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.

They're back!

Mother's Cookies Circus Animals are back, and although I hardly ever bought them, I'm happy they're once again an option.

My old pal Kathy explains it here.

While looking for a good picture of the cookies, I found this interesting note too. "Dessert first"? Sounds like a blog I should keep an eye on.

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...

BADD (bread attention deficit disorder)

Oops, I did it again.

See, we were only going to go to the grocery store, and I had a list, so it should have been an hour at the most... The dough had only risen for about two hours before, so I figured that if it was rising in the loaf pan for more than the planned 45 minutes, it'd be okay.

And it did turn out okay, after I punched the billowing mass back into the pan and baked it.

B got home from work and we turned around and headed to the store. But we were both hungry, and I had a menu from a Greek place in the car. Hannaford's can't hold a candle to gyros, pastichio and milkshakes. (Even though we only ate the gyros - he opted for Marathon beer, I got water, and the pastichio is sitting in the fridge, still untouched 24 hours later.) Plus, going shopping with a hungry boyfriend is a recipe for spending $200 on organic junk food. My least favorite thing to hear while shopping: "Ooh, this might be good." (Thing is, though, he's usually right.)

So the dough rose for at least another two hours. Maybe three? As pretty much anyone who knows me will attest, I'm not so good with those clock things. This has to be the most forgiving bread recipe EVER. See?


First stage of rising. That's a lot of flour, and my dough is always gummy. Oh well.


Not sure why I didn't take a picture immediately before this, when the dough had spilled over the pan's edges.


See? it turned out fine. And it was delicious with eggs this morning.

Alien bread

There's flour all over the kitchen.
There's flour all over me.
The apartment smells like stale beer.
(I think it's the yeast, but it could be stale beer.)
The dough is rising.

This is the fourth time I've attempted to make my BFF Jenessa's vegan bread, and I swear it turns out different every time.

Maybe it's because I'm not the most attentive dough-watcher. ...Maybe.
Last time, I let it rise about two and half hours, until it was doubled. Then the boyfriend and I wanted to go do something else, so I stuffed it into a loaf pan, beat it down, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge.

We have refrigerators to inhibit growth of cultures such as yeast, right??? Well, we got home from wherever pretty late, too late to bake the bread. I peeked into the fridge and was confronted by an angry, amoeba-"shaped" tan mass that threatened to hold the sprouts (don't laugh at me because I ♥ sprouts) hostage. The sprouts will never forgive me, because I shut the door, went to bed, and tried not to have nightmares about that horrific scene.

I had to work the next day, so I punched the dough back into the loaf pan, re-Saran-wrapped it, threw it back in the fridge, and walked away. Again. With the lives of at least a few different kinds of produce at stake.

I checked it again when I got home sometime after 1 a.m.
It had exploded. Again.
I went to bed. Again.

I probably should have known better, and just thrown it out, but I'm always game for a bit of a science experiment. So I baked it the next day. Needless to say, it was not as tasty as the first three loaves (the first time, I split the dough into two loaves like BFF says; second time, baked it all in one and it was great), but it looked amazing! This was the Sears Willis Tower of bread tops. Too bad that when I took it out of the oven, even after tapping it for that lovely hollow sound, much of the interior was doughy and gross.

I still ate the crusty parts.

Here's hoping the current loaf comes out better...

It's electric, pt. 2

this fascinated me
Originally uploaded by stephaniekg

The coffee grounds acted like this.

It's electric! (... boogie woogie woogie.)

Yesterday morning and today, I had chocolate cake (left over from B's birthday Monday) and black coffee for breakfast. Delicious. Of course, this is my weekend, so I'm not worried about the inevitable energy crash.

B, being the earlier-riser, had been the primary A.M. coffee-maker. He's mentioned it before, but not until my own recent forays into home coffee brewing have I noticed that the coffee grinder magnetizes the grounds.

Huh??

No, I'm not walking around the kitchen holding a magnet, but it seems as though when the receptacle for the grounds is pulled out of the grinder, and when the lid's removed, grounds splay out in patterns that look like the same ones metal filings make. Remember Wooly Willy? Where you drag the magnet-pen to make his beard and hair and mustache? Like that. It's kind of a pain to get coffee dust to behave.

Well, after much Googling and not-really-what-I-was-looking-for information about magnetic therapy, I found this in a review of a coffee grinder:

* Grounds receptacle builds up static charge. This is an amazing thing. I had no idea coffee beans could so convincingly mimic the properties of magnetized iron filaments, as they cling together in a lump on the wall of the plastic container. I am forever scraping them off into the coffee filter. Sometimes they take to flight, perhaps attracted by the magnetic force of the International Space Station, only to settle scatter-shot all over the counter.

Makes sense.

A review for another grinder claims that the slow bean-grinding speed doesn't magnetize the grounds. Yet another site is pro-grinder magnetization, but I can see why they'd want to conserve as much product as possible.

So now I know a little more about the science causing the Wooly Willy coffee grounds, but I'm still not sure what to do about it. I really like the grinder, and it was free. Funny thing: Until looking it up just now, I didn't know that it claimed to have an anti-static bean container.

More Googling yields this coffee-grinding nugget: The static charge can be created by the speed of the burrs when coupled with the wrong humidity and temperature.

Looks like plenty of other people have had this problem, as "static" is mentioned in more than a few coffee grinder reviews. I guess once this one dies, it'll be good to have a reference. Until then, it doesn't sound like there's a way to fix the current problem. Throwing some Downy in with the beans is not exactly appetizing.