juice, olive oil (only a teaspoon), sugar (just a bit), and orange peel with a little water. The recipe called for orange flower water, but I had no such thing in the house, so I improvised. These are really good carrots!

The summer squash was sauteed in a little olive oil, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. It doesn't get much better than that.

The tomatoes are those heavenly heirloom tomatoes - the kind that are deep red, and heavy with flavor. They make you swoon, they're so good. I just sliced one up, added salt and pepper, and covered them with eggs over easy.

We topped the meal with banana daiquiris - strange perhaps, but I had bananas to use up. It went with the meal just fine.

Whew!

Do you like the new look? I migrated the information from my old website onto my food blog, and changed the template, too. It makes me feel lighter, somehow.

I was perfectly happy with my web host, but I needed to cut costs. Blogger is the right price (free), plus this way, anybody who finds me through search engines gets to see the blog, too. I like that.

I was afraid I'd screwed it up, though, when I tried to point my domain name to the blog. Everything went to the old website and I couldn't access the blog at all! It turned out I just needed to clear my cache.

That's enough technology for me, today. I'm going to take a nap!

Post-Vacation

I've been home for a week, and you know - it was good to see vegetables again. I always say that.

My first tasks were to clean the frig, go grocery shopping, and pick up my CSA box. I have to confess to being somewhat disappointed with this summer's boxes. Not completely disappointed - I've had asparagus and English peas, and a few baby artichokes. Green beans, occasionally. But where is my corn or squash? When do the melons come in? What about peppers? I see these things in the store and most of them are from local farms. Why didn't my farm grow them?

Probably they'll start showing up in the box and I'll be overwhelmed. Last year, I remember getting so many sweet peppers, that it took me until this March to use them all up. That's pretty cool, actually. And this week, I got several onions, something else I've been waiting for. So hopefully, the summer stuff will start to come in.

The one thing I'm not so crazy about? Cucumbers. They just don't do it, for me. I like putting them in my drinking water, but that's about it. I should try to make pickles. I'm not mad about them, but I bet my husband would love them. I think my older grandchildren would like 'em, too.

Vacation

A family reunion is currently claiming my time. My days are filled with grandchildren, nephews, in-laws of all kinds, Virginia sun and wind, and hours in the swimming pool or out on the river in the boat.

Well, and food, of course.

This side of the family is solidly devoted to fake industrial food, but even these people have a special dish that gives them pleasure to prepare and share. Breakfast and lunch are on-your-own affairs, with lots of *shudder* pop tarts, toaster strudels, sliced American cheese, crackers and chips for people to grab whatever they want. Also, sodas and energy drinks galore. On the good side, there's a never-ending bowl of fruit.

Each family takes a turn with dinner, and it's these meals that allow everyone to shine. My father-in-law made his favorite stir-fry, with lots of real vegetables: carrots, onions, cauliflower, snow peas, scallions, and the addition of marinated beef and chicken. All served over homemade fried rice. Yumm.

My step-son and his wife made beautiful shish kebabs packed with bell peppers, onions, cherry tomatoes, and beef.

My daughter-in-law made a great potato salad, with careful attention to the flavorful dressing.






Their  four-year-old daughter, from the first day they arrived, was enamored of the apple tree in the back yard, and picked apples every time she could get someone to lift her up high enough. As soon as her 12 and 15 year old cousins arrived, she had them in the tree, tossing apples into her bucket.

So I made a pie.

For my turn in the kitchen, I made lasagna, easy to use to feed a crowd:

And a salad with radishes, zucchini, and asparagus, a surprising hit:

Our hosts, my sister-in-law and her husband, prepared a southern meal of barbequed spare ribs, corn on the cob, and a colorful pasta salad. Tonight, my other sister-in-law brings out her family's favorite beef tacos, with lots of veggie toppings. Along with Coronas and lime.

The rumor for tomorrow is crab legs and pizza. THAT one will be interesting!

A Cheese Class

My youngest gave me a cool birthday present. A class in cheese-making, followed by wine and cheese tasting! Our class was at the Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills.

Gloria helps shake up the milk. We used non-homogenized milk, so the fat had to be loosened.

Curds and whey after heating the milk, and adding citric acid and rennet.

Our mozzarella balls after shaping the curds and dipping them in HOT water. We decorated them with flower petals or herbs.

Gloria and I pose at the door. We also got to visit the farm's goats!

Wild Alaskan salmon: food politics in action

So who gets the money for all that expensive salmon? Here's another example of Big Ag (in this case, Big Fish) destroying a local economy:

Wild Alaskan salmon: food politics in action

More Greek Weekend

I had more cooking to do on Saturday. Since I made half the recipe for Copenheim, I wanted to use up the rest of the phyllo dough. But the last thing I needed was more sweets.

Which calls for an appetizer. Oooh - vegetables!

Elaine's cookbook has recipes for cheese puffs and spanokopita. My appetizer became a sort of combo, based on what I had in the frig:

A mixture of kale and beet greens, sauteed with onions and garlic:

To this, I added cottage cheese and dill. Are you wrinkling your nose? You might be surprised to know it tasted darn good!

