Little Apartment in the Suburbs

Pasta for when I don't have time

2010-09-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

As opposed to hours on a Sunday, this one was 20 minutes on a weekday morning.

I made entirely too much filling for the raviolis, and you can't throw out that much cheesy goodness. Not Michael Landon joked that he wanted a homemade lasagna with the leftovers (he has an odd sense of humor), but I had already decided that was exactly what I wanted to do. And ricotta with raw egg couldn't exactly wait for another day off.

So to abbreviate the rest of the process, I skipped meat - I had enough cheese to make the American Heart Association sufficiently appalled in its absence. Also, the lasagna noodles, which don't sound like work until you're on your way home and really don't feel like stopping by the grocery store in shoes that need to come off two hours ago, and can be just as easily replaced with dried rotini.

While the water came to a boil (always with a lid on! takes half the time), I chopped up the leftover onion and garlic from my grilled tomato sauce in the food pro, and mixed those up with what little of that sauce was left over, a can of crushed tomatoes, more basil pesto, and more of my usual seasonings. Pulled the ravioli filling out of the fridge, grated a bunch of mozzarella, parm, romano and asiago. When in doubt, more cheese.

I layered sauce, mostly-cooked pasta, ricotta/filling and cheese, a few times until the top, finishing with sauce, grated cheeses, a little dusting of bread crumbs, and a little butter dabbed on top.

Perfect for a weeknight when you're too hungry to cook. Popped in the oven covered with foil for 30 min at 375, and another 15 with the foil off. Cheesy. Yum.

Pasta for when I have time

2010-09-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

After a fairly lazy childhood, I've developed a type A personality that makes it difficult to relax on weekends. I can watch HGTV and drink coffee til noon with the best of them, but at some point I need to do something productive.

My to-do list is never-ending, and somehow cleaning the house never bubbles to the top. There's something kind of freeing about spending the entire day in the kitchen when I should be finishing sewing projects or refinishing the garage sale finds cluttering Not Michael Landon's garage.

So I found myself last Sunday with a bunch of tomatoes passing their prime, and the will to turn them into something tasty. Our pathetic excuse for a summer had left me with enough for a decent meal-and-leftovers portion of sauce. As for a pasta, with a full day ahead I figured I could be ambitious and go for ravioli.

Not Michael Landon likes to make fun of my reliance on Joy, but I used it here as I usually do, for a reference rather than a recipe. I've had some trouble with fresh tomato sauces before, I usually burn them before I can get them to thicken. I thought about roasting them first, but with the mercury pushing 90 degrees inside (yeah, finally, after my vines have given up), turning on the oven didn't sound appealing. Joy had a grilled tomato sauce, much better idea.

I tossed the tomatoes with a little olive oil, salt & pepper, and after checking with Not Michael Landon that I'd turned the thing on properly (seriously, I need to cook meat more often), I just popped 'em right on the grill. I would recommend doing this over foil in hindsight. We have these neat stainless steel grates that kept the tomato juice from putting out the fire, but it made a heck of a mess. Another thing I could have done was peel the tomatoes, they ended up kinda stringy in the finished sauce. They would have popped right off after cooking.

I needed onion and garlic, and wasn't planning on cooking the sauce much once I was done on the grill, so I made a little foil pocket (also with oil, s&p) and stuck them on as well. They took longer than the tomatoes, but didn't need as much babysitting. As everything finished, I dropped it in the blender, and then took it inside to whiz up with more s&p, my usual spaghetti sauce spices (oregano, parsley, dried lemon peel, and a dash of nutmeg) and twice my usual ice cube of basil pesto. I thought more basil would add to the summery taste of fresh grilled tomatoes.

So, ravioli. I think it means "work" in Italian. Joy had boring ideas of meat filling, so I figured cheese would work. But even the cheese only called for ricotta and a smidgen of parm. At the grocery store, I checked out the ingredients list on a store-bought 4-cheese ravioli (ricotta, mozzarella, romano, parm), and came home with fontina, parm, romano, and asiago, in addition to whole milk for making ricotta. Go big or go home.

Ricotta is a cinch, but it takes for-ev-er to warm up, and needs constant babysitting. If you're not crazy, just buy the stuff, Martha's not watching. I mixed all the cheeses up with some egg and seasonings per-ish Joy, and then set on the long journey of making the pasta. I realized I hadn't even used my pasta roller since we moved, and boy how time made me forget how long it takes. By this time, I was getting hungry.

Luckily once the little pillows of cheesy goodness were made, we were at the home stretch. They needed to rest some, but the first ones I had made were ready by the time I finished. While they were boiling, I warmed up the sauce and then let them finish cooking a few minutes in it. I was so impatient by the end that I did undercook them a bit, but on the plus side, they make for perfect leftovers today at lunch.

Just about anything tastes wonderful after that long in the kitchen, but I was pleasantly surprised at how the filling flavor stood up to the bold sauce. Two cheeses. Pshaw, Joy.

Gardener of the Year

2010-07-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Remember that little plan we had to gradually increase our edible garden space, year by year? Baby steps prevent failure. Well, last year's one bed heard about the babies and had a few. There are now six.

It was actually a sprinkler problem that did us in; we just decided to devote a whole sprinkler zone (otherwise known as half our back lawn) to the endeavor. So, since I had all this space, I decided I must grow from seed, because I couldn't fill up nearly 200sf of garden space with $eedling$. And since I was buying seeds, I naturally bought 29 varieties, or $75 worth. On top of all the work - and money - of actually putting these beds in, filling them, hooking up an irrigation system, killing the grass around them all, and covering it with gravel.

Huh. Wonder why that didn't all work.

As you can see above, we're getting there.

What's not working:

The grass isn't all dead, nor all covered with weed block. Obviously the gravel isn't yet there. We didn't even get to re-waterproofing last year's bed.
What is there is extra soil parts we still haven't moved out of the way (but it holds the weed block down nicely, and makes an excellent doggie obstacle course).
Um, gardens don't typically have this much visible dirt in July. I've got at least 2.5 beds worth of space that's not filled at all.
Square foot gardening is kind of dumb when you don't fill up all the space. There are five tomato plants shoved into the back half of that far middle bed, and they're going to be a bitch to harvest.
Notice the bolting arugula in the far left back corner. Pretty though.
Those corn stalks on the right are actually ornamental, which I didn't notice until I brought them home. Also, it appears to be dying.
My turnips were eaten by rolly polleys, then the remaining bits rotted in the garage.
There's a hose draped over that giant bag of peat moss because we have no irrigation.
Everything you see here was grown from seedlings, unless you can make out the carrots behind the corn, or the potatoes in the ground behind that.

Phew, so is there anything that is working?

Five beds built & filled
Pretty much everything I planted from seedlings is doing beautifully. That's a cantaloupe at front left. Expect many recipes. The entire back left bed is lettuces & arugula, and it's awesome.
I did manage to get radishes, turnips, potatoes, and carrots to grow from seed. It's nothing I'm going to sell at the farmer's market, but I MADE FOOD.
There was plenty of laziness and outright unexplained failure involved in the seed starting, but I do feel like I learned some things I can use to improve next time. I still have plenty of seeds from my buy that are still good, and it's time to start things again for cool season crops.

And just this last Saturday, we had our most local meal yet, cooked on the grill and enjoyed al fresco on the back patio. Herb-roasted homegrown potatoes, salad (romaine, buttercrunch, marvel of four seasons, arugula, carrots and cucumber, all homegrown, with homemade vinaigrette), and Marin Sun Farms chicken, served with homebrewed British Bitter.

In true Not Laura Ingalls style, the cucumber tasted like ass and had to be picked out of the salad and fed to the dogs.

Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy

2010-07-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

In our never ending quest to spend less money, Not Michael Landon and I decided we could cut the alcohol budget. Not by drinking less, of course. By homebrewing.

I was raised a beer snob. I did the college thing of course, but at this point in my life I'm too old for Bud Light. I'll take water instead. But if there's a problem with good beer, it's that it's not cheap. Small batches, craftsmanship, and increasing grain prices can add up to a six pack for $9+. I've seen estimates that basically say if you drink the mass-produced big 3, skip it, but if you're into good beer, homebrewing will save money. I'll get into dollars later, but we've found this to be the case.

One of the (many) great things about homebrewing is it's naturally easy and uncomplicated. It's about drinking beer for pete's sake, it's not going to be rocket science. Brewing supply shops sell kits of equipment to get you started, as well as kits of ingredients with instructions. The simplest recipes are literally "boil a can of hopped, sugary goo for an hour".

On brewing day, we set up our turkey deep fryer, fill the pot with water, and steep some grain tea on the stove. Once we're boiling, pop in the grain tea and malt extract, and add hops at various points according to recipe. Boil for an hour, then cool down as quickly as possible. Siphon into the glass fermenter, add yeast, and leave it in the tub for a week or two.

On bottling day, we spend about a half hour washing and sanitizing bottles, then boil the bottling sugar, decant into bottles, and cap. Everything ages for another few weeks, and then we're ready to drink.

We buy mainly organic, quality ingredients, from a local co-op. We've tried a few more mainstream kits and found a difference in clarity, sediment and evenly tasty flavor. A kit of ingredients, adding yeast and bottle caps, will run $40-$66 with most around $42-$47. This is for a batch of 5 gal, from which we usually net just over 48 bottles. Math math, yada yada, that's $5.56/6pk or $11.12/12 pk. This usually beats even the best sale prices on decent 12 packs.

So... drinking. What are we drinking already?! We've tried a dark lager (lagers are trickier, and this was our first batch, so that shows just how easy the whole thing is), strong scotch ale, ESB, porter, British bitter, and we just bottled a red ale. I can't say there's one I wouldn't do again, and they've all changed slightly over the 2 cases, but if I had to pick a favorite, I'd probably go with the dark lager. Flavorful, malty, just enough hops.

If you're interested in learning more, check out http://www.breworganic.com/index.htm. There's tons of good info, and you can even buy all their products and equipment online. We're lucky to have them local to us, but considering beer is mostly water, even ordering online has a smaller carbon footprint that buying ready-made beer, unless it's very local.

Happy Brewing!

My Lunch Today...

2010-06-30T12:33:00.001-07:00

...was dreampt up on a quick walk with the dogs.
...was put together in five minutes after we got back home and before I bolted out the door, and I really mean five minutes, not five Not Laura Ingalls minutes.
...is 100% local.
...is super yummy if I do say so myself.

Let's call it Smoked Brisket Pesto Panini with Fontina on Artisan Bread with side of Crudites. Sounds fancy for five minutes.

Ingredients

Sourdough bread from Raymond's

No, I didn't bake it myself. Baking bread is a lot easier and less time consuming than most people think, but honestly, it's just not first on my list every weekend. This stuff is tasty and local and doesn't require I turn my oven on in 90 degree heat.

Basil Pesto

I whipped this up last fall when the basil in my backyard garden had gone bonkers and I couldn't keep the flowers at bay any longer. I chopped it all off and stuck as many leaves as would fit in my blender along with about 1/4 cup of pine nuts (toasted dry on the stove while I picked the leaves), a few cloves of garlic, a healthy tablespoon of lemon juice, and enough olive oil and/or water to get the blender going. When it was all whirred up, I added enough Parmesan cheese and salt to get it to my liking, then poured it into ice cube trays and froze it. It's handy popped into a spaghetti sauce in the dead of winter when there's no fresh basil around, but today I stuck a cube in a sandwich bag and let it thaw until I could spread it on the bread at lunch.

Smoked beef brisket

I should tell you Not Michael Landon has developed quite the obsession with BBQ. About once a month or so, he'll order a piece of the grass-fed beef carcass that is delivered weekly to our grocery store (he's becoming legend with the butchers) and let it cook away all day in the Webber kettle he obtained for free off craigslist. Okay, there were non-free modifications, and it's a science that takes a bit of tinkering, but the point is this is another weekend cooking activity that we only have occasional time for like bread. Except meat keeps and freezes better, and if he's firing up the smoker, that thing is going to be loaded up with meat. This particular brisket was cooked at least a month ago.

Fontina cheese

From my favorite Clover Stornetta family farms. Melts beautifully.

Carrots and celery

Just chopped up on their own. I took a look at the hummus in the fridge, but it's no longer suitable for human consumption.

Directions
Before I headed out the door, I popped the meat & cheese on the bread, grabbed the cube of pesto, and chopped up the veggies. At work, I spread the pesto on one slice of the bread and toasted the whole thing, assembled, for maybe 5 minutes.

