Scottish Cow

Green Stuff

There's the garden bed...finally!  Just a little bit late, and just about as far away from our house as it could possibly be.  I'm a little worried it's going to be too shady, but it's as good as it's going to get - our yard is long and narrow and pretty much surrounded by trees.

The little bamboo sticks are marking the rows of seeds that Molly and I sowed (cool, I can claim to have sowed something!) last weekend.  Looking at the notes on when to plant different vegetables, I can assure you that we missed the date on everything.  Somewhere in that dirt, among the skewers are seeds for spinach, lettuce, chard, radishes and two different kinds of scallions.

We'll see what happens.

I can also assure you that my plans for this little 4 x 8 box are much, much grander than the actual dimensions will allow me to accomplish.  There are carrots and peppers and squash and cucumbers and a pumpkin for Molly and tomatoes, FIVE DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF TOMATOES!  The tomatoes and peppers are all inside and doing well still, so I think they'll be alright - just don't know how many will fit. 

 Here are a few, chillin' by the window.  Not literally chillin', I hope.

I'll say it now, and I mean it - if there are any gardeners out there, and they have any advice to share (ha, like there's a gardener without advice?), please let me have it.  This is the first time we're attempting something besides herbs and tomatoes in containers.  My coworker Jon is telling me bizarre tales of open-ended coffee cans full of rocks and powdered milk that his wife uses for her tomatoes.  I don't know about any of that, but I have had her tomatoes before, and they were fantastic.

More green...We are thankful to TIna's father for lots of things, not least of which is his garlic.  He has a massive, endless garden of garlic - several varieties - and it keeps our family supplied well throughout the year.  I asked him last week if he had any young, green garlic we could steal a few shoots of.

He showed me a secret.

After it's pulled from the ground,  he cleans, sorts, ties and hangs the garlic in the barns and garages that seem to be sprinkled all over their property.  During the cleaning and sorting, any head that's not up to spec is tossed dismissively into the woods behind the barn. 

Those woods are now overridden with patches of garlic shooting up among the twigs, clumped together tightly, since the whole head took root.  Out there with the poison ivy, there's more green garlic than we could ever hope to eat, but we're trying hard.

If you haven't had green garlic (I like "baby garlic") before, it's the same as regular garlic, just picked before the head forms and before the stalks get woody.  You can and should eat the whole thing.  It's not as strong as full-blown garlic, and has a sweet flavor to it.

That's the last batch I harvested, waiting on the stove.  Here's how we've eaten it so far:

• in scrambled eggs
• in rice
• in a stir fry
• out of my hand while walking in the yard (garlic breath has never been so sweet)
• in grilled Vietnamese-style pork (post coming soon)
• in salads
• in wraps
• in a soup

Here's that very soup, and how it came together:

Chopped up a few of the green garlic shoots and half an onion.  Added salt, sauteed till soft.  Added white wine, and reduced.  Added some chicken broth/stock that was already in the fridge waiting to be used.  In another pan, browned some balls made from some fresh (non-smoked), local polish sausage.  Brought the liquid to a boil, turned to low.  Added the sausage balls, several big handfuls of already cooked rice, some carrot peelings, and some more green garlic (just the tops, minced).  Salt, pepper, top with more green garlic and some red pepper (aleppo).

It was wonderful to slay so many leftovers at once.  Molly asked for seconds.  I love that.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep and there's a whole lot of garlic in it to eat before this spring has left us behind.  Any other thoughts for it?  There's a definitely a quiche or tart in the near future.

Finally, the CSA starts next week.  Mountains of green.  I said it before, and I'll say it again - bitter greens, I'm ready and waiting and I'm gonna get medieval on you.

A Little Dinner

This was fun.  We had a small dinner together, on the couch, TV off, after the kids were both in bed.

It was so...quiet.  And the dinner so...easy.  No utensils, no plates, no one practicing their hula-hooping (she's getting quite good).

The green dip was the aforementioned not-guacamole.  The white one was a quick maneuver to use up some feta that was on its last legs - it was whipped up with some chives*, red pepper flakes, olive oil, s/p and some half and half to thin it out.  I'm guessing any dairy product that's thinner than the cheese would work - buttermilk, yogurt, crème fraiche, etc.  And any other seasonings for that matter as well.  How's that for a quick recipe?

Some toasted baguette slices and a few tomatoes.

We shared a beer - Long Trail Blackberry Wheat.  Great for a couple reasons - first, the Long Trail Brewery is up the road from my aunt and uncle in Bridgewater, VT.  They (my family, not the brewery) showed up for Christmas last year with a couple six-packs, one of which was so fresh the bottles hadn't been labeled yet.  All of their beers are fantastic. 

