If I figure out a way to buy a house in the next year, it will be because I want a real food garden. I'll probably end up spending all of my money on plants and seeds and garden-y stuff, and I'll crash on the floor of a woefully underfurnished room in a sleeping bag.
But I'll have squash next year, dammit!
Would having chickens be going too far?
Guess I should get the yard first, before I think of the chickens.
This book has done a number on me.
05 November 2009
A victory, of sorts
That looks so gross. But it's *my* gross. Thyme and parsley from my little pots that sit on the kitchen floor. The rest of it is fixings for chicken stock, which will become chicken soup tonight.
Last night, I finally got the chicken (his name was Gary, by the way) in the slow cooker with onion, carrots and celery. The recipe called for a parsnip and another vegetable I can't remember. Didn't have them, so I ignored that part. I feel really ridiculous for needing a recipe to make chicken stock in the first place. I mean, really. It's hot chicken water. How do you screw that up?
The recipe also called for a bay leaf, parsley and thyme. Alright, I thought. I have a package of bay leaves that have been in the back of the fridge for almost a year. It's dry in there, and they still look great, so I used a couple. You can sub extra bay leaves for a parsnip and that other mystery vegetable, right? Totally.
It was exciting though, to find that the parsley that hadn't been growing so great outside has really done better since I moved the pots inside about two weeks ago. So that's in there, kinda hugging the right side of the slow cooker insert.
The thyme, well, it hasn't done so hot since the move. It was in a pot with some insane, ravenous chocolate mint, and I think the mint might have screwed things up for the whole pot. Roots running around the perimeter of the pot are a bad thing, right? At any rate, the mint seems to have burned itself out, and there were still teeny sprigs of green thyme. They're in the mix too, right on top. Poor baby thyme. You get your own pot next time.
So it's all sitting and stewing as I type. Hopefully the joint's not burned down when I finally get home tonight, and making soup is easy. At least I don't need a recipe for that.
03 November 2009
It's been too long...
I used to blog in the mornings or early afternoons before leaving for my 4 or 5 p.m. shifts at the newspaper. I'd make coffee, maybe an egg or some yogurt concoction, then settle in for a morning of paying bills and snuggling with the dog and reading blogs and news. A couple days a week, I'd go for a hike with my puppy, Leo, either up Mount Beacon down to Dennings Point. Once in a while, I even made real food, like bread or scones, before heading in to work.
But then I got a day job—my dream job—for which the hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I catch the train at 7 in the morning and get home around 7 at night. I love everything about it.
The pace of the work suits me—no more 11:28 p.m. anxiety attacks while someone wants to change a headline and my boss is telling me to just send the page.
I'm smitten with a good deal of the content—the best hot cocoa in the world, anyone?
I learn something new every day—even if it's just that ATMs at Duane Reade are fee-free to me.
The train ride is often breathtakingly beautiful—pink fog rising from the Hudson this morning, stellar sunsets for the past two months (not anymore, of course, with the expiration of daylight savings time).
I'm exposed to things I'd never have the chance to try anywhere else—a fancy-schmancy French wine from 1995 that showed me what "elegant" means. Balsamic vinegars from Italy that poured like motor oil, aged 12, 25, and 100 or more years.
But getting home at 7 means that adventurous cooking goes on the back-burner (so to speak), a little bit. After two months in this schedule, I think I'm getting used to it, and will be able to figure out a routine that involves more cooking. Once my weekend days opened up, I got roped into (often literally: we climb) more adventures in the great outdoors. Now that the weather has chilled substantially, I look forward to spending more days in the kitchen. That said, I've saved a fair bit of money by making quick dinners at home, even if, like last night, it's just mashed sweet potatoes and stir-fried frozen veggies with Asian-inspired seasoning. That was on the table before 8, and I even played ball with Leo for a while.
