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A Good Weekend

Not a bad weekend, all in all. There was a minimum of running around madly, and a good dose of leisure and relaxation. Another plus: I finally finished a project that I’ve been working on for a couple of months.

Actually, I’m a little surprised that I did finish it, given how many half-started projects I’ve had over the years. While my brain knows that working a little bit regularly can get a job done, eventually, my gut has never made that connection. So I get frustrated, or (more often) distracted by a shinier project and the old one is (temporarily, I tell myself) abandoned.

Here it is:A useful use of all those scraps of brightly colored artisanal paper that I’ve been hoarding all these years.

Saturday I went to a jewelry demonstration, which was fun. I didn’t buy anything, although there were a few pieces that I liked. The problem was, the math. The games are fun, the jewelry nice to look at and imagine buying, and the sales spiel not too intrusive. But during the part when the hostess says “if you sell $1000 dollars worth at your party, you earn $500”, I immediately think,

“they can make a profit if they sold the pieces at 50% off”

and when she adds all the other ways to get discounts and benefits … I’m left thinking that the pieces are almost certainly priced at least 300% cost. Not to mention the prices do not include shipping (likely high) or tax. So a piece that is already nudging past what I’m willing to pay at, say $30, would probably end up costing me about $40 – and the total cost to make it is probably at about $10-15 …

Which is why I’ll go to a demonstration, enjoy a demonstration, but never buy at a demonstration.I also spent some quality time this morning starting on the mighty, mighty Christmas card project, over some buttermilk pancakes and Sarah McLachlan. We’ll see how I do this year? Bets, anyone? ☺

A not so relaxing day

Today I was supposed to meet friends for brunch in Philly. Unfortunately, for the first time in 15 years, I locked myself out of the apartment. A call to my apartment management’s emergency number confirmed that a lock-out is not considered an emergency and they couldn’t help – I’d have to call a locksmith. (While my apartment management is great for repairs, etc. during the week, their absolute insistence on not working on the weekend is very irritating.) The police also could not help, and suggested that I either call a locksmith or the fire department (to break in).

I opted for the locksmith, and spent a not so lovely hour sitting on my front stoop staring at my psychotic pumpkin while I waited for the locksmith to arrive. (My apartment management also could not recommend a locksmith, so I was left with calling 411)

In the end, it took the fella about 3 minutes to pick my lock. And cost me $149. I’d opted for a locksmith, because I’d imagined it would be cheaper than the repairs necessary to fix a broken window. Next time, I’ll break a window. Actually, next time I’ll call a cab to take me to work to pick up a spare set of keys.

At which point, my friends had just received their food. I almost didn’t go in to join them. The only reason I did, was that I felt certain that I’d end up spending the day nursing my annoyance until it thoroughly ruined my day. Andrew very kindly went through the menu and found a selection of things he thought I’d like (good job Andrew!) and almost as soon as I sat down I was given:
Cafe Cuba Libre: Cuban coffee with steamed coconut milk.
Torta de Cangrejo Benedict :
Jumbo lump crabmeat and potato cakes, poached eggs, avocado mash. Tomato Hollandaise sauce.

Yum!

And because Mike is in Germany, emphatically not living it up, Kristin brought him in absentia:

Of course, we mean to taunt him with it.

Now, if my ipod will turn up, I’d be more relaxed. But I’ve looked for it everywhere and don’t have a good feeling about it. Fingers crossed.

Jack O'Lantern

Well, it’s that time of year again, and on Friday we had our annual Jack O’Lantern contest. As a member of the social committee, (hmmm. Brownbag committee, check; Sustainability Club, check; Social committee, check; Office Art committee, check – I seriously need to cut back on contributing) I felt obligated to participate.

And it’s not like the idea of carving a pumpkin is unappealing.

However, this year I was way busy at work, working long days and fighting off a migraine almost everyday this past week (unfortunately triggered partially by sleep disruption), my energy levels just were not where they should have been.

In fact, I should have given up on the idea of competing. But I’d already bought the pumpkin, so I stayed up late (see earlier note re; migraine triggers = STUPID) to do my part.

I’d also forgotten how long it takes just to gut the damn thing (and it was a big pumpkin), especially as I love to make pumpkin seeds later. So this year’s effort took about 1 ½ hours – 1 hour of which was spent gutting the monster and the last half hour was spent wishing it was done.