No fancy picture, no involved process. I've been purposefully absent for awhile because I can't ever find time to upload pictures and when I can, I feel like I should be spending it in the kitchen, making something actually blog-worthy. Today, a story about lead in kids' foods - and the ensuing interwebz cry of "Oh Noes, what will we feed our children that's not supplied by Del Monte or Earth's Best!" - reminded me that I didn't start this to share the fancy things I make from scratch, I did it to share the easy, real-life ones. Since I lamented about convenience foods not buying us time nearly a year ago, I really have (mostly) put down the Taco Bell, but I haven't been sharing it. Well, it's not homemade lasagna or pumpkin pie. It's a sandwich thrown together on a typical running-late-as-always Wednesday morning that keeps me from abusing my wallet and waistline at Chipotle a few hours later.

And now I'm full. Back to work.

Stock Tips

2010-01-26T15:04:00.000-08:00

Not the Wall Street kind, but we're sort of talking about money. Done correctly, stock is free. Or at least, the cost is buried in your water and energy bills. It's kind of like compost - turning garbage into something yummy. Just a little more direct. I don't have a recipe to share, and a picture isn't very exciting, but this is how I make my stock.

1) Save anything yummy. Never throw away a bone, or any remnants of the holy trinity (onions, celery, carrots).

2) Freeze it. I keep a bag of miscellaneous bones in the freezer, and a separate bag of carrot and onion skins and ends, and celery tops, bottoms and hearts. Leeks often end up in there as well. This lets me use the scraps from several meals to make a stock, instead of throwing away rib bones here and there and waiting until we cook a whole chicken.

3) Consider how much of a purist you want to be. I toss all bones in together, and I don't pay attention to ratios of vegetables. Sometimes something that has been smoked ends up in there. If you want to make real separate chicken, beef, and vegetable stocks, you'll need to keep more bags in the freezer and obviously it will take longer to save up enough for a batch.

4) I'm going to skip ahead here a minute and chat about straining. In a word, it's a bitch. I've tried several methods and they all suck, mostly because it's really hard to pour a giant pot of liquid and gunk through anything. I've finally solved this problem, and I have to give credit to Not Michael Landon, as well as Reynolds. I'm not a product pimp, I'm not getting paid or freebies, and I'd gladly use something generic if I'd found it, but this little baby made my life a billionty times easier: http://www.reynoldsstuffingsacks.com/. So, instead of dumping your odds and ends in a pot, dump them in a stuffing sack, tie off, then shove them in a stock pot and cover with water. Or even better, store them in the stuffing sack in the freezer in the first place (inside another plastic bag, I wouldn't worry terribly about freezer burn, but let's not invite it).

5) Bring to a boil and simmer. How long? Eh, 'til it tastes good and you've got some time to put it away. I usually have it going at least overnight, usually until I get home the next day. Just on the lowest setting where you get a bubble or two now and then, enough to keep it from growing bacteria, but not send your energy bill through the roof. I have a flat-top electric stove, so I don't consider the risk of fire to be high, but if you do, or if you have a gas stove, you can always use a crock pot.

6) Taste. Be careful, this sucker's been boiling awhile. I don't add much seasoning or herbs to my stock because I like to leave it a blank canvas for when I'm actually cooking with it, but I will add a bit of salt just so the flavors come through enough to tell me it's done. It's done when it tastes like stock, not water.

7) Cool. This is tricky. We're about to put boiling liquid in the freezer, so it needs to cool down. Start by tossing the stuffing sacks; those bones are just holding heat. It's tough to cool down a large, hot stockpot, but that's also an easy container to ice down. My stockpot fits pretty well on ice in my dutch oven, but if you can poor it into smaller containers first that you can put on ice, that will work faster.

8) Pour into a muffin tin. This will give you nice little chunks that are a good volume for recipes, and also melt in a reasonable amount of time.

9) Be sure the tin has cooled to room temperature, then put it in the freezer. If you want a lean stock, cool it further in the refrigerator first, then skim the solidified fat off the tops.

10) Once frozen solid, pop the blocks out of the muffin tin, and store in a large plastic bag. This isn't super easy. A butter knife and a strong husband helps. My muffin tin is looking pretty beat up from the experience too; I'm thinking about picking up a cheapy just for this use. I'm not thinking Reynolds can save me here.

That's it. Takes a lot of time, but it's all passive, and it's really not rocket science. I think I burnt it once, but all things considered it's forgiving. Then use your little hockey pucks to your heart's content in soups, stews, casseroles, rice, or as extra encouragement for your canine picky-eater. The usual places.

Olive Oil Bread

2009-11-14T12:18:00.001-08:00

So here it is at long last. I've tried a handful of yeasted breads, and this is the only one I've really had success with. Sandwich bread turned out too dense. This actually has a texture approaching something you'd pay money for in the grocery store.

It starts out, not with Joy, but with Martha. I have a couple tweaks, but really the best is the addition of garlic and rosemary. They're not necessary by any means, but they take plain old bread to a really lovely place. If I haven't mentioned it already, you're almost always going to want to use less garlic than I do in just about any recipe. Unless you're afraid of vampires.

This is a great dinner bread, and goes well with something like pumpkin turkey chilli, or as a crostini for bruschetta with an abundance of summer tomatoes, but we've used it plenty for sandwiches. The shape usually turns out pretty flat, so they're long skinny sandwiches.

We keep two types of olive oil on hand - extra light, which comes in a giant vat from Costco and is used for cooking, and extra virgin, which we buy in a big tin container from the Italian grocery store, and is used for salad dressings. The olive oil is a big part of the flavor here, but it calls for a lot, so I strike a balance between cost and taste by using about half and half.

Olive Oil Bread with Garlic and Rosemary
adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

Ingredients

3 3/4 tsp active dry yeast (less than 2 packets; open 2 and measure out)
1 1/2 lbs (4 1/2 cups) bread flour, plus more for dusting
2 scant cups lukewarm water
3/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp salt
4-5 cloves garlic, minced, or to taste
1 tbsp chopped rosemary

Directions

1. Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let sit until dissolved.
2. Meanwhile, in the bowl of an electric mixer, weigh out the flour if you have a scale around. Martha says real bakers measure their flour by weight, not volume, and I think it's helpful with this recipe, which tends towards the wet side. I almost always have to add more flour than 4 1/2 cups.
3. Add the olive oil and water (with yeast) to the flour. Stir with a wooden spoon until incorporated, then cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about one hour. I use a trick I learned from Joy for a rising cabinet: turn your oven on to 350 or so for one minute, then turn it off. It gets just warm but not hot, and will stay a consistent draft-free temperature better than a countertop.
4. Add the salt, garlic, and rosemary. Mix with the dough hook on low until incorporated, and then up the speed a bit until the dough starts to pull away from the sides. Then turn it out onto a well-floured surface and knead by hand a bit more. Don't be afraid to add flour here if necessary, I almost always do, and flour the board often. Most of the time I'm working with this dough, I'm fighting to keep it from sticking to the board and/or running off it.
5. Return the dough to an oiled bowl, cover again with oiled plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled in bulk, another hour or so.
6. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured work surface and fold into thirds one way, then the other. Turn over, cover with oiled plastic wrap, and let rest 15 minutes.
7. Here, Martha has a bit about a wooden peel and transfering back and forth, and I don't have a wooden peel, which is probably why I never quite get the shape right. I just shape it into a round on my board, by rotating it between cupped hands, and let it sit, covered, for another 30 minutes. At this point, it's time to preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place a baking stone (or cookie sheet, or upside down jelly roll pan) as close to the floor of the oven as you can get.
8. Make four slashes on top of the loaf to form a square, and place on the baking stone or substitute. This is the part that's easiest with a peel, in large part due to the wet texture of the bread. I usually pick it up in as much of a round as I can manage, and plop it onto the stone as quickly as possible without letting any glop onto the floor of the oven and burn.
9. Bake for about 35 minutes, until crust is dark golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, then enjoy!

Pumpkin Turkey Chili

2009-10-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

I really have been back in the kitchen, promise. I have all sorts of excuses why you haven't heard about it, as always, and I won't bore you with them, but the good news is they're actually good excuses, which means I really will be able to share more coming up. Including my famous olive oil bread I promised you like, oh, a year ago. And a postmortem on my garden experiment.

But before we get to that, let's start with what we ate with this latest batch of bread. This story starts with another pumpkin pie from pumpkins. By the way, my crust really hasn't improved in the past year. I was thwarted by the glazing once again. I'm going to ask my grandma about this, but I have a feeling she just doesn't glaze. I think I'm going to wait to glaze next time until after I've baked the weighted crust, just before I let it brown.

Anyways, I had a sugar pie pumpkin from my CSA box I needed to use and a free Sunday, but I wasn't sure how much puree this pumpkin would produce, so I got another at the farmer's market. I needed two cups of pumpkin for a pie. I ended up with nine. I made some muffins and froze the leftovers in 1 cup bags, but really, I shouldn't be eating enough sweets to use up 6 cups of pumpkin anytime soon.

So, when this chili popped up in my blog reader, I jumped at it. It didn't taste pumpkin-y at all, just earthy and slightly sweet. Best of all, it's only 389 calories for a hearty and comforting portion packed with veggies.

Pumpkin Turkey Chili

adapted from allrecipes.com

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chopped sweet peppers (bell or similar)

1 clove garlic, minced

1 lb ground turkey (go ahead and go for the dark meat, it's reflected in my low cal total)

1 1/2 tbsp chili powder

1/2 tbsp cumin

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tbsp cocoa powder

dash nutmeg

salt & pepper to taste

1 4oz can minced green chilies, mild

1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

1 14.5 oz can red kidney beans (any other canned or dried soaked & boiled bean would work here)

2 cups pumpkin puree (canned or scooped from roasted pumpkins)

Directions

1. Heat oil in large skillet or French oven and saute salted onions and peppers until soft. Add garlic and saute on bed of onions and peppers so it doesn't burn.

2. Push the veggies to the sides and brown the turkey.

3. Add spices and stir to slightly toast. Be careful not to burn.

4. Add all the canned goodies and stir well.

5. Let simmer for a good half hour or as long as you want.

6. Serve with a good hunk of our old friend olive oil bread... coming soon (promise!)

Convenience

2009-07-15T14:40:00.001-07:00

Can you believe all the great, from-scratch, healthy, sustainable, tasty food I've been cooking lately?! Amazing, I tell you, simply amazing. You may sit in awe of me.

Oh you didn't see it? Did I forget to share it with you?

Okay, okay, actually it was a whole lot of Taco Bell. We've made a big push over the last few months to really "finish" our new house, and since neither work nor our normal busy weekend schedule seems to likely to slow down to accomodate us, we've had lots of busy weeknights filled with painting and drilling and swapping out hardware until the dog lets us know it's time for his walk, which means it's 9:00 and we haven't eaten a bite. Oops.

Now, we've survived the apocalypse before. I know there were plenty of things I could have done to avoid the late night Taco Bell trips. One Friday I actually did manage to take an hour out of projects to whip up a couple pasta bakes that sustained us for nearly two weeks (one went in the freezer, e.coli averted). But I'm not going to lie. It's really hard to stay on top of it all in the middle of craziness, and even harder to just stop and get a handle on it in the first place.

All this eco-friendliness often laughs in the face of progress, and while I'm first to admit human progress is often less than brilliant, it's important to note once in awhile that we did come up with these "advances" for some kind of reason. All these modern conveniences from canned beans to Hamburger Helper are supposed to save time - and we've filled that extra time with other persuits. We can argue chicken or egg all we want, but the result is in 2009 we're left with all kinds of expectations. If we want to turn back to kitchen escapades like it's 1940, some other kind of time filler really does have to go. This is hard enough for a couple DINKs without a lot of mandatory responsibilities, but we're going to need some kind of innovation in thought or technology for the world to even be able to catch on, much less want to.

Sustainable Food makes the point that we're only afforded the time to even be concerned about things like sustainability precicely because our total efforts have been decluttered by things like convenience food. (This is a nest of quotes of like three different blogs; if it didn't make so great a point I'd spare you the horror)

Clarke: "In a paper published a couple weeks ago, Dr. Sherilyn McGregor of Keele University in Staffordshire points out that when environmentally sound living requires extra work, that work is usually 'women’s work.' ... What decisions are environmentalist citizens asked to make? Choosing the green laundry detergent and toilet paper and buying organic groceries. Carrying cloth bags to the supermarket. Using non-toxic cleansers. Adding corporate citizenship to one’s list of brand loyalty factors and schlepping the Seafood Buying Guide around. Sorting trash into the proper containers for recyclables, compost, and landfilling.

