Category: cooking

Gardening (mis)adventures that tasted good.

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It’s almost September. It’s been a long hot summer and my garden is looking scraggly.

I finally found some time to give it the attention it has been craving.  I weeded, ripped out some dead things, cut some things back hoping for a fall revival, planted some new greens.
In my enthusiasm,  I cut back what I thought was a dead branch of sage.
Turns out it was just leggy, because at the other end of the foot long branch were some happy new sage leaves.
The only squash plant that has produced anything in my garden this summer were a few volunteer compost bin butternut squash plants. When the squirrels were on their rampage to eat everything in sight just a few short weeks ago, they had gnawed through the vine, causing an unripe (green) squash to become unattached. I was not about to let them have it, so I brought it in and hoped to be able to do something with it.  It actually did ripen sitting on my counter for a few weeks. 
So, with the sage I hadn’t meant to cut back and the butternut squash that I hadn’t planted, I made our first fallish dinner the other night – Roasted Butternut Squash, Sage & Feta Pizza.

I peeled and diced the squash, tossed it with some sliced onions, salt, pepper & olive oil and popped it in the oven at 350 or until it was browning nicely. Probably close to an hour, but I tend to not keep an eye on the clock and just depend on things smelling right.  Highly technical cooking skills in use there.
For the pizza, I prebaked a crust for about 5 minutes, then covered it lightly in olive oil.  I had some jack cheese in the drawer, so a light sprinkle of that, spread the squash & onions on top of that, added some feta and the fresh sage leaves.  I covered all of that in a light dusting of more jack cheese and then baked the whole thing until it was golden and well, looked right.
That’s a highly technical cooking term.  Use it at your own risk.

I can pickle that.

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Pat & I have been told more than a few times that we may resemble more than few sketches in Portlandia.  Admittedly, we are music snob geeks with some pretty firm standards about what music our child listens to (Mike & The Mechanics ARE a gateway band that we refuse to let her listen to and yes, we do know who Neu! is. ).  We may have watched entire series of TV shows in marathon format, but what has really gotten us the most comparison to the show is my love of pickling.

Admittedly, I have mostly laughed it off.  After all, I’ve already taught one canning & pickling class and I’m gearing up to teach  a pickling class in a few weeks, so I need to practice and know my stuff, yes? 

However, the other night, Pat & I were having dinner with friends and had jimica for the first time.  About two bites into it, I looked at him and said “This would make a great pickle”.

This week, with Edie being gone, most of the block on vacation and Pat at work all day, I’ve kept myself busy with you guessed it, pickling.  As I type this, my second batch today is on the stove – Curried Pickled Squash & Zucchini, Betty having left me a big bag she acquired from Russell.  Leni was kind enough to share a large bag of cukes I turned into Bread & Butter pickles earlier today.  The squash pickles would be my 4th batch of pickles in 3 days.  I spent all day Thursday making Watermelon rind pickles (and realized I need to rewrite the recipe to double the liquid amounts in the brine) and last night I pickled a peck of peaches (which is really fun to say.  Pat & I walked around all night saying it. I bet you said it while reading it, didn’t you?)

I have often stated that I don’t tend to follow recipes while in the kitchen, but when it comes to canning and pickling, I don’t improvise, I am by the book.  The whole concept of acid content and knowing what works and what doesn’t is sort of beyond me.  Or so I thought.  Last night, as I was getting myself set up to pickle those peaches, I realized that the last time I made a batch, I sort of merged the recipe from “Joy of Pickling” with the one from Serious Eats In A Pickle, meaning, I wrote my own recipe.  My very first pickling recipe.   And because we’ve already eaten them and people that have had pickled peaches before have eaten them and declared them just like their grandmother made, I knew I had done it right. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with myself and sat down while the last batch was in the canner and wrote the recipe out to use in my upcoming pickling class.

My name is Becky and I’m a pickling junkie.  I’m going to walk away from the canner for a few days and head to the water for some quality time with my all time favorite partner in crime from college.  I’m going to resist the urge to pickle anything for the next few days, although I can’t promise I won’t put a bird on it.

If only I cared more.

