Solstice

Tomorrow is the winter Solstice (which this year comes accompanied by a lunar eclipse).  Coming from Irish and Scandinavian stock, I was raised among the Catholic tradition, but the integration of the "old culture" remained an important part of my upbringing - leaving milk out for the pooka when things started to go missing or things kept going wrong, the First Foot and the Risgrynsgrot with a lucky almond on New Years to determine our fates for the year.

The Solstice, while never officially celebrated in my childhood home, has always held a special meaning for me.  The sentiment of turning inward, or to our families and friends, as sources of light in times of darkness is something that deserves a moment or two of acknowledgement, even if it's the simple act of gathering our loved ones around a table and lighting a candle together against the darkness.

Renewal and rebirth.  It happens cyclically in our lives, though we seldom pause to acknowledge of ending of one era and beginning of another.  So often we don't consider the act of letting friendships lie fallow to cultivate new fields, though periods of rest are critical to ensure fertility.

In 2002, I had the privilege of visiting Newgrange, a Celtic burial ground dating to approximate 5,000 BCE, which is oriented to allow the light of the setting sun illuminate its innermost chambers, which are filled with the bones and images of my ancestors.  A high priest would enter the chamber and into the darkness of the tomb, waiting for the last gasp of the sun's light to cast a momentary glow on the bones of the long dead before plunging the space into darkness and damp silence.  There they would meditate on the coming year, and pray for the return of strength to the waning sun.

Tonight, on the darkest night of the year, our internationally recognized cycle, our primary illumination in darkness will be blotted out by the shadow of our earth, making tonight the darkest night in hundreds of years.

Have you decided who you want with you to light your way?

Falling for Fall

It's December and it's 74 degrees right now.  Convincing my kids that it's Christmas, despite the pervasive "jazzed up" Christmas Carols absolutely everywhere right now, has been fruitless.  Monster's school had a visit from Santa this morning, and he didn't want to go, claiming that it "wasn't time yet" and he'd rather "go play on the playground."  Winter, indeed.

So in some attempt to create some semblance of holiday cheer, we've engaged in a handful of little craft projects in an attempt to recreate a more traditional holiday season.  Last night we dyed a bunch of coffee filters in some water color paint (the tube kind, diluted in water), and Monster felt compelled to color on them after they dried with a blue highlighter.  Since then, we've folded them up and cut them into little snowflakes, some cut more successfully than others, strung them on some yarn and festooned the dining room.

According to Monster, this is damned exciting.

Meanwhile, I'm up to my ears in studying for finals.  One of my instructors is a graduate student, and despite the provision of study guides, trying to follow the logic of her selection of Critical Pieces of Art since 1850 has been one disappointment after another.  Yes, art is subjective, but if the idea is to create a foundation for basic artistic appreciation, starting with the generally considered "masterpieces" of each sub-genre is probably a good idea.  I digress.

With school in its full swing, I've been cooking a lot less.  Having a bit of time yesterday, I got a wild hair to make homemade eggnog, just to remember that we no longer have tasty fresh eggs anymore since Delilah was snatched in the night.  We've decided to hold off getting more chickens until it warms up a bit (chickens typically produce fewer eggs in the winter), but in the meantime, every time I purchase a carton of eggs I picture the inside of those commercial "free range, vegetarian fed" warehouses and nearly barf.  As a result, we're going through them significantly more slowly.

Thanksgiving Feasts

It's no secret:  I look forward to the planning of feasts.  

Dirt Monster

This year, my husband has asked to make the Thanksgiving Dinner (TM).  I assumed all my watching of Iron Chef (the original, generally done as a drinking game with sake - rules to follow) had rubbed off on him.  No, he admitted later, after I sulked silently for about a week with the knowledge that I would not be making the chestnut stuffing I'd been mulling over, and would not be subjecting the husband to my heart-attack brussels sprouts (though, in retrospect, the fact of the sprouts are probably have some part in his desire to cook it himself - he calls the things "turtle brains," and will not eat them in a house, with a mouse, etc).  Apparently, I "do it wrong."  Thanksgiving, he says, is not for culinary experimentation.  Thanksgiving is about a dry stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and the turkey needs to be stuffed with apples, thank you very much, not citrus as I've done in past years.  Oh, brother.

So, here's the thing.  This means my husband (whose past culinary feats have been of questionable success) is going to be all up in my kitchen.  More importantly, I will need to somehow resist the urge to hover or provide him with all manner of unsolicited culinary advice.  I'm not sure if this will be possible, but I have a feeling that the tranquility of our five day vacation depends on it.  Instead, I'm furtively playing with the children and catching up on some reading.  It's not working.

Sharky still refuses to wear clothes.

So, I'm turning my creative juices to the Christmas Feast, which my mom has let me take over.  So far, I'm planning a curried bay scallop and plum salad with arugula, and my mom has apparently hoarded some giant beef tenderloin that needs doing, which to me just screams for a yorkshire pudding done just so.  I'm also plotting a blue cheese and fig souffle, mostly because my last attempt was not as successful as I wanted it to be.

Iron Chef Drinking Game:  The Rules

Get a friend.  Drinking alone is for the British.

Get a bottle of sake.

Find an episode of the original Iron Chef (none of this new-fangled Bobby Flay garbage).

Drink whenever:

- Chairman takes a bite of the pepper and for a moment looks like he's going to barf.

- Chairman gets a wistful look on his face and says "as I recall..." or "if memory serves..."

- Allez-Cuisine!

- During cooking, one of the panelists says definitively what they're making.

- During cooking, one of the panelists comments on the exertion of the chef.

- During cooking, the lady panelist says something unanimously considered dumb.  (ie. "wow, those eggs look really soft!)

- During judging, the old guy uses some crazy Japanese metaphor to describe the food ("these mushrooms are like cherry blossoms on a breeze.")

- During judging, the lady says "in my mouth." (seriously)

- The Iron Chef wins.

Congratulations.  You and a friend have likely just finished a bottle of sake in under an hour.  I hope you've got a designated driver.

Remiss!

It has been over a month since I've updated.  It's not out of laziness - I have just finished seven papers, and I have two more to go.  My favorite is one I submitted Friday to a theater research symposium - a case study on famous Italian courtesans-turned-starlets (cleverly titled "Harlots and Starlets").