"Of course, we men carry all those containers to the curb, which perfectly balances the division of labor. But then you add Environmentalism 2.0 to the mix, and you have the Slow Food (read: hours spent in the kitchen) and Local Food (read: hours spent shopping) movements, and with that kind of scheduling pressure a woman likely wouldn’t even have enough time left in the day to type up her husband’s poetry."

Henderson: That's not random snark -- Clarke is specifically referring to poet Wendell Berry's anti-computer tirade of a few years back, in which he explained that his wife types his stuff on an old Royal typewriter. It's all very well, as Keele writes in her paper, to idealize participatory citizenship as in Athens of old. But "as feminists have noted, these Athenian citizens were freed for politics by the labour of foreigners, slaves, and women who were not granted the status of citizen. Citizenship, understood as being about active participation in the public sphere, is by definition a practice that depends on 'free time'; it is thus not designed for people with multiple roles and heavy loads of responsibility for productive and reproductive work." ...

So just as I'm feeling subjugated - and laughing at the idea of Not Michael Landon writing or dictating poetry - a little burst of optimism comes in the form of this UCLA study that says convenience foods aren't actually all that convenient after all. It's not a terribly diverse or large sample, but they concluded that heavy reliance on convenience foods saved only 10-12 minutes of hands-on cooking time and didn't save at all on total prep time.

Convenience food was instead used to make more "elaborate" meals, cater to individual kid tastes, and avoid making a grocery list beforehand. Really? I'll admit I have a rather simple palate and enjoy clean, uncluttered flavors, but if "elaborate" = HFCS and modified food startch, please, count me out. I can't particularly comment on picky child eaters, having never been responsible for ones well-being for any extended period of time, but Not Michael Landon has been accused of having a child's palate, we eat the same thing, and we're both alive. And if life is too complicated to make a grocery list before you go shopping, well, just stick to the same simple repetoire and/or hire a therapist.

So, I'm ready to stop making excuses and put down the Taco Bell. And it's a good thing, because too much of my CSA is going to waste, and my homegrown veggies are just starting to ripen. I'll give you a hint on step 1 - have a big party. It forces you to clean your house and leaves a bunch of quality leftovers. Change is much easier with a clean slate.

Little Garden in the Backyard: Part 3 - the plants

2009-05-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

You mean we're actually growing things here? Amazingly enough all that prep work eventually leads us to real live plants. Growing from seed has its advantages - it's by far the least expensive method and gives you complete control throughout the life cycle. My five year plan definitely involves starting my own seeds, and maybe even harvesting my own for some varieties, but we're starting small here remember. Buying seedlings is far more foolproof.

And here's where I get to pimp my local Master Gardeners. I'll let them explain who the heck they are for themselves, from the American Horticultural Society website where you can find your own local program:

The Master Gardener program, conducted throughout the United States and Canada, is a two-part educational effort, in which avid gardeners are provided many hours of intense home horticulture training, and in return they "pay back" local university extension agents through volunteerism. Master Gardeners assist with garden lectures, exhibits, demonstrations, school and community gardening, phone diagnostic service, research, and many other projects.

I get a monthly e-newsletter from my local Master Gardeners program with all kinds of tips and tricks, and a schedule of workshops and classes which are mostly free. But by far the best thing they do is their annual plant sale. The seedlings are $3 each, which is a decent price to start with, and the proceeds all go back into the MG program. There are all kinds of different fun varieties available, the MGs themselves swarm the place with advice and answers, there are other vendors with all kinds of neat plants & garden products, and the day is filled with seminars and demos and more knowledge than you could hope to absorb.

Tomatoes and peppers especially don't like cold ground, so I kept these seedlings right up next to the house for the couple weeks they were home, and brought them in the garage the couple nights we got near frost. I checked their moisture level nearly daily as they can dry up quickly with their small size, and watered them more than once a day during our heat wave of 90 degree + temps (Yes, the frost and record highs were within two weeks of each other. While I'm making baby steps, global climate change is catching up). They hung on bravely, but started loosing their patience.

The whole idea of Square Foot Gardening is to plant things in square feet, instead of rows - it's a very complicated fancy name. If a plant is to be spaced 12" apart in a row, you would instead plant one in every square foot. If the spacing is 6" apart, you would plant 4 per square foot, and so on and so forth. Indeterminate (viney) tomatoes can be planted one per square foot; determinate (bushy, the kind you can grow in containers) one per 2 square ft.

So, you're supposed to lay down this grid of wood or twine or something so you know where these square feet are, but did you see my pretty stained redwood box?! Well check this out - marigolds are an organic gardener's best friend. The yellow flowers are a natural repellent to all kinds of bugs, and they make a pretty little border. By planting a marigold every 12" around the border of my bed, I can roughly eyeball a square foot grid. Two birds, meet this one stone. Brilliant. You might notice in the picture at top that I couldn't bring myself to actually line everything up with the marigolds in exact square feet. It just looked so crowded, I couldn't imagine picking tomatoes off the grown vines. It's pretty close though; baby steps.

As for the actual planting, I did nothing fancy. I've got plenty of fertility in the soil, none needed in each hole. I just broke up the roots a bit and stuck 'em in. Tomatoes can use as many roots as they can get, and don't actually need much leaves, so I plant them deep, as much as 2/3 of the stem underground. Prick off the leaves you're burying and those stems will turn into especially nutrient-grabby roots. This picture is rather horrible (taking photos of dirt on dirt in the fading light isn't as easy as it sounds), but gives you a general idea.

When it warms up some more, I'll be mulching the whole bed with a few inches of extra compost, but for now I dare say we're done. Time to sit back and wait for late summer magic.

Seedlings:

Tomatoes: I went for a wide variety here, but heavy on paste tomatoes that can be canned

Paste - Sunset's Red Horizon (2), Mamma Mia (2)

Beefsteak - Ernie's Round, Mariana's Peace

Strawberry - Orange Russian

Cherry - Sugary

Green - Spear's Tennesse Green

Peppers: Gypsys are smaller and thinner than bells, the hot peppers will be used for salsa

Sweet - Gypsy (2)

Hot - Anaheim, Serrano

Lemon cucumbers: cute and yummy and fantastic for snacking, salads, or pickling

Herbs:

Sweet basil

Cilantro

Garlic chives

Italian oregano: after planting I figured out this is a perennial; it may move to the flower beds in the fall

Materials & Cost

Planting took about one hour, and involved only a trowel. Most of the peppers and tomatoes were purchased at the Master Gardener's sale, and a lot of the rest was purchased from other vendors at the event. I picked up a couple things elsewhere and even got a couple tomatoes as gifts, but my rough total is $45.00 plus $11.00 for marigolds (I'd file this as pest control rather than seedlings). I'm not proud to say a number of seedlings fell victim to my black thumb just waiting to be planted; the cilantro that made it into the ground was no less than my third. This is an additional dimwit cost of about $16.00, and a recurring theme I need to get a handle on (you may remember tomato canning involved a similar dimwit fee, when I got so burnt out I never got around to preserving the peppers and basil I had bought as well). Remember seedlings are the only real recurring cost of the whole project, so I have to harvest about 23 lbs to break even assuming an average farmer's market price of $2/lb for local, organic produce. Stay tuned.

Little Garden in the Backyard: Part 2 - the soil

2009-05-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

That's a whole ton of sh_t. Almost literally, really, the picture above is all the soil we bought for the vegetable garden, and it's mostly steer manure. If I can't grow something in this stuff, there is truly no hope for me. We used roughly equal parts garden soil and steer manure compost, and another half part peat moss. Square Foot Gardening recommends 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 vermiculite. Whatever vermiculite is, they didn't have it at OSH and I was in a hurry as usual. We even added in a little all-purpose organic fertilizer to the top layer.

Another plus to the raised bed, and a rather tall one at 12", is we don't have to worry about weeds or grass, especially crab grass, encroaching on the garden space. I did a flat bed with my mom's garden and we ended up digging a trench around and installing a wood border, this on top of all the digging we did to clear the bed in the first place. With this raised bed, we dug up about one whole square foot - just enough for the four posts to sit in the ground. We left the rest of the grass, it won't grow through 10" of soil, and will eventually break down to become nutrients for the veggies. The only drawback is I can't yet grow something with really deep roots like carrots, at least not yet.

We layered the ingredients in thirds and raked/mixed after each addition to make sure everything was well-incorporated. The end result is a porous, aerated, uber-nutrient-rich blank canvas ready to make yumminess. We got a late start, so we left planting the seedlings for another day, this gave the soil a chance to get some water and settle. For now we're watering it with the sprinkler right behind it in the corner there, but I won't want the tomatoes watered as often as the lawn once they really get going, so we'll have to figure something out.

Now before I break down the costs, I have to share one last tip, and beg you to forgive the little woman nature of it. Growing up without a man in the house, there is a certain handiness to Not Michael Landon that continues to amaze me, five years after moving in together. When mom and I used bags of steer manure compost, we'd open them up potato-chip-bag style, usually with whatever was lying around like a trowel or a rake or just tear at them with our hands until they finally gave in. Then we'd flip them over and attempt to distribute each bag evenly over the entirety of the 8'X8' bed, which mostly resulted in the momentum of the bag swinging us around until the majority was in a big clump in one corner, and the rest scattered a bit here and there.

So imagine my wonder when Not Michael Landon evenly sets out six bags of compost in our garden bed, makes a big open U-shape on each with a utility knife, and dumps each over in its place, resulting in a nearly even layer of compost with almost no effort at all. I was speechless. He wondered how I hadn't died off on my own already. You're probably too smart to be as amazed as I was, but here's a picture just for funsies.

With digging the holes, dumping everything in, turning and raking, this stage took all of about an hour. We bought a lot more soil components than we needed, but it will all get used eventually, in the next bed if not in other places around the yards.

Materials & Cost

This was all on a no sales tax sale, whoopee! Tools used were a spade, large shovel, and small rake.

Steer manure blend: 12 cu feet, 12 bags at $1.09 each = $13.08

Garden soil: 10 cu feet, 3 1/3 bags at $8.99 each = $29.97

Sphagnum peat moss: 2.5 cu feet compressed, 2/3 bag at $15.49 each = $10.33

All purpose organic fertilizer: 3.5 cups of 20lb bag at $19.99 = $1.17

Total: $54.55

The box and the soil are really the start up costs of this garden. Next year will involve some added compost, fertilizer, and seedlings, but this soil and box will be used again. So the sum total for the installation itself is $129.96 and 6 man hours of labor.

Little Garden in the Backyard: Part 1, the bed

2009-04-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Not Michael Landon informs me that the screws we used are 3" #10 wood screws. Apparently that's very important. In case you were about to use dry wall anchors or something. See what I mean about ever the engineer?

One of the things I was most excited about when we decided to buy a single family home was a vegetable garden. How prairie-like is that?! It's like pre-scratch. Backyard vegetable gardens are coming back in a big way (remember the Obamas are doing it too), they're as local as it gets, and done right can be super healthy and cheap.

Now don't tell Not Michael Landon this, 'cause I'm always trying to defend myself, but I have about the blackest thumb you'll ever meet. A very sad mountain of plants met their demise on the front step and kitchen windowsill of the Little Apartment. I've been helping my mom with her vegetable garden the last several years, and I can't say I've contributed much, even though I have plenty of strong opinions. She's rather happy she gets to do it her own way this year, although I'm pretty sure she misses my manual labor. So I'll be updating you with my progress, and I have all sorts of ideas (including a five year plan), but as my road to good intentions is often paved with spectacular failure, don't hold your breath for a Sunset magazine feature.

So onto step one - the raised bed. Raised beds are great for drainage, which apparently is important in growing plants or something, and better yet, they require you to bend over just a little bit less. My plans are loosely based on Square Foot Gardening , so I went for a 4 X 8 ft box. This lets me get to all the plants w/o compacting the soil by stepping into the bed and also minimizes the chopping-up of my lawn vs. two 4 X 4 boxes. We already get more veggies than we can eat from the CSA, so this first year I'm focusing on things we can preserve, mostly tomatoes, and starting small. As of right now, the plan is to build an additional box each of the next two years, and wean ourselves off the CSA completely.