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If I was a good food blogger, I’d take the time to ensure decent pictures of the food I blog about.
If I was a good food blogger, I’d take the time to put together a real recipe.
But alas, some days I am just too hungry to take the time for nice pictures.  Some days I just go with the flow and throw things in a pot and cook them and am pleased with the results. 
Above is one of those results. It started out as stewed okra & tomatoes.  I threw in a jalapeno from the garden and minced garlic with the onion,  some fresh corn cut off the cob, fresh thyme & parsley a few minutes after the tomatoes, Old Bay and shrimp after cooking the okra for a few minutes and served it on a bed of grits.  I measured nothing, as is my habit.  Everything about it was just right though.  I’ve always seen rice recommended to be served with stewed okra & tomatoes, but after giving grits a try, I think that’s the way I’ll be serving it from here on out.  They were a much better foil to the sauce.
I know people steer clear of okra because they think it’s slimy.  It’s true, when you slice it, it is slimy.  Cooked however, it loses that quality and becomes a thickening agent.  Fresh okra is the only way to go.  I prepare it exactly four ways all summer long:  stewed in gumbo or with just tomatoes as seen above, battered & fried and pickled.  I hear it’s tasty roasted on the grill and I intend to try it that way as well one of these days.  It’s a pretty plant to have in your garden – it gets tall and the blooms resemble hibiscus. Just be sure to plant a good bit of it, as once you get the taste for fresh okra, you’re hooked.  And pickled okra in your bloody mary’s is quite good.

A Feast for the King of the Castle.

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Since I am slightly demanding about being pampered on Mother’s Day (read: I want someone else to get up and make me coffee and I’m not cooking dinner that day), I feel the least I can do is make Pat anything he wants for dinner on Father’s Day, even if it’s something I don’t like, like lamb.
Pat & Edie are both fans of lamb.  Me?  I don’t care for it.  I have tried it numerous ways over the years and it just does not appeal to me.  Since I do most of the shopping and cooking around here, we tend to eat what I like, which means no lamb, except for special requests on days like Father’s Day and birthdays. 
Not too long ago, I had seen a post on E.A.T. for lamb burgers that Tim said (and I quote directly) “If you have shied away from lamb, this is a good recipe that has training wheels.” So when the request came in for lamb, I immediately thought of this recipe.  At the very least, I figured I’d be happy with the sides of hummus and couscous.
We opted to grill the burgers instead of cooking them on the stovetop, but otherwise, I followed Tim’s easy recipe.  I whipped up some hummus, some Tzatziki, a Couscous salad and a Watermelon Feta Mint Salad which Pat dubbed “Watafet”Salad.
I liked it.
I liked the lamb.  It was the cumin that did it I think.  Over the years, I have found the addition of cumin almost always adds something interesting to a dish and this was no exception.  We will definitely eat lamb burgers again cooked this way.    Thanks Tim.  You have just made my family very happy to hear we will be eating more lamb. 
I also followed Tim’s side suggestions, with the addition of the watermelon salad. For the couscous, I simply tossed some fresh thyme and chives from the garden with some chopped cherry tomatoes and black olives, salt & pepper and a dash of olive oil.  I’m the only person in this house who likes cucumbers, so I left them out, although they would be a good addition as well. There were some in the tzatziki, so I didn’t want to push it.   As for the “Watafet Salad”, I chopped up about a quarter of a watermelon and a handful of fresh mint.  I added crumbled feta, salt, pepper, lime zest, the juice of a lime and a generous dash of olive oil, tossed it all together and served it.  It didn’t appear to be a salad that would keep well, so I wouldn’t make more than you can eat at the time.  However, it was quick, easy and would be a great dish to carry along to a potluck.
It was a feast fit for the king of our castle. 