Meanwhile, grants!  Oh, and La Fenice was nominated for a local award!  Oh, and the hubby has many projects in the fire (as per usual), but these latest are very exciting and all a little hush-hush until they're released unto the world.

Today, the hubby finished installing a knife-throwing board in the yard.  (Crazy, right?  Yes.  Crazy awesome.)  After about twenty minutes of practice, I got decent at it.  Even little Monster took a turn, after learning some safety precautions.  VERY exciting stuff.

In sad news, Delilah, the sole surviving chicken of a series of hungry dog attacks, went missing last night.  Usually she hides under the barn if there's a predator of any kind, and she loved to ride around the yard sitting on the hubby's foot, would come running over when we'd come home and adopt a pose that we called "the chicken line-backer," which meant she wanted us to pet her coxcomb.  There are a few scattered feathers, but no more than a chicken loses when agitated.  I thought I heard her a number of times during the day - I'm hopeful that she's just scared and under the barn, and we'll find her taking a dirt bath tomorrow.

Can Jam: Peach Butter

Trust me.  You're not all I've been neglecting.  You should see how overgrown my garlic bed is.  (Yes, it's all I've managed to grow.  No, I'm not proud of it.)

Current favorite way to eat peach butter:  over a lot of very thick plain Greek yogurt.

But I'm happy to report that my first-ever attempt at canning fruit was a smashing success.  It turns out, if you go to the farmer's market and inform the folks in the booths that you'll be canning (better yet, making a jam of sorts), they're likely to magically produce a basket of "not-quite-perfect" fruits that they wouldn't have been able to sell.  Those, they'll give to you for a song (literally, in my case).

One of the baskets of peaches, doing time before a super hot bath

So I had tons of utterly fantastic Fredericksburg peaches (yep, they have their own website, they're that good), so I set about peeling them.  

I'm no dummy.  I totally Googled peeling tons of peaches at a time.  I tried the boiling/ice water bath method.  For some of them, it worked.  For the rest, well - let's just say I spent a while peeling peaches.  By the time it was over, I had four pounds of peeled peaches, sticky forearms, and the start of an ache in my lower back.  I tossed all of the peaches into the blender with the juice of two lemons and dumped the whole thing into a crock pot with one cup of sugar (more to balance out the lemon juice than to sweeten the peaches - they were plenty sweet on their own).  Then I let it reduce until it was about 1/3 of the original volume and canned in a water bath.

Pretty Pretty Dinner

Wow.  I'd call myself a slacker if I hadn't been so busy.  It turns out, the pursuit of higher education is time consuming.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been rather inundated with the double whammy of Things Going Wrong coupled with "Professionals" Who Make it Worse.

Take my car.  I was on my way to school when the car in front of me starting spitting plastic auto parts all over the freeway.  I had a fraction of a second for a decision, and figured straddling the (rather large) piece was probably my only option - my tires don't belong on a monster truck, and there was no room for me in adjacent lanes.  The terrible noise as I drove over it was frightening, but I made it the rest of the way to school without smoke, explosions, or ninjas bursting from the backseat.  When I came back from school (MUCH later in the day, totally ready to go just go home already), I discovered my car wasn't turning over.  I initially thought I'd left something on and called my roadside assistance service to get a jump.  The marvelous fellow who showed up managed to put the jumper cables on the wrong terminals, totally frying out a bunch of cables and fuses.  He left fairly promptly, citing "another call" and frantically having me sign paperwork that said he wasn't liable for the mess he just caused.

So my husband has been handling our tyrannical daughter, who is in the middle of a disastrous sleep regression.  Despite not sleeping at all last night, he left early this morning to fix my car.

This afternoon, while he caught up on some well-earned sleep, Monster and I talked about what a good daddy we've got.  I asked him what nice things we should do for him, and he suggested pretty pretty flowers. So we got out some poster paints and the ton of coffee filters I've got left (we've switched to a reusable one) and got a-painting.  After they dried, I threaded a few beads on a sturdy wire, punctured three painted coffee filters, and made a sturdy loop behind them (to stand them up a bit).  I cut some slits into the filters and crunched them up a bit, and they wound up looking pretty cute.

For my part, I had a few spectacular ribeye steaks doing time in the fridge, and a giant pile of spinach and swiss cheese.  By adding a few oven-roasted rosemary potatoes, we had ourselves a pretty decadent little faux-steakhouse dinner.

I asked Monster if that was good enough, and he suggested we make it a "Pretty Pretty" dinner, which I took to mean "bust out the china."  So I did.  Frankly, it doesn't get used enough.  I also busted out these fantastic towering crystal pilsner glasses we got for our wedding that I think make totally awesome water goblets.

Then we all scampered off to wake up Daddy (probably actually the cruelest aspect of our thank-you dinner, but at that point it was 8:00 and I was FAMISHED), who seemed to think our thank-you was pretty okay.

Most of all, I thought it was awesome that we managed to get Monster involved in thinking about ways to appreciate the people around us and the nice things they do.  The bulk of our afternoon was about making things with our hands to show our loved ones that we noticed that they'd done something special, and based on Monster's eager responses, I think it clicked.

Textural Exploration

We went for a little neighborhood jaunt yesterday with a giant wicker basket that used to do time as an Easter Basket.  To be more accurate, the hubby, Monster and I went for a walk.  Lady Bug rode on Hubby's shoulders.

Monster and I spent the walk gathering foliage with different textures.  We did a lot of touching, poking, and (on his end) chattering about spiders and bugs and whether or not Ratatoulle lived in the bushes.

After the loop was complete, we splayed all of our finds on the table and sorted them by stems - big stems and little stems, and started cramming them into the old jelly crock.  Lady Bug participated until it became clear that her intent was to undo everything Monster and I had done.  Apparently the walk was the final straw before a nap was absolutely necessary.

At any rate, the resulting bouquet was surprisingly classy for a hodge-podge of sticks and weeds gathered from overgrown vacant lots.

Stew

I can't help it.  I like stew.  I like to toss a bunch of hearty things in a pot, let the flavors mingle, and dunk chunks of crusty bread in them.