We used these instructions from Sunset to plan and build the box. I left out the PVC pipe hoops because I haven't had issue with birds or cold in our area, and I can always attach them to the outside later. Since the materials were not exactly free, we needed a wood that would last awhile in the dirt and rain. Not Michael Landon, ever the engineer, has a tendency to Tim-the-Tool-Man-Taylor any project he's presented with, and as such he really wanted to use pressure treated wood. Despite a good effort in convincing me the nasty chemicals they use these days are not as bad as they used to be, I opted for redwood, which is naturally moisture and rot resistant. We still added nasty chemicals in the form of waterproofing, but at least it's dry to the touch. It wasn't recycled or reclaimed wood or anything like that (Not Michael Landon absolutely refused to use the remnants of our patio cover which are still sitting in a pile waiting for us to pay someone to take them away), but at least it's from California. Hippie home ownership involves all sorts of compromises.

It took almost as long for the two of us to put it together as it did to find someone at the hardware store to cut the boards for us. With waterproofing, it was about two hours total. And that's it up top all pretty (don't pretend you don't have a water heater just hanging out on your back patio, or half-assed curtains that don't reach the floor, and dead weeds all over, I know you're not that hoity toity).

Materials & Cost

First, a note. I have pro-rated all the materials for the various parts of this project, as this is all stuff we will use again, probably even if we never added another box. There is a little more up-front cost than I describe, but these are the true costs. In keeping with true costs, I also included tax. If you do not live where the Governator has just raised sales tax to an arm and a leg, you will see some savings. I have not included the cost of tools, even if we did buy them, as they will be used a billion times in the future - or at least they better be. For this stage, we used a drill and a paintbrush.

6 2" X 6" X 8' redwood boards : $54.14

1 4" X 4" X 8' pressure treated wood post, cut into 16" pieces: $10.89. Okay, okay, I let him talk me into this one. It was half the price of redwood. If this is the toxic influence that kills me, it's a cruel cruel world and I'll be telling God such shortly.

1 gallon Behr waterproofer: $3.05. We used maybe 1/6 of this gallon, this is the price of 1/5. It will last for the next two boxes, as well as an additional coat on the outside of the boxes each year for several years to come.

34 3" screws: $7.33. We used 32 and broke two.

Total: $75.41

Brownie Birthday Cake

2009-04-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

I couldn't pick Lois out of a lineup, but whoever she is, she's a brownie ninja. In the never-ending war between cakey and fudgy, this brownie takes both trophies. In fact, the tender yet rich consistency and flavor is so perfect, I found myself thinking this is exactly what chocolate cake should be. As a true from-scratch devotee, I cannot describe how much it irks me that it is so impossible to make a chocolate cake from scratch that tastes better than one from a box. Somehow those dehydrated trans fats accomplish a magic grass fed butter and a Kitchen Aide mixer can't recreate. I'm always on the prowl for a chocolate cake recipe to rival a box.

So the next time I had a birthday to cake-bake for, I used a full recipe for each layer and added frosting on top (and in-between). It should only take a quick glance to the truck load of butter and eggs in the recipe below to understand why this was a bad idea. I'm not proud to say it was the first time in my life I've met chocolate that was too rich. I think next time around I might just frost one recipe, or possibly split the one recipe into layers. Lesson: do not let your need to one-up Sarah Lee talk you into putting 8 eggs into one cake.

Whatever kind of cake you make, please, for the love of God, never frost it out of a can. If you only make one thing from scratch, chocolate frosting should be it. It takes no time at all and is about fifty billion times better than the crap you can buy off the shelf.

Lois's Brownies

Ingredients
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 c sugar
2/3 c unsalted butter
1 c flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs

Directions
1. Melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler. Use a large bowl and suspend it over a fairly shallow pan of simmering water. Don't completely cover the pan with the bowl, or the pressure will increase the temperature too much. Be careful that no water gets in the bowl. Basically this means hold onto the bowl and don't go starting the rest of the recipe. Melting chocolate is a fairly simple method that pays dividends in taste, all it requires is vigilance.
2. Take bowl off heat and add sugar, then eggs and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Add dry ingredients.
4. Pour into greased 8"x8" pan and bake at 325 for 30 minutes.

Homemade Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

1 lb powdered sugar
1/4 c or more cocoa powder
2 tbsp milk or coffee, plus some more

Directions
1. Mix powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Add as much cocoa powder as looks good, it will get slightly darker with the liquid.
2. Add milk or coffee very slowly; mix thoroughly and test texture before adding more. The sugar will dissolve into the liquid and come together, but the point where it becomes too liquid is very fine. If you go too far, you can just add more powdered sugar and/or cocoa, but it will be more than you think. Coffee just enhances the chocolate flavor, rather than tasting like coffee; milk will have more of a milk chocolate taste.

Little White House in DC

2009-03-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Obamas are starting a veggie garden, just like Michael Pollan suggested they do in his open letter to the then-undetermined next farmer-in-chief. Lest one think they're dabbling, it's nearly the square footage of my house. And they're even making honey.

That's it - I need a staff.

Veggie Time

2009-03-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

After a long four month hiatus, my CSA starts again this week. Not a moment too soon. I hadn't had a cold from February through December, and then after Christmas I got hit by three in a row. There's no doubt our diet suffers when veggies aren't automatically bulging out of our fridge.

One of the things I really want to work on this year is using and preserving as much of the bounty as possible. We threw away far too much last year, and had hardly anything saved for the winter. The box we get is really too big for two, so this is quite the challenge. The start of the CSA season also coincides with energy-draining allergy season, so finding extra time and energy to chop and freeze is quite the tall task, but all I can do is try.

This all starts with planning. I get an email on Mondays with a rough idea of what's coming on Wednesday, so I can get a head start. On tap this week:

Green garlic

Red beets

Savoy cabbage

Parsnips

Braising mix/cooking greens or mystery

Red Chard

Parisian Round carrots

Mystery

Curly parsley

The root vegetables will be easy. Beets, carrots, and parsnips I can chop up and roast in the oven alongside some pork chops or other meat. Parsnips are very similar to potatoes in a lot of ways, so I can mash some for another meal. All three are also nice additions to a salad when sliced very thin.

The greens are the toughest for us. Neither not Michael Landon, nor I like cooked greens, which is normally a great way to get rid of a box full of greens like this quickly. Without all the water cooked out, these greens seem to multiply. None of them are really salad greens, but we've found their bitterness doesn't take over when paired with some other salad-friendly lettuce and a good vinegrette. I can tolerate cooked greens mixed in with other things, so I may blanch some of them to use in a quiche or other baked dish I can take to lunch as leftovers.

Curly parsley is kind of a mistake on the farm's part, and not something I normally use, but my parsley jar is looking really sad, so I'll dry this in the oven and use for many months. Spring garlic will be used in almost everything, but there's still a ton in a bunch. I may need to see about drying or freezing it next week or so.

We're tasked with a salad for 7 or 8 people at a pot-luck on Thursday. Pot-lucks are how I use up a lot of our CSA leftovers, so I'm always happy to bring something.

We also need to get our compost pile going since these veggies come a little more "from the earth" than you see at the grocery store.

Update next week with our results and more veggies. Happy spring!

Pumpkin Pie from Pumpkins

2009-03-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

My flowers are budding, birds are flying North, and my dog is shedding. Spring has sprung, but I gave up sweets for Lent, so allow me to reminisce a bit about fall treats.

The kicker to this pie is it's not made from a can, but any good pie starts with the crust. Now, I know everyone thinks their grandmother makes the best pie crust, but unless your my cousin on my mother's side (hi), you're wrong. I'm going to immortalize her recipe here on the interwebs, and it's a good part of what makes it so great - it's got twice the fat of any recipe I've seen - but there's something magic about the technique that no one has quite mastered, so she's safe as pie queen for now.

The pumpkin part isn't as much work as it sounds. It just roasts in the oven, and then you scoop it out. Joy has all these elaborate instructions about getting it to the consistency of canned, but I didn't look at them until I had mixed in the eggs and cream, so I found out a stick blender works like a charm. A regular blender will suffice just as with butternut squash soup, it's just messier.

A friend we served this to was convinced there was some kind of secret spice, the pumpkin flavor is so rich. The cream also gives it a richer texture as opposed to evaporated milk, without loosing its firmness. Sugar pie pumpkins - which are small, round, and more orange - are ideal, but any variety will do. I had a lot of the smaller flat Halloween pumpkins lying around. Just add sugar to taste, tasting as minimally as possible (lots of raw egg).

Grandma's Pie Crust

This makes two crusts, enough for a covered pie like apple. Cut in half for pumpkin.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup cold butter
2/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup ice water

Directions
1. Everything works better cold. Start with a cold bowl.
2. Whisk flour & salt.
3. Cut butter & shortening into small pieces - I like to shave of teaspoons or so with a butter knife right into the bowl.
4. Cut butter & shortening into flour with two butter knives or a pastry blender until consistency reaches course meal (see picture on the left).
5. Pour ice water in and mix by hand until just stuck together. You probably can't tell in this picture on the right, but there's little pockets of butter & shortening that will create the flaky layers when baked.
6. Cover & refrigerate at least one hour until firm.
7. Roll out onto as lightly floured a surface as you can manage.
8. Fold rolled out crust over on itself once or twice to transfer to a greased pie plate without looking like a dog has chewed on it. I haven't mastered this part yet. Luckily it's forgiving, you can stretch and piece together the crust with your fingers once it's in the plate.

Pumpkin Pie
adapted from Joy

Ingredients
2 1/2 to 3 lbs pumpkin
Canola oil
2 large eggs, plus one large yolk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream (reserve remaining 1/2 cup of pint for whipping)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp grated or ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt, plus a few dashes

Directions
1. Wash pumpkins and cut in half whichever way makes them flattest. Pop off the stems, scoop out flesh & seeds. Salt and drizzle open sides with canola oil. Oil a roasting pan, place pumpkins on it rind side down, and cover with aluminum foil.
2. Bake at 325F until very soft, as long as 1 1/2 hours. Check often with a spoon. Rinse scooped out seeds, toss with oil & salt, and bake on a separate rack for a few minutes to snack on while finishing your pie.
3. Set oven temperature to 425F. Scrape flesh free of rinds and scoop into large bowl or blender. Add cream and two eggs; blend (in blender or with stick blender) until smooth.
4. Whisk or blend in remaining ingredients thoroughly.
5. Glaze and blind bake the crust: brush with remaining egg yolk. Somehow bake & brown crust without letting it bubble up too much. I haven't quite mastered this yet, but I think the key is a well-greased empty pie plate set inside the crust. Bake for 8-10 minutes, take out empty pie plate and bake another 3-5 minutes until brown. Decrease oven to 375F.
6. Pour custard into baked crust and bake 35 to 45 minutes until firm.
7. Cool completely, best served cold with fresh whipped cream on top.

On how to survive the apocalypse

2009-02-25T13:34:00.000-08:00

I'm back. Christmas'ed, house bought, dog adopted, moved in, and unpacked enough for my camera to start surrendering some of what I've made these last three months. But it's not a whole lot, being that all of this activity wasn't particularly condusive to homemade meals. Apocalyptic is quite the hyperbole for the wonderful occasion of buying a house (I expected to be really proud, but mostly I felt insanely lucky, especially at this particular moment in history), but when we're talking about home cooked, whole, real, sustainable food, it's pretty apt.

All in all I think we've done pretty well. Taco Bell and Round Table are now right down the street, and we said our long goodbyes to the Taqueria and Chinese joint around the corner from the little apartment, but I don't feel like we regressed at all down our path away from eating out.

Here's a little of how we did it:

1) Trader Joe's, thy name is savior. Cheap, minimally processed, convenience food. Need I say more? We dropped a good c note there when we got really frazzled and ate off it for a month.

2) Food Processor Pasta: Put salted water on to boil. Whiz up an onion and some garlic in a food processor, dump into a skillet with a little olive oil. Open a big can of tomatoes and whiz 'em up in the same unwashed food processor bowl (skip this step if your husband and/or kids don't have an aversion to cooked chunks of tomato). When the water boils, toss in the pasta. When the onion is soft, toss in the tomato. When the pasta's done, toss it in the sauce.

Done. In like 15 minutes. Portion it all out into individual tupperware and eat for lunch and dinner for a week.

3) Clementines and baby carrots. Or any other ready-to-eat anytime fruits & veggies. A good vegetable side or salad is the first thing to go when home cooking slacks off. We've often reminded each other to grab a clementine to prevent scurvy. We're mostly joking.

4) Forget what "dinner" looks like. Cheese, crackers, hummus, naan and baby carrots gets the job done.

