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.

Bread & Butter.

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This morning I taught my first official canning class at the Charlottesville Cooking School.  I’ve taught countless friends how to can so that part wasn’t new.  I’ve assisted with numerous classes at the school over the years, so I felt comfortable in that space, but the part where I stand up in front of complete strangers and be credible about something?  That part had me nervous.  As did the part where I make sure the class was structured so that we got everything done in the amount of time scheduled for the class. Somehow I managed to pull it off though. 
We canned tomatoes and zucchini bread & butter pickles.  The class had been advertised offering cucumber pickles, but last week as I was walking around the farmer’s market, I had a heck of a time finding pickling cucumbers.  It seems the heat this summer fried just about every farmer’s crop that I talked to, causing the lack of them at my local farmer’s market.  I know from experience that regular cucumbers don’t pickle nearly as well as the pickling variety.  They will still make a fairly decent bread and butter pickle, but you can’t rush the soaking step.  As I couldn’t find a recipe with a soaking step shorter than 3 hours, the time allotted the class was 3 hours, well, I realized I was going to have to make a substitution if I was going to send my students home with a jar of pickles that I knew was going to be good.  So, after reading up on pickles, zucchini pickles it was!

After all, I didn’t want their first pickle experience to have a sub-par result.  I’ve made dill pickles that haven’t turned out and it stinks to put a bunch of work into something that you end up throwing out.  They were all taking the class because they wanted to learn to can and I wanted to make sure they enjoyed it.

I promised my students that even though we didn’t make the cucumber pickles, I would share my recipe with them.  The recipe I use is the one my mother used, from an old Ideals Family cookbook, published in the early 1970’s, although I have seen this recipe elsewhere as well. 
Bread & Butter Cucumber Pickles
(from The Ideals Family Garden Cookbook)

1 gallon cucumbers
8 small white onions
2 green peppers, shredded
½ c. salt

Syrup
5 c. sugar
1 ½ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon ground cloves
2 Tablespoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon celery seed
5 cups cider vinegar



Wash but do not pare cucumbers. Slice crosswise in paper-thin slices. (You will be well paid for this seemingly tedious task. A slicer might be easier, but be sure the slices are paper-thin.) Slice the onions thin and cut the peppers in fine shreds. Mix the salt with the three vegetables and bury 1 quart of cracked ice in the mixture. Cover with a weighted lid and let stand for 3 hours, then drain very thoroughly.

Meanwhile, make a pickling syrup as follows: Mix the sugar, turmeric and cloves together. Add mustard and celery seeds and vinegar. Pour this syrup over the sliced pickles. Place over a low heat and paddle occasionally, using a wood spoon. Heat the mixture to scalding, but do not boil. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal by processing for 10 minutes.
Let stand at least 4-6 weeks before cracking open.  The longer they sit, the better they get.
I don’t remember the yield on this recipe, it’s been a year or two since I made it and I don’t have it noted.  I think it makes somewhere between 7 and 9 pint jars worth. 
Happy pickling!

"The Suburban Strange"

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I mentioned a few weeks ago how excited I was to be holding in my hands an advance copy of a dear childhood friend, Nathan Kotecki’s first novel, “The Suburban Strange” which is to be published in October of this year. 

When I say the author is a dear childhood friend, I’ve known him upwards of 30 years.  His family lived down the street from my family, our parents were in a ‘gourmet’ dinner club sponsored by the local Welcome Wagon for years.  We went to the same schools, the same church, walked to and from the bus stop together from grade school through high school. I think our dads may have carpooled to work from time to time.  We spent many an hour hanging out after school, having numerous adventures over the years.  So as I read his book, a young adult novel set in high school,  it made sense that I recognize places and situations and found myself guessing at who and what were the inspiration for the book. However, while there was something familiar about the book, it wasn’t.  Nathan created something entirely fresh and new with his first book.

Writing reviews has always left me feeling slightly ill at ease. I don’t feel like descriptive writing is always my strong point. My wine columns are a great example. I was actually given the chance to write them because I don’t use what’s commonly known as ‘wine speak’ and was told that made my writing far more accessible to new wine drinkers. I’ve written here before that I tend to butcher the English language, especially in speaking form. If it wasn’t for spell check, my writing would tend to be pretty horrid as well. I feel a little out of my league writing a book review to be honest. I’m the sort of person to call the book ‘good’ or ‘not good’ and leave it at that. Being a girl of very little patience however, I wanted to get my hands on Nathan Kotecki’s first novel, “The Suburban Strange“, ASAP and if that meant writing a review, well, I’d give it a try.

