Little White House in DC

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

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

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

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

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

1. Soak the beans overnight, at least.
   
2. 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.)
   
3. 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.
   
4. Turn the heat down to low and go to work.
   
5. (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.
   
6. 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.
   
7. 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

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

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.