Not a magic formula for success and I won the booby prize for next-to-last.

Sigh. Next year I’ll try to remember to a) buy a pumpkin carving kit, and b) spread the job over two days.

Pumpkin Cake

Last year for Andrew’s Birthday, I’d wanted to make a chocolate-pumpkin cake that Mom had made for my birthday when I was in grade school and that I’d really loved. So I searched for a recipe for chocolate pumpkin cake – but being in a rush didn’t read through it all the way and it turned out to be a recipe for pumpkin cake with chocolate garnish.

Not bad, but not great and not at all what I had intended.

So this year I found an actual pumpkin-chocolate cake recipe and made a pumpkin cake (but overdid it a bit with the food coloring in the frosting, which scared people off ….)

Playing Catch-up

Oh my goodness, have I been delinquent about keeping up with this blog. My intentions are to get better – I’ve been taking photos and have ideas for posts, but they keep piling up in my to-be-written list … and then never get written. The more I have in my to-be-written list, the further behind I seem, and the less likely I am to just do it.

So today I’m going to clean house. There is no earthly reason I have to write every idea I have so I’m just going to clear the decks with some summaries:

1. I did finally make the egg-yolk ravioli. Thoughts: the homemade ricotta a definite improvement over store-bought, the brown butter and excellent accent, the yolk … didn’t add much
2. Early in the summer I bought sunflowers at the farmer’s market, after first assuring myself they would last and I could care for the cut blooms by talking with the booth manager. She said they would last a week. They lasted 4 days. They were beautiful, but I’m not buying any more.
3. I love peaches, but am very allergic to them raw. When it was peak peach season in New Jersey, I bought loads, grilled them (on my George Foreman, we’re not permitted “real” grills where I live) and froze some and put others in yoghurt.
4. On Saturday I went into Philly on a brilliant day – blue skies, puffy white clouds, clear air … the kind of day children draw in kindergarten but seldom occur in real life. So I took some lovely photos of the freshly painted Ben Franklin Bridge
5. In peak tomato season, I went hog-wild. I was disappointed by the tomatoes I bought at the Farmer’s Market, which were mealy and tasteless and, if anything, worse than those found in a winter supermarket. So I bought heirloom tomatoes from Whole Foods and gorged.
6. A co-worker had been swamped by the over-abundant generosity of his neighbor’s bounty and brought me a pile of excellent home-grown tomatoes, bell peppers, chili peppers, and bonnet-peppers. I made SPICY gazpacho. Yum!
7. I drove up to Rensselaer (yay RPI) but not to Troy, for a proposal site walk – at one of the New Jersey Turnpike rest stops, the women’s restroom was beautiful!
8. In late September I attended the National Geographic Traveler’s photography seminar, “Putting the WOW in Your Nature & Outdoor Photography” with Michael Melford and Eddie Soloway. It was fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, the Beineke library (which I’d remembered from when I was touring potential graduate programs) was closed ☹ 9. And last weekend I went to Trish and Chris’s wedding! Gorgeous weather and it was beautiful. Ate too much though.

Black Walnuts

“That Squirrel has a lime!”

Mom, Dad, and I are on the porch having lunch when I spy a squirrel bounding across the lawn with a green sphere in its mouth, obscuring my view of most of it’s head. A lime doesn’t make much sense, but I couldn’t imagine what else it could be.

Mom gets up to look, “That’s not a lime, that’s a walnut”

There’s a moment of silence. A walnut seems even less likely than a lime.

“Where would it get a walnut?”

“We have a black walnut tree” Mom points off to one side, high on the bank.

I have a hard time parsing the fact that I didn’t know that we had a walnut tree in the backyard of the house I grew up in. In fact, I still am struggling with the thought. Maybe Mom planted it after I went to college. Maybe.

Later, I go out and look. The trunk is a good eight inches across so it wasn’t planted terribly recently and perhaps it wasn’t mature enough to bear fruit when I lived here. Or I was just oblivious.

Mom tells me that they’d (her family) would gather up the walnuts, let the flesh dry out, crack them open, and her father would drive over them to crack them open. I’m fascinated.

Later, when we’re in the garage returning from a pleasant walk, I see two green spheres lying on a shelf next to two black and decrepit balls and I realize that Mom’s been sporadically gathering a few of these walnuts for years and I’d never thought to question the odd things she’d collect in the garage.

