The Cabinet of Prof. Kitty

Clubs with Me as a Member

2012-01-31T21:06:00.001-05:00

Clubs have the promise of consistency. You don't accomplish things just once, but regularly and with help and support (unless you're the only member...). However, I am also pretty fussy and impatient and do not usually do well with other people's agendas. That's why I like to start my own clubs. Here are some clubs I've founded or joined at the very beginning.

The ALS: Animal Lover's Society. I think I was the only member though I may have issued memberships to my parents. I was about 10. From what I recall, the club's main purpose was to cut out and keep pictures of animals from catalogs and flyers received in the mail. Also I did chores to raise money to send to various organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. I liked to send $5 to $10 at a time, and would get my parents to write the checks.

AAE: Americans Against Executives. I founded this with my friend Annie when I was 15. Basically we didn't like corporations and chose to express it with our logo of a fellow in a trenchcoat and hat carrying a briefcase, with a big slash over him. We believed in the free distribution of capital and goods, or something like that. We'd been reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe at the time.

STOP: Save Trees or Perish. This had something to do with hiding in trees and then jumping out at people who might want to cut them down. They weren't even endangered Redwoods or clearcutting, just average trees around the neighborhood. I have since reversed some of my feelings on this--I think it's OK to remove some trees sometimes, especially if they're not well, or if they're IN MY WAY.

Plant Club: As a grownup, my friend Erica and I went on Field Guide expeditions to explore wild plants in our area. We had 2-3 meetings that involved lying in fields with our books, taking notes, and discussing things like Brassicas and sepals.

Sewing Club: This was probably my most successful club. My friend Traci and I met a fair number of times to do sewing projects. We alternated houses. We made diaper covers, boxer shorts, quilts, placemats, gifts, languishing projects that are still not finished... We managed to keep it up even after we had children, until she moved to the other end of the state. I miss you Traci!

Book Club: This seemed like a great idea--4 smart fun women get together every month to talk about books. Except we had very different ideas about what we wanted to read. I wanted best-sellers, the "popular" books I would never pick up otherwise. Others wanted to get some classics under their belts. As an English major I had zero interest in reading Dickens ever again. Actually I didn't want to read anything published before 1990.

Mix-Tape Club: Some clever people got together via email and organized a mix-tape exchange... except everything was on CD of course. We would choose a theme, then half of us would create CDs on that theme. The best thing to come out of it was the song "Beef & Broccoli" by Immortal Technique that showed up during our fruits & veggies round. (Thanks Chad!)

Running Club: Another great idea that was not exactly a failure! I and another mommy succeeded in getting up at 6 am and running 2 miles on several occasions! However, we were not able to keep this up for long.

Winter meadow

2012-01-08T19:51:00.000-05:00

Source: angielewin.co.uk via K. on Pinterest

A few years ago, even though I had no money to spare at the time, I could not resist buying this Angie Lewin card because the design was so beautiful. I hung it at my desk and it made me happy.

Now that I'm trying out Pinterest, I'm discovering more and more Angie Lewin images, and also that I really love the look of dead Queen Anne's Lace, and dried up leathery milkweed, and prickly crunchy teasels, and tall faded meadow plants like that. At the same time, I've decided I would like to try to get back into rug hooking (I made 1.5 rugs in 2003 and then never picked it up again). Perfect rug subject: My own version of an Angie Lewin weed scene--dead weeds. I made a draft rug sketch and had a discussion about the whole idea with my daughter. Today, on a still-snowless clear blue January day, we decided to make a special expedition to find some of these beauties for ourselves, and maybe get some rug inspiration on the way. Here are some photos from our winter meadow research.

Stalks with round wasp galls might be a cool motif.

I'd love to have milkweed somehow coming right out of the rug.

Queen Anne's Lace, you gorgeous old thing

Some more old ladies in profile

Mullein stalks! Another interesting idea. They're like the saguaros of Vermont. Kind of.

Mullein close up. These must have been about 8 feet tall. Super fabulous.

Favorite Songs of 2011

2011-12-31T10:15:00.000-05:00

Nuclear Seasons: Charli xcx

I haven't ranked these songs, but "Nuclear Seasons" is pretty far up there for me this year. British electro-pop sensation Charli xcx nails this one with a dark late 80s sound reminiscent of the days when good, strange music could only be found through someone who knew someone who was on college radio.