Summer in Texas makes stew a fairly unreasonable dinner option, but after spending the weekend watching the water steadily rise in our creek and feeling the temperature plummet to a measly 93 degrees, I really couldn't help myself.

Tonight's stew was sort of based around a pasta fagioli, only without pasta.

Ingredients:

1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 large frond swiss chard
3 cups beef stock
1 tube breakfast sausage
2 cloves garlic, minced
large fistful of grape tomatoes
1 large can of crushed tomatoes
1 can of garbanzo beans

Sweat the onion in a pot with the garlic.  Add sausage, stir until the sausage has browned.  Add the tomatoes and beef stock, then everything else.  Bring to a simmer and let it mingle for at least a half an hour or until the tomatoes pop.

Growing Up

It occurred to me today, while watching Monster (who is just learning how to really swim) boldly grab up preferred floatation devices and head for the deep end of the pool, that my kiddos are rapidly approaching school age.  Not pre-school age, but serious school-school.

We're fortunate enough to live in an area with a fantastic elementary school, mediocre middle school, and decent high school.  But that's just the thing - the words "decent" and "mediocre" shouldn't be in my vocabulary when discussing the environment in which my children will be spending most of their time.

So I started poking around, as I tend to do when I get a wild hair or start fretting over one thing or another.  If it weren't for list-making and Google, there'd be a padded cell somewhere with my name on it.

We're fortunate enough to live in a city filled with alternatives to the public school system.  Unfortunately, most of them are private schools of various flavors, with enormous tuitions.  My husband and I determined a while ago that it's more important to us for our children grow up in an environment that includes parents fulfilling their creative goals regardless of the income it brings in, which generally means we're budgeting fairly carefully.  Having to choose between eating food from the farms and our kids getting an exemplary education should not be an issue.

So imagine my elation to discover that the Austin Discovery School is not only affordable, but is actually tuition-free.

On top of that, there are all kinds of really rad new camps and schools popping up around town.  Neither of my kids are old enough yet, but The Austin Tinkering School provides a forum for little kidlets to poke and prod at various things and figure out how they work.  (More pictures are here)  These little guys are even making Rube-Goldberg machines, which makes them lucky and me jealous.  There's also the brand-new 9th Street School, which is a sort-of home school in East Austin for 5-7 year olds, taking a very practical, hands-on approach to learning.  The kids tend their own garden and cook with their bounty, make their own newspapers and books to encourage learning, fix and ride their own bicycles, and a number of other relevant, exciting things.

The newest mystery is The Living School.  I think.  I can't find ANY information on it outside of this blog (where is it?  Is it even in Austin?), but it's pretty much the coolest thing ever.

More on Canning

Alright.  In between all the studying I'm doing for school, I'm also studying how to can.  I've got kids at home, I can't go pumping them full of cooties - that's Preschool's job.

Here's a How-To round up of awesome links:
USDA's Canning Page - Pretty much the bible of bacterial murder and safe canning practices.
Tigress in a Jam provides a tidy little how-to on canning.
Tigress in A Jam - Botulism (et al) can't survive in acidic environments (meaning a PH of 4.7 or lower).  For some veggies, this is no problem, for things like carrots, this is.  Read all about overcoming that obstacle here.
Another Great Post from Laundry, etc. on dealing with tomatoes, which ride that acidic cusp of 4.7/4.6 - with recipes for tomato puree and jelly.
A just my speed idiots guide to canning tomatoes, from August Can Jam.
But HERE is what I've got my sights set on:  a Tomato Butter, also by August Can Jam.

A Peck of Pickled Peppers

I've done it!  I've canned my first thing ever!

I've had peach butter in a crock pot all day, but while I was making dinner tonight, I realized that it might be a good idea to pickle some of the bushel of anaheim peppers I picked up yesterday at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market (specifically, from the Johnson's Backyard Gardens booth).

So, I chopped them up into rings and dropped them into jars I had just scrubbed super clean in hot, soapy water, along with a roughly chopped garlic clove.

I wound up chopping about ten good-sized anaheims, which filled three 12 oz jars.  Meanwhile, in a super-clean stainless steel pan, I brought two cups of white vinegar, two cups of water, a tablespoon of sea salt (I didn't have canning salt), a tablespoon of black peppercorns, a tablespoon of coriander, and a teaspoon of sugar.

I let the smelly vinegar mixture get to a nice rolling boil, and let it chill there for a few minutes while I made sure to wipe down the tops of the jars, lids and rings.  I filled the jars with the brine/vinegar fluid, popped the lids on, and put on the rings, then put them into a big stock pot with water halfway up the sides of the jars, which (for some reason) I was remembering was the way to do it.  I've just double-checked a few instructional sites and determined that I'll probably need to re-process them with the water OVER the jars, but I'll let them cool the rest of the way to see if any of them actually seal.

A couple of things with the process:  A lot of places were instructing to get some special tongs to get the cans out.  I used regular tongs and grabbed the cans as they were coming out with a folded up dish towel.

My hubby has already gotten nostalgic a couple of times; first mentioning that his grandmother always used a pressure canner, and that they'd be shooed out of the house from the overwhelming smell of vinegar and the fear that the pressure canner might explode at any moment.

At any rate, I figure the peach butter will be done later tonight and I'll process those properly.  Meanwhile, I'll keep my ears pealed for the ping of the pickled pepper seal.

Follow Friday: Some Rad Canning Blogs!

My aunt and grandmother can.  My mother never did it.  The entire process seems utterly foreign and terrifying to me.  As a person, I generally attempt to hit scary things head on, but with my kids watching, I feel the need to do it more like a mac truck than some jerk with a bicycle (not that there's anything wrong with bicycles).


Meet my new obsession:


Figuring out how to can without murdering my beautiful husband and children with botulism and a host of other creative bacteria.  The fact that my husband's grandmother, who raised him, was some sort of kitchen goddess, who canned her own everything, plucked her own chickens, and made pies that I will never duplicate, ever is more than a little intimidating.  My husband is fan of notating every kitchen disaster to bring up when I mention a flavor combination that makes him cringe (especially if my response is for him to "trust me.")


At any rate, here are some delicious blogs I've found on the subject, that I've immediately added to my Google Reader.  (Holy crap, did you know they make this thing?  You tell it which blogs you like and it puts it all together for you...  I know, I'm behind.  But it's made keeping up SO much easier.)


