I came in the house today with a handful of gardeny things for supper. Jonah met me at the door, a bamboo pole in one hand and some bailing twine in the other. "Here, Mom, you get this one..." he said, hold the twine out to me, "...and we'll fight! Ready..."
Hm. Seems he has the advantage in this match...
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Guessing Game
Just thought I'd share this-- My Mom has a fun guessing game contest going on right now at her blog! Go check it out and give it your best shot!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
This Is a Post About Beer
Er... Scratch that. It's a post about immitation beer. No wait, that's not even right. "Wannabe?" "Fake?" "That which should not even bare the name 'beer'?" Something like that.
Beer is a bit of a luxury around here because it's not exactly a necessary grocery item (oh, be quiet, Kris). For this reason, I'm making plans for a little homebrew operation, but that's another post for another time.
See, I like beer. Not as fanatically as my brothers like it, but I do. Not even as an everyday thing, and not even a whole beer most of the time. Wimpy as that may sound, the fact is, I like to have it with food, and my stomach is simply not large enough to hold my meal and a whole 12 or 16 ounce beer. That may be because when I have beer, I want something substantial. None of that fizzy pee-water stuff for me. Nathan teases me that I like a beer that I can stick a fork in. Something like this:
That was an Espresso stout that I had with my dear friend and sister-in-law, Loraine, while visiting in Oregon a while ago. Yes, a 10-ounce glass. Perfect.
And yeah... another post for another time.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
Yesterday, I held a "jam session" --no, not the music kind, but rather the actual "jam" kind... you know berries, sugar, pectin? Jam.-- here at my house with two other families. After spending the day whirling berries in the food processor and canning the result, we made pizza to feed our families. This pizza, with it's bubbly, cripsy, garlic-oiled sourdough crust, was just calling out for beer. So I sent Nathan and another guy on a beer-run. They went to the nearest tiny-town, where the choices are, well... limited.
Here's what they came back with:
(Yeah, that's right. Read it again. Bask in my glorious non-photoshop skilz!)
This is something I had never tried before.
This is something I really never had the inclination to try.
But we were eating pizza, after all, and good pizza. And this called for beer.
BEER, I tell you.
So I opened it up, and took a swig.
And I was instantly transported... back... back in time....
Back to washing endless dishes in my Mom's kitchen. Seems like I was always on KP duty...
Becuase, I'm telling ya... this stuff tastes like Dawn.
Yeah, ya know, the dish soap?
No mistaking it. I sip that stuff and get a definite whiff of "brother blowing a handful of soap suds in my face."
Or that time when I was really little and Kristin emptied the entire bottle of Dawn into our bathtub and we splashed until we had mountains in of bubbles over our heads and then Kristin started crying because he got soap in his eyes...
Are those the things the fine folks at Anheuser-Busch want me to be remembering while I drink their so-called "beer?"
I mean, come on. It doesn't taste even remotely like lime. Did someone forget to rinse the brewing equipment, again?
I wasn't imagining it, either. Everyone at the table agreed that it tastes distinctly like Dawn.
Ick. Give me a good, dark, microbrew anyday.
Beer is a bit of a luxury around here because it's not exactly a necessary grocery item (oh, be quiet, Kris). For this reason, I'm making plans for a little homebrew operation, but that's another post for another time.
See, I like beer. Not as fanatically as my brothers like it, but I do. Not even as an everyday thing, and not even a whole beer most of the time. Wimpy as that may sound, the fact is, I like to have it with food, and my stomach is simply not large enough to hold my meal and a whole 12 or 16 ounce beer. That may be because when I have beer, I want something substantial. None of that fizzy pee-water stuff for me. Nathan teases me that I like a beer that I can stick a fork in. Something like this:
That was an Espresso stout that I had with my dear friend and sister-in-law, Loraine, while visiting in Oregon a while ago. Yes, a 10-ounce glass. Perfect.
And yeah... another post for another time.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
Yesterday, I held a "jam session" --no, not the music kind, but rather the actual "jam" kind... you know berries, sugar, pectin? Jam.-- here at my house with two other families. After spending the day whirling berries in the food processor and canning the result, we made pizza to feed our families. This pizza, with it's bubbly, cripsy, garlic-oiled sourdough crust, was just calling out for beer. So I sent Nathan and another guy on a beer-run. They went to the nearest tiny-town, where the choices are, well... limited.