This was an obvious time to experiment. I open the dried black walnuts easily with a hammer and am disappointed to find them hollow and empty. One offers promise with black meat (see picture), which makes sense in my head as Mom said it was a Black walnut, but there is no meat inside. The green walnut offers real meat – and was harder to crack open than I’d imagined. Suddenly driving a car over it doesn’t seem to be as much overkill as I’d imagined.

In fact, according to Wikipedia, Mom’s account is half-right and half-wrong – but the opposite halves than I’d supposed. The husk is best removed when green and not dried, for the best flavor. But a common method for removing the husk is to roll the nut on a hard surface like a driveway – commercial huskers use a car tire rotating against a metal mesh.

I also learn, too late, that the juice from the husk is yellow brown at first and quickly oxidizes to a deep black green color and leave stains on hands and clothing. I now have literally, but not figuratively, green thumbs. And filthy looking thumbnails.

- Updated later –
We put 3 green walnuts in the drive before heading out to dinner (Kudos to me for hitting all three!). The results:
• One crushed, walnut and all
• One husk crushed, walnut shell intact and laying amongst the mush of husk like a yolk amidst white
• One husk crushed, walnut shell expelled like a spit watermelon seed, found feet away.
We’ll let the two recovered shells dry out and taste the walnut next month.

Nasty Yoghurt

I jinxed myself – I tried to experiment with coffee yoghurt (no recipe) and brought it in to work for breakfast.

Blech! Eeewwww! Nasty!

There’s no sense in going into everything I did wrong … but I’m in no hurry to try again.

Eeewwwww!

Yoghurt

I know, I've been delinquent in my posting. But I think that I'm ready to get back into the swing of things and may shortly choose a blog platform and stop this double-posting thing, which is a real pain.

I held out for 3 months, but in the end I gave way. In late May I visited friends who introduced me to their yoghurt maker. Despite not being a regular eater of yogurt (I generally find it both too tart if plain and far too sweet if flavored), and not in any way a fan of single-use kitchen items, or anything to clutter the counter, I wanted one. But the yoghurt she served me was good, and I need a better source of dairy than cheese, and I’m trying to do better about eating breakfast, and …

Enough with the excuses. After 3 months of wanting one, I finally figured that I must really want one and I bought one:

Impulse buys are often mistakes. Buying something I’ve wanted more than a few months, is less often a mistake. So far – no mistake. I’ve had more yogurt in the past two weeks than I think I’ve had in the past three years, and have yet to get sick of it! I’m much more interested in breakfast, and have a sensible dessert option too!

Ricotta

Saturday I made homemade ricotta.

OMG, that was easy, and so divine! I took the recipe from From Argentina with Love

but she modified it from Michael Chiarello's Casual Cooking and Heidi Swanson has virtually the same recipe at 101 Cookbooks, so it’s pretty bog standard. All that you need is whole milk and buttermilk (4:1), cheesecloth, a strainer, a pot, and a candy thermometer – and I’m thinking that I won’t need the candy thermometer next time, now that I know what it should look like. I made mine using 1 quart of milk (4 cups) and ended up with about a cup of ricotta.

Why did I make ricotta? I’ll give you a hint:
Michael Ruhlman and cook eat FRET

Baba Ganouch

I’m Addicted. I again bought eggplants at the Farmer’s Market (Again over-buying), this time with the intention of making Baba Ganouch.

I love the way it feels to say that word:
Baba Ganouch. Baba Ganouch. Baba Ganouch.

I believe it hails from the Mideast in the area of Syria and Turkey – and the ingredients certainly back it up: eggplant, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, seasonings …

I love eggplant, and yet I’ve never made Baba Ganouch. It also would not have occurred to me to char the eggplants first, until I read David Liebovitz’s method. (Though it being nearly 90 degrees here, I cheated and used the microwave to finish cooking the eggplant). I had bought Sicilian eggplants and these looked as though they had been grown white, and the farmer later ran out in the dead of night and painted it aubergine.

I also used cilantro and not parsley because I adore cilantro and am not too fond of parsley.

Yum!

On a related note, I’ve had a recipe cut out from Martha Stewart Living magazine on my fridge forever (months, anyway) for parchment bread (It’s more cracker than bread), which looked too simple to be real, but if it worked, would be perfect for the Baba Ganouch.

Baba Ganouch. Baba Ganouch. Baba Ganouch.