5) Keep a loaf of bread and a jar each of peanut butter and jelly at your office if you can. If you can't get dinner on the table, what's the chances your making your own lunch? It takes me less time to whip up a sandwich than it would to go grab something.

6) Have an awesome mom who brings you a full home cooked meal with leftovers when she thinks you've been TacoBelling-it too much. This one's a little tough to control, but do what you can. And thanks, mom.

Navy Bean Soup

2009-01-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

My grandfather was pretty much famous for this soup. It's legendary. Of course, he's been gone for over 15 years now and no one ever got the recipe. I was only 10 when he died, so I don't even remember the soup first hand, which makes it awfully difficult to replicate. I eventually adapted a recipe from Joy called US Senate Bean soup, which apparently has been served in the US Senate cafeteria for eleventy billion years, and can be made with navy or other like beans.

Why did I try? Well, it's what I like to call mortgage food - dirt cheap, therefore leaving money to pay the mortgage. While I'm trying out more mortgage food these days because I'll soon have one for the first time, the headlines tell me there's plenty of people out there who could use it these days. This is basically beans and potatoes, flavored with some cheap fat. Slow cooked, the beans almost totally disintegrate and it gets really creamy. Right out of the pot, it's okay, but the leftovers get better every day as the ham flavor takes over.

It's amazing how far away we've gotten from food like this that used to be so commonplace. First of all, I learned that navy beans are not navy at all. They're actually white, but they were popular food for the US Navy once upon a time, mortgage food being a great way to feed a crowd on the taxpayers' dime and all. Secondly, I learned what a ham hock is. In case you haven't come across one, and you end up staring at the butcher a little doe-eyed when he tells you they're in the self-serve case, and then try your best to look like you know what you're doing while you paw through a bunch of different meat products which may or may not be what you're looking for, this little package on the right is a ham hock. It's a piggy knee joint.

This makes a ton, we had dinner one night and 6-8 servings leftover. Feel free to cut in half if you don't want to be eating it for a week or are more particular about food safety than I am.

Ingredients

2-3 ham hocks
1 bag dried navy beans
1 large onion (we had leeks around, so we used those)
6 medium celery ribs with leaves, chopped
2 large potatoes, peeled and finely diced
4 garlic cloves, minced

Directions

Soak the beans overnight, at least.
Turn the slow cooker on high and throw in the ham hocks to get the fat flowin'. (You could also do this on the stove top if you don't have a slow cooker around.)
Drain the beans, toss them in the slow cooker, and cover with cold water. I used less than half the water the recipe called for, mostly because it wouldn't all fit in my slow cooker, and I still think it was a bit watery. Just make sure there's enough for everything to cook in.
Turn the heat down to low and go to work.
(When I got home, I transferred everything into a stock pot to add the veggies, mostly for room and also the higher temperature. You could probably accomplish the next step on high in a slow cooker if you'd halved the recipe.) Take out the ham hock and pick off any meat; discard bone, fat and skin, although you should know that makes up most of a ham hock. Chop up the veggies and toss in, add salt & pepper to taste.
Simmer a half hour or so until the potatoes are really soft. Mash with a potato masher if that looks practical, I just served it as is. Most everything was mush already.
Serve with toasted sourdough bread, bonus points if it's garlic. Dip the bread in the soup for a little taste of (inexpensive) heaven.

Christmas is here, bringing good cheer

2008-12-17T15:54:00.000-08:00

Does Carol of the Bells make anyone else feel a little frazzled? I love love love the song (although I love most Christmas music, I know, I know), but it just has this suspenseful feeling to it that - along with the general rush of the season - reminds me of driving around for that last Christmas errand in the rain totally exhausted, or staying up until 1am baking and wrapping presents the night before I have to be up early to leave work early to drive to family. Maybe it's a sign that I'm crazy that I still like the song.

My holidays really tend to consist of the two holiday-related posts I've made:

Step 1: Plan and think about what to do. Do some of it, but mostly procrastinate and think about doing it. Think lots, mostly about how much time there is to do stuff.

Step 2: Oh crap it's Christmas. Do as much as humanly possible, and then some. Only think if it's about how to do less, or how to cram what has to be done into the time left.

Somehow Step 1 rolls really quickly into Step 2; there is no nice getting stuff done time in between. Anyways, Step 2 is most definitely here and I've started to cut stuff out. Like I said before, I'm doing all this for my own enjoyment, so I do have to stick to my guns and cut stuff when it's time to cut. If only I could do that at work, I'd have good cheer to spare.

One of those things that's getting cut lately is the glut of posts I have waiting in the back of my brain and the memory card in my camera. Things should quiet down just a bit after this week, but we have plans after the holidays, and some of them involve saying goodbye to the little apartment, so I make no promises. But there is pie coming eventually...

We're so frugal

2008-12-03T14:50:00.000-08:00

Or not, since I'm Not Laura Ingalls.

But on another semantic note, I have a hard time kind of putting a term around the way I eat and live sometimes. It's sustainable, it's frugal, it's healthy, it's old fashioned, it's back-to-basics. These aren't all things that people automatically lump in together, and certainly something can be old fashioned without being sustainable, or sustainable without being frugal. Even sustainable without being healthy, but don't get me started.

So this little excerpt from Wise Bread: My Favorite Guides to Frugal Living Are Not Guides to Frugal Living was right up my alley. It's been quite the while since I reread the series; I might take another crack at them.

The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Whaaa? A children's fictionalized autobiography? Well, I have gotten lots of frugal ideas from the Ingalls family. OK, many of them are not practical in our time since we have a different economy and diferent scarcities than they did. For example, Ma and Laura would tear their worn sheets down the middle, turn the edges toward the outside and sew them back together to get more use out of the cloth. Nowadays, manufactured cloth is cheap and sewing skill and time are dear, so most people wouldn't bother.

And yet. I guess what I get from reading and rereading the Little House Series is encouragement toward frugal, simple living in the form of reminders of how luxurious my life truly is, even if I give up a few little niceties. I especially love reading about the Ingalls' Christmas mornings, and how excited and grateful little girls could be over a couple sticks of candy and some hand-knit mittens. Puts into pretty stark contrast the expectations of the modern American child, and provides me with plenty of incentive to keep our own holidays simple and joyful while my kids are still young enough to follow my lead.

Butternut Squash with Leek Soup

2008-12-02T13:57:00.001-08:00

I found my camera!!! I know you were all on the edge of your seats and praying daily for me. You can stop all that now. I left it at my mom's house taking pictures of my carved pumpkin. Not Michael Landon didn't feel like carving his own, which means it's still sitting on my porch waiting to be made into soup (or pie, he hopes).

Anyways, I did not find my camera before I made this soup. I'll post a picture next time I make it - it is neon orange. Very fun and festive. It's also pretty easy - the original recipe came from some random generic 30 minute meals cookbook I got ages ago. It normally takes me longer than that, but only because there's lots of chopping and peeling and I don't like to dirty 3 pots by cooking everything at the same time. I also make large batches because it keeps well for a good long while (although doesn't freeze great) and Not Michael Landon will inhale any left lying around.

He loves loves loves this soup, which is amazing considering his culinary tastes usually don't stray far from the meat and the potato, and a safe salad here and there. This is fairly gourmet sounding. Maybe it's the potato that endures it to him, it does mellow it out nicely. On top of all these benefits, this soup is ultra healthy and cheap. How can you go wrong?

Ingredients
1 butternut squash, peeled and chopped into 1" cubes
2 medium russet potato, or 4 new potatoes, chopped into 1" cubes (peeled if you really want, but it adds extra nutrients and it'll just be blended up anyways)
2 tbsp butter or olive oil
1 leek, sliced
4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup milk
salt & pepper to taste

Directions
1. Roast the butternut squash seeds in the oven with a squirt of oil and a dash of salt to snack on while you're cooking. They're like pumpkin seeds but smaller and nuttier, with better texture.
2. Soften the squash and potatoes. I usually steam/boil them one after the other in the same pot (not the same water), but I've been meaning to try roasting the squash.
3. Meanwhile, soften the leeks in your choice of fat.
4. Toss the (drained) squash and potatoes in with the leeks, and add stock and milk. Don't worry about mashing or ricing because...
5. Blend it all up. I bought an immersion blender pretty much solely for this soup. It makes it eleventy billion times easier. But I've done it in batches in my regular blender too, and it works, it's just a little messier (be sure to use a towel as a lid instead of the hard plastic one, to avoid hot liquid explosions).
6. Serve with some yummy bread - I'll post my olive oil bread soon.

(Really) Homemade Lasagna

2008-11-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

Yeah, the camera is still missing. This looked like lasagna.

It did take a good couple hours of my Sunday. Sundays are a great time for getting something in the fridge for leftovers all week. This turned into dinner on Tuesday when I came home sick, and lunch for both of us Wednesday through Friday. What else would I have done with that Sunday? We used to have a busy social calendar that ate up time and money, but we've cut back on that. I could have watched TV, but this lasagna tasted better than Real Housewives of Orange County, and it was better for me. A little football in the background, a lotta cooking in the kitchen, and plenty of snack breaks is just about my ideal weekend.

I started with Joy to get an idea of the layers - last time I didn't use enough pasta - but lasagna is one of those things that doesn't need much recipe.

Sauce

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
1 onion, diced
garlic to taste, minced
1 large can peeled tomatoes
1 large can tomato puree (optional, keep reading)
salt, pepper, and herbs (oregano, parsley, basil, whatever you like) to taste

Directions
I browned the ground beef in a large shallow skillet, then softened the onion and garlic in the fat. I pureed the tomatoes in the food processor - Not Michael Landon isn't a fan of chewing cooked tomatoes - and added them to the pan. Top off with the seasonings, cover, and simmer as long as you have, stirring occasionally. The longer the simmer the better, but until you're done with the rest of the dish is just fine.

Just make sure you keep an eye on the heat, especially if it's going a good while with all the rest there is to do. You wouldn't want to burn it, and have to add another can of tomato puree to thin it out, while trying to avoid scraping up the burned bits on the bottom into the sauce. But if that did happen, it wouldn't ruin anything. As long as the burned bits aren't in big clumps, the sweetness hides it well. Prairie food is about salvaging now and then. But I wouldn't know, 'cause I kept a good eye on my sauce.

Pasta
Here's where the really homemade begins. I would have used my home canned tomatoes for the sauce, but it still feels too early (hopefully that changes before next tomato season). I made the pasta fresh like I have before. I cut it all into lasagna noodles, just by hand. Each 1/4 batch into six noodles - once in half width wise and then into thirds longways. I used about 3/4 of the pasta for this dish, and dried the rest of it. It's all curled up, so I'll need to boil them when I use them, but I didn't boil the fresh pasta. While I let the pasta rest, before rolling it out, I made the cheese.

Ricotta
To keep the homemade goin', I made my own ricotta. I've made my own mozzarella before, but it is more work and more difficult, and the results aren't as polished, so I stuck to store bought this time. Ricotta is really insanely easy. This recipe is adapted from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, where I got my citric acid and dairy thermometer. The stages are fairly easy to recognize even without a thermometer. I didn't chill it at all, I just let it drain for a half hour while I was rolling the pasta, and then used it right away. I only used 1/2 gallon of milk, but I should have used double that. I'm not a giant ricotta fan, so I didn't mind, but this is yummy enough to turn me.

Ingredients

1 gal whole milk
2 tsp citric acid (there's also recipes with vinegar or buttermilk out there)

Directions

Use whole milk. The fresher the better. I get mine these days from Straus Family Creamery; it comes in bottles, which is so cute it makes it taste better.
Add 2 tsp of citric acid per gallon of liquid (dissolved in 1 cup cool water). Add 1/2 of this Citric Acid solution to the milk (save the rest of the citric acid). Stir briskly for 5-10 seconds.
Add 1 tsp salt.
Heat the milk slowly on low to med stirring well to prevent scorching.
At 165-170F watch for small flakes forming in the milk and the separation of small curds.
If after a few minutes you do not see the flakes forming, add more of the Citric acid until they form (do this in small 1 Tbsp increments to avoid over acid milk). I didn't need to add anything here.
Continue heating to 190-195F then turn the heat off.
As the curds rise, use a perforated ladle to gently move them from the sides to the center of the pot. These clumps of curd will begin to consolidate floating on top of the liquid.
Let the curds rest for 10-15 min.
*** This is very important because this is the point where the final Ricotta quality is assured
Ladle the curds gently into draining forms (No cheese cloth should be needed if you were patient in the previous step). As a "draining form" I used cheese cloth over a mesh strainer. Let the curds drain for 15 min up to several hours.
For a fresh light ricotta, drain it for a short while (until the free whey drainage slows) and chill to below 50F. For a rich, dense and buttery texture allow it to drain for an extended period of time (several hours). before chilling overnight
Move to a refrigerator or cold room. Consume within 10 days.