Here's what they came back with:
(Yeah, that's right. Read it again. Bask in my glorious non-photoshop skilz!)
This is something I had never tried before.
This is something I really never had the inclination to try.
But we were eating pizza, after all, and good pizza. And this called for beer.
BEER, I tell you.
So I opened it up, and took a swig.
And I was instantly transported... back... back in time....
Back to washing endless dishes in my Mom's kitchen. Seems like I was always on KP duty...
Becuase, I'm telling ya... this stuff tastes like Dawn.
Yeah, ya know, the dish soap?
No mistaking it. I sip that stuff and get a definite whiff of "brother blowing a handful of soap suds in my face."
Or that time when I was really little and Kristin emptied the entire bottle of Dawn into our bathtub and we splashed until we had mountains in of bubbles over our heads and then Kristin started crying because he got soap in his eyes...
Are those the things the fine folks at Anheuser-Busch want me to be remembering while I drink their so-called "beer?"
I mean, come on. It doesn't taste even remotely like lime. Did someone forget to rinse the brewing equipment, again?
I wasn't imagining it, either. Everyone at the table agreed that it tastes distinctly like Dawn.
Ick. Give me a good, dark, microbrew anyday.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Battling the Enemy
I always get a little alarmed when I see squash leaves that look shrively, like this:
...instead of perky and happy with life, like this:
At first, I though it could be lack of water, since we seem to be going into a drought again. But then I noticed that it was only one vine that was looking sad, and it was not just a "little wilty."
I knew right away who to blame.
My enemy.
My arch-nemesis.
My greatest garden guerrilla.
That abundant adversary.
That deep defiler.
August assailant!
Inordinate invader.
Prominent PEST!
ATTACKER OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND WONDERFUL AND DELICIOUS IN MY GARDEN!!!!
Okay, maybe not all things. Pretty much just the winter squash.
But it is still representative of the numerous bugs that plague my precious crops.
So it pretty much gets to bear the brunt of my wrath.
It's the squash vine borer. (Public service announcement: do not click that link unless you are feeling particularly strong of stomach. Better yet, don't do a Google image search, either.)
Yes, the grubby little squash vine borer, and I hate them with every fiber of my squash-lovin' little heart.
And I love squash an awful lot.
It's one of my very favorite vegetables. (Okay, so every vegetable is my favorite. Except celery. Yuck, bleck, bleaaaah!)
The squash vine borer has been determined to deprive me, year after year after squash-deprived year, from (one of) my favorite vegetables.
And so we are at war.
He may have one many battles, but he has not won the war.
Fortunately for you, I do not presently posses a photograph of this mangy little beast. I do have a photo of the damage one has already inflicted on one of my squash vines:
These irritating insects fly around and lay their eggs at the very base of squash plants, right at the stem where it comes out of the ground, and at various intervals for the first foot or so of the plant. The eggs hatch, and the little worm burrows into the stem where it eats, and grows and eats and grows and leaves in it's wake a weakened plant and copious amounts of nasty, yellow worm poop. Eventually, the plant has no more connection with the ground and it dies. Usually, it dies before the fruit is mature, leaving it's poor, orphaned babies to die attached to lifeless umbilical cords.
Yes, it is THAT tragic.
My main defense in the past has been to look for the nasty, yellow, worm poop and cut into the stem with a knife to find and remove the fat, white grub. Then I feed it to the chickens and laugh maniacally.
Lather, rinse, repeat through multiple worms in multiple vines.
I heap the soil over the wound to help the plant re-root. Sometime, this is successful, but sometimes it is too far gone. Sometimes, there are so many grubs that I can't possibly get them all.
I've also tried sprinkling diatomaceous earth around the base of the plant, but it washes off, and it's hard to get it on the underside of the vine where the grub is perfectly happy to bore in.
This year I laboriously wrapped the stems in old pantyhose (man, I hate that word. Ugh. Pantyhose. Shudder.) to try to keep them from getting in.