CharliXCX - Nuclear Seasons by charlixcx

Hey Sparrow: Peaking Lights

Slow and wispy, this is a little like "Heart & Soul" played on a kalimba--there's a nice plinky, repetitive thing going on. Breathy background music.

Hey Sparrow by Peaking Lights

Better Off Without You: Summer Camp

This song makes me laugh. It has the boppy throwback sound that seems to be going around (like the Dum dum girls). Also it's a breakup celebration song. I'm so happy you're gone! Stop calling! Tee hee.

Summer Camp - Better Off Without You by Webzine Obstacle

Thankless Thing: Wild Beasts

This is mostly on my list because I love Wild Beasts and their forays into the falsetto-sphere. This song is quite mellow for my taste, but also gorgeous and pretty irresistible. Find them on Facebook!

Wild Beasts - Thankless Thing by DominoRecordCo

Yellow Missing Signs: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

I posted about this on Facebook and it was pointed out to me that it seems to be about justice for serial murder victims. Which is not a bad thing, but I'd only been listening to the music, some excellent raw synth pop straight out of 1985.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Yellow Missing Signs by Polyvinyl Records

100 Other Lovers: DeVotchKa

DeVotchKa have a lovely happy gypsy-ish sound. Apparently they came to fame on the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack. This song is quietly propulsive.

DeVotchKa - 100 Other Lovers by antirecords

Beat and the Pulse: Austra

Toronto's Katie Stelmanis seems just amazing. Super-talented, the unplugged piano sessions released in the fall prove she can make awesome electro-pop without even needing the electro. This song is another big 2011 favorite.

Austra - Beat And The Pulse by bluepumpkin aka antennica

Bunhill Fields: Amor de Dias

Bunhill Fields is a London cemetery for dissenters apparently. The song seems appropriately pensive and atmospheric, with the occasional sweeping cello and piano statement. It's lovely pop.

Amor De Días - "Bunhill Fields" by OctopusWindmill

Don't Stop: The Dodos

These two guys worked with Neko Case on their album, though this song is just them. And it's great! They have some interesting percussion things going on... drumsticks? Don't Stop has a lot of layers and noise and energy, appropriate for the name.

The Dodos 'Don't Stop' by Wichita Recordings

Let's Go: Mike & Cody

Every best-songs list has to have a big club banger, right? This song makes me want to jump up and down and drink gin & tonics made fluorescent by the club black lights. Let's Go!!

Let's Go! by mikeandcody

Christmas Playlist

2011-12-23T07:52:00.001-05:00

Maybe I get kind of fanatical about Christmas music. I'll admit it. Growing up, our rule was that Christmas music could be played from after Thanksgiving dinner until the end of Christmas Day. Such a short window makes Christmas music extra special. Nowadays I impose this rule with gusto, listening almost exclusively to Christmas music all month long until other family members start making remarks. My favorites change with the years--here are some I'm enjoying now!

Corelli's Christmas concerto. It's only about 15 minutes long and instrumental, but sounds totally like Christmas to me. Just look for Corelli's Concerto Grosso in G minor Op. 6/8 on your average baroque mixtape.

Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols. I like the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers version found on their Angels on High CD. The rest of the CD is great too.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi Trio. What a classic. This year I also bought the piano music to learn.

Klingende Weihnacht. My father spent time in Germany in the 60s and I think this record came out of that experience. It has been part of my Christmases as long as I can remember, and the sound of the little German children singing ROCKS my every December.

Noels Celtiques: Celtic Christmas Music from Brittany, Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde. This album is so beautiful it sometimes makes me cry. The northern tippy-top part of France has Scottish connections, and they can be heard in these transfiguring songs that sometimes include bagpipes.

Christmas with the Rat Pack. Frank, Dean-o and Sammy take turns belting 'em out on this swinging collection.

Verve Presents: The Very Best of Christmas Jazz. John Coltrane Quartet, Bill Evans, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Horn, Dinah Washington... in a word: awesomesauce. Jimmy Smith's drawbar organ version of "Jingle Bells" is a total treat.

Christmas Album, Nat "King" Cole. This guy's voice is like buttah. A perennial favorite.

A Very Siúcra Christmas. This is a recent find at a used CD store, apparently from around 2002. A folky-Celtic trio, Siúcra is quickly growing on us as a new Christmas staple. There are some new Christmas songs I've never heard before, like the "Cherry Tree Carol" that makes new sense of the miracle plays I had to read in college. (Why DID the baby have cherries in his hand at the end of the play? This song answers the question.) The talented lead singer Beth Leachman got an adorable Vows wedding writeup in the NYT in 2009: click here to read.