Assembly

Butter the bottom and sides of a 9x13 baking dish.
Spread a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan.
Top with pasta, slighly overlapping the pieces, then ricotta, shredded mozarella cheese (freeze it for at least 15 minutes to make grating easier), and sauce. Repeat these layers twice more.
Top with more sauce and plenty of mozzarella cheese. Add some parmesan too if you're feeling fancy.
At this point I covered the dish with foil and stuck it in the fridge. Bake within the next couple days at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes, until bubbly. Then take off the foil for another 10-15 minutes until the top is nice and golden. After dinner when the plate is cool, stick it back in the fridge for leftovers. It's even better the next day.

I've been tagged!

2008-11-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

Two posts in a day, I know, your head is spinning. But I have to do this before all the blogs on my reader are tagged :)

7 weird facts about myself. There are lots of weird things about me. I'm kind of weird. But in a loveable way.

1. When I was a kid, I thought there was a witch that lived in my closet. I was terrified that she would come and eat me up while I was sleeping, so I would hide myself under the covers until just my fingers were poking out. Then I would imagine that she had come out of the closet and was making a stew in a cauldron at the foot of my bed, and planning on adding my fingertips. This was silly enough to calm my fears enough to sleep.

2. My family dresses up for Easter like Halloween. We have a different theme every year. Because ham and pretty dresses are boring.

3. I cannot sleep with socks on. My feet don't sweat - it's a lovely and strong genetic trait my grandfather passed along. If I happen to get into bed with socks on, I will take them off with my toes, which Not Michael Landon finds endlessly odd.

4. I hate fans. I don't like the blowing. It dries out my contacts and just feels icky. I'll often sit on the couch in the middle of the summer with a blanket over my head so I can't feel the fan.

5. I'm kind of OCD about numbers and counting. I have to have things in even numbers or multiples of five, especially TV volume and deodorant swipes. Not Michael Landon also finds this entertaining, and finds ways to screw with me all the time.

6. I demanded my mother teach me to read at age 3. I walked into the bathroom while she was taking a bubble bath with my favorite book in hand (something about a weird fuzzy creature in a dungeon) and demanded she teach me. Right. Now.

7. I love Disneyland like a small child. I know I'm not supposed to, but it makes me happy deep inside. The image of me jumping up and down at the Disneyland entrance has been burned into my in-laws memory. They're being nice, but I think they're a little weirded out by it.

And now, the following can consider themselves tagged. A couple bloggers I "know" have already been tagged, so a couple of you probably don't have a clue who I am. Hi, I read your blog. I'm so glad I get to introduce myself by telling you how weird I am.

Cocina de doyle
Fashion Victims Unit at Iced Coco
Renee at Kitchen Table Scraps
The Judge at Martha Stewart Baking at Home
Ms MoneyPenny
Terri at T-rated
Dig Your Own Hole

Granola Bars

2008-11-20T10:55:00.000-08:00

Confession: my camera has gone MIA. The picture I took with my iPhone was not blog worthy, but if you click on the recipe link below, mine look almost that good. The edges are more crumbly, but you get the idea. The last pictures I remember taking were in my house, so please send me good juju that I will find it soon.

Not Michael Landon is kind of obsessed with snacks, and they must have "substanance" (yes, spell check, I know this is not a word). This is very foreign to me, as someone who has been trying to loose weight since about seventh grade. Snacks are for curbing hunger, not providing energy. But what do I know.

These are yummy, and pretty easy. It's basically rice krispie treats, only with oat granola instead of rice krispies. They're also pretty big. I would recommend spreading it out in two pans if you've got them. They crumble a bit at the edges when cut.

First, we need granola.

Homemade Granola: modified from Martha, makes 8 cups. Her receipe makes 6 1/2, but the bars call for 8, which is why the quantities are screwy. If you like granola cereal, just ignore the +s and make a double batch.

Ingredients

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp shredded coconut
5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp toasted wheat germ
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp unsalted sunflower seeds
1 1/4 cup coarsely chopped almonds (Not Michael Landon hates almonds, so I used some cashews I had lurking in the pantry; I didn't quite have enough, so I added some more sunflower seeds and this next ingredient)
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp flax seed (my addition, it's good for you to boot - you're getting the idea this isn't like a baking recipe where everything has to be all precise, right?)
1 tablespoon + 1 tsp sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon + a pinch ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon + a smaller pinch freshly ground nutmeg
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp honey
8 tablespoons (1 stick) + 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp (golden) raisins

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment, and spread shredded coconut on top. Bake until toasted. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. (My wheat germ was untoasted, so I toasted that here too, on the same sheet. Watch carefully, neither takes long.)
Decrease oven temperature to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment; set aside. In a large bowl, toss together oats, wheat germ, sunflower seeds, almonds, sesame seeds, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.
In a small bowl, stir together honey and butter; pour over oat mixture. Stir well. Spread onto sheets. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Break up granola; sprinkle with raisins and toasted coconut. Store in airtight container.

Now onto the bars. The granola is all gummy when it comes out of the oven, so wait for it to cool first. You probably don't need to break it up too much by hand, the dumping in and stirring will take care of some of it.

Peanut Butter Granola Bars: again, adapted from Martha, makes 16 sizeable squares

Ingredients

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for pan
10 1/2 ounces mini-marshmallows
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
8 cups Homemade Granola

Directions

Butter a 9-inch-square baking pan; set aside (I lined it with parchment paper instead). In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add marshmallows; stir until melted, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat.
Stir in peanut butter and granola until well combined (I stirred the peanut butter in first on its own; felt like it would mix throughout better that way). Transfer mixture to prepared pan. Dampen your hands, and press mixture into prepared pan, distributing mixture evenly. Set aside to cool. Invert pan, releasing bars. Cut into sixteen squares. Store in an airtight container up to 3 days.

I'm no food safety expert, but I always store stuff longer than directed, especially if it's not refrigerated or anything. I've had cookies that tasted fine weeks (months?) later, and I've never gotten sick. Well, only once, but I'm not certain that was my fault - I blame packaged lettuce.

Merry Christmas!

2008-11-18T14:11:00.000-08:00

I love love love love Christmas. It's my favorite time of year by far. But when I said in my first post that I tend to take on too much - well, that kinda explodes at Christmas. I bake cookies, make a Christmas craft for 20, make my own Christmas cards, and make my own wrapping paper. On top of shopping for gifts, decorating my house to make it vomit Christmas, and attending five parties at a bare minimum (not including Christmas and Christmas Eve). Oh and I do still have to work during the month of December, which usually happens to be the busiest time of year. Also, I mostly do it all on my own, since Not Michael Landon usually has final exams late in December.

This year, we're hoping not to be in a little apartment anymore sometime soon, which could make it as crazy as the year I decided to get married in January.

The easiest way to tackle all this would be to do less. But I really like it all. So my first strategy is an attitude adjustment. I simply do not let myself get frustrated and worn out doing it all. I'm not doing it for anyone other than me, so if I'm not having a good time, there's no point. Usually a firm reminder that I'm doing this for fun does the trick, but theoretically I could stop. (I can stop anytime I want to... right?)

My second strategy is to start early. Which is the catalyst for such an annoying post title on November 18th. My Christmas card supplies are purchased and photos chosen, and almost all my Christmas cookie dough is in the freezer (one more half batch to go). I've gone through all my addresses and identified the ones I need to update. My goal is to be well on my way to done with the crafty stuff by Thanksgiving.

This kinda ties into my third strategy - planning. I have a memo booklet with lists for cards, cookies, crafts, gifts, and addresses for all, as well as what I've done the last several years to keep from repeating. I'm supposed to stick this in my purse so I can work on it whenever I have a chance, but I need to move it to my iPhone, probably via my Zenbe lists ap. I also drew up a week by week schedule for now through the holiday. It isn't set in stone or excessively detailed, but it lets me plan out when I need to start things, when I need to finish, and avoid having too much going on at once.

The weather is still so nice here it's hard to get into the mood, but it's all worth it in the end.

Here are the cookies I have sitting in my freezer, all courtesy Martha Stewart:

Gingerbread Snowflakes

These are so yummy and spicy and not overly sweet. There's something that just says Christmas about a cut-out cookie that you decorate, but I got kinda tired of plain old sugar. Martha wants you to make these giant snowflakes, but I just used the cutters I have - trees, snowflakes, and stockings. I cut them out, froze on a cookie sheet with parchment, and then transferred them to a plastic freezer bag.

Ingredients

6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup packed dark-brown sugar
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 teaspoon finely ground pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 large eggs
1 cup unsulfured molasses
Royal Icing
Fine sanding sugar, for sprinkling

Directions

Sift together flour, baking soda, and baking powder into a large bowl. Set aside.
Put butter and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; mix on medium speed until fluffy. Mix in spices and salt, then eggs and molasses. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. Divide dough into thirds; wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll out dough on a lightly floured work surface to a 1/4-inch thick. Cut into snowflakes with a 7- inch snowflake-shape cookie cutter. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, and refrigerate until firm, about 15 minutes.
Bake cookies until crisp but not dark, 12 to 14 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.
Put icing in a pastry bag fitted with a small plain round tip (such as Ateco #7). Pipe designs on snowflakes; immediately sprinkle with sanding sugar. Let stand 5 minutes; tap off excess sugar. Let icing set completely at room temperature, about 1 hour. Store cookies between layers of parchment in an airtight container at room temperature up to 5 days.

Chocolate Crackles

We've made these in my family forever, although we call them crinkles. I think this recipe is a little better, but don't tell my mom. I rolled the dough into balls and froze on a cookie sheet and transferred to a plastic freezer bag. I'll roll them in the sugar before I bake them off. Cross your fingers the sugar sticks.

Ingredients

Makes about 4 dozen

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cups light-brown sugar, firmly packed
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
1 cup confectioners' sugar, plus more for rolling

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Chop bittersweet chocolate into small bits, and melt over medium heat in a heat-proof bowl or the top of a double boiler set over a pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.
In the bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and light-brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat until well combined. Add melted chocolate. With mixer on low speed, alternate adding dry ingredients and milk until just combined. Divide the dough into quarters, wrap with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator until firm, about 2 hours.
On a clean countertop, roll each portion of dough into a log approximately 16 inches long and 1 inch in diameter, using confectioners’ sugar to prevent sticking. Wrap logs in plastic wrap, and transfer to a baking sheet. Chill for 30 minutes. Cut each log into 1-inch pieces, and toss in confectioners’ sugar, a few at a time. Using your hands, roll the pieces into a ball shape. If any of the cocoa-colored dough is visible, roll dough in confectioners’ sugar again to coat completely. Place the cookies 2 inches apart on a Silpat-lined baking sheet. Bake until cookies have flattened and the sugar splits, 12 to15 minutes.
Transfer from oven to a wire rack to let cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Pine Nut Cookies
These are new for me, but the dough was pretty yummy and really simple even though I had to cut the egg in half to make it in two batches since I only have a small food processor. I couldn't get the pine nuts to stick very well, so I froze them w/o since they would just come off in the bag. Wish me luck that they stick better when I bake them off.

Ingredients

Makes about 3 dozen

2 cups pine nuts
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup almond paste
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Process 3/4 cup pine nuts, the sugar, almond paste, and vanilla in a food processor until fine crumbs form. Add egg; pulse to combine. Add flour, baking powder, and salt; process just until dough comes together.
Roll dough into 3/4-inch balls. Roll balls in remaining 11/4 cups pine nuts, gently pressing to coat. Space 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets.
Bake until cookies begin to turn golden brown, about 20 minutes. Let cool completely on sheets on wire racks.

Microwaveables

2008-10-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

A general strategy I try to follow in all aspects of my life is simply to simplify. I don't blow dry my hair, I've canceled all my magazine subscriptions, and I clean most my house with only vinegar. With few exceptions, this saves my pocketbook, the environment, my health, and my sanity in one way or another. This is certainly true of microwaving non-microwaveable oatmeal and popcorn.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal is a fantastic breakfast. It's good for your cholesterol, it's filling, and with enough milk and fruit, it's a great balanced meal to start the day. It's also super easy and quick to prepare from almost nothing.