It didn't work.
I've been told I should start my plants in the house so the get an earlier start and can resist the borer.
That doesn't work, either. The borer just figures that's an even bigger and juicier plant to parasitize.
I have recently come across the thing that I think will be key to my victory over this pest. Knowledge is power, people, and now I KNOW SOMETHING. I hope I have not learned it too late for this year (though I fear it's close, as evidenced by the damaged plant in the photo above...).
Squash vines will form roots at the leaf nodes along the stems. If I heap soil over the vines at intervals, they will grow extra roots to support the plants and keep the fruit growing even after the borer has killed the base of the plant.
Brilliant, I tell you, BRILLIANT!!!!
MuWAAAAH-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!
This technique is a little difficult to use now that the plants are so big and tangled and the ground is so hard from lack of rain. Also, I'm not sure if there is time for them to grow adequate roots before the borers take over.
But I'm still gonna give it my best shot.
Even if I don't have complete victory this time, it's so close... I can just taste it.
...instead of perky and happy with life, like this:
At first, I though it could be lack of water, since we seem to be going into a drought again. But then I noticed that it was only one vine that was looking sad, and it was not just a "little wilty."
I knew right away who to blame.
My enemy.
My arch-nemesis.
My greatest garden guerrilla.
That abundant adversary.
That deep defiler.
August assailant!
Inordinate invader.
Prominent PEST!
ATTACKER OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND WONDERFUL AND DELICIOUS IN MY GARDEN!!!!
Okay, maybe not all things. Pretty much just the winter squash.
But it is still representative of the numerous bugs that plague my precious crops.
So it pretty much gets to bear the brunt of my wrath.
It's the squash vine borer. (Public service announcement: do not click that link unless you are feeling particularly strong of stomach. Better yet, don't do a Google image search, either.)
Yes, the grubby little squash vine borer, and I hate them with every fiber of my squash-lovin' little heart.
And I love squash an awful lot.
It's one of my very favorite vegetables. (Okay, so every vegetable is my favorite. Except celery. Yuck, bleck, bleaaaah!)
The squash vine borer has been determined to deprive me, year after year after squash-deprived year, from (one of) my favorite vegetables.
And so we are at war.
He may have one many battles, but he has not won the war.
Fortunately for you, I do not presently posses a photograph of this mangy little beast. I do have a photo of the damage one has already inflicted on one of my squash vines:
These irritating insects fly around and lay their eggs at the very base of squash plants, right at the stem where it comes out of the ground, and at various intervals for the first foot or so of the plant. The eggs hatch, and the little worm burrows into the stem where it eats, and grows and eats and grows and leaves in it's wake a weakened plant and copious amounts of nasty, yellow worm poop. Eventually, the plant has no more connection with the ground and it dies. Usually, it dies before the fruit is mature, leaving it's poor, orphaned babies to die attached to lifeless umbilical cords.
Yes, it is THAT tragic.
My main defense in the past has been to look for the nasty, yellow, worm poop and cut into the stem with a knife to find and remove the fat, white grub. Then I feed it to the chickens and laugh maniacally.
Lather, rinse, repeat through multiple worms in multiple vines.
I heap the soil over the wound to help the plant re-root. Sometime, this is successful, but sometimes it is too far gone. Sometimes, there are so many grubs that I can't possibly get them all.
I've also tried sprinkling diatomaceous earth around the base of the plant, but it washes off, and it's hard to get it on the underside of the vine where the grub is perfectly happy to bore in.
This year I laboriously wrapped the stems in old pantyhose (man, I hate that word. Ugh. Pantyhose. Shudder.) to try to keep them from getting in.
It didn't work.
I've been told I should start my plants in the house so the get an earlier start and can resist the borer.
That doesn't work, either. The borer just figures that's an even bigger and juicier plant to parasitize.
I have recently come across the thing that I think will be key to my victory over this pest. Knowledge is power, people, and now I KNOW SOMETHING. I hope I have not learned it too late for this year (though I fear it's close, as evidenced by the damaged plant in the photo above...).
Squash vines will form roots at the leaf nodes along the stems. If I heap soil over the vines at intervals, they will grow extra roots to support the plants and keep the fruit growing even after the borer has killed the base of the plant.