Ten Treasure Salad

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When I was a kid, “Ten Treasure Salad” was my dad’s go-to summertime potluck dish.  He cut the recipe out of the paper and it became, along with his tacos and spaghetti sauce, one of his signature dishes.  I really don’t know how he came to be the one to come up with what we brought to cookouts, I imagine he got tired of all the potato salad and wanted something different.  He also really liked to cook when he had the chance.
I loved this dish as a kid.  I realize now it was because it was all my favorite things thrown together – snow peas, mushrooms, shrimp, broccoli, cauliflower and red bell peppers in a ginger soy dressing.  Somehow my version has never quite tasted like I remember it, in part I know, because I throw tofu in for the chicken, although my marinated tofu has more flavor than the chicken ever could.  I have played around with this recipe over the years and I think I finally came up with a version that rocks it.  Among my substitutions:
  • Rice noodles for the rotini pasta
  • Teriyaki marinated tofu for chicken
  • Ginger soy salad dressing instead of the called for 1/4 cup soy sauce with 1/8 teaspoon ginger
  • Adding cilantro for an extra kick
  • Adding garlic, ginger and soy sauce when I saute the veggies
I whip up my own teriyaki sauce sauce based on a recipe from The Vegetarian Meat & Potatoes Cookbook.
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
3 tablespoons orange juice
Minced garlic
1 tablespoon maple syrup
3 tablespoons sesame oil
I have learned that if you boil tofu for about 10 minutes or so, it firms up and holds marinades beautifully.
I use Twin Oaks tofu, which is pretty firm to start with.   The longer it marinates, the more flavor it holds, so I will prep this in the morning or even sometimes a day ahead of time.
The Ginger Soy salad dressing is based on one I used to eat religiously at a restaurant that sadly, is no longer open.  It was primarily a vegetarian smoothie place that had a nice salad bar I’d grab lunch from a few days week back before we had a kid and a mortgage and I could eat out every day.  I loved their ginger soy dressing, I swore it was sprinkled with fairy dust that made it addictive.  Here’s my version of it.
1/2 cup olive oil
1/8 soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
pepper to taste
Now, for the salad.  I throw in the following:
Carrots, sliced
Mushrooms, sliced
Broccoli, chopped
Cauliflower, chopped
Snow peas or sugar snaps
Red Bell Pepper, cut into small strips
Scallions or Chives, chopped
Shrimp
Marinated Tofu
Cooked noodles (I like pad thai type rice noodles)
Cilantro
I saute some of the vegetables in sesame oil with ginger and garlic.  I start with the mushrooms and when they are slightly cooked I add the broccoli and cauliflower, also adding a touch of water/wine/broth to steam as well as soy sauce or salt.  I stir fry that for a few minutes, then add the snow peas and shrimp.  When the shrimp are done, I combine this mixture with the tofu, noodles and the remaining veggies (I like my carrots and peppers raw for a nice crunch), cilantro and about half of the ginger soy salad dressing. 
This salad is good hot or cold.  I find myself making early in the day during the summer, especially when I know it’s going to be hot out there.  It keeps well for a few days, is a great addition to a potluck and you can mix up what you put in there.  I’ve been known to substitute zucchini for the broccoli, regular peas for the snow peas, sometimes I’ll use a variety of mushrooms, sometimes I’ll just use regular button mushrooms.  I imagine marinated chicken would be great in it as well.
Happy Summer Eating!

Scenes from the week.

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 It’s been a busy week around here.  Here’s some of the highlights.
Playing around with the settings on my camera, I finally figured out the b&w one.  
The Planting Seeds Festival

held at the Buford Garden, had a fantastic turnout and was a success

despite the fact that Mother Nature didn’t fully cooperate.

The whole shebang was moved into the cafeteria at Buford when the skies opened up and the children took over the face painting stand. 
Face painting became full body painting.
Apparently this is what a gang of girls will do when left with a stand full of face paint.
When the headliner, Dar Williams, took the stage
there was dancing and sing-a-longs.  A good time was had by all.

Anniversary dinner of shrimp and grits.

This bug paced the top of my monitor literally all day Wednesday, back and forth, for hours. 
Please ignore the dust.  He did.
My Mother’s Day gift to myself.
A variegated leaf geranium. 
There’s practically a rainbow on every leaf!
My winning streak lately has not been limited to just new fly rods. 
I won a seed giveaway thanks to the Eco Women.
That’s a cosmos popping up from seed.
I also won some apron patterns from Lesa , but I’ve used my rainy days to clean around here, instead of sewing, despite what that picture of the top of my monitor tells you.  Sewing when your hands are covered in poison ivy is not ideal anyway. Neither is cleaning really.
While I was at the nursery, I spied a tag for Becky Mix. 
Of course it came home with me.  They are now planted in the back yard.

Near my new patchouli plant.
Who knew it was a plant?
It has a much softer scent than what you  remember.  There’s no second note of uhm, well, you know.
I was listening to the Dead as I ran errands that day and as I’d already bought and planted my scarlet begonias for the year, I thought why not?

One of the roots of that pesky muscadine vine I’ve been digging up from all over the back yard. 
It’s huge.  I need to take an ax to it.  It’s the size of my foot, maybe bigger and
I wear women’s size 10 shoes.   
I may have underestimated it’s ability to not die.  It’s the energizer bunny of invasive plants.
I threw the hibiscus in a spot of dirt a few weeks ago and despite the neglect, it’s thriving.
I guess it’s earned a weeding and mulching session, hasn’t it?
Just as soon as I dust off that computer monitor and finish hacking away at that muscadine root.
I finally found myself some new canvas gardening gloves so I am going to try to stop ripping roots out of the ground with my bare hands.  Wish me luck.