I am the world's least morning person and yet I roll out of bed every morning and feed Not Michael Landon, so I need things simple (I'm prone to temper tantrums when things don't go my way before coffee. I'm not kidding.). I have a drawer outfitted with all necessary oatmeal supplies and I cook both our bowls at the same time.

Instant non-instant oatmeal

Ingredients:
1/2 c rolled oats
1/2 c plus a splash water
Suggested flavorings and toppings, optional: cinnamon, brown sugar, maple sugar, honey, sliced fruit, berries, milk.

Directions:
1. In a cereal bowl, combine rolled oats and water (no mixing required, just give the bowl a little jiggle).
2. Microwave for 1:15.
3. Remove and stir - be careful, the bowl can be really hot.
4. Microwave for another 1:15.
5. Stir again and serve.

You can add flavorings whenever suits you. Try it out and see what you like best as there will be slight taste differences if you cook the flavorings with the oatmeal, especially with milk and fruit. Also experiment with the amount of water you add, cooking time, and serving size. Oatmeal consistency is a highly personal preference, so use this as a guide to see what works for you.

Cost comparison:
Premium instant: Quaker Hot Cereal Oatmeal, $0.47 per 1.5oz packet.
Store brand instant: Safeway brand Hot Cereal Oatmeal, $0.30 per 1.5oz packet.
Bulk non-instant: Safeway brand Hot Cereal Quick Oatmeal (42oz container), $0.13 per 1.5oz serving size.
Savings: up to $0.34/serving minus cost of flavorings
Additional benefits: your oatmeal won't be stuffed with fillers and artificial sweeteners and HFCS like the store-bought packets. Also, there's always oatmeal on hand if you get a hankerin' for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

If you're still really sold on the ready-to-go packets (though adding a few flavorings is no big deal - it does not induce temper tantrums), you can dole out a serving of oatmeal and its flavorings into individual baggies beforehand. You have to like your sugars cooked with the oatmeal, and promise me you'll reuse the baggies.

Popcorn

On to the fun stuff. As long as you don't add too much fat, popcorn is a very healthful snack. 31 calories for a whole cup! And super filling - it's basically fiber and air.

Brownbag Popcorn
adapted from Instructables

Ingredients:
1/4 c loose popcorn kernels
canola oil spray, optional
salt, optional

Directions:
1. Take a brown paper bag, open the bag, and pour in your serving of loose kernels.
2. Fold over the flaps like the standard brown bag lunch at least three times, small folds are better.
3. Microwave until the popping slows to about once every 2-3 seconds. This is 2 minutes on my relatively new unit.
4. I flavor with a couple sprays of canola oil and a few pinches of salt. You can use other sprays, a little butter, or those flavor shakers. I tried Parmesan cheese once, which clumped into a ball, but it could probably work if you're careful.

Cost comparison:
Premium microwaveable: Orville Redenbachers Smart Pop Mini Bags, $0.50/bag
Store brand microwaveable: Safeway brand fun size microwaveable popcorn, $0.47/bag
Bulk: Safeway brand popcorn kernels, $0.09/serving, plus Safeway brand brown paper lunch bags, $0.02/bag
Savings: up to $0.40/serving
Additional benefits: no risk of popcorn lung

Blog Action Day: Poverty and Slow Food

2008-10-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the second annual Blog Action Day. Today I'm joining with bagillions of other bloggers on the planet to bring focus to poverty. I feel like such an insider on my, like, fifth post.

Not Momma Ingalls (my mom) often chides me about the expense of our way of food. Being raised in a family of eight and then raising me on her own, getting the most food for the least money is bred deep in her blood. Sometimes I can see the unit price calculator behind her eyes if I look close.

It was bred in me too, of course. And then one day I was shopping at Target. Not Michael Landon wanted some granola bars. The Target brand was $1.50 cheaper than organic - almost half the price. As I stood in that aisle contemplating my choices, my desire for environmentally friendly food locked in a tug-o-war with my genetic need for frugality, some storage box thingy caught my eye. It was turqoise, it would look so cute in my living room, and it was only $14.99.

"Only $14.99". And here I am having a come-to-Jesus moment over $1.50 for granola bars. Since that day, our food budget has increased. But we're spending less. We eat out less, we stay home more, we buy less processed foods, and yes, we spend some more on meat and dairy. If I could live without ESPN, we'd cut cable. If we were really hurting, we could cut the cell phones and internet - between all these communications bills we could probably feed another family on top of ours.

As a percentage of the household budget, Americans are spending on food half of what we did in 1960, and half of what we are still spending is spent on food outside the home. So when someone says they don't eat local, organic food because they can't afford it, the first question should be what else are they spending money on?

But the dollar bill barriers to the slow food movement are much more complicated than all that. There are truly hungry people in the US and around the world who cannot afford rising grain prices, much less an heirloom tomato.

In the most recent Times Magazine, Michael Pollan writes a fantastic letter to our new president-elect (whoever he may be) about food policy. It sticks its fingers in all kinds of issues, including poverty. The long article is definitely worth a read when you have the time, but this excerpt relates directly to the topic at hand:

Farmer in Chief
By Michael Pollan

It will be argued that sun-food agriculture will generally yield less food than fossil-fuel agriculture. This is debatable. The key question you must be prepared to answer is simply this: Can the sort of sustainable agriculture you’re proposing feed the world?

There are a couple of ways to answer this question. The simplest and most honest answer is that we don’t know, because we haven’t tried. But in the same way we now need to learn how to run an industrial economy without cheap fossil fuel, we have no choice but to find out whether sustainable agriculture can produce enough food. The fact is, during the past century, our agricultural research has been directed toward the goal of maximizing production with the help of fossil fuel. There is no reason to think that bringing the same sort of resources to the development of more complex, sun-based agricultural systems wouldn’t produce comparable yields. Today’s organic farmers, operating for the most part without benefit of public investment in research, routinely achieve 80 to 100 percent of conventional yields in grain and, in drought years, frequently exceed conventional yields. (This is because organic soils better retain moisture.) Assuming no further improvement, could the world — with a population expected to peak at 10 billion — survive on these yields?

First, bear in mind that the average yield of world agriculture today is substantially lower than that of modern sustainable farming. According to a recent University of Michigan study, merely bringing international yields up to today’s organic levels could increase the world’s food supply by 50 percent.

The second point to bear in mind is that yield isn’t everything — and growing high-yield commodities is not quite the same thing as growing food. Much of what we’re growing today is not directly eaten as food but processed into low-quality calories of fat and sugar. As the world epidemic of diet-related chronic disease has demonstrated, the sheer quantity of calories that a food system produces improves health only up to a point, but after that, quality and diversity are probably more important. We can expect that a food system that produces somewhat less food but of a higher quality will produce healthier populations.

The final point to consider is that 40 percent of the world’s grain output today is fed to animals; 11 percent of the world’s corn and soybean crop is fed to cars and trucks, in the form of biofuels. Provided the developed world can cut its consumption of grain-based animal protein and ethanol, there should be plenty of food for everyone — however we choose to grow it.

In fact, well-designed polyculture systems, incorporating not just grains but vegetables and animals, can produce more food per acre than conventional monocultures, and food of a much higher nutritional value. But this kind of farming is complicated and needs many more hands on the land to make it work. Farming without fossil fuels — performing complex rotations of plants and animals and managing pests without petrochemicals — is labor intensive and takes more skill than merely “driving and spraying,” which is how corn-belt farmers describe what they do for a living.

To grow sufficient amounts of food using sunlight will require more people growing food — millions more. This suggests that sustainable agriculture will be easier to implement in the developing world, where large rural populations remain, than in the West, where they don’t. But what about here in America, where we have only about two million farmers left to feed a population of 300 million? And where farmland is being lost to development at the rate of 2,880 acres a day? Post-oil agriculture will need a lot more people engaged in food production — as farmers and probably also as gardeners.

The revival of farming in America, which of course draws on the abiding cultural power of our agrarian heritage, will pay many political and economic dividends. It will lead to robust economic renewal in the countryside. And it will generate tens of millions of new “green jobs,” which is precisely how we need to begin thinking of skilled solar farming: as a vital sector of the 21st-century post-fossil-fuel economy.

Here are some more articles from various sources on the subject of organic food and poverty:
Ten Reasons Why GE Foods Will Not Feed the World
Can organic farming feed the world?
Organic farming can 'feed the world'
THE MYTH: Industrial agriculture will feed the world.
GM-Free Organic Agriculture to Feed the World

Cockadoodledoo

2008-10-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

I butchered my own chicken the other day. I didn't take pictures - I know you're disappointed. I normally buy Rosie organic chickens and have my butcher cut them up for me, because Not Michael Landon hates carving chickens and I'm not much good at it myself. But I have a strange aversion to asking people anything or for anything (I made it through my Bachelor's degree without attending a single office hour), and we've been buying lots of chicken lately, so this particular chicken I just couldn't bring myself to have them cut up.

Joy had fairly easy-to-follow instructions, starting with the wings, then the legs and thighs, and finally the back and breasts. It wasn't super pretty, but it wasn't hacked to heck either. I handled it mostly with a cheese knife and really only needed kitchen shears to cut through the ribs. The joints popped out quite easily.

When I was a kid, my mom would roast a whole young chicken all. the. time. She would coat the top of the breast in butter and garlic salt and it would come out all crispy and scrumptious. We would race each other to the oven when it was done to get to the crispy skin first. Not Michael Landon's family would barbeque chicken three or four nights a week in the summer. Chicken done the same way over and over can get boring, crispy skin and barbeque sauce notwithstanding. I grill it on our George Forman grill most the time. I can throw on thighs and legs for dinner that night, and throw on the breasts to keep as leftovers while we're eating.

Here are some things we like to do with leftover chicken, stay tuned for recipes:

Chicken tacos with homemade salsa
Chicken tortilla casserole (the sole casserole in my repetoire, a family favorite)
"Kitchen sink" salad (as in, everything but the)
Pasta with balsamic vinegrette and chicken

Fresh Pasta

2008-10-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

I looooove pasta. Atkins never convinced me otherwise. I reject the idea that there's anything fundamentally wrong healthwise with a food that's been a part of so many cultures as long as pasta has. We usually eat it at least once a week. It cooks up quickly and makes lots of leftovers for lunches. It's also yummy without meat, which makes it more economical and better for the environment.

I actually don't have any major qualms with pasta from the grocery store. I can get organic whole wheat pasta from Trader Joe's for $0.99/lb. That's tough to beat, and I keep lots of different shapes in my pantry at all times. Italians don't have the same hang up that we Americans do about fresh vs. dried pasta. It's just different kinds, each with their own pros and cons.

I saw Jaime Oliver make fresh pasta and sauce from scratch on Food Network in 10 minutes flat and thought this was something I could tackle. Of course, it took me significantly longer than Jaime, but who really thought I was as awesome as him?

If you've been paying attention, you'll suspect I got the recipe from Joy, and you'd be right. It's insanely simple - 2 cups flour, 3 eggs. You can mix it in a food processor or stand mixer, but by hand is the traditional way. Just pile the flour, make a well in the center, and crack the eggs inside. The first time I tried this, I used my built-in cutting board and dripped floury egg onto the flour, but you're smarter than me, so you'll know to start out with a level surface. On try #2 I used our big wooden cutting board with the lip around the edge. That's right, I'm a college gradumate.

From here you just start mixing the flour in with the eggs bit by bit, being careful not to break the well. It starts out slow and precarious, but soon enough it gets viscous enough that it won't run off on you, and you can start pulling the sides of the well in too. Unless it's raining outside or you're in high altitude or something, don't mess with the ratios. It will look alternately too wet and too dry at various points. Just keep mixing and then kneading.

Kneading is fun; it's mindlessly monotonous and gets your frustrations out on flour instead of your husband. You know that great feeling when you turn your brain off and stare until your vision blurs? You can do that while kneading. The heat from your hands will loosen up the dough a bit so it gets more wet and can take on the rest of the flour floating around on your board. When it's all incorporated and homogeneous and your mental state is sufficient, you can quit.

After this comes "resting". It's supposed to redistribute the flavors, and probably helps the texture. Cut the dough ball in four pieces first and turn a bowl over on top of them on the counter to keep them moist. Joy recommends at least an hour.

