It's that time of year again

Last year, I didn't blog much about gardening despite ending up with a pretty rockin' garden. Energy that could/should/would have been spent on blogging instead went into the new puppy, dealing with the garden, dealing with the new house, etc, etc. Last summer was overwhelming.

My first priority was peas. I knew a "real" garden would take some work and planning and money and sun, but I could handle peas. (Please disregard the super-high-tech, dog-proofing twig fence; March 21, 2010):


The few that I got were pretty tasty. I didn't really "amend" the soil, and they didn't get as much sun as I'd hoped. And then Lucy (the new puppy) dug them up.

I brought a really beautiful strawberry plant home from the Union Square Greenmarket. It transplanted well into the sort-of-raised-bed (complete with amended soil) B created. But then one day I came home to this (June 25):


It was OK, though, because the rest of that garden had turned into this jungle (Lucy's in the back left. June 25):


We grew zucchini (July 7):


And purple green beans (July 7):


They turn green when cooked (Note super-duper-high-tech kitchen implement to keep half a bean out of boiling water; July 8):


An attempt was made at eggplant (July 7):


All seemed to be going well in Gardenland. Until... (July 12)


Something went wrong and bugs got into the zucchini. Not just the zucchini fruit, but into the vines themselves. I think they might have been some kind of borer. I remain the only person on earth unable to grow tons of zucchini.

Luckily, we had little hot peppers to distract us! Look at all those jalapeños trying to flip us off (July 12):


There was a tomato (July 12):


An ominous sky artsily framed with tomato blossoms (July 12):


And even more ominously, a wild dog with no regard for chicken-wire fences (July 12):


To be continued...

"Gardening" update

Well, we've been in the house a month this week. There are still boxes to unpack, but during the bouts of dry weather we've had, I've been able to work a little bit in the yard.

The lone length of fence that seems to get the most sunlight was overrun by maple seedlings and saplings, so it's taken some work to clear that out. As soon as I cleared one section, I mixed some potting/garden soil in with the dirt that was already there, formed the dirt into mounds about 2 inches high, and got my peas in the ground. There were frost warnings the past two nights, but 1) peas should go in the ground as soon as it's workable, and 2) because we're so close to the (temperature-moderating) river, we can usually disregard the frost warnings after April 15.

If you know me, you probably won't be surprised that *I* was surprised that "pea seeds" are nothing more than dried peas.

The week before we moved, in late March I guess, I started these little Home Depot seeds in a mini-greenhouse plastic-eggcrate-looking kind of kit. We bought one "kitchen herbs" one, with basil, chives and parsley, and one "pepper selection" (or something) one, with two hot peppers and one kind of sweet pepper. Each species got two pots. On one end of the herb container, the basil is growing and is overdue for transplanting... One chive sprouted on the other end, but has since withered. In the middle, where I thought I'd see parsley, nothing so far...

With the pepper one, two pots on the same end are doing really well and are probably ready to be transplanted. The middle pots have slightly smaller sprouts bursting through. The third set hasn't seen any activity yet. I actually have no idea which peppers are which, because although I wrote the plants' names in Sharpie above them on the lid, I rotated the lid at least a few times in the watering process... So I guess we'll see how those turn out.

I meant to start lettuce like, oh, I dunno, maybe two months ago. I still haven't done it. It's frustrating, but I hopeknow it will get done when the time is right, after I feel like I've contributed enough to getting the house in order.

Other things we've bought that need to get in the ground: asparagus shoots(?), two kinds of grapevines (this will require more clearing of the baby maples), and seeds for purple green beans (ditto), tomatoes, squash (I think?) and bell peppers. Maybe I go a little crazy with the seed-buying... but I get excited and can't help it! We've been looking at dwarf fruit trees, too. But we can't do those until the hulking, behemoth trees in the front get taken out.

In other kitchen news... Haven't been cooking nearly as much as I'd like. Especially lacking in kitchen time are new-to-me dishes, and some of the good stuff I made during my last months in SLC. (I'm lookin' at you, lentils, onions and rice. I'm lookin' at you, teriyaki chicken.) I keep saying it'll happen once we're settled in — seriously, there's no shelving below head height in the pantry — but I just need to make that happen. A few days ago, I cooked an entire meal from things we had on-hand, and it felt like a big accomplishment. How sad is that?