Tigress in a Jam - Who has set a goal for readers to post one canning recipe a month.  My goal is to figure out how to can and perfect at least one recipe by the end of September.
Canning Across America - Provides a national resource and posts all kinds of recipes, resources, and gorgeous pictures of canning successes from all over. 
Earth Easy Blog (Canning Tips You Might Not See in the Manual)- This post on canning includes all kinds of tips that aren't in most books, and feels like a really good start.

The Lost Art of Busking

Tonight we took the kids to see the 1st Annual Street Magic Festival, run by the Man With His Mitts in Everything, John Maverick.  I had the good fortune of meeting him while performing last year and discovered that he lives just up the street from me, and since then it's been one failed attempt to collaborate after another.  In fact, I'm supposed to head up the hill tomorrow so we can figure out if I'm too tall to be sawed into thirds (I'm fairly certain it's every girl's secret dream to be a magician's assistant).

Our trip, more specifically, a handful of comments overheard, made one thing perfectly clear:  we've forgotten how to appreciate real talent.  Night after night, we'll watch people eat bull testicles, run ludicrous obstacle courses, and all manner of talentless human degradation and call it entertainment - but you run across a person on the street whose spent hours perfecting a slight of hand, or some juggling feat and it's "boring" or "weird."  Around the fringes of the festival, I caught a couple of comments:  "Oh, it's just people doing tricks, let's go find a bar," or (in one miserable case) "Are you ready to go?  I don't want to miss Project Runway."

Further into the festival, we learned that we could ask anyone with a badge to do a trick.  My kids were all eyes - people juggling diabolos and clubs, hula hooping (Monster's favorite), a slew of Parkour guys doing back flips off railings and each other (VERY cool, but we're already informing Monster about the amount of practice required to successfully perform such feats), and various magicians of all ages wandering around with decks of cards and coins.

More exciting for me was watching my kids discover intimately that people can do the seemingly impossible and giving them coins to distribute to the performers that truly fascinate them.  In this digital era, where the notion of arts patronage is something only the elite can do and pedestrians avoid eye contact with street performers, there's a lesson there for my kids - we support the amazing in our family, in every tangible way.

Dark Days Challenge

It's official.  I'm participating in the 3rd Annual Dark Days Challenge, which challenges folks to cook at least one meal a week with locally sourced ingredients during the winter.  I'm not sure how this will work when I get to Chicago for the holidays, but currently, I'm stoked.  Between my proto garden, my canning schemes, and the bounty of the local farmers' market, I'm thinking this will be A-OK.

Oh!  I totally forgot in the last post!  How cool is this?  Jewelry made out of pages of your favorite book!

I've got a few books whose bindings have failed or who have suffered water damage that I just can't bear to part with - I've spent too many perfect rainy nights re-reading those pages.

Attempts and Discoveries

It's no secret that I have a black thumb.  Maybe I've mentioned that before.  I will not post pictures of the two tomato plants that failed produce a single edible tomato, one of which is nothing but leaf jerky hanging limply from a Topsy Turvy in the middle of our yard.  I even spent time combing the Texas A&M Tomato Solver website for solutions.

Today I transplanted the one surviving plant, which has never even produced a proto-tomato, into a pot.  I'm hoping that in doing so I didn't totally massacre the roots and that it likes its new (totally inconvenient) spot in the very middle of the yard, the only spot that gets sun for more than a few hours a day.  It's probably too late for anything to come of the plant, but I'm keep my black fingers crossed.  I also, for funzies, planted some garlic and scallions I had doing time in my pantry.  

We've been getting Greenling baskets for awhile lately.  For months, we did the Local Farms basket, but during the third straight week of okra, I decided to start selecting my own basket (which led us to the delicious discovery of Pluots).  There was something lacking, though.  I was missing the joy of shopping for your food - being able to smell, touch and see everything before making your selections.

So we cancelled our basket for the week and went to the Sunset Valley Farmers' Market with the hubby and kids.  There we visited with the folks from Kitchen's Pride and walked off with a heavy bag full of oyster mushrooms, stopped by the stand for McKemie Homegrown and picked up some absolutely gorgeous purple bell and anaheim peppers along with some lemon basil, and of course Johnson's Backyard Garden, whose stand is like a supermarket aisle with all their options, where I snagged some onions, sweet potatoes, sweet potato greens and a butternut squash.  Our last shop stop was for tomatoes at the B5 Farm stand.  Monster asked for some juice, so we stopped at a stand that was selling some serious juice - Monster and the Hubby got a watermelon coconut, and I snagged a Basil Lime with San Pelligrino.  Absolutely perfect, since the day was starting to get hot.  All told, we spent about $14 less than we would've with Greenling, got to meet our farmers, and got to fondle our foods before we purchased.

As a result, I've been on a baking frenzy:  a peach-pluot pie in a shortbread crust and a coconut-basil cake (we ate it like pancakes this morning).

Seared Tuna Steak Salad

The fam has a membership to YMCA.  Our closest has been under renovation since we joined, which means the lot of us are either travelling to other locations or working out on top of each other in the reduced space.  That hasn't stopped me from heading over there every once in a while, but doing ball slams in four square feet is claustrophobic.

At any rate, a couple of days ago, I did something that my husband calls 30/30s, which is 30 seconds of as many reps as you can, and than a 30 second "rest" at the extension, for three or four minutes, depending on how sore you want to be tomorrow.  I did four different kinds of 30/30s, so by the time the workout was over, I was covered in workout slime, had noodles for arms, and was famished.  

And I had tuna steaks in the fridge.  And peaches.  Hell yeah.

Most Fabulous Seared Tuna Salad Ever

This probably qualifies as one of the fastest, tastiest meals we've had here in a long time. 

The players:

5 small tomatoes (I've been using Campari, because they're damned tasty)

3 medium peaches, chopped to bite size.

Crumbled goat cheese

French Fried Onions (I'll eat these out of the can.  Trashy and delicious.)

Salad greens

Vineagrette (we used a Champagne Caper)

3 sashimi grade tuna steaks - check your Sustainable Fishing Guide to determine which to get in your area.  