Tabouli, with a twist.

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I find tabouli to be one of those things you can toy with in many ways and still have it come out scrumptious every time.  With the weather leaping over early spring into what feels like early summer, I have been wanting lighter dinners, like salads.  Tabouli is actually sort of perfect this time of year, as my herb garden is springing back to life, offering fresh mint, parsley and chives. 
Tabouli is a salad that is basically a grain, tossed with olive oil, lemon, parsley and mint, rounded out with vegetables. Traditional tabouli is made with primarly tomatoes, bulghur wheat, onions & garlic. I’ve used a variety of grains, ranging from couscous, quinoa, millet to barley in lieu of bulghur.  Even my traditional tabouli has been known to have some cheese (feta or fresh mozzarella is quite nice), and black olives.
Last week, I was in the mood for some tabouli, but seeing how it’s not tomato season, I felt the urge to get creative with it.  And that is how I came up with ‘Other Side of the Mediterranean Tabouli’.  I plumped up some dried tomatoes with white wine, threw in some marinated artichoke hearts, black olives and feta and tossed it with quinoa, mint, chives, parsley, salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil.  I served it on a bed of arugula, fresh picked from the garden.  A perfect spring dinner.

Chickpeas two ways, gardens and more.

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It started with this recipe.  Mock tuna salad made with chickpeas?
Had to try it.  You should try it.  It’s good.  I was surprised at how much the flavor resembled tuna salad.  Texture not so much, but flavor, yes.  I made it the way I make my tuna, right down to chopped pickles.  In this case, pickled okra. So good.  You should try that in your next whatever salad you make.  I am definitely thinking of trying my lemon basil green bean pickles in my next batch.
Up next was something that caught my eye over at E.A.T. (Which incidently is fast becoming one of my favorite food blogs, I’ve gotten a few great ideas from there recently and since it’s a Richmond blog, that’s practically local!)  I digress…
Spicy Carrot Sandwich– That had my carrot loving girl’s name all over it. Only, as I was making the hummus to go with, I added too much liquid. Necessity being the mother of invention as they say, I had to get creative with the sandwich idea, as my hummus was just a little too thin to stay on a sandwich.
I borrowed a trick from the first chickpea recipe and made the spicy carrot sandwich in rice papers.  I added sprouts and romaine and we feasted.
They liked it.
And no one complained we had chickpeas for dinner two nights in one week. 
That’s pretty huge. 
Especially when you consider it was chickpeas in rice paper wrappers, twice.
I represented Edie’s school at a meeting of the city elementary schools with the schoolyard garden folks at Buford Middle School yesterday afternoon.  It seems all the elementary schools here in Charlottesville City are in different stages of starting up gardens.  There was a group of students from the University of Virginia who are involved in different aspects of some of these schoolyard gardens, including a group that is helping to develop curriculum that ties what the kids are doing outside into things like S.O.L.’s, Virginia’s standardized tests.  Some of them are headed to California this summer, to see Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard and gleam some ideas from there. There is going to be a celebration/fundraiser for the city elementary gardens in May – I may have volunteered to help with that.  I also asked about a garden at Walker Upper Elementary.  With every elementary school now developing a garden as part of the curriculum, as well as Buford’s garden, there is a two year gap for the kids in 5th and 6th grade at Walker.  I was told there is a plan for that and so I may have offered to help with that as well, since I will be a parent there next year.  Yes, I may have a problem with volunteering for too many things, but this is something I believe in so much – teaching kids about food, how to grow it, to think about where it comes from….it’s so exciting to be a part of and make change happen.  This is one of the big ways I truly think we are going to change our food system.
Speaking of schools and food, you might want to check out this month’s Chew on This potluck. It’s my friend Ivana‘s latest initiative, to get us talking about food issues.  This month is a conversation on her recent visit to the DC Central Kitchen and is it possible to bring something like that here.  Sadly, Wednesdays are my jam-packed days with things like Girl Scouts and piano lessons and I won’t be able to make it. But you should go, definitely.
And on a completely unrelated note, Pat superglued my glasses yesterday, so they are a little more stable than just the duct tape fix.  I do love that man of mine.

Breakfast of champions.