One of B's relatives gave us a $100 Williams-Sonoma gift card. It may take a while to get used, because I want to save it for something "good." I'm not sure what that means, really, but I just want to make sure that it's not wasted on froufy dish towels or gourmet croissants, when we could really use "x." Does that make any sense? What would you get with it?

Home sweet garden

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.

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.

An education in fermentation.(Rhyming is good, right?)

Sorry, mom and dad...
I lived in Utah for eight years, ages 18 to 26. Prime beer-drinking years, right? I guess. I only went on a booze run up to Evanston, Wyoming, one time, and although I had the world's best fake ID, I was so terrified of getting busted on the way back to Salt Lake that I never went again.

I didn't do much beer-drinking after about age 20. Not because of any kind of moral calling or righteous superiority, I just... didn't. A guy who I was with for a long time didn't drink at all. When I did buy a six-pack, four or five bottles often languished in the fridge for months (gross, absolutely; maybe even borderline criminal). I was so, soooooo boring.

At the beginning of 2008, I moved near one of the state-run wine stores downtown, and began cooking the ethnic-inspired meals nearly weekly for my friends. When possible, I bought wines from the appropriate country. Feeling kind of goofy for the last event, Morocco, I bought one wine from Spain and one from South Africa, and we roughly (very roughly) decided to split the geographical difference. There was no method, usually just madness.

Since moving here, and living with wine drinkers, I've been drinking much more thoughtfully. Which is to say, now I do more than buy whichever bottle has the more interesting label.

Right on Main Street in happenin' downtown Beacon is the Artisan Wine Shop, and these folks have helped me immensely. Although I work nights and weekends and therefore have yet to make it to one of their tasting events, the owners have steered me toward some great bottles. Also, I always assumed that good wine equals expensive, and they have shown me that that doesn't have to be true! I owe so much to these people, and they don't even know it.


A couple of weeks ago I walked in with a blank look on my face, and walked out with three bottles of grapey goodness. One was a white zinfandel, my boyfriend's mom's fave; one was a Spanish red with a dramatic label (I'm not totally out of the woods yet) that my boyfriend had bought before; and the third was a sauvignon blanc to pair with dinner's scallops. I'll be honest: I loved it for the cool label, and I was intrigued by its claim to having citrus notes.

But we opened it, and it really, really did have those citrus notes! It was like grapefruit (or, more accurately, grapefruit's cousin pomelo) slapping you in the tongue. In a good way, of course.

So when I walked in there a few nights ago, I knew at least one thing I wanted. But I know that I know nothing about wine, so I kind of crafted an experiment. "Would it be really lame," I asked, "to get another sauvignon blanc so I could compare them side-by-side and maybe learn more about that family?"

I felt really dumb asking. Like, really dumb. Luckily, Mei Ling So (one of the owners) is either used to dumb questions or good at hiding disdain for their askers... She told me it was actually a pretty good idea, and gave me a couple of choices. Most from France, either the Loire Valley or Bordeaux. I asked her what caused the differences, and finally learned how to pronounce "terroir." (The thing about food editing is that although I've learned to spell unusual words, I haven't always learned how to say them right, if at all. For a long time in Salt Lake, "tart-ees tate-in" was a running joke about tartes tatin...)

So I got the Mason Cellars' Pomelo 2007 sauvignon blanc, and a biodynamic sancerres from Bordeaux. She mentioned that it was citrusy, too, and I got all excited about them being similar, but she shut me down: "They're really different." Apparently the biodynamic winemakers don't "mess with" (I swear those were her words) the winemaking process as much. She described the French one as "yeasty," because fewer preservatives are added. Also, the biodynamic guys add infusions of chamomile and nettles, which is really interesting but I don't really get. Yet.

Oh, boy. Have I got a lot to learn...

Picked up sushi on the way home, and cracked open - well, unscrewed, anyway - the Pomelo. Because it was a school work night for the boyfriend, getting though two bottles of wine was out of the question and the sancerres is still chillin'.