Microgreens (I used broccoli)

1 Lemon

Put a pan over medium high heat with a drizzle of olive oil.  Assemble your salads (everything but the tuna and the dressing).

Season the tuna with salt and pepper on both sides.  Squeeze the juice of one lemon over all three steaks.  When the pan is hot (put a drop of water on it.  It should dance across the surface), put all your steaks in it.  Let them be for about one and a half minutes before flipping - your goal is to get a really good sear, but to keep it nice and pink in the middle.  Once they're done (DO NOT overcook your tuna.  There's nothing sadder than a well-done tuna), slice them and put them on your salads.

The bright sweetness of the peaches, combined with the tomato and richness of the tuna is pretty much amazing.  My husband hates peaches but devoured this salad in a flash.  

Killer Salads

I don't know where you live, but where I live it's freaking hot.  With the mercury climbing to 105 and our AC unit working hard to keep up, I'm doing my very best to avoid turning the stove on.  Which means some of my favorites are out of the question - roasted chicken, stews, polenta and risotto.

Since the weather's gotten hotter, I've been attempting several varieties of salads to find something that's actually filling but requires very little cooking.  After staring blankly at the fish section at the local supermarket (which has a surprisingly good selection), I figured I should do what smart people do when they're at a loss - ask for help.  I chatted with the fella behind the counter (Ben) about where the fish came from, how many times each of them had been frozen, and which were the freshest.  Having just switched purses, I didn't have my Sustainable Fish Guide (which can be sorted by region and rates fish based on overfishing, sustainability of fishing methods and whether the harvesting methods are harming other fish or the environment), but I remembered that most Pacific line caught Yellow Fin Tuna is okay, so I grabbed three sashimi grade steaks.  I also grabbed a big container of Texas gulf crab meat, because the only thing better than crab is crab already out of its shell and because I'd like to support gulf fishermen.

So I decided to make the first crab cake I've ever made, toss it on a bed of fresh spinach and surround it with a bunch of chopped up heirloom tomatoes.

My crab cake contained:

One container jumbo lump crab, picked for shells and cartilage
1 tablespoon horseradish
1 tablespoon worchestershire sauce
1 cup mayo
2 ears corn (roasted - actually, I roasted six of them at once by sticking them unhusked in the oven at 400 for about a half hour or so), corn cut from the cob (I cut them all and stuck them in tupperware for future roasted corn recipes)
Fistful of cilantro, chopped
Fistful of chives, chopped
1/4 of a red onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 green pepper, finely chopped
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
Juice of one lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

With your hands, mix all ingredients, adding mayo if it's having trouble sticking together.

In a pan, add about a cup of vegetable oil.  Turn the heat to medium high.  (Now is a good time to assemble your salads).  Once the oil is hot enough that dropping water causes sputtering, add your crab cakes and flip after about two minutes (check them - no one likes crab cake char).

I served it with Annie's Green Goddess dressing, which is a whole bottle full of tasty win.  By the time I'd finished my plate, I was tummy-ache stuffed, which is almost unheard of.

In a semi-related note, Chardonnay mixed with Central Market's Pomegranate Italian Soda is probably illegal somewhere.

Goat Cheese

Alright.  I've gone and made goat cheese.  Like all homemade cheese, it's delicious - the texture and richness is far superior to anything I've picked up at a supermarket.

I ordered a half-gallon of goat milk from Wateroak Farms out of Bryan, Texas (described as "a haven for dairy goats").

The whole process started with dumping the whole half gallon into a clean pot, along with the juice of a meyer lemon (gifted from a friend with a tree).  I didn't bother timing it this time, having made ricotta once and accidentally making ricotta and whey out of a cheese sauce that broke.  There will be a point about 15 minutes in where the milk solids separate from the liquids.  The temp will be about 180.  Be sure to stir frequently - I noticed that the solids in the goats milk sunk (I don't remember the cow's milk doing this.)

The process of making ricotta feels very pretty.  I'm sure in more commercial environments it's less lovely.  I think at least part of it is the frothiness of cheese cloth.

The trick here is to fold the cheese cloth a few times.  I put it in a colander and, since I didn't really have a use for the whey, stuck it in the sink.  Afterwards it occurred to me that the chickens probably would've loved it if I mixed it with some stale bread for them.  Live/learn.  Next time.  Etc.

Just after it's drained, I added a bit of salt and a few turns of the pepper grinder.

Now, apparently the big difference between ricotta and farmer's cheese is squeezing and time.  I wrapped my ricotta (the solids after the separated milk goes through the cheese cloth contraption) in the cheese cloth and put it in a ring mold.  (This is actually a lie.  I don't have a ring mold.  I grabbed a metal "house" cookie cutter that came in a holiday cookie cutter kit and man-handled it until it could generally be described as round.)  Then I added a little souffle cup filled with black eyed peas on top for a little weight and put the whole stack into a tupperware container.  It's spent the last two days in the fridge, squishing.

The outside took on the texture of the cheese cloth.  I was surprised when I tasted it that it doesn't have the characteristic zing of goat cheese, but it was still incredibly rich and creamy.  I'm thinking this has something to do with something my brother's special lady friend mentioned - that goats milk funkiness is a seasonal thing.

Further cheese making attempts beyond farmer cheese will require cheese cultures.  I guess it's time to do a little research.

Sexy Fruit Salad

Not much makes me sadder than lame fruit salad.  (This is a melodramatic overstatement.  Run with it.)  If I order a fruit salad and wind up with a sorry cup of cantaloupe and grapes, I begin silently cursing the prep cook.

A few weeks ago, the Hubby and I made a trip to a little Italian restaurant in the Galleria.  Their dinner salad highlighted a basic lesson in food editing:  a salad is not the place for you to clean out your vegetable drawer (and in this instance, a pantry).  A salad is the opportunity to create a very unique fusion of flavors - nothing should be there without a purpose.

The most recent local box from Greenling, besides having a gigantic bag of okra that I'm fairly sure we'll never get through, was full of fruit.  I went to chop up one of the Fredericksburg peaches for Lady Bug and I to share and decided instead to make a Damned Sexy Fruit Salad instead.