Baroque Christmas Music. I found this at the library. The name about says it all. My cup of tea.

The Little Drummer Boy, by the Harry Simeone Chorale. Let me just say that "The Little Drummer Boy" is the most hideous Christmas song ever, in my opinion. However this gospel-like album of medleys (that sounds terrible, but it's good!) gets really rollicking in places!

Tell me what Christmas music you like! You don't even have to be Christian to have a favorite song or two. Heck, I'm some sort of witchy pagan sun-worshiper myself.

Holiday Crafts

2011-12-20T20:34:00.000-05:00

I'm always trying to simplify Christmas, I don't know why. I should probably just accept its complexities! One great year was when my mom and I didn't get a tree, but strung lights on the coffee table and put our gifts beneath that. Craziness! These days, with children and an extended family, I'm still trying to make things easy yet special. Last year my equation was that each person would get: one homemade thing, one purchased thing (modestly priced), and food. I collected ideas from blogs and my ancient stash of abandoned projects. Here are a few examples of DIY gifts from last year. I've been waiting since then to share them!

Project: Stuffed Ornaments
Sometime in the early 80s someone gave me fabric that had Christmas toys printed on it. You were supposed to cut them out and sew them together with ribbon to make cute stuffed ornaments. Fast forward about 30 years to when I rediscovered this fabric with my sewing stuff. Santa brought two for each child--stuffed toys are excellent stocking stuffers!

Project: Boxer Shorts
Is it too much information to share that I make all of a certain person's underwear for him from a worn and loved Butterick boxers pattern? The best part about homemade boxers is the mad fabric choices that are possible. One year I made boxers with adorable otters on them floating in a sea of blue. Another time I made boxers sporting multicolored jalapeños. Here, please note one pair has an idyllic village pattern with little houses and copses scattered about.

Project: Painted Spoons
Design Mom inspired me to encourage our older child to make her own presents for family members. One of our first (hopefully of many) projects was to paint these spoons with spots and stripes. We left the stirring part of the spoon plain so nobody would have to eat paint. We also sealed the painted section with a coat of non-toxic clear stuff. (I will have to dig around to figure out what it was called...)

Project: Road Rug
I'm not sure if I like how this turned out. It is just some traffic fabric from the quilting store that I backed with plain blue cloth and sewed together. Cool, except with our hardwood floors it slides around and is really hard to play on. But it could be a good roll-up road to use outside or where there's carpeting.

Project: Porcelain Pens
I am most proud of this one. I got the basic idea from Design Mom, who explains how to make monogrammed mugs using porcelain markers from Michael's and plain white china from the thrift store. I made my own trip to Michael's and sure enough, found these neat markers that are like thin sharpies for ceramic. The best part is: everything is totally adjustable and erasable until it's how you want it, then you bake it briefly to set.

For this mug for Grandpa, we decided to add his grandchildren's hands as part of the design. First I traced the hands and cut them out.

I taped the hand stencils to the mug.

We traced around them with black porcelain pen.

Here's the basic tracing. I may have been the main handler of the porcelain pens up until this point.

Then I handed the pens over to Miss Monkey, who did her own decorating (with some help when requested).

All three grandparent gifts. If you like the ancient Greek egg-and-dart motif on the bottom of the slim vase, I take all the credit.

Project: Embroidered Tea Towel
This was also a satisfying project, many many years in the making. I got these tea towels to embroider when I was about 10, and did not finish them until my second maternity leave.

Project: Homebrew
I posted a photo essay about this early in the year -- great gift for some special uncles.

Project: Baked Goods
We packed up a bunch of lovingly recycled Christmas tins with a selection of holiday treats baked by 3 generations of ladies, me being the middle generation. (Thanks mom!) We made:

lebkuchen
fruitcake
shortbread
my signature oatmeal coconut chocolate chip cookie recipe

Thanks for reading! I have some more ideas for this year, though not being on maternity leave I will not be as prolific this time. What are your fave DIY gifts to make--or receive?

Butternut bake: Savory holiday side

2011-12-19T20:45:00.004-05:00

This Butternut Cranberry Bake that I blogged about back in 2008 would be a great side dish for a family holiday meal. This recipe always reminds me of the K2 lunch spot in Kendall Square, Cambridge, which had a version in their salad bar circa Fall 2000. It was so yummy that I experimented at home until I figured out a pretty good replica. Here are some new things I've learned about this recipe.