It really is incredibly easy – if you have a pasta machine and a pizza stone. I expect it’s more difficult if you need to roll it out by hand. Fabulous! I am absolutely, 100% making this again.

Leftovers (part II)

I bought some Red Chard at the Farmer’s market. Chard is in the beet family, which explains why I like it almost as much as beet greens. To me, beet greens have a stronger, more earthy, flavor than chard. On the other hand, I can get two good meals out of a bunch of chard where a bunch of beets inevitably wishing that I had more beet greens and fewer beets …

Cooking it is fairly straight forward: parboil and then sauté with some garlic, separating the stalks from the leaves as the stalks require a little more cooking. I think that I may have over-cooked the stalks in this case …

To make use of the rest of my roast chicken, I made chicken-pot-pies (individual portions) using a recipe from Delia Smith which called for sharp cheddar and cayenne in the sauce (excellent). As usual, I went a little overboard and took the crust from a different recipe, one that called for cream cheese.

To be honest, I’m not sure that the cream-cheese added anything to the crust, except in the unhealthy sense. On the other hand, it didn’t take anything away, either, but I don’t suppose I’ll go to the trouble of making it again.

Leftovers (part I)

The first weekend (my first, back from vacation), I went totally hog wild and bought far too many fresh vegetables, and a small chicken. I roasted the chicken a la Nigel Slater. It was fantastic - but I obviously could not eat even a small chicken in one sitting.

(slight aside: his book, Appetite, is one of my all time favorite cookbooks. Anne Fadiman wrote an essay in her book, Ex Libris, click here for a review titled “Never Do That to a Book” in which she broke bibliophiles into two categories: courtly lovers and carnal lovers. Since reading it, I have at unexpected moments found myself making the same division. Nigel Slater is a carnal lover of food. I am a courtly lover of books, but a carnal lover of food.).

This past weekend, in an ineffective attempt to rein in my buying impulses, I brought a shopping list:

• Arugula
• Swiss Chard
• Leeks

Items not on the list, but bought nonetheless was:

• Eggplant (they just looked soooo good)
• Zucchini (but, they go so well with eggplant)
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Tarragon
• Peaches
  

Sigh. Of the items that I bought, only a third had been my intention.

I began with an omelet – must keep up my strength for the cooking ahead – and then, having realized once I got home that if I didn’t cook some of the vegetables immediately, they’d go soft and unpleasant before I did, I grilled them on my George Foreman grill (My apartment does not permit gas or coal grills, and the Foreman works very well for vegetables. And “Panini”)

Then I moved on to other things.

Heat

It has been (or so the radio tells me) seven straight days where it has reached over 90˚F. Blech. So yesterday seemed like the perfect time to go see a movie (gasp, on a work night!). This is the first movie I’ve seen since Christmas.

There are a lot of fun movies out or coming out soon that I’ve heard good things about – which of these brought me to the theater?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

I enjoyed it – most particularly Guillermo del Toro’s fantastic imagination, and his horrifying re-interpretation of tooth-fairies and the bizarrely-eyed seer beneath Ireland. Nonetheless, I think that the first movie (excellent) was the better film. There was more tension between characters, more for the viewer to figure out on their own, and less certainty that the right people would all win out in the end. In short, I think the first film was the smarter of the two.

Nonetheless, I consider it money well spent.

Okay. I’m back now

I think.

It took longer than I expected (which is no great surprise, as the inner me often expects the unreasonable) to get back into the swing of my “real” life and catch-up with all the little chores that keep life moving smoothly and cleanly.

As dearly as I loved eating on my vacation (oh, seafood!), I’ve missed eating more lightly and cooking. Saturday I went to the Farmer’s market before temperatures crested 90˚F and collected some fresh produce.

Despite a list, I still bought more than I can rationally expect to eat in a week and I spent much of the weekend cooking.

Bliss.

I also started going through my vacation photos. I think that I may end up spending as much time going through them as I did actually on vacation. I also wish that I’d spent the time I’d intended playing with my new camera before I left. Then again, I suppose that I would never have immersed myself in playing with it the way that I did while I was away, so it may be just as well. …

I took over 1200 photos. Oh, the painful lesson of a digital camera and a big memory card …

(confession: I’m actually really enjoying going through all these photos ..)

I'm back!