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Remember last fall when I had gotten myself all those apples and made several batches of apple butter, not just to give out as gifts, but because missthing had been on a kick for several years of daily desiring apple butter on her morning carbs and I thought that since I had so many apples and making apple butter was so easy, why not?  Also yes, there is that thing about how I love to know exactly where all our food comes from and I prefer to make from scratch as much of our food as possible. 
It never fails however, that once I realize she has a fondness for something and I lay in a good supply of my own homemade/homegrown version of it, she decides she’s done with it.  It’s been this way since she was a baby, with the exception of carrots, so this is not a new tween thing.  Of course this happened with the apple butter, now that I have a good case or so left down on my basement shelves and no one wanting to eat it every day anymore.  Short of making her hand it out to all her friends as birthday gifts, I have been trying to figure out what to do with it.
And then one day, on Food in Jars, I discovered this recipe for fruit butter granola.  It had been adapted  from another website and I adapted it down as well.  One cup fruit butter, 3/4 nuts, 2 cups oats, a sprinkle of salt and I pop it in the oven.  When it comes out, I mix in a little dried fruit, always raisins, but sometimes craisins, chopped dates, figs, what ever is on hand.  Because while a certain someone gave up fruit butter for the time being, she’s okay if I mix it in with the granola.  Although, truth be told, she prefers my friend Vikki’s French Chocolate Granola, which I have just started making myself, instead of demanding Vikki make it for me,  mashing it up with this recipe, that adds cherries to the mix.  Because chocolate and cherries are hands down my most favorite food combination, ever.  Right now, everyone seems to be good with the nonstop supply of homemade granola around here, so I’ll keep on making it, hopefully working through my supply of fruit butters, while mixing it up with new ideas.  I’ve never done much with granolas, but I feel that I’ve gotten the hang of them here lately, so maybe I will start coming up with my own recipes. 

Something borrowed.

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I often find that when people share recipes with me, unless I’ve actually eaten the dish before, I have a tendancy to file them away and forget about them.  Lend me the cookbook with your own notes in it though?  Well, I might try it.

The recipe in question was “Jimmy Ray’s Butternut Poblano Soup”.  Among the spices used were both chili powder and cinnamon, so right there I was intrigued.  For the longest time I was pretty sure that cinnamon only went in my morning oatmeal or apple pie.  Anything else was just weird.  And then I discovered Mollie Katzen, who is my hands down favorite cookbook author, and some of her interesting uses of cinnamon.  I still am not brave enough to throw it anything on my own, but any recipe that calls for it, I’m game.


See?  It must be good.

The cookbook is from a resturant in Athens, Georgia, by the name of The Grit.  The recipe is a vegan one, and while I’ve got nothing against vegan, I wasn’t in the mood to go to the store for soymilk.  So I used real dairy in the form of milk & butter, instead of soy versions.  I think cream would be outstanding in this soup, but I was fresh out.  I may actually be slightly over cream at this point in my life, having just gotten through the holiday season, heavy on the cream.   There was still a nice richness to the soup, even with skim milk, but that may have been the smidgen of chicken broth I used, as I was also fresh out of vegetable broth.  (I realize that those changes took this lovely soup about as far away from vegan as possible and honestly, I don’t mind vegan, we do eat that way at times, but I’m also the girl who fries her tofu in bacon fat.)

I made a few other changes to the recipe, mostly to fit what I had on hand.  So, instead of buying and roasting poblanos, I just pulled some of the anaheim peppers I grew, roasted, chopped and froze last summer out of the freezer.  Fresh herbs were used for the parsley and rosemary, in place of dried, which is what the recipe called for.  I may have used too much parsley – I went out and cut some from the garden as it was getting dark and I didn’t realize until I started chopping how much I had.  Oh well.  There are worse things than too much parsley in your soup.  It may have covered up for the fact that I didn’t take the seeds out of my hot peppers, as the recipe called for and they ended up in there as well.  While I’m confessing all the changes I made, I’ll go ahead and say that when I froze the chopped peppers, I filled jars, so there was no measuring ‘one to two’ peppers.  I just eyeballed it and threw in what I felt was a good amount.

It was….delicious.  It had some heat from the peppers, but not too much, because Edie ate it without complaining. She commented on the ‘interesting’ spice mix.  She thought perhaps I had thrown ginger in there and was surprised to learn it was cinnamon.  As this isn’t my recipe, I’m not going to post it, although if you do a google search, you are likely to find it.  I haven’t decided if I need this cookbook yet or not, although Pat’s already waived the ‘no net gain’ of books rule on this one.  Seems Dahlia raved about it to the point where he was sold on it before he even tasted anything out of it.  That’s pretty big. Although, since he got me “The Way to Cook” for Christmas, I’m not sure how much he holds to that rule.  He did let slip though, that since he got me a Kindle, he’s wondering how many books we can get rid of. Hmm.