The Sound of Silence

Not so much silence in my world, just silence in my blog. We've had a whirlwind month of travel---Over 3000 miles driven to the East Coast (and more!) and back. I've done a little cooking, almost all of it off this blog and have made absolutely no new recipes. I traveled back in time to when pea season (M thought freshly picked peas--that she picked no less--made the perfect breakfast) existed. We visited a farmer's market, repeatedly, and found wonderful blueberries, cling peaches, fresh sweet corn, cucumbers, green beans, and pastries. M picked peas and helped dig potatoes. J helped plant sweet corn, dig potatoes, and pick off potato beetles. Little I just ate. For the drive home, we carefully packed a cooler full of ice packs, frozen sour cherries my parents picked, and peas I helped shell. Sour cherry pie is in our future!!

I returned to a CSA box of wonderful, height-of-summer veggies. I traded my patty pan squash for my eggplant and scavenged my eggplants to plan this week's menu. I've been able to pick some sungold and yellow grape tomatoes off my own plants and am still hoping my heirloom tomatoes just might produce.

Here's the menu for the week. Hopefully, soon, I'll have all sorts of new recipes to share.

Tuscan Panzanella
Ratatouille
Caponata
Baba Ganoush
Sicilan Beef Roast (new recipe!! using a crock pot!!)
Fajitas
Grilled Eggplant Sandwiches

New Michael Pollan book

As those of you who follow this blog regularly know, I love Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and in general the New York Times Food/Health sections. In my weekly perusing of the NYT Food section, I stumbled across an interview with Michael Pollan about his new book: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. In this small book, Pollan has compiled a list of 64 food rules to follow for a healthy lifestyle. Pollan asked NYT readers to share their food rules--a lot are based in cultural and familial traditions (as in, "My grandmother always said....") I loved these and agree with many of them. Some I know I need more work on, especially his basic, "Eat Mostly Plants" rule (somehow, we have reverted to eating lots of meat this winter....). My two favorite rules? "You don't get fat on food you pray over" and "Eat all the junk food you want, as long as you cook it yourself." I am looking forward to reading the book and seeing all 64 food rules.

Click here to see an interactive link of 20 of his rules.

Another reason to make your own "pumpkin" for pies

I saw this article on NPR's website. I am betting canned pumpkin prices are going to spike. This is just another good reason to make your own "pumpkin" (any orange winter squash like kabocha, butternut, etc) for pies and desserts.

Fiascos

This past week, I seemed to have more cooking fiascos than usual. Things just didn't go the way they should, whether it be user error with my pecan sour cream biscuits turning out flat as usual or the help of my children, like the pumpkin chocolate cheesecake. It seems like each cooking experience ended up being a learning experience. Some of the problems I don't know the solution too, others I figured out on my own (thanks wikipedia!). Since we learn from our own and others' mistakes, let me enlighten you to my week.

1. I can't get biscuits to rise. I think I am figuring out problems. This week, I didn't get my proportions of liquid to flour quite right, that could be a problem. I've also found I'm better off using a pastry blender than my fingers to combine the butter. I also suspect my method of using the biscuit cutter is part of the problem because my free form pieces seem to rise better than my pretty scalloped edge round biscuits. Still working on this one, so until I get it right, I will just keep experimenting (and hoping my mom will divulge her secret for biscuit making).

2. Marbling cheesecake is hard when one of the batters has melted chocolate in it. I also thinking using the mixture to combine one make inconsistency in the batter as well. The chocolate just seems to clump together and won't marble in with plain-ish batter. I had this problem with both the pumpkin chocolate cheesecake and espresso cheesecake brownies. I think for awhile, I may just layer things instead of marbling them.

3. Malabar spinach is not the same as regular spinach. (See post on Spinach Feta Focaccia)

4. Add extra baking time if using frozen pumpkin (winter squash) in recipes.

5. Don't leave the pumpkin chocolate cheesecake out in the open to cool to room temperature. Put this behind a locked door. Otherwise, a hungry family member may think they can't until the cheesecake cools to start eating it. The said family member may pull their little 2 1/2 year old fingers through the cheesecake leaving deep canyons. The said family member may use their little 2 1/2 year old hands to scoop out cheesecake by the fistful to eat it. This will make the baker quite upset, almost breaking her will to bake anything else. (Cheesecake carnage is pictured. It's hard to adequately capture the damage since it was somewhat marbled).


Quite a cooking week. I hope to get back in my groove next week. Maybe if I can some good night's sleep thrown in there, that will help too. I've had enough cooking fiascos for a little while. Time to make masterpieces again! :)

Baby Food

Baby I is getting older and that means he is almost ready to start eating solid foods. This is yet another reason I love being part of a CSA and shopping at Farmer's Market. I know exactly what food goes into my baby's body and where it came from. I know the farmer and I know nothing unwanted is sneaking in with the food, thanks to the organic produce.