I arrived back at home at about 2 am Tuesday morning and returned to work on Wednesday. I heard some bad news about a good friend, and with jet lag and another bridal shower this weekend and still not being unpacked, it may take a little bit before any details of my trip get typed in – or photos sorted through.

I will say that I had a fantastic time.

And ate, really, an embarrassment of oysters.

So I’m craving light food now. Specifically lots and lots of vegetables. Dinner tonight was stolen from Eric Ripert: broiled zucchini slices topped with hard cheese (again with the Prima Donna) and drizzled with a basalmic glaze. Tasty!

Tasty! I had it with a glass of Cavit Riesling, which I’m discovering that I like quite a lot.

*Prima Donna is a mild cow's milk cheese made in the style of a Dutch Gouda. As compared to a four- or six-year Gouda, Prima Donna has a distinctly softer, subtler flavor. It has an ivory rind with slight rose blush; bright, crunchy texture; and sweet, nutty flavor with a distinct caramel aftertaste. Pair Prima Donna with bigger reds such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Zinfandel.

Gazpacho

I started the famous Gazpacho last night, as you can see from the photo. Immortalized in digital format, one can see what work I’m willing to give myself to play around with taking pictures – the recipe simply calls for mixing all the ingredients together. Look at all those extra dishes. Clearly the honeymoon is still on for the camera.


I thought I’d keep with the recipe – but didn’t include the thyme (I forgot) and used a purchased balsamic glaze instead of making my own (I already had it)

After marinating overnight, running through the blender and sieve, I had it for dinner with a George Foreman ‘panini’ made with some remaining tomato, pesto, and mozzarella.


Yowza Yum!


And oh so easy ....

Next week: VACATION!

And next Friday I’ll float away on vacation...

This weekend I’m going to be trying to both run around madly trying to prepare for my vacation next week (Oregon and Washington) and relax and feel better rested. Two somewhat incompatible goals, entirely within character for me.

Preparing for my vacation means some shopping, laundry, cleaning the apartment for my return, packing, the fun of making some incipient plans for what I intend to do, and playing around with my camera so that I have a better idea of what I am doing when I’m away.

Not that I haven’t been playing around with it just about daily, but I’ll confess to doing mostly fun play, and not the constructive play that will help me learn more about its features.

Relaxing and feeling better rested … I’ll confess to not having many energized and well-rested feeling days this year. This is, I think, my own damn fault. I burned myself out with the marathon last year and have totally slacked off on getting regular exercise. I’ve also been greedy with my evening classes this year (watercolor and pottery) – which I’ve enjoyed immensely but they have meant more late nights and less “me” time. But I think this term has been fairly proouctive

So my aim in relaxing and feeling better rested is to go to bed early, sleep in, exercise some, and spend some quiet time reading and in introspection. And making some gazpacho from The French Laundry cookbook which I’ve borrowed from the library, inspired by the French Laundry at Home blog.

And thinking about my resolutions. I need goals.

Father's Day

Last weekend I drove up to Boston for Father’s day. For Mother’s day, K (my brother) and I helped my parents sort through and clean out the attic. I persuaded Mom that it made more sense to move the garage sale stuff down to the garage on Father’s day, closer to when the garage sale would be held, so that the basement would remain at least partially navigable. So K and I spent most of Saturday setting up the garage for the garage sale and cleaning out the attic and basement and I gave myself a blister vacuuming out K’s car (and my own).

My Dad has a moderately well-sized collection of slides taken during his various travels – including his trip around the world before he married my Mom (I should say just before – he proposed and went on this months-long trip leaving Mom wondering if they really were getting married. Before you think this is callous, I’ll point out that mom went on a two-week trip to Greece before their wedding without him so she was hardly pining). He’s been looking into ways to make these slides digital and is hoping to find something satisfactory that he can do at home somewhat cheaper than sending them all out. So we did some experiments with my taking pictures with my new camera of the slides projected on a wall:

This was taken when many Japanese women still wore kimono – looking at this picture temporarily gives me a very different perception of time.

While not perfect, I think it does a reasonably good job and can be done relatively quickly for free. He’s going to think about it.



Sunday we met K and his girlfriend KH at Mary Cheung’s, our favorite place for Dim Sum. Naturally I brought my new camera, and KH has recently resolved to take a picture a day so there was a lot of snapping of pictures.

Curiously enough, A, the boy I went to the Prom with, whose parents still live down the street from mine, was at the next table with K’s best friend from High school. It’s a small world, where you grew up.