Using oil on the phyllo, I rolled this mixture up into turnovers:

I haven't baked them, yet. I put the pan in the freezer for about 30 minutes, then put the turnovers in a plastic bag for storage. They'll be great to just pop in the oven for a quick dinner or appetizers for guests. Perhaps this weekend, when the R. family comes for dinner.

Ah, but now it was time to prepare the marinade for the Arni Souvlakia, aka, shish kebabs (p. 50).

I had a small leg of lamb and roast in the freezer, so I'd thawed them out and cut them into little pieces. I added quartered onion, cherry tomatoes, and mushroom caps (cremini). The recipe called for bell pepper, but I haven't found any locally grown pepper yet, so I left them out.

Sitting in the marinade







But what did I have left after these preparations? Did you guess a lamb bone? With a little meat still on it? What do you think I did with that?

Yep - lamb stew! An excuse to use more vegetables! Sorry, I didn't get a picture of it, but I've got a nice broth with onion and carrots. I'll finish it today - adding a roux and some fresh peas. Can't wait!

The next day (Sunday), was the crowing touch:

We grilled them, along with some corn, and had a marvelous lunch. We had one skewer left over (go figure), and that became this morning's breakfast, chopped up with some leftover asparagus and scrambled with some eggs. Perfect!

Gloria and Bill have no complaints about Elaine's cookbook! They just want more!

A Report and a Review

Greek Weekend! I finally had company, and took advantage of it to try a couple recipes from Elaine Schmitz's Recipes & Recollections of My Greek American Family.

It was done in my usual of-course-I-messed-with-it way of cooking. This usually happens because I refuse to go out and by an ingredient if I have something else that I need to use up, and that just maybe, could substitute without totally screwing up the recipe.

More often that not, this involves vegetables.

So yesterday, I donned an apron and pulled out the pots and pans. The recipes:

Connie's Arni Souvlakia - Shish Kebab p. 50
Minnie's Copenheim p. 125

Then there were the dishes I had to make up on the spot to deal with leftover ingredients:
Veggie-Cheese Turnovers (a weird version of spanakopita, or perhaps Cheese Puffs)
Lamb Stew (sort of)

First, I made the syrup for the Copenheim:

Sugar, water, & lemon juice, simmered for about 45 minutes.







Then I got busy with the phyllo dough. Being me, I found, and used, whole grain phyllo dough. Every little bit helps.

I should probably remind you that I'm not a patient person. It's rare that I make something both delicious AND attractive. I can live with that.






Then I beat the egg yolks, folded in the walnuts and beaten egg whites, and spread it over the phyllo:

This was topped with more buttered phyllo dough and baked for about an hour. The syrup was poured over the top of it.

You know, sometimes it does turn out looking attractive!

I need to get a picture of the inside. The egg/walnut mixture bakes into a fluffy, cake-like center. I never would have imagined it. This tastes wonderful, too. A great dessert. Even though I cut the recipe in half, there is still a huge amount left, so it was divided between the guests to take to their various places of work on Monday. The whole Bay Area gets to play Greek!

I'll post the other recipes in a separate entry, so I don't overdo the picture fairy. But I should add: this recipe is very easy to do! Don't be afraid to try it - just have plenty of people around to help you eat it!

Cooking Club - the Third Day

Pizza!

That's what we did for our third cooking club meeting. Everyone brought their own toppings, I made the dough. We used my lovely pizza stone and made delicious, crispy pizzas, with highly creative toppings! I was impressed!

First up is Barry, who was a little self-conscious to be the first guy at our meetings. But we were delighted to have him! And his Apple/Dubliner Cheese pizza was amazing:

Here's a better look at the pizza:

Corrine, who comes to us from England, via Houston, made a fabulous southwestern affair. Let's see, it had chipotle-dusted, sauteed chicken breast, fire-roasted tomatoes, roasted vegetables, and cilantro. Marvelous!

See?

I made a more typical pepperoni/mushroom/cheese pizza, with the addition of zucchini. Never pass up an opportunity to add vegetables:

It was good, too!

We need more people! Where is everybody?

Prep Work

What do you do to prepare for an out of town trip? One thing I have to do, is cook!

My weekly box came right on schedule, but we won't be home to eat it.Here's what my kitchen looked like:

Time to get busy! Here's the sauce for a vegetable stew. It used an onion, which was slightly caramelized, along with some broth I had in the freezer, parsley and other herbs.

Here's the stew waiting for it's crusty topping and thirty minutes in the oven. This took care of the asparagus, fennel, garlic, mushrooms, another onion, and more parsley. I had lots of parsley.

This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven:

That's dinner tonight, with a nice Zinfandel. Perfect for the cold, rainy day we had!

But that didn't take care of everything. No, there were still veggies on my counter. So I shelled the fresh English peas (yum!), chopped up another onion, along with a jalapeno, mint, and a tomato, to make Pea Curry:

I'll freeze this and serve it next week with Roti and brown rice. I also blanched a batch of snap peas and tossed them mint leaves. Those are good! I also cooked up another onion (I had a lot of onions), along with lots of garlic, and sauteed them with chard and beet greens. I'll freeze that, and make a main dish out of it by roasting it with white beans and serving it over polenta. I got that idea from the CSA flyer.

Oh, and I roasted the beets. They can go on salads next week.

How about that? I got something done today!