The main character, Celia, is new at her school, Suburban High, but finds herself befriended by a group that calls itself “The Rosary”.  Strange things start happening to girls at the school on the day before their sweet sixteenth birthday.  There is a theme of supernatural, which I know seems to be the rage what with Twilight and Harry Potter, but he goes in a little bit of a different direction, which is refreshing.  He calls it “Kind” or “Unkind”, a sort of witchcraft.  There is mystery, romance, friendship, music, art, fashion and coming of age as well.   It’s one of those young adult novels that I think is going to appeal to a much wider audience.  The characters are developed in a way that you feel like you slowly get to know all of them over the course of the story.  They feel real.  The plot unfolds in a way that didn’t leave me skimming to get through it quickly nor did you always see twists and turns coming.  When I finished it, I immediately wanted to read the next installment in what he promises to be a series.  It’s a good read and it’s a shame everyone else will have to wait until October to get their hands on it. Fear not, I will be reminding you of it’s publishing date, for I honestly couldn’t be more proud of him. 

“The Suburban Strange” by Nathan Kotecki.  It’s a good book.  Well done my friend,well done.

Staycation.

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Sunday morning, we dropped our girl off at Camp Lachlan for the next three weeks. It’s an all girls camp outside of Rockbridge Baths, which is outside of Lexington.  It’s winding country roads once you get just a few hundred yards away from I-81 to get there and it’s just absolutely beautiful.
The part of me that has spent the last few weeks being full time stay at home mom is a little relieved to have a staycation from my ‘job’.  But part of me misses my buddy.  My schedule is already pretty loosey goosey during the summer with no big yellow angel coming every day, no regularly scheduled activities like soccer or girl scouts or piano to keep me (us) straight.  We have spent the last few weeks just hanging and losing track of exactly what day it is. Sleeping in, hanging out at the pool until time to go home and figure out what’s for dinner, then sitting up late watching movies….summertime and the living is easy around here. Not having a kid to be responsible for means I get even looser with it, if that’s possible.  Popcorn & apples, nachos & beer, wine & cheese are already regularly served dinners around here, only now we eat them while watching “Game of Thrones” episodes back to back.
We had a “Game of Thrones” marathon the day we dropped her off at camp. I have no idea what we’re gonna do when we finish the whole series off, which at this rate, will probably be by the weekend, at the latest. 
I’m still trying to sort out exactly how I’m going to be spending my three weeks free from motherhood other than catching up on TV.  There are things to do around the house for sure. I might actually clean. Maybe paint. Maybe some sewing. Definitely pickling some more peaches. I’m teaching a canning class this Saturday (it’s sold out, but my pickling class next month still has some open spots). A few roadtrips, some with my hubby, some all by myself. I have some meetings set up in regards to some upcoming projects I have lined up. Mostly, I’m going to savor the alone time. Today, for instance, Pat left early for work, and he’ll be home late.  I’d have tagged along, but I had to go to the dentist this afternoon.  Ugh.  I really hate going to the dentist. But I do get a whole day home alone. 
Speaking of my husband’s job, here’s a great article about him from the Lynchburg paper.  It’s hard to describe what his job as a Riverkeeper entails, but I think the piece did nice work of it.  Gives you much better idea of what he does than my answer of calling him “The old man of the river”. 

Oh,  Lesli is doing a painting giveaway.  She’s an amazing artist with a great eye for color and design and her blog is full of decorating ideas and DIY projects.  If you haven’t seen her blog before, definitely go check it out.  Maybe one of the things I do with all my free time is actually get out to her place and meet her in person.  I do need to head out that way for peaches soon….

Pickled Peach Pie.

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After taking exactly one bite of the pickled peaches I’d made last month, my little foodie Edie declared we needed a pie made of pickled peaches.  This weekend I accommodated that request.

That girl of mine is onto something.  Combined with ice cream (for dessert) and yogurt (for breakfast), pickled peach pie is the way to go, if you can stop yourself from eating the jar of pickled peaches.  After her first bite of pie, she informed me, we’re gonna need more of these, so I guess I’m going to head out this week and get another half bushel or so of peaches to pickle, because we have managed to eat almost half of the two batches I put up just a few weeks ago.