I did some freezer-oriented cooking a month or so ago. I had really ambitious plans one day to make vegetable lasagna, butternut squash-apple soup, sweet potato chili, a spicy carrot-cabbage Chinese kimchi kinda thing, and ... and I can't remember what else. I took a picture of the table laden with all the food I planned to cook that day. I'll put it up here when I get home (if I remember).
It probably goes without saying if you know me, but I didn't quite get through everything on the table. I got the lasagna and chili done and frozen, and the butternut squash roasted (it's easier to prepare if it's cooked first). We went through the lasagna pretty quickly. There are still two big yogurt containers full of chili in the freezer. Unfortunately, the squash didn't get made into soup until its already-roasted freshness was already questionable, and it just tasted "off" no matter what I added to the soup. Also unfortunately, that will finally get chucked tonight so I can use the big pot for chicken soup.
There's most of a roasted chicken in the fridge, see, and I don't want it to meet the same fate as the squash. Since B and Leo will be at B's parents' place tonight to celebrate his sister's birthday, I have an empty kitchen to work with. Can't wait!
Coming soon... A roundup of some of the awesome and not-so-awesome (but usually cheap) places I've had lunch since starting the new job, and thoughts about agriculture/farming/conscientiousness since reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." It's amazing. And what happened to that garden on the back deck, anyway?
But then I got a day job—my dream job—for which the hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I catch the train at 7 in the morning and get home around 7 at night. I love everything about it.
The pace of the work suits me—no more 11:28 p.m. anxiety attacks while someone wants to change a headline and my boss is telling me to just send the page.
I'm smitten with a good deal of the content—the best hot cocoa in the world, anyone?
I learn something new every day—even if it's just that ATMs at Duane Reade are fee-free to me.
The train ride is often breathtakingly beautiful—pink fog rising from the Hudson this morning, stellar sunsets for the past two months (not anymore, of course, with the expiration of daylight savings time).
I'm exposed to things I'd never have the chance to try anywhere else—a fancy-schmancy French wine from 1995 that showed me what "elegant" means. Balsamic vinegars from Italy that poured like motor oil, aged 12, 25, and 100 or more years.
But getting home at 7 means that adventurous cooking goes on the back-burner (so to speak), a little bit. After two months in this schedule, I think I'm getting used to it, and will be able to figure out a routine that involves more cooking. Once my weekend days opened up, I got roped into (often literally: we climb) more adventures in the great outdoors. Now that the weather has chilled substantially, I look forward to spending more days in the kitchen. That said, I've saved a fair bit of money by making quick dinners at home, even if, like last night, it's just mashed sweet potatoes and stir-fried frozen veggies with Asian-inspired seasoning. That was on the table before 8, and I even played ball with Leo for a while.
I did some freezer-oriented cooking a month or so ago. I had really ambitious plans one day to make vegetable lasagna, butternut squash-apple soup, sweet potato chili, a spicy carrot-cabbage Chinese kimchi kinda thing, and ... and I can't remember what else. I took a picture of the table laden with all the food I planned to cook that day. I'll put it up here when I get home (if I remember).
It probably goes without saying if you know me, but I didn't quite get through everything on the table. I got the lasagna and chili done and frozen, and the butternut squash roasted (it's easier to prepare if it's cooked first). We went through the lasagna pretty quickly. There are still two big yogurt containers full of chili in the freezer. Unfortunately, the squash didn't get made into soup until its already-roasted freshness was already questionable, and it just tasted "off" no matter what I added to the soup. Also unfortunately, that will finally get chucked tonight so I can use the big pot for chicken soup.
There's most of a roasted chicken in the fridge, see, and I don't want it to meet the same fate as the squash. Since B and Leo will be at B's parents' place tonight to celebrate his sister's birthday, I have an empty kitchen to work with. Can't wait!
Coming soon... A roundup of some of the awesome and not-so-awesome (but usually cheap) places I've had lunch since starting the new job, and thoughts about agriculture/farming/conscientiousness since reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." It's amazing. And what happened to that garden on the back deck, anyway?
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