I'm happy to report that all of the fruit, save for the store bought grapes, all of the fruit was local.  Aside from the fistful of red grapes, I chopped up peaches (3) from Caskey Orchards out of San Marcos, Figs (5) from Comanche Farm, Blueberries from My Fathers' Farm out of Seguin, and the juice of a meyer lemon given to me at Flipside Church Night by a woman who's got a tree full of them in her yard.  I tossed these juicy babies with a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses and a teaspoon of chinese five spice.  I totally meant to add the lemon basil doing chill time in the fridge (from Acadian Family Farms in Lavaca County), but forgot.  No worries, I've got some fresh purple hull peas in the fridge I can toss them with.

While I was "cooking," the Hubby was doing legwork on the installation of a tankless water heater while grabbing two more chickens and some feed from Callahans, this time Rhode Island Reds.  After chatting with a girlfriend of mine who also keeps chickens, we're pretty sure that the Reds get eaten first because they don't have the camoflague that the Barred Rocks have.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, I've named them Quiche and Souffle, mostly because I'm assuming they'll be made into a quick feast by one of our local preditors.  Seeing the new birds next to old, fat Delilah is a study.  For a little while I had felt guilty about cutting down their commercial feed and forcing her to scratch for bugs (though she was living pretty high on juicer pulp and veggie cuttings).  She's about as plump and chickens come, and the yolks in her eggs are Crayola orange.

Sleep

We're in the thick of it now.

Monster has just started to skip naps altogether, though we're working on getting him to at least take "rest time," which he'll merrily do - it means he gets an hour where his sister is locked out of his room, and he can watch a movie of his choosing from under his covers.  If we manage to keep Lady Bug off him after he goes to bed at night, he'll sleep through and everything is candy-flavored roses.  This rarely happens.  Lady Bug is a ninja, and under the cover of darkness she will always find her brother, sleeping peacefully, and slap his face.  It is, apparently, a tiny woman's perogative.  Once she's slapped him, he's up for at least four hours.

Lady Bug, however, will only sleep when the sun is up.  I'm pretty sure she's actually a vampire.  Frequently, I get up for work to find the hubby is just falling asleep after a night's worth of pleading and wrestling, the little lady having gone to sleep with the dawn.

Overall, it's making the house a little tense.  I try and stay up later to offer the hubby some respite, which just means I'm headed to work on little sleep.  Hubby's sleep schedule is so ridiculous I'm fairly confident he falls asleep in the shower.

I remind myself that scoldings and promises don't get the kids to sleep any faster.  I remind myself that the phase is a transitory one, that soon we'll all be back to our regularly scheduled programming, and if we let go of trying to micro-schedule we'll likely have an easier time of things.

Texas Barbeque

Going for barbeque in Texas is more or less a carnivorous orgy.  On the way home from work yesterday, I had an overwhelming yen for a two-meat plate smothered in tangy/spicy magic flanked by heaps of carbohydrates.  What mama wants, mama gets.

We went do Don's Depot, an odd little barn/hut along 290, run by a quartet of fervent Mexicans more interested in the Espana/Portugal World Cup game than dumping ice cream scoops of cherry cobbler into styrofoam cups. The barbeque, however, is enough to make me want to sing gospel tunes and do the Roger Rabbit at the same time.  My kids did their own damage to the plates - Monster polished off two pieces of Texas Toast (with a fork) in his continued boycott of all things not beige, and Ladybug snitched sloppy fistfuls of anything unattended, including a disastrous handful of sauce.

Here's the problem with going for barbeque:  I eat way too much of it.  I cram my face full of sauce-slathered sausage and brisket without coming up for air.  The remaining spaces between my cheeks as I barely chew the meat is filled with macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and what the restauranteur playfully dubs "green beans."  By the time I'm waddling out of the place, I feel like I've swallowed three bricks coated in shame sauce, and it sticks with me the rest of the day.

To add guilt to the gurgling pile, we got home yesterday to find our new Greenling box had arrived, filled with all sorts of leafy magic.  I noticed with dismay that, after the Writers' League of Texas Agent's Conference over the weekend, a lot of last week's vegetables were still in the fridge, many of them already looking past their prime.

To make up for it, I made a magical little salad, mostly free from guilt.  In the new CSA box were some gorgeous packs of butter beans and blueberries.  I sauteed the butter beans in butter, along with a hefty fistful of lemon basil, a chopped onion and some coarsely chopped elephant garlic.  After everything started to brown, I tossed it on a waiting bed of red butter lettuce, baby spinach, blueberries, shredded carrots and mozzarella cheese, and (because I can never help myself), coated it in flax seeds and panko breadcrumbs.

On Indiana Jones

Monster has become obsessed with Indiana Jones.  Between his pilferage of the House Fedora (you have one - admit it), declaring "bad things" to be Nazis, and the fact that the trilogy is on a regular loop, it's safe to say that he's a bit of a fan.  (Yes, it's a trilogy.  The fourth movie never happened.)

Now my husband and I are faced with a debate.  Up until now, the whole child-censorship thing has been fairly easy.  Cartoon violence doesn't bother us - things like kung-fu, crazy action scenes where things blow up, etc don't bother us if they don't bother him.  We have discussions on the ridiculous nature of what's happening, and he's developed a pretty good sense of the fantastic.  Blood-spattery war movies are dependent on the context - is it something he's likely to understand, does it invite the opportunity for dialogue, or is it just going to be scary and confusing?  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an odd one - while I've used the "kalima" heart-ripping scene to hilarious effect on stage in the past, it's not something that's easily explained to a three year old, the context is cultists kidnapping children for slave labor and sacrificing their rescuers...  It doesn't fit any of the criteria.  My instinct is to stop the movie before then, but Monster is just too smart for that kind of thing.  Hubby has suggested we do like we always do and take our cues from Monster - he hasn't demonstrated anything more than feigned fright (his usual grab-up-the-stuffed-tiger, white-knuckled action sequence reaction) to stuff that makes me kind of cringe.

Playing with Opposites.

We got some really amazing radishes in the Greenling box this week - heirloom watermelon radishes.  They're absolutely gorgeous when sliced, but getting the sort of thin slices that would be necessary for my evening's plans would have required a much steadier hand than I, ninja-sharp knives, or a mandolin.  Instead, I made less-lovely matchsticks and dropped hint-bombs on my husband for my upcoming birthday.