The recipe is a simple affair of cutting up and rinsing a big handful of cranberries,
then sautéeing in a bunch of butter with half an onion or so.

One thing is that if you don't have brown sugar or brown rice syrup, maple syrup will also do very nicely. Just pour it on over the cubed squash before stirring in the sautéed onion mixture.

Arrange a small cubed butternut squash in a baking dish with some sprigs of thyme
and water that goes about halfway up the squash pieces.

Another thing is that very small children love this, but larger ones may not. Our kindergartner who hates "mixed up food" thought this was completely revolting. She does not care that it tastes like delicious squash candy!

Cover and bake for about 40 minutes, stirring halfway through.

The best brownie mix?

2011-11-28T19:53:00.009-05:00

At my new job, unlike my old job, there is no coffee cart that comes by at 2:10 every afternoon to sell gigantic and perfect chocolate-chip cookies for 75¢. So I bring brownies to make up for it. Making brownies at home has turned out to be a cool mother-daughter activity on Sunday afternoons--it's not hard for a kindergartener to help crack an egg, measure and pour oil and water, stir it all together and scrape into a baking pan. Here are some tasting notes I scribbled on torn box-fronts in search of the perfect brownie mix.

Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownies, 13x9 family size

Touted as "extra thick and fudgy!" these did not deliver.
"Not very chocolatey or chewy. Plain."

Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie mix
Has "Chocolate chips in the mix." This was "very moist & fudgy.
Good. Maybe too moist--got clumpy."

Pillsbury Dark Chocolate 13x9 Family Size
"Dark color & moist texture, but not very chocolate-y tasting"

Betty Crocker Ultimate Fudge (8x8 only)
with "Hershey's Fudge Pouch & Melt Away Chips"
"Wow, very dense & moist & chocolate-y. Not cake-y. Almost like underdone but not--just moist!" It appears that I liked these, but they were actually so rich & sweet they became a chore to eat. They were still around the following week, and we took a break from brownie-baking for a few more weeks just to recover.

Ghirardelli Chocolate Supreme (8x8 only)
"Chocolate Syrup pouch included"
By this point I was wary of add-ins like a pouch or chips, but I think this mix is a winner! "Chewy, chocolate-y, but not too much of either. Could be the one?!"

Are you a brownie-holic? What's your favorite recipe? Do you believe in from-the-box, or insist on from-scratch? Any secrets? I have a friend who places walnut halves on top of the batter before baking for the total illusion of homemade. Yum.

Braised Turkey

2011-11-24T13:56:00.000-05:00

Look at that gravy. It sparkles.

With the days getting darker (read this good post about it at Door Number 8), the evenings are getting really long. It seems natural to make the best of things by cooking up nice Sunday dinners. Here's another one where we actually invited guests over—first time in a long time! The main dish: braised turkey. This happened earlier in November, but since it's Turkey Day I'd like to share it now!

Personal trivia: I had never cooked my own turkey before this.
My whole life, female relatives have always done all turkey cooking.
For my first turkey dinner I even bought a roasting pan!

The idea of braising a turkey is from a Cook's Illustrated recipe that, for a CI recipe, was actually quite doable and simple. The basic premise is that you brine the turkey (of course! It's Cook's Illustrated!) and then chop it into 3 main pieces, then cook it in flavorful liquid for a couple of hours until it's completely moist and tender.

I like when there's a secret ingredient that makes a recipe go from pretty good to amazing, and this recipe definitely had one. Dried porcini mushrooms. $49 a pound. This selection cost less than $2 though.

These get mixed with a mirepoix on the bottom of the roasting pan, then the turkey is browned in a hot oven.

Here's the bird basted and ready for browning. One of my favorite parts was getting to butcher (as in "cut up") the turkey the night before--cutting off the wings, carefully carving off the drumsticks so I don't 1. miss the chef's oysters and 2. injure myself. I made a slow-cooker stock with the pieces I cut off, plus giblets. I used to love dissecting things in anatomy class. Sorry Alicia Silverstone.

After browning, the recipe says to add wine and chicken broth for the braising, cover, and turn the oven down for 2 hours.

Another fabulous part of this recipe was the amazing gravy. Here's where the power of the porcini really blossomed forth. It was savory, and because