Which means, you know, that I have to go back and get another bottle of Pomelo for an advance-planned tasting. It'll be rough, but I think I'll get through it. Here's to more sushi and wine this Tuesday!

Hi there

Has it really been more than two months since I've trolled around here?

I've got no excuse, I suppose. Have had a to-do list as long as I am tall, but who doesn't, really? I got some big items checked off of it over the past few days, which feels good, but that doesn't write blog posts, now does it? Even when blog-writing has been on said to-do list, it still hasn't happened. To my blogging friends: How do you keep it up? Do you write whenever you're inspired? Adhere to a schedule? I need to figure out how to do this on a regular, disciplined basis, despite the pushes and pulls of everyday life.

Maybe my barrier has been one of opportunity. I've been getting outside, hiking with my puppy a lot more than I thought. Despite this summer's torrential downpours, Leo and I have had a great time. Many of the excursions have been marked with opportunities for urban foraging: mulberry trees everywhere, from a branch inching toward my bedroom window, to berry-laden fronds hanging over a trail near where we climb, to another path at Dennings Point. There's even a white varietal a few blocks over.

There are wild black raspberries growing everywhere, too: along just about every trail I hike on, including both of the aforementioned trails. On windy country roads near B's parents' house, even in their yard. I've seen wild strawberries around Dennings Point, with hypersaturated red berries. A few weeks ago, B, Leo, and I were making our way around the Beacon Reservoir and spotted blueberry bushes. Along the fence bordering our landlord's property, blackberries are peeking out from among the overgrown vines. This is stunning...

Maybe the next time I head out (tomorrow?), I'll remember to bring a clean container for collecting. Recipes like this one, for rosemary ice cream with mulberries (the same dappled ones I've seen more of recently), have inspired me to do something with the mulberries before it's too late. I'm new to this gardening stuff, and newish to the Northeast, and totally new to making ice cream (that one time in preschool where we shook some container of something does not count), and I have no idea when "mulberry season" is over, so I guess I better get on this.


Late-spring dinner. Fiddlehead ferns sauteed with shallots, butter and some lemon juice (thanks, Lesli, for the prep idea). Garlic mashed potatoes, half-sweet and half-red. Thyme-poached salmon (thyme from my pots!) with a random concoction of a yogurt-sour cream sauce with tarragon (tarragon from my pots!).

I've still been cooking up a storm — fiddlehead ferns have been among the more unusual ingredients around the kitchen. There's a nascent container garden on my deck, too: fennel, onions, rosemary, lavender, basil, parsley, tarragon, lettuces, red and green bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, three kinds of tomatoes (small, medium and large), chocolate mint, thyme, broccoli, and collard greens. The photo above is from May 13...

From around the same time, here's a view of Leo in the "garden," before seedlings and starters from Adams were even potted:


I took new pictures today, and can't wait to put them up for comparison.

The lettuces in the pot right now aren't doing so hot, so I bought some seeds, which I need to start. It rained for a month straight starting around Memorial Day, but we've had some hot, sunny days in the past week so I hope the plants start really growing. But not like the lettuce and basil that bolted. Still not sure what to do about those.

I see things every day and think of content I'd love to write about, but never get around to it. Among those items: my newfound love of kimchi, this article from the NYT, how much I miss food editing, and my summer food love adventures... all of it TK, as we say in the biz. Which reminds me - also TK was more info on the tubers... Did I ever finish that? No? Well, that also is TK.

Beacon Bites: Homespun Foods

Salami(I think?), provolone and caponata panini and carrot cake, Homespun Foods, 232 Main St., Beacon, NY; www.homespunfoods.com

Despite success with the vegan bread, I was having a really awful day, and wanted something kinda fancy-schmancy for lunch, with something sweet too. The awesome Japanese place doesn't take cards, and I didn't want to stop at the credit union for cash, so Homespun it was. This place is rockingly busy on the weekends due to its proximity to the art museum and inclusion in Beacon writeups in the Times, and usually a little sleepier on weekdays. Well, that'd been my prior experience. It was hopping at 2:30 on a Wednesday with about 20 women and four guys (but two, photographers, quickly left).