Second, it's a good "fruity" beer, not one of those horrid, sickly sweet creations, like the bastard child of a Bud Light and a pack of Bubbalicious. This beer is refreshing, tangy and pretty dry.  Something definitely in the Belgian lambic tradition.  You might have a tough time finding a dish that this one wouldn't taste good with.  Cheers.

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*  Coffee might be the only thing in the past week that we've consumed without any chives in it.  Still going through the enormous bunch from the farmer's market.  They've kept really well in a pint glass half full of water stashed in the fridge.

What does food do to you?

Pistachio ice cream...waffle cone...Port Jefferson NY...1994.... 

OK... I'm back.

Food can really have an effect on you.  Memories and food get seared together in our brains, both the good and the bad.  Flavors can bring you places you've never been and places you'd like to go back to.

Abby here, the little one formerly known as Polka Dot, is having her first taste of asparagus.  Not only that, but also her first tastes of balsamic vinegar AND Parmigiano-Reggiano.  Whoa.  She loved it.  But she won't remember it, and not the next time either, but the time after that...

We won't forget the first time Molly ate more than a couple bites of it.  She was older, and polished off a plate of it.  Later that night when she went to bathroom we thought there was a serious problem... Burning eggs, sulfur, overwhelming fumes from the pee of a 2 year old.  A weapon of mass destruction. 

Tina hit Google looking for 'foul smelling urine" or something like that and stumbled across a page about asparagus.  Bizarre.  Who knew?  Scientists apparently.  I absolutely love the fact that there was a research paper in a 1975 issue of Science titled, "Occurrence of S-methyl thioesters in urines of humans after they have eaten asparagus."  Urines of humans?  Anyway, apparently everyone's body does the same little dance when it comes to digesting the green stalks, but only certain people can smell the byproducts.  I don't know whether we should be thankful for our S-methyl thioester receptors or not...

What else does food do to you? 

Does anybody share this problem with me:  When I eat eggplant, the skin falls off the roof my mouth.  Seriously.  It doesn't happen every time, and I can't figure out when it does and doesn't't happen, whether it's related to the cooking style, or something else I'm eating with it.  I just thought I was weird until a couple other folks I know mentioned the same problem.  The skin literally starts peeling off.  It's unpleasant, but not frequent enough to keep me away.

Two simple recipes for when you want to torture yourself, or the ones that will use the bathroom after you:

1) Toss asparagus in some olive oil and salt.  If it's nice out, and you've already got the grill going,  put them on there and keep turning them until they are tender and a little crispy.  If the grill is not a good option, put them on a sheet pan on some foil, and do the same operation under the broiler.

The last time we had them, we had big stalks and I got lazy and didn't feel like peeling them.  In an unfortunate bit of positive reinforcement, I was rewarded.  I ended up completely charring a few stalks - it turns out the skin peels right off, like a roasted pepper, leaving the soft creamy interior.  The texture wasn't great for eating them straight, but chopped up in rice was excellent.

2) Toss some thin eggplant slices in oil and salt (hmm...a pattern here).  Grill them on both sides until soft.  Put something in the middle and roll them up.  Pictured above, it was feta, tomatoes, basil and oil.  Great, quick appetizer.  Next time I might peel some of the skin - note the eerily straight edge in the lower left of the photo. 

So I ask again, what does food do to you?  Emotional, physical or otherwise...leave a comment if you've got something good to share...

 

Busy Day

So this past weekend Tina was out of town catching up with her best friend, who unfortunately lives in Binghampton.  It was the first time it's been Molly and Abby and I for an entire day and overnight.  We had a lot of fun.

We were busy.

We went to the farmer's market.  It rained.  We got asparagus, chives, honey, and lettuce.  We got soaked on the way home.

Abby ate 2 strawberries.

Molly and I made some scallion pancakes.  We didn't have scallions or regular flour.  So we actually made white whole wheat flour chive pancakes.  They were still really good.

While chopping chives, I lost Tina's favorite knife behind the slide-in range.

I lost my wedding ring in the yard.  During an epic battle with a slug that had attached itself to my hand, I managed to fling it (my ring, not the slug) across the driveway into the dirt and rocks along side it.

Abby slept, Molly and I searched for the ring.

We made a pink bean dip - it was half white beans, half red beans, garlic, lemon, oil and tahini*.  Molly said, "Hey, this tastes like hummus."

I rented a metal detector.  It beeped at the rebar in our driveway.  It beeped at our grass.  It beeped at the dog.  It didn't find any rings. 