After match-sticking these beauties, I tossed them with a little white wine vinegar and olive oil, salt and pepper and put them in the fridge to keep them nice and cold.

Contrasting opposites in a meal has always been a way to make things interesting.  I decided to play with velvet and crunch, cream and vinegar, pepper and cheese, and hot and cold.

Watermelon Radish Risotto

My risotto was made traditionally, mincing half an onion and one elephant garlic clove and letting them sweat with two tablespoons of butter.  I toasted 1 cup of Arborio with the onion and garlic for about a minute until they started to brown just ever so.  I used 2 cups of chicken stock, 1 cup of white wine and 2 cups of water, adding gradually and stirring until the added liquid is gone before adding more.  When I finished, I added one cup of grated parmesan cheese, stirred to melt.

Covering the risotto in the slightly pickled radish and some basil blossoms made it absolutely gorgeous.  The hint of lemon from the basil buds combined with the pepper of the radish cut through the density of the risotto and lightened the whole dish.

"Summer Stew"

The day before our Greenling Local Box arrives is always a bit of a mash-up of trying to finish off the veggies that are still doing time in our produce bin.  Despite cramming as many different veggies into dinner every night, each Tuesday I've invariably got a bit of something left, despite feeding a family of four and our frequent dinner guests.

Having spent yesterday with two of my lovely friends, Tara and >Josie, we had more veggies to gobble today than usual.  My answer?  I'll call it a summer stew:  roasted veggies and chicken in a thick tomato broth.

Ingredients:

1 bell pepper, diced
3 ears corn, corn cut from ears
1 large green tomato
4 medium tomatoes (vine ripened)
1 red onion, diced
1 large clove of elephant garlic, roughly chopped
1 large can crushed tomatoes
1 can pinto beans, rinsed
4 chicken breasts
3 cups beef stock
1 tbs oregano
1 tbs basil
salt to taste
1 tbs turmeric
1 tbs butter

In a 350 oven, bake the chicken for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large stock pot, add all chopped fresh veggies and the butter.  Stir until onions are translucent.  Add beef stock, crushed tomatoes and beans, herbs and spices and salt.  Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

When chicken is done, chop and add to pot.  Serve with crumbled goat cheese and french fried onions.

Peach Salsa, Pork Chops and Turmeric Risotto

I'll admit it.  I adore cilantro.  To me, it's citrusy-green flavor and scent totally remind me of summer.  I began my culinary fete today armed with the newest spice brought home from Central Market to experiment with:  Turmeric.  I've had it before, but always mixed with a curry powder.  I've heard it called the "poor man's saffron," which seems like a good reason to experiment with IT, rather than actual saffron.

This week's Greenling box came with four of the most incredible peaches I've had in ages.  I decided to make a quick salsa out of it:  Chopping up three peaches, a quarter of a bunch of cilantro, one clove of elephant garlic, a quarter of a red onion, a teaspoon of salt, some cracked pepper.

I had some pork chops fresh from the butcher at HEB, so figured I'd fry those up.  To me, a pork chop is only ho-hum unless it's got a good sear.  For some reason, my hubby has a hard time getting a sear on anything, partly because he gets antsy when it comes to cooking.  Here's a tip for the hubby:  just let it be.  The more you poke a piece of meat, the more you "double check it" to see if it's done, the more sorry your sear.

And now, to the Risotto.  My love affair with risotto began when a certain Italian maestro decided to cook a meal for a theatre troupe.  Dinner turned out to be a giant pot of gorgonzola risotto and a bottle of chianti for each of us while watching some of the most incredible Italian clowning I've ever seen.  Needless to say, I was smitten, and it's vaguely possible the chianti had nothing to do with it.  His tip?  Don't stop stirring the risotto.  Armed with his advice, I attempted my first a few months ago and haven't quit.

Tip number one:  you really need to get arborio rice - long grain rice doesn't make enough starch to get creamy like you'll like it.

In a big pot, put half of a red onion, minced, one elephant garlic clove, minced, and a tablespoon of olive oil or butter.  Let soften over medium heat for about five minutes.  Meanwhile, measure out three cups of chicken stock and two cups of white wine into another pot and put over low heat.  Back in the pot of onions and garlic, add one teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of salt, and one cup of arborio rice.  Stir for about one minute or until the rice gives off a nutty aroma.  Add about one cup of the stock mixture, stirring constantly.

From here, you'll continue stirring the rice, adding stock about a half cup or so at a time whenever the liquid is entirely absorbed.  Expect to spend about 20 - 25 minutes at the stove, stirring. 

A lot of my friends scoff at the idea of being "stuck" at the stove for 20 minutes.  I think of it as a golden opportunity to pour myself a glass of wine, put on a little Count Basie and engage in a little cook-top jitterbug, or to plunk one of my kids on the counter next to me and hear all the details of their day, or to spend time with a friend in need of an ear. 

All told, the warm belly-snuggle flavor of turmeric, combined with the brightness of cilantro and the subtle sweetness of a super-ripe peach is pretty much the definition of early summer to me.

Peach Mango Brown Betty

Ah, the brown betty.  Why does something so astonishingly versatile, comforting and magical always get pigeon-holed as an apple dessert?

Last week, our basket was filled with some of the most darling little peaches I've ever seen, crammed full of wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, alongside two of the biggest, rosiest mangoes.  For Memorial Day, I made some (spiked) strawberry lemonade with some frozen strawberries I had lingering in my freezer from back in the day when I thought I could tempt my eternally finnicky toddler to eat his fruits and veggies via smoothies (a failure).

Ingredients here:
10 small peaches (or 4 large ones)
2 mangoes, skinned
1 cup strawberries (fresh or frozen)
1/2 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)            Really, just chop up some of your favorite fruits.
1 1/2 sticks butter, divided
1 cup brown sugar, divided
1/2 cup white sugar, divided
2 Tbs pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs cacao nibs
1 1/2 cup coarse oatmeal
1/2 cup ground flax seeds
1/2 cup wheat flour

Preheat your oven to 350.  Chop your fruit into bite sized pieces and spread evenly around the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan.  Toss with white sugar, 1/4 cup of the brown sugar, and 1 Tbs pumpkin pie spice.  Chop 1/2 stick of butter into smaller pieces and scatter over the fruit (can be omitted, but the flavor is less rich).