Pickled peaches have the consistency of canned peaches – that is, soft.  Where the pickling comes into play is the taste.  They have a bit of a tang to them from the vinegar, a bit of spice to them thanks to the ginger and cinnamon and the natural sweetness of a peach.  They are, as has been said around here, ‘dang good’.
I used the recipe from The Serious Eats website in pickling them.  The only variation I did to the recipe was to grate the ginger rather than slicing it.  As I noted in my post when I made them, I had a good bit of brine left over – enough to get at least double, if not triple what the original recipe called for. Which clearly, is a good thing.

I did a tutorial on making a pie crust a while back for our friend Bea who is living in England, but realized I didn’t include the recipe at the time (I had sent it to her previously), so to correct that, here’s my pie crust recipe.  It’s based on the recipe my mother handed down that I’ve tweaked slightly.

Pie Crust
(Yields 2 crusts for a 10″ pie pan)
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or a mix of white & whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter (or crisco or lard or a blend of shortenings), cold.
6-7 tablespoons ice cold water with a dash of vanilla.
Cut butter or shortening into flour, salt & sugar until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.  Slowly add the water, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough just holds together.  (I find whole wheat flour needs more water than white flour.)
Let the dough rest in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.  Even just a few minutes helps when you roll it out.  The colder the dough is, the easier it is to roll out.   I roll out my pie crust between two layers of wax paper.  I pull one layer off, lay my crust down in the pan (or on top of the filling) and then gently peel the second layer off. 
To make pickled peach pie, I drained two and a half pint jars, tossed them with a sprinkle of sugar and about a 1/4 cup or so of flour, similar to the recipe for a regular peach pie.  I followed the baking instructions for standard peach pie – my method is to bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 for 35 minutes or so. 
A note about pie pans- I use only vintage Wear-Ever aluminum pans.  I have tried many different pie pans over the years and aluminium pans are the way to go.   It results in a much nicer bottom crust than any other pan and is what commercial bakeries use. 

Funky Chickens.

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The chicks are fast growing into chickens, sprouting real feathers.
Some of them have been given names.
Like this one.
Edie named this one Ozzy, after her favorite rock star, mostly because of the black lines around her eyes.

That was before we saw the mohawk too.
Ozzy is quite vocal of a chicken and lives up to her name.
She is our punk rock chicken for sure, because of course we have a punk rock chicken.

Cuddles aka Rosebud aka Rose aka Ruby. 
She’s the neighborhood kids favorite and so everyone has a different name for her (Li has a new name for her almost daily), also the smallest and sweetest of the chickens.
She’s now sprouting feathers on her legs and feet.
She was grey as a chick, but her feathers seem to be coming in more white as she gets bigger.

This is Butters.
There is some concern Butters may actually be a rooster, given her(his?) size and aggressiveness, although I noticed when I was down there today she’s not as aggressive as she had been.  She has been the biggest chick since they were about 3 days old and along with Ozzy, was one of the first one named.

Brian’s named this one Kramer, after the TV character.
She’s a little Krameresque I’ll admit.

Most of them have funky plummage on top, even if they aren’t named.

The chickens are a major source of entertainment for the kiddos around here.  We have been throwing scraps from the compost bucket into their yard and covering it with leaves, hoping to attract some bugs.  (And growing some nice fertilizer while we’re at it.)
In other news, the squirrels have not attempted to enter the house in a few days.  That doesn’t mean I’m leaving the back door open when I leave the house, but I at least feel comfortable leaving it open when I’m not in the kitchen.  I noticed today however, that they have fairly well stripped my tomato plants of fruit over the last 48 hours, so I guess it’s let them have their way in our house or it’s my garden.  We’re still not entirely sure about a dog, but if I’m going to have tomatoes ever again, I am clearly going to have a build a fence.  Either way, looks like my next major digging project is going to be a fence.

We are not alone.

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The whole block, at least our side of the street, is under seige.
I went down to Betty’s yesterday and she told me the tale of how she was standing in her kitchen when she heard a noise.  She looked up and saw a squirrel trapped between her kitchen window and the screen in front of it.  When she opened the window, the squirrel fell through the screen and landed on her kitchen counter. 
You can see the outline of the squirrel in the hole.