As far as I am concerned, he is ready to eat solids at the perfect time. Apples are at the farmer's market. I am buying 2nds (the apples with spots that need a little work before they're ready to eat) and making applesauce (here's how to make applesauce using a KitchenAid and attachment). That will be followed by some of that wonderful orange winter squash I am currently processing (here's how to do that). I can also find pears at the farmer's market now and soon we'll be getting sweet potatoes in our CSA box. Perfect. When it's time, I'll get a small amount of local lamb (from the farmer's market) to introduce Baby I to meat and then chicken as well. By the time the rich leafy greens and broccoli are in season, he'll be ready to conquer those as well. I can't think of better way to get a child off the right start of eating.

Here's what I am up to on this cool fall day (which we so rarely get in September. September!! I love thee this year!). Applesauce and processing winter squash. I hope to make Kobacha muffins later this week! :)

Pictured are the apples before cooking and after I've cooked them down. They're now ready to process.

I Heart Michael Pollan or Health Care Reform and Food

I do, I really love Michael Pollan. His latest published article/essay in the New York Times looks the monster in the eye and really gets at the heart of a lot of our health care and health issues. Our food choices are affecting our health and maybe, health care reform should look at that aspect as well. Here's the article.

Possibility of No New Posts

As those who check this regularly know, I am pregnant. At this point I am not only pregnant, but very pregnant, 38 weeks to be close to exact. What does this mean? Well, I think the answer is a little obvious. At some point, the posts will dwindle down to nothing. I am not sure post-baby how long it will take me to post again. The best way to keep up with it is to become a follower of the blog. That will let you know when I get around to having a new post.

Until that occurs, I will continue to blog approximately 5 days a week or so.

A New Food Page

I love finding new websites about food. I think that has to do with not only the love of cooking food and eating food, but also my love of reading about food. Curtis and I are both big fans of The Atlantic magazine...the articles are news related but written in a more indepth way than say Newsweek or Time, kinda like NPR news stories vs CNN (or any other news agency). It's not the political bias as much as providing more than just the headlines and a few details.

I am off subject though (well slightly). Through the Austin Chronicle (or KUT or the news last night, I can't remember where, but that too is not important), I learned that one of Boggy Creek Farm's owners is writing for a blog featured on The Atlantic's website. This afternoon, I discovered my new favorite website of people writing about food. It's listed over in the links section or you can check it out here. The site is awesome--it lists blogs it finds (like Georgia on my Thighs---cooking through a Paula Deen cookbook), blog it sponsors (like On the Farm which has Carol Ann Sayle from Boggy Creek Farm), and food articles (on things like what is Healthy Food, Bagels, and the now popular White House Garden). It's the whole enchilada! Check it out when you have a chance!

A couple of New York Times Articles...

Ok, maybe they aren't the newest gardeners, but they are the highest profile gardening advocates lately. Check out this article from the NY Times about the Obama's garden on the White House lawn. Regardless of your political view, the embracing of gardening and eating locally and in-season by the President and his family is significant. Yay for growing what you eat and knowing where what you eat comes from!

Also from NY Times is this article by Mark Bittman (chef, cookbook author, one of the hosts of Spain:On the Road Again), summing up organic food choices vs. good food choices. It does well at talking about how the label "organic" is not the answer to all our nation's health problems.

(I hope the link opens--I am not sure how long they keep archived articles available for public viewing for free....Thanks to my mother-in-law for clipping the article on the White House Garden and sending it to me!)

Menu for Week

This week's menu has more meat than usual. We have another week off from our CSA box and so I don't have an overabundance of veggies to plan around. I've used most of my vegetables from last week's box already (I'll explain what I did with everything). I am not sure if I'll be able to be in my kitchen this afternoon or not, the workers are finishing everything up so we can get our final inspection on Wednesday. I am guessing tonight's dish will be put on hold, I don't see how they are going to get done by the time we need to eat supper!

Here's the menu for the past several days and the coming week:

Thursday: Tuna Tostadas
Friday: I didn't cook (couldn't get in my kitchen)
Saturday: Reuben sandwiches or PB& J for lunch with oranges and baby carrots from our old garden. Dinner: Black Olive and Mushroom Pizza (M's choice of toppings)
Sunday: Fettuccine with Greens (I made some adaptations I need to blog about!) and sliced tomatoes
Monday: Cabbage Bread Soup (Valle d'Aosta Soup)
Tuesday: Lasagne and a vegetable (unsure of that one yet)
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: Hungarian Paprika Chicken on noodles with a side of braised root vegetables
Friday: Cabbage Bread Soup if I don't make it today or something other dish TBD
Saturday: Roasted Chicken and Vegetables

I have discovered my new favorite food blog: Joy the Baker. It's mostly baking, but the paprika chicken recipe I am trying this week is from her. I like her style of writing and I love the great pictures of the mostly desserts she makes. I am a sucker for baking of any sort so this is right up my alley. Speaking of baking, we are slowly breaking in our new kitchen by making some old standbys: Cowboy Cookies last Thursday (we make one tray at a time, so we get many days of fresh, warm cookies!) and Coffee Cake Sunday morning for breakfast. I am slowly feeling like I am moved in here. I just need to make chocolate pudding to truly initiate the kitchen.