In a medium bowl, melt the remaining butter.  Add the remaining ingredients and mix together until a dense, crumbly mixture is created.  Sprinkle over fruit and press down.

Bake for 30 minutes.  Serve with ice cream (we used strawberry).

A Well-Stocked Pantry

I've found that, with these lovely little boxes of produce arriving each week, my trips to the grocery store become more about keeping a well-stocked pantry than anything else.  The following are items I make sure I always have on hand:

CousCous (from the bulk section, usually both fine-grain and Israeli)
Pasta (my husband prefers a vermicelli, I prefer a corkscrew - we usually have both on hand)
Arborio Rice
Flour
Sugar
Brown Sugar
Good Quality Olive Oil
White Wine
Red Wine
Chicken Stock (I buy the cans, though every now and then I'll get a whole chicken or turkey and make a big batch that lasts FOREVER)
Beef Stock  (I just buy the cans)
Red Wine Vinegar
Balsamic Vinegar
Canned Beans - Black Beans, Chickpeas and Refried
Large can crushed tomatoes
Baking Powder
Baking Soda

Spice Rack:
Salt
Pepper
Dill
Paprika
Tarragon
Oregano
Basil
Rosemary
Cumin
Curry Powder
Cinnamin
Clove
Whole Nutmeg
Cream of Tartar (for baking)
Something I'm Unfamiliar With

Ages ago, I picked up some spice jars for about $10.  Since then, I've been refilling them from the bulk department and saving fistfuls of money while keeping our garbage low - the little bags we now get our spices in are re-used when I get fresh herbs in my Greenling box - chop them just before they start to look sad and put them into the little bags and toss them in the freezer.  They're not lovely when they thaw, but they're great in soups and other hot preparations.

Chicken, Chickpeas and Tomatoes

The very first time I dined at Lambert's Barbeque, I was clever enough to order their Anchiote Seared Chickpeas and Goat Cheese appetizer, which is one unbelievable bite after another.  Since then I've poked at that flavor profile - creamy tang of goat cheese, warm earthiness of the chickpea, brightness of the tomato.

In our box this week, I ordered some heirloom tomatoes and I had one vine-ripened fella doing time on my kitchen sink.  I decided to play up those flavors on a salad, thanks to a bounty of romaine and radicchio from the basket.

I had some (mostly) thawed chicken breast, so I rubbed it with smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and some herbs de provance and popped it into a 350 oven for about 30 minutes.

In a hot pan, I added one well-drained and rinsed can of chickpeas, some diced spring onions, and some giant chunks of the freakishly large garlic cloves we got in the box along with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika.  I chopped the lettuces and put them on the plate, and then chopped the tomatoes to toss in with the chickpeas, which at this point had started toasting up all pretty-like.

It timed out pretty well, as I was just tossing the chickpeas and tomatoes onto the salad bed when the chicken finished, which I chopped into strips and added to the salad, along with a sprinkle of goat cheese.  This salad needed no dressing.  Between the goat cheese, the multi-faced flavors of three different tomatoes, the giant chunks of roasted garlic and extremely juicy chicken, every bite was full of win.

Roasted Root Veggies

I had some pretty spectacular root vegetables hanging out in my pantry, including some pretty gorgeous beets, baby carrots and a giant kohlrabi from my Greenling local basket.  Along with the couple of lonely potatoes and a red onion I had, I figured it was time to roast some root veg.

Some friends came over last night, so separately I was roasting a turkey breast that turned out fairly well.  I used my tried-and-true trick of cramming as much butter and magic under the skin as it would fit before roasting.  Last night was no exception:  a combination of a half stick of butter at room temperature, a few tablespoons of mustard, some horseradish sauce, and a bunch of herbs de provance I've been glaring at for nearly a week.  The whole thing did some time in a 325 oven for about two hours.

Pretty much as soon as the bird when in the oven, I started chopping the veggies.  I used:

Four medium beets, chopped into wedges
Two white potatoes
One sweet potato
One red onion
One giant kohlrabi (trim the hard skin off)
About nine baby carrots, shaved and sliced in half.

Personally, I put the beets in a separate bowl for both tossing and roasting to avoid turning my veggies pink.  It's not really a huge deal, but I have a hard enough time getting my beefcake of a husband to eat things that are green, I imagine it would be nearly impossible to entreat him into eating pink.

I tossed the veggies with about 4 tablespoons (1 for the beets) of Canola Oil, 3 tablespoons of honey (1/2 for the beets), a fistful of fresh parsley (picked), salt, pepper, and the juice of one lemon.  I always use my hands to ensure each little piece is totally lubed.

They went in the oven with the turkey for about forty minutes.

Hey, here's a tip so you don't make the same bone-head mistake I did.  Beets have an extremely high sugar content.  In fact, they make sugar out of them.  When you roast them, line your roasting dish with either parchment or tin foil or whomever does your dishes will give you an earful.

Tomato and Citrus

Anyone who's spent any time with me and food knows that I've always had a soft spot in my heart for tomatoes. The brightness of their flavor, combined with their versatility make them easily my favorite thing on the planet, after my kids.

In high school, my boyfriend's mom kept a garden filled with tomatoes. One afternoon I left for a road trip to visit my grandparents, and she packed me off with a gallon zip-lock filled with cherry tomatoes picked fresh from her garden. Yes, I finished them all in two hours. No, I didn't feel bad about that.

The windowbox over my kitchen sink has had a couple of really gorgeous tomatoes ripening for a week now, and last night I just couldn't take it anymore. Ready or not, they were going to get in my belly.

We've also got a ton of citrus hanging around - it's citrus season here, and the grocery stores are peddling them off for dimes a piece.

To me, a tomato has always registered as a more savory citrus type flavor. The combination of tomato and citrus seemed a natural one, and plays beautifully together in this killer relish that smothered some chicken breast at our house last night:



Tomato Grapefruit Relish

3 or 4 medium tomatoes, diced
2 large grapefruits, supremed and diced
1 small onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
fresh parsley, finely chopped

Toss all together in a medium bowl. Add a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Best after hanging out in the fridge for a half an hour or so.

For a less bitter flavor, oranges can be substituted. For a sweeter flavor, use tangerines or clementines.