Brilliant, I tell you, BRILLIANT!!!!
MuWAAAAH-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!
This technique is a little difficult to use now that the plants are so big and tangled and the ground is so hard from lack of rain. Also, I'm not sure if there is time for them to grow adequate roots before the borers take over.
But I'm still gonna give it my best shot.
Even if I don't have complete victory this time, it's so close... I can just taste it.
Summer Simplicity
Homemade kefir (from our very own goat milk!) +fresh, wild, black raspberries + honey from our neighbor's bees + an egg from our chickens this morning + a little cream to boost the healthy-fat quotient = yummy, super-nutritious, easy, oh and, YUMMY lunch.
Mmmm... It's a good way to have plenty of energy to get through the rest of my day after being up waaaay too late last night working on a website, with a big long list of things to accomplish today...
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Something Rustling in the Bushes
Hey, why is that little tree rustling around?
Why... it's a...
...A face peeking out!
Maybe it's an Enting.
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Idot's Guide to Artisan Flat Bread
I've never done a cooking tutorial on this blog (uh... that I can remember anyway). It's just not really my style, I guess. You can get that at any number of food-related blogs. I have been asked to do them before, however, so I'll dip my feet in the water with a quick demonstration of pita bread. I make all our own bread products, partly because I enjoy it, partly because it's healthier (generally I use soaked or sprouted freshly ground flour), and also because I never go to the store.
Just to show you how lame I am at this food-demo thing, I'm not going to post a recipe.
Booo! Hisssss! Get off the stage!!!
Hey, quit with the tomatoes, alright?
See the thing is, I don't really use recipes very much. Well, I do for my sourdough bread, but only because I'm trying for a consistent product, and it's a more difficult bread. Other breads? I just make it up. I have a pretty good idea of proportions and I just throw something together. When I do use a recipe, I'm not known for my measuring skills. I'm kinda lazy that way...
Pita bread doesn't need a special dough. Just a basic, softish bread dough-- flour of your choice, water, yeast, salt, butter, honey. I work in proportions of flour (don't worry, not even I really understand it). This dough was based in 6 cups of fresh ground hard white wheat flour.
So, step 1. Mix the dough, let rise until doubled, punch down, turn out of the bowl onto a floured surface. (Yeah, that's all one step. Told you I was lousy at this. Look, that's the way most breads start, okay?)
2. Divide the dough in pieces and roll the pieces gently into roughly 3 inch balls. Let them rest a few minutes so that the gluten will relax and you don't spin your wheels trying to roll dough that just pulls back.
3. Put dough bowl into sink to soak (who really wants to chip dried dough out of a bowl when it's time to wash dishes?) right next to this morning's oatmeal pan and the nasty pan still soaking from last night, left from cooking a pile of old cow ribs.
4. Begin rolling dough balls into rounds. Be sure to use a fancy French tapered rolling pin because you will feel all hoity-toity and besides, that is the only way to be artisan-- use French stuff.
5. Let the rounds rest on the sheet pan for a few minutes, then put them right on the bottom of a very hot (450) oven, that you preheated a while ago, but I forgot to tell you to do earlier.
(You know that excuse some people have for not cleaning their ovens because "no one ever sees inside the oven anyway."? Well, I just blew that one out of the water, didn't I? Now the whole internet has seen the inside of my oven, complete with dribbled bits of burned pie filling and old cow juice.)
6. Set the timer for 3 minutes.
7. After 3 minutes, move the pan up to the top rack, and put another sheet pan of pitas on the bottom.
8. After three minutes, remove the first pan, and move the second to the top rack, adding another pan-full to the bottom, if you have one ready, which I didn't, and time for three minutes.
9. Scrape the crusty bits from the pan and taste.
10. Slap forehead as you wonder (now that you already have 6 pitas fully baked) what kind of idiot would leave the salt out of the pita dough?
(What about not using a recipe? Oh, shut up.)
11. Blame it on the Royal Dough Taster for not allerting you to a problem with the dough.
(Do you like raw bread dough? I think it's disgusting. I love cookie dough, but bread dough? Yuk! Jonah loves it.)