The guy from the metal detector shop volunteered to come over.  And he found the ring with his fancy detector in about 10 minutes.

We walked to the park.  We put Abby to bed.  Molly and I read Sleeping Beauty and Draw Me a Star.

Molly went to bed, and so did I.

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* Ha...The spellchecker in typepad just tried to switch "tahini" to "tahiti"

What the World Eats

Here's an interesting graphic attached to this NY Times story about the folks in India being angry at the folks in the US for blaming them for the rising food costs.  The graphic is, well, pretty graphic.  I knew, as a nation, we eat a lot of corn.  It's in everything.  But 1600 lbs?  Per person?  Wow.  Keep in mind,  we're not talking about the juicy, sweet, butter-dripping Fourth of July corn that you and Uncle David each eat 7 ears of.  As the graphic notes, it's corn for "food, seed, industrial uses, feed and waste."  It's used in the production of all the beef, chicken and milk we're consuming.  The differences in those areas, and with rice, between the US and the rest of the world (Europe included) are pretty astounding.

And yes, it seems to make for a difficult argument that others are driving up food prices.

Fish Stew

This dish made it's appearance as part of the ongoing effort to eat fish at least once a week*.  We're not doing so well so far, but that's OK.  Fish is tough, because we don't live near a decent fish store.  Our supermarket, Wegmans, is the best bet anywhere near by, but it's not like we can walk to it before dinner to pick up the catch of the day.  So if they have something that looks appealing during the weekly trip, I'll grab it.  Last week they did.  It was the fresh Alaskan king salmon**.  It looked more than appealing, it looked gorgeous.  It looked like $28/lb.  I came home with a package of monkfish.

No plans at the time of purchase, but decided on something stewy for dinner the next night.  It turned out to be a very simple dish and it didn't require anything that we don't normally have on hand, aside from the fish.  It also elicited a "Hey, this is pretty good" from Tina, who's not a huge fish eater.  She'll eat shrimp like a vacuum cleaner, but you never know with fish.  Molly loved it and wanted more "fish chunks."  Last time we had fish, she had dessert, and then went back for more fish.  We've also caught her dunking her fish in strawberry yogurt in the past.  You heard it here first, the bold new pairing of 2008 - flounder and strawberry yogurt.

Lots of fish soups and stews include some homemade fish stock (tastes lovely, didn't have any fish heads or shrimp shells lying around) or clam juice, but I steered away, not wanting the liquid to be beating us over the head with fishiness. 

Started with the basic onion, shallot, garlic sauteed in oil (what good dish doesn't start with onion or garlic in a pan?).  Some spices, a splash of white wine.  The basic dry white wine I love to use for cooking is a "Vin de Pays des Cotes de Gascogne" - which, remembering my 12th grade French, I believe translates to "cheap-ass wine."***  Kidding of course, but it is $7 a bottle after all.  It has a dry, light, fresh citrusy taste, and a glass went really well with the stew as well as in it.

Then a can of tomatoes and some little additions at the end.  I stirred in some yogurt to make it a little creamy, but it was totally unnecessary.  Cream or crème fraiche would be been great too, and even more unnecessary.  Some lemon zest too, which I can't seem to stay away from lately.  Those addictive, little golden threads. 

Now that I've given most of it away, here's the recipe.  My guess is that it would work well with any firm white fish.

Fish Stew

1/2 - 3/4 LB monkfish
1 medium onion, diced
1 large shallot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
28 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 C dry white wine
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
pinch red pepper flakes (we love aleppo)
1/2 C water
Basil/marjoram/other minced herbs
Lemon zest
1/2 C yogurt (optional)

Heat oil over medium and saute onion, shallot, garlic, and salt until soft.  Add cumin, coriander and red pepper.  Cook for another minute.  Turn up heat, add wine, cook for another minute.  Add tomatoes, fish, water, bring to steady simmer, and turn down to gentle simmer, cover partially.  Cook till fish is tender - 20 minutes is what it took for me.  Turn off heat, stir in yogurt, herbs, lemon zest.  Add more salt/pepper as necessary.

Serve topped with croutons - bread cubes (old is good), tossed with olive oil, into the toaster oven or under the broiler, flip a few times till crispy.

* The classic Buffalo fish fry (battered, deep fried haddock) with fries, potato and mac salad does not count :)

** No comments on carbon costs for Alaskan salmon please

*** Looked it up - Vin de Pays is just another step in the French wine classification system.  It's below AOC, which is a certification that given product has met the criteria and a level of quality for a given geographic area.