I've never had anything bad here, but nothing jumped out at me from today's specials. The salami, provolone and caponata panini sounded swell, and was a little cheaper than the consistently-to-die-for quiche. There are usually more desserts to choose from, too, but from today's choices of chocolate-enrobed brownie, carrot cake, and a poppyseed (probably lemon, too) bread pudding, I went with the carrot cake. The Mexican chocolate pudding, made with almond milk, sounded good but it looked like the pre-portioned servings were all in to-stay dishes, and I wanted to get back home to my puppy.

The panini was okay. It probably would have been better if I'd eaten it there, as the cheese got the way melted cheese gets when it cools for a bit. The caponata was different from any I'd had before, occasionally screaming "OLIVE! INCOMING!!" with each little green chunk. I don't really love salami, but I forgot that before I ordered it.

The carrot cake was interesting too - in a good way. The icing had a subtle citrus tang. A little nuttier than I like, but I know that's the breaks with carrot cake. The icing-cake ratio was a little high. I guess I wasn't expecting the layer of icing between cake layers. On the other hand, when the woman working asked which piece I wanted, I said "corner," so that'd explain the preponderance of icing as well.

I'd eat them both again, although I probably wouldn't order the sandwich again. But that's only because I know you can't go wrong with the quiche and its accompanying salad. There's a patio out back, and it'll be nice to sit out there the next time I'm not in a hurry. The service is always friendly, and usually efficient. I'll probably be back this weekend.

A note on Homespun's desserts: The Nutella-cherry bread pudding I made for New Year's was a ripoff of their chocolate-cherry bread pudding. I've also made my version of their caramel-apple BP. They've had ginger-pear BP too, and while it was good, I don't think I'll be trying to replicate it any time soon. Just Sunday, B and I had a lemon tart and chocolate espresso cookie. Next time I'll try to take pictures before Leo laps up the last crumbs (of everything but the chocolate, of course).

P.S. - This awesome plate was among kitchenesque Xmas gifts from B:
I love this plate for everything...

New year, new (well, two months old) kitchen, new blog post

The first things I unpacked? Wine glasses and Larousse Gastronomique, parting gifts from my Trib family...


Despite the kinda-success of my actual resolution of cooking dishes from a different country every week, execution of the blogging portion (can't remember if that was part of the resolution) SUCKED.

Since reading so many stunningly beautiful food blogs, with amazing photos, it has become really hard to post my lo-res camera phone pictures. It's like, why bother? Everyone's done this, and they've done it prettier. And it's been intimidating to try and catch up on the backlog of projects - I just realized that today, January 5th, it's been one year since the Italian kickoff. Unbelievable.

I moved again November 1 to a great apartment in a great town, and have been cooking a pretty fair amount with the boyfriend, B. He loves to cook and eat as much as I do, except he's a little more adventurous and a little more confident that his adventures will turn out tasty. (He's usually right.) He makes the best breakfast burritos ever.

He and I hosted Thanksgiving, and his parents and brother came down. We made these caramelized root vegetables (sans dried currant sauce, which sounds pretty damn good), two pumpkin pies and an apple pie, and a cranberry relish, whose recipe I got from my Aunt Judy last December when my family organized a "Chris-giving" during one of my rare trips back to SD. There's nothing like Christmas by the beach... (Really, this is where I grew up. That place is a block and a half from the beach.)

This blog kicked off with a little bit of a yoga tirade, and although my passion for it hasn't dropped off, my practice certainly has. Without that point of reference, I never would have gotten where I am today, physically/geographically and mentally. I've been to two classes since moving to Beacon. This first one I did in a studio in six months (maybe more) was on Thanksgiving Day. It was for my friends and family who helped me get to this point too. Cheesy, but true.

I know I always say this, but... Updates to come. I promise. They're already in a draft post. For now, though, I need to do some groceries. :)


Nutella bread pudding, again, but this time with dried cherries! For New Year's Day brunch in Ithaca with Katie and Jon.