12. Wonder why the Royal Dough Taster is wearing a sweat shirt and sweat pants when it's 85 degrees outside with 100% humidity and the oven on.
13. Take all those beautiful pitas you've already rolled out...
14. ...and pile them all up, spinkling salt between each layer, in futile attempt to make them into something useful.
15. Gnash your teeth and remind yourself that you've tried this before and it is just never quite the same as remembering the salt in the first place.
16. Take your freaky claw hand (if you don't have one, get one!) and knead the salt into the dough.
17. Repeat steps 4-8 until you have a pile of less-than artisanal and slightly idiotic pita breads.
18. Put the unsalted pitas on top so that they will be used first by unsuspecting members of your household and only you will know the secret...
Just to show you how lame I am at this food-demo thing, I'm not going to post a recipe.
Booo! Hisssss! Get off the stage!!!
Hey, quit with the tomatoes, alright?
See the thing is, I don't really use recipes very much. Well, I do for my sourdough bread, but only because I'm trying for a consistent product, and it's a more difficult bread. Other breads? I just make it up. I have a pretty good idea of proportions and I just throw something together. When I do use a recipe, I'm not known for my measuring skills. I'm kinda lazy that way...
Pita bread doesn't need a special dough. Just a basic, softish bread dough-- flour of your choice, water, yeast, salt, butter, honey. I work in proportions of flour (don't worry, not even I really understand it). This dough was based in 6 cups of fresh ground hard white wheat flour.
So, step 1. Mix the dough, let rise until doubled, punch down, turn out of the bowl onto a floured surface. (Yeah, that's all one step. Told you I was lousy at this. Look, that's the way most breads start, okay?)
2. Divide the dough in pieces and roll the pieces gently into roughly 3 inch balls. Let them rest a few minutes so that the gluten will relax and you don't spin your wheels trying to roll dough that just pulls back.
3. Put dough bowl into sink to soak (who really wants to chip dried dough out of a bowl when it's time to wash dishes?) right next to this morning's oatmeal pan and the nasty pan still soaking from last night, left from cooking a pile of old cow ribs.
4. Begin rolling dough balls into rounds. Be sure to use a fancy French tapered rolling pin because you will feel all hoity-toity and besides, that is the only way to be artisan-- use French stuff.
5. Let the rounds rest on the sheet pan for a few minutes, then put them right on the bottom of a very hot (450) oven, that you preheated a while ago, but I forgot to tell you to do earlier.
(You know that excuse some people have for not cleaning their ovens because "no one ever sees inside the oven anyway."? Well, I just blew that one out of the water, didn't I? Now the whole internet has seen the inside of my oven, complete with dribbled bits of burned pie filling and old cow juice.)
6. Set the timer for 3 minutes.
7. After 3 minutes, move the pan up to the top rack, and put another sheet pan of pitas on the bottom.
8. After three minutes, remove the first pan, and move the second to the top rack, adding another pan-full to the bottom, if you have one ready, which I didn't, and time for three minutes.
9. Scrape the crusty bits from the pan and taste.
10. Slap forehead as you wonder (now that you already have 6 pitas fully baked) what kind of idiot would leave the salt out of the pita dough?
(What about not using a recipe? Oh, shut up.)
11. Blame it on the Royal Dough Taster for not allerting you to a problem with the dough.
(Do you like raw bread dough? I think it's disgusting. I love cookie dough, but bread dough? Yuk! Jonah loves it.)
12. Wonder why the Royal Dough Taster is wearing a sweat shirt and sweat pants when it's 85 degrees outside with 100% humidity and the oven on.
13. Take all those beautiful pitas you've already rolled out...
14. ...and pile them all up, spinkling salt between each layer, in futile attempt to make them into something useful.
15. Gnash your teeth and remind yourself that you've tried this before and it is just never quite the same as remembering the salt in the first place.
16. Take your freaky claw hand (if you don't have one, get one!) and knead the salt into the dough.
17. Repeat steps 4-8 until you have a pile of less-than artisanal and slightly idiotic pita breads.
18. Put the unsalted pitas on top so that they will be used first by unsuspecting members of your household and only you will know the secret...
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