An Eggy Quickie

Is there anything better than having fresh eggs around?  You have an instant meal, anytime of day.  Scrambled eggs have always been my favorite, and still are.  Tina and Molly are partial to the "dunkin' egg" - just a fried egg, over-easy, with a nice runny yolk.  Although as of late, Molly has been requesting soft boiled eggs (also known as "the egg in the shell I can dunk my toast into").  Maybe there will be an all eggy post sometime in the future. 

Usually for us eggs are a weekend thing, but we had an extended morning today (the best kind, eh?) and offered Molly an egg option for breakfast.  She ended up with the plate in the photo above after some discussion:

"What kind of egg do you want Molly?"

"Hard boiled."  Of which we had some.

"You want the kind you can peel and hold in your hand?"

"No, I want the hard boiled egg that I can dunk my toast in."

"That's a soft boiled egg"

"No it's not."

That went on for a while.  The teenager-like attitude you can get from a 4 and a half year old is amazing.  Anyway, she got her soft boiled egg, and promptly attacked it, leaving the wreckage behind:

Yikes.  I swear she's a sweet, well-fed little girl and not an hungry velociraptor.  Anyway, she seemed proud of her accomplishments.  Good girl.  Speaking of accomplishments, Tina made a really nice bag last night.  She's pretty proud as well, prancing around the house this morning with it draped over her arm.

Note the label on the wine bottle has sufficient blur and shadows to obscure the details. Ha! Now no one will know the $7 bottle of dry french white I like for cooking (and drinking too). :)

Cows are the Mooiest

Sorry, not trying to be silly, or evoke some feeling (either positive or negative) for cows before talking about eating them.  Not going to get into that here.  It's just a line from an addictive song on Noggin (kid's TV) that's sung by a character named Moose A. Moose.  And he is quite a character.  Molly loves the song, and Abby is transfixed by by Mr. Moose every time she's in the room and spots him on TV. 

So...Cows.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we made a decision last year that we were going to try very hard to avoid factory-farmed meat from the supermarket.  Yes, even from Wegmans, as much as we love them.   We've been doing pretty well.  A big part of making it possible was the purchase of a chest freezer.  The giant, white slumbering beast lives down in our cellar, which looks a lot like the one from Silence of the Lambs, but without a well (and definitely without a yipping dog and a prisoner), and it keeps our goods cold somewhere around 15 below zero.

It's allowed us to do a few things - preserve some of the harvest from the CSA, buy things in bulk and save for later, and purchase a forequarter of a cow in one swoop. 

We ran into Doug and Dan of Hanova Hills Farm at a local farmers market.  They had a white van full of beef from their 550 acre farm in Forestville, NY.  We bought a few cuts, and they had us hooked with the first bite of hamburger.  It's not certified organic meat and I don't really care.  The animals are born and raised there, living and eating naturally out in the fields.

We decided on a forequarter because it had our favorite cuts - chuck roasts, ground chuck (hamburgers, of course), flat iron steaks, rib-eyes, the skirt, the brisket and the short ribs.  Who needs tenderloin and t-bones when you've got those?!

The experience has been great.  We specified how we wanted the cuts divided and packaged - Stew meat or ground?  Rib-eye steaks or roast?  We waited two weeks for the next round of processing and everything came vacuum sealed in individual portions, delivered right to our door.

What do you get when you buy 1/4 of a cow?  This turned out to be 206 lbs, which according to them, was pretty big.  That includes everything - bones and all, which we gladly took and turned into some wicked stock.

206 lbs was:

• 80 lbs of ground beef*
• 13 rib eye steaks (about an inch and a half thick)
• 5 large packages of bones
• 4 large packages of shanks
• 3 huge chuck roasts (6 lbs each at least)
• 4 packages of flat iron steaks (a couple to a pack)
• the brisket
• the skirt steaks
• the short ribs

Overall, we paid $2.79 per pound.  Expensive for soup bones? Yep.  How about $2.79/lb for naturally raised hamburgers and rib-eye steaks?  No way.  So yes, there's a definite investment up front, with the large amount of beef and the chest freezer too.  But if there's room in the basement and the wallet...The freezer will last a long time, and hold more than just this one chunk of beef.  It will let us buy things in bigger quanitities at lower prices.  And less vegetables headed to the compost pile, as we have a great option for preservation.  And purchase a big supply of well raised beef at a great price. 

The guys at Hanova Hills were friendly, knowledgeable and clearly passionate about what they're doing.  The quality, flavor and freshness of the meat is second to none.  Now they've branched out and have a full home delivery offering now - any order, large or small.  Check them out at Lake Country Direct.  They are also now carrying local pork from Randolph, NY (we'll be ordering some soon) and lamb from a friend's farm outside of Cleveland.