Since this is the internet and I can’t pose for you in person the way the squirrels position themselves when chewing through the screens, I got fancy with technology and drew you a stick squirrel.  It’s other foot was below the window line.
Perhaps this one gives you a better idea. The red blob at the bottom is it’s tail.
See it now?

It did some damage to her kitchen window too, trying to chew it’s way through the wood.
Seriously, we are under siege.  We have set the hav-a-heart trap and have gotten the main offender, the one we call Fatty, which was the biggest of all the squirrels, the one that sitting on our porch earlier this year, Pat thought was a small groundhog that had gotten really brave.  No, it was that big of a squirrel.  A few smaller ones have been caught and taken care of as well.  Are we going to have to trap every last squirrel in the neighborhood?  We have dozens of them, it could be never ending!
I’ve even broken down and suggested we get a dog.  Yes, we need a fence, but we have everything we need to build one – you see, we were going to get a dog many moons ago and got everything we needed to build a fence, but then realized that it was going to be a lot of work to build said fence and a baby wasn’t as much work at the outset, so we had a baby instead of getting a dog. I later realized that we could have left the dog home alone much sooner than we could the kiddo. Also, I’m not a dog person.  I’m a cat person.  Who is married to someone who is highly allergic to cats.  And before anyone says, oh, he can take allergy medicine for that, let me tell you, he can and does but he still has pretty horrific allergy attacks around cats that aren’t pretty.  So, we don’t have cats.   And because I have long suspected I would be the one to take care of the dog the most (confirmed when we borrow friend’s dogs just to see how it would go), I have not been quick to get a dog.  But clearly, this squirrel problem is going to take a bigger solution than what we are currently doing.  I may just have to get a dog.  Damn those squirrels.

There’s a new post up over at Cville Swaps, plus the announcement of our latest swap date.  Go see what I’ve been up to when I haven’t been battling psycho squirrels.



I refuse to live in that sort of neighborhood.

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I live in the sort of neighborhood where we leave doors open all the time, especially the back screen door. The kitchen door pretty much only gets closed and locked when we go out of town.  It’s that kind of neighborhood. Or was, until yesterday.

(Click on the photo for a larger view of our unwanted guest.)
The squirrels that I spent most of last summer complaining about because they ate everything in my garden, a dozen plants worth of green tomatoes plus every last peach on the peach tree, leaving me exactly none last summer, have now chewed through the back screen door and as I discovered yesterday, are now entering our house and helping themselves to whatever they can find in my kitchen when we aren’t looking.  I came home from the pool yesterday to find jars of dried fruit scattered on the floor and two packs of buns nibbled through.  Needless to say, it’s ON.
Pat set the hav-a-heart trap
immediately as I walked around ranting about how the squirrels must GO and this morning I discovered we caught a raccoon.  Seems there’s endless wildlife feasting around our urban homestead. I guess I should be happy the raccoon didn’t enter through the ‘wildlife door’ because it might not be able to let itself back out the way the squirrels seem to have figured out and I don’t want to deal with a raccoon in my kitchen.
We still have some peaches left on the tree (it’s a late ripening variety, so they aren’t anywhere near ready to be picked) and there are plenty of tomatoes left on the vine, although while weeding yesterday I found 4 green ones that had been picked for me and something ate the first two ripe ones.  I don’t mind sharing a little bit of food with our neighbors, no matter what persuasion they are, but this breaking & entering has gone too far.  I’m taking the neighborhood and my house, back from the squirrels, because dammit, I like living in a world where I can leave my back door open all the time.  It’s a good world to live in.

This season’s favorite salad.

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I’m a big fan of having salads in the fridge for quick meals during the summer months.  My new current favorite is based on a salad in ‘Salad Makes the Meal’ by Wiley Mullins.  The first time I made the Lentil & Bulgur salad, I failed to recognize that I had used Barley instead of Bulgur until I noticed it was taking forever for the grain to cook.  Yes, I realize they look nothing alike and clearly, it was a blonde moment for me.  In my defense, they both start with the letter ‘B’ and are grains.  I have made it with bulgur and realized I like it better with barley or it’s Italian cousin, farro.

I do include a few items from the recipe, but I also play pretty fast and loose with it, as I do most recipes that aren’t cake.  I also have found the Chive Blossom Vinegar I made this spring to be an excellent substitute for the red wine vinegar called for.