Now we're ready to roll. If you're adventurous and have the space, you can do this with a rolling pin. There's also attachments for Kitchen Aid mixers that cost an arm and a leg (Joy approves the rollers, but sticks its nose up at extruders). I picked up a hand-crank pasta roller at Bed Bath and Beyond for $35.00. On first try I rolled it all the way to the thinnest setting. I'm not sure exactly what this setting is for, but yummy fettuccine isn't it. Number 3 (3rd thinnest of 7) worked perfectly. I roll the dough through three times on each setting, folding in half after each pass through. Keep the dough lightly floured; it doesn't seem like it needs it, but it will pull and shred eventually, and that's no fun. Keep the remaining dough balls under their bowl, and don't try to multitask during this step to keep the dough from drying out.

My roller has two cutters: one for fettuccine and one for spaghetti. Again here you can go low-tech: just fold the pasta in half loosely several times, and then cut into strips for a more rustic feel. The picture at top is my pasta drying on my $13 wooden drying rack. Once again, not a necessity, but it was cheap and it comes apart easily for storage. Drying for another hour or so is recommended by Joy. This recipe makes about two servings for us, so we dried the other half all the way overnight and put it in a plastic baggie in the pantry for later (careful - it's brittle).

Be sure to keep the lid on while boiling water to save time and energy. After drying for about an hour and a half, this pasta was cooked in about 4 minutes. I checked every 30 seconds - one minute, it's way faster than dried (the home-dried pasta also cooked quicker than store bought). A quick canned tomato sauce, and dinner is served.

So not nearly as quick as Jaime, mostly due to the hand-mixing, resting the dough, and drying. Since he didn't do any of these, I doubt their necessity. It's a rough day when I have to decide whether to follow Jaime or Joy, but pasta making isn't a bad way to spend a Sunday in between other tasks.

Fish en Papillote

2008-10-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm so fancy. ish.

I've been really trying to eat more fish lately. You know, health and all. Plus, it can be a sustainable part of your diet, as long as you follow guidelines like these provided by Monterey Bay Aquarium. Every time I'm there I pick up their latest Seafood Watch guide and keep it in my wallet so I know what to stay away from at the store. The problem with these guidelines is it's not as cut and dry as "this fish is good, this fish is bad". It's more like "this fish caught here, in this way, is usually good". This is where it comes in handy to get your fish from an actual person behind a counter, of whom you can ask questions. Of course, I'm unexplicably shy about things like that, but my market always notes the region as well as whether the fish is wild or farmed.

If you're not getting it by now, the fact that I'm imperfect is kind of the whole point of this blog, and here I've failed once again. I've been buying pacific red snapper because rockfish (its other name) was listed as "best" or "good" on my pocket guide. Now that I've gone and found the full list for my faithful reader(s?), it's looking more like "avoid". Whadya know, my blog teaches me things too.

Cooking fish is great, not because it tastes particularly wonderful, but because it's so quick. A thin fillet like snapper cooks through in no time flat. I usually throw it on the stove with some olive oil, salt and pepper, my standard for just about any food. This particular day, a coworker had given me some homegrown cherry tomatoes and they sounded really good with fish, but really moist fish. No dried out edges.

Martha Stewart is obsessed with cooking en papillote and seems to think this is a normal staple of cooking. I think she's insane, but it popped into my head as a way to keep the fish moist. In case you're not Martha, en papillote basically means baked in a pocket of parchment paper. I opened up Joy, 'cause this is just the kind of technique a reference like that is best at, and got crackin'.

Joy insists on lots of moisture inside the packet, so I added about a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil. There was lots and lots of liquid swimming around the fish once it was done, so I could probably cut back on this. Then I just diced up a quarter onion and some garlic and halved the cherry tomatoes, and threw them on top with s&p. Joy had me cut the parchment in a heart shape and fold it closed in a kinda funny overlap way. I have no idea why a circle wouldn't work, but I wasn't going to mess with Joy. The overlapping folds kept the pocket closed despite steam building up a bit inside. Parchment works better than foil because it keeps in just enough steam, but lets some out too.

Only 15 minutes in the toaster oven and all set. This was yummy, especially for fish. The name sounds so fancy, you'd never imagine a full dinner could be on the table in a half hour. Lest you think I've gone to the dark side, I served this with Annie's Mac & Cheese and some stir fried cauliflower (Yes, it's purple. CSA veggies come in some interesting colors).

Canning Tomatoes Part 2

2008-09-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

Wherein the real work happens.

Lesson 1: Do not start processing on the same day as picking. I could have gone home, taken a long shower and napped all afternoon, but instead I processed tomatoes for the next 6 hours. And then came back the next day for another 4.

Really the most tedious part of this whole adventure was peeling. Not Michael Landon, who would be happy as a clam eating all fruits and vegetables right of the vine with no processing or cooking whatsoever, was curious as to why we were removing the skins. They're too filmy and tough; once the tomatoes are cooked down they just kinda float around and refuse to breakdown.

The method we used for peeling was to scald the tomatoes. We washed them well, spread them out in a single layer and poured boiling water over them all. Just wait for it to get cool enough to handle, and they mostly slide right off. They seem to peel best when good and warm, not too cool.

Canning is, essentially, an effort in outwitting bacteria. The whole idea is to put the most sterile food possible into the most sterile jar possible and then sterilize it. Tomatoes are a prime canning candidate because of their high acid content - which is rather inhospitable to bacteria. It's very important to maintain sterility at every point in the process as much as possible. The kind of bugs that multiply in canned food are not always detectable to the eye or nose once you break that seal months later.

Now, my mother tells me I'm a paranoid person, but everything I've read about canning stresses sterility and following instructions and recipes exactly. We used the instructions in Joy of Cooking's 75th Anniversary Edition, which follow USDA guidelines. What follows is a narrative of my process - NOT precise instructions to be tried at home. You need Joy of Cooking anyway, put it on your Christmas list.

So we made sure all discolored bits and cores were removed from the tomatoes and tossed them in a pot to boil. I started out this adventure with my sights on canned tomato sauce with a great recipe; by the time we had started peeling, I settled for crushed tomatoes and compromised by adding a basil leaf. My grandmother commented that she used to cold pack tomatoes, but since they boiled while we were peeling more, the additional time/effort was minimal. Knowing she never killed anyone gave me extra reassurance that we were maintaining sufficient safety.

The jars, lids, and rings we washed with warm soapy water and then scalded with boiling. A jar filling funnel would have been very useful, but a ladle worked okay too. The jars get really hot with the boiling tomatoes poured in, so a pot holder is essential, preferably plastic to help with spills. We topped the jars with two tablespoons of bottled lemon juice (more acid; bottled is required over fresh squeezed, since the acidity in individual lemons is variable) and a basil leaf. Poked a clean, skinny spatula in to let out any air, left about a half inch of space at the top, topped them with a lid and screwed the ring on just until resistance was met - too tight and it's hard to get them off afterward.

While everything else was going, we set my giant canning pot to boil half full (an excellent hand-me-down). Setting the jars on the rack was a bit tricky; I had to pull it out and stack them dry to see how they fit first. There are handles that you could presumably use to lift the whole rack in and out, but I had visions of 7 jars of tomatoes crashing to the floor and crying a lot. We topped off the pot with more boiling water to cover the jars well, and set them to boil for 45 minutes.

After that the jars just had to come out promptly and set still for 12-24 hours. Moving the rack and/or pot around full is definitely a two-person job; that sucker is heavy. And now they're sitting on the floor in a corner in my kitchen, the coolest, darkest space I could find.

So, you'll remember we set out on this time consuming and work-intensive journey for two reasons: cost and taste. We used approximately 45 lbs of tomatoes, purchased at $0.50/lb, and yielded 13 quart jars of crushed tomatoes. This is $1.73/qt, or $1.51 for 28 fl oz (the size of most large cans at the supermarket). It's actually nearly impossible to compare what we made to something available at the supermarket. The organic tomatoes come from large scale industrial farms; the quality tomatoes with minimal additives come all the way from Italy; local just doesn't have the scale to make it to a store shelf. So it makes it easy that nothing - nothing - available at Safeway comes close to this price.

The true cost to me is higher. Gas brings it to $2.55/28fl oz. I wasted peppers and basil that I meant to can and freeze since I was so burnt out with the tomatoes. But even then it's only starting to come close to the Cento tomatoes I usually buy. You'd have to add in mine and my mother's hourly wage to make this whole endeavor more expensive than store bought. And while it was a lot of work and time, and my mom keeps saying she'll say no the next time I have a hairbrained idea like this, it was sure more fun than my 9 to 5.

As for taste: the fresh tomato season is still in full swing, so I haven't cracked open any of those jars yet. I took one taste during processing and was impressed. San Marzanos are supposed to be the world's best sauce tomatoes, according to chefs. Stay tuned for the verdict.

Canning Tomatoes Part 1: U-Pick

2008-09-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

Why would I want to can my own tomatoes? First, moving yourself off the industrial food complex is a rather expensive endeavor. Processed foods made from commodity corn are excessively cheap (thank you government subsidies), a luxury whole foods do not enjoy. So one of my methods for keeping costs down is to process as much of our food myself as possible. I've only found one brand of canned tomatoes (Cento) at my local supermarket with only tomatoes listed under ingredients. Seriously, you wouldn't think there could be that much else in "canned tomatoes", but take a look sometime. Anyways, this brand is at least $3 for a 28oz can.

But they do taste really good, which brings me to my second reason - taste. You know the difference between store bought tomatoes and homegrown tomatoes? I'm hoping the difference between store bought canned tomatoes and home canned tomatoes approaches that somewhat.

In order to tackle the first goal (cost), I needed cheap tomatoes. Local, organic tomatoes are tough to find for under $2/lb, so enter my local farm, which spurred this whole endeavor. We subscribe to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which supplies us with more veggies, and a bit of fruit, than we can usually consume from March to November. It's all locally and organically grown, for a little under $20 a week. Considering how much I spend at the farmer's market when I allow myself a trip, it's a great bargain.

This time of year they're a little overwhelmed with the tomato harvest, so they invite people out to the farm to pick their own at a reduced price ($0.50/lb). I recruited my mom, with the promise of a cupboard of tomatoes and an underestimate of the work involved, and we drove the half hour or so out to the middle of nowhere to pick tomatoes. By the way, I calculated the cost of gas and it was still far less expensive than the cheapest locally grown tomatoes I could find anywhere.

This was the first time I'd been out to the farm, and it was really fascinating just to be there. I can safely say it's probably the first time in my 26 years I've ever encountered the place my food starts out. I had a vague idea of the quantity of produce they... well, produce, but I was taken aback by the amount of land that translates to. The family were really nice, but down-to-earth no-nonsense type people. I got the feeling if I asked a question to the farmer about his crop, I might be there until next Tuesday still taking in the answer.

Picking your own produce is a rather quaint idea, but it doesn't feel particularly quaint while you're doing it. Don't get me wrong, I could use the free exercise, but when they say farm workers do backbreaking work, they're not kidding. Lots of up and down, lots of lugging crates of produce around, lots of sun, and no shade. We went on one of those hot Californian September days that take you by surprise, and we were way too far inland for the marine layer to cool us off.

After a couple hours, we had about 45 lbs of tomatoes (1/3 heirloom, 2/3 San Marzano), and we picked up some peppers and basil they had for sale also. We headed home, exhausted and dirty, for the real work to begin...

Yeah, I have a food blog too.

2008-09-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

My husband, Not Michael Landon, hates blogs. He thinks people with worthwhile things to say are actually published.

And I'm not here to prove him wrong. I took high school journalism, but that's where my verbal prowess ends. My culinary skills aren't world class either. I'm probably not even unique in my quest to create old fashioned food for a modern family (scratch that, I know I'm not unique, given the trouble I had finding a blog name that wasn't taken).

So it's a good thing that my main purpose here is just to catalog my own adventures. Kinda like logging what you eat to loose weight, this is my way of keeping myself on track. If you find a solution that applies to your life, that's icing.

But exactly what is this track? I try to be a good hippie - do what's right for the environment and my own family's health. In terms of food, I try to accomplish this by eating locally, and processing as much of our food as I can myself. Of course, there are challenges too, and they're the regular ones: money, and time.

And who's on this track? I'm Not Laura Ingalls, a quarterlifer, working full time. I'm a crazy perfectionist with issues about tackling too much at once. I really do enjoy spending time on cooking and other domesticity, but it can bring stress when there's too much on my plate. Not Michael Landon is my husband of over two years. He works even more than I do, and he goes to school too, which means he helps out where he can, but where he can isn't much. He's a meat and potatoes kinda guy, but he continues to surprise me with his flexibility. Sometimes I test his limits. We live close to our families in the silicon valley, in a little bitty postage-stamp of an apartment.

And this is how we eat...