Here's to their continued success.

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*  Oh, did you say "Holy #$*%! That's a lot of ground beef!"?  Yes it was.  We given a good chunk away to family, and well, um, we like our hamburgers over here, so no real complaints out of us.  Had I known it was going to be that much, I probably would have had some diverted into stew chunks (which we just used some of the chuck roasts for anyway).  Lesson learned.  Overall, the meat has lasted almost an entire year at this point and we've still got some ways to go.

Here's some more pesto, roasted tomatoes, peaches and stuffed peppers from last summer, hiding in the beast:

 

Lemony Avocado Toast

This was an experiment of mine that, for once, turned out really well - multiple, separate instances of praise from Tina and delight from Molly (it's bright green and mushy, so not a real stretch there) - her portion, not pictured, featured chick pea eyes, carrot nose and red pepper smile embedded in the green.  Yes, it's easy to conjure delight from a 4 year old girl.

And yes - I'm refusing to call it guacamole.  I got the idea from the classic Italian salsa verde I was messing around with a couple weeks ago (not really sold on it yet, still working) - subtracting the parsley and adding the rest of the ingredients to the mashed avocado.

The lime turned into lemon (juice and zest).  The onion turned into garlic.  The cilantro turned into basil and marjoram.  And it turned out awesome!   I'm sure someone else out there has done this before...for all I know it has a name and everything, but it's new to me.

What would Italian guacamole be called?  Guacamola?  Whatever.  It doesn't need a name.  It was a fantastic, light lunch, just slathered on some toasty bread.  In the photo above, the surrounding slices had a little mayo, lettuce and tomato (shhh...the BLT police haven't tracked me down yet), and that's all we needed.

I'll admit to being hungry again by dinnertime, but that's a good thing, right?

Mashed Avocado, Hold the Guacamole

1 avocado
Zest and juice from 1/2 lemon, maybe more
1 small clove of garlic, minced
Some fresh herbs minced - this had basil & marjoram
Splash of olive or other oil (we had avocado oil - neat)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Other toppings - Diced tomatoes? Crumbled Bacon?

Step 1:  Mix it all together, spread it on toasted slices of bread

Step 2: Ensure there will be no leftovers. Seriously, it's avocado. Eat it before it turns brown.

Lunch For One

Looks fantastic, doesn't it?

Diced chicken with some applesauce.  Strawberry yogurt.  Chopped pears.

That is the most exciting lunch I've made in a long time.

If you don't see it, try this - imagine that for months all your meals consisted of was liquid and mashed fruits and vegetables with no seasonings at all.  Yuck.

I've said it before, but what would it be like to be able to remember your first bite of chicken or watermelon, or crunchy cheerio?  Abby is finally old enough to eat some of what we're eating, and it's really an awesome thing.  Not only is it easier, quicker and just plain cool to be able to give her some of what we're having, but she gets so excited to have something that's not pureed to a pulp.  Keep in mind, no teeth yet*, so the stuff has to be pretty much mashable, but it's neat to see her scooting around the kitchen in her walky-thing grabbing soggy cherrios and chomping them up.

Also, on the homefront, we finally got a new range.  Also very exciting.  High tech convection oven?  Nope.  Crazy powerful jet-engine 30,000 BTU burner?  Nope.  Fancy knobs?  Nope.  Actually, we're just excited that it starts when we ask it to and doesn't threaten to bring down our house.  The previous tenant (inherited from the previous owners) had a proclivity towards laziness and risky behavior.  Such as:

1) It required an additional flame (supplied by the operator) to start the burners.
2) When we moved in, the oven light was out.  I replaced it, turned it on, and it promptly exploded.
3) The oven would take somwhere between several and 20 minutes to start.  When it finally decided to go, you would hear a nice big WHOMP from inside, as the gas ignited and the oven did its best impression of an FAE.

I had a post planned for a noodle salad thing with peanut dressing planned (yes, I realize that peanut dressing is a bit played at this point**, but that doesn't make it not good) - soba noodles, shredded lettuce and other veggies, slivered chicken and the peanut/soy dressing.  First, I forgot to take a picture.  Second, Molly didn't like it and my enthusiasm took a big hit. Finally, another Andrew, a food writer for the Buffalo News, had a very similar recipe in Sunday's paper.  Oh well...maybe some other time.

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* The first sign of a tooth breaking through appeared this very morning!
** Can you get it at Applebee's?  Probably...