Becky’s Lentil & Barley Salad
1/2 cup lentils, rinsed and drained
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt to taste
Place lentils and garlic in a saucepan, cover with water by 2″ and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until tender, about 15 minutes.  Drain well, transfer to large bowl.
1/2 cup barley (or other grain of your choice)
salt to taste
Place barley in a saucepan and cover with water by 2″ and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until tender and cooked through, about 20-40 minutes.  Drain and add to lentils.
(Both of these can also be cooked in broth for extra flavor.)
Additions:
(In any combination)
Chopped celery, carrots,bell pepper, cucumbers.
Toasted nuts, such as cashews, slivered almonds or walnuts.
Chives or scallions, parsley
(The recipe calls for fruit to be added, such as an orange, grapes or raisins as well.)
Season with salt & pepper, drizzle with olive oil and vinegar and toss.  Serve immediately or let it sit for a few hours in the fridge.  Also good with greens, either chopped and mixed in or served on a bed of them.
Enjoy!

My Cousin Molly’s Art Show Extravaganza

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Friday afternoon, we booked it up to Baltimore to attend my cousin Molly’s art show. Show isn’t quite the right word though.  Event is more like it.
My cousin Molly and I are quite a bit alike, with her being younger, better looking with longer legs and possessing of more talent, although otherwise two peas in a pod who happen to be 13 years apart in age.  Molly is an artist, who still works a day job (bartending at a local wine bar, which I guess makes it more of a night job technically).  Since Edie was a wee one, Molly has always made an effort to have a relationship with her.  Consequently, Edie adores Molly and has declared Molly, “her cousin” and not mine.  Every time we visit, Molly makes sure she spends some quality time with Edie and always has a fun little something for her, whether it be fancy new velvet leopard print slippers or art supplies.  Molly’s kind of awesome like that.
Molly and a partner have organized a few events under the artist collective title “HoodSCAPE”.  They combine art, music as well as celebration in the form of costumes, face painting and parades.  They held their second event, UpChuck, Friday night, at The Yellow Sign Theatre on Charles Street in Baltimore.  They even got some local press. 
Before the bands got started, we got to take in some of Molly’s recent works.
Totally not great shots, but you can get the drift, yes?

I’m loving her balloon paintings. 
She’s also done some cool elephant ones that I didn’t get a decent shot of. 

Molly made this for the show.  I think a smaller version would be pretty awesome in a kid’s room, don’t you?

There were also costumes to take in.  There was a bit of a pirate theme going on, with lots of tutu skirts and corsets being worn. 

Patrick was King Neptune.
Of course Edie got her face painted.  The main lights were switched off to spotlight the band that was performing in the middle of Edie’s paint job, so I used the flashlight app on Pat’s iphone to help the artist finish Edie’s face. Of course I had to capture the moment. 
Yep, that’s my kid getting her face painted in the back of a bar by the light of a cell phone.
Poor Parenting Skills on display.  Or are we opening her little mind up to all the experiences there are in the world?  We had her out of there early, so I am leaning towards the latter.
Pretty impressive face painting.  Little Day of the Dead action going on.
When Edie first got near the door Friday night, she was slightly taken aback.  I had tried to prep her for what she was about to go to and Molly’s brother Mark had lent a hand in this, but clearly, we didn’t quite do it justice.  She was a little overwhelmed when we first arrived, but she was able to realize that “under the strange face painting were just normal people”.   (Her quote.)

We did not stay the entire evening, just the first hour or so, since you know, we are old and someone’s parents who happened to have the kid in tow that evening. The only musical act we caught was Joseph Mulhollen, who we really enjoyed.  In the spirit of the event, he was in costume and we found him reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright.  I now wish we had picked up one of his CD’s, so we’ll have to correct that.
We spent the rest of the weekend visiting with family – Uncle Kevin’s sister Mary Ann and her husband were in town visiting as well.  It really was too hot to do much of anything besides curl up in the AC and watch Wimbledon, although we did make it out for Uncle Kevin’s college buddies annual backyard fireworks display and we attempted to go to Molly’s boyfriend Patrick’s band’s show, which was cancelled at the last minute due to weather or something like that.  Instead, we hung out at Patrick’s parents house, meeting them as well as the band and had a darn tooting good time.
I am quite proud of my cousin Molly.  I’m a little bit in awe actually, at her awesomeness.  She’s a great role model for my Edie, who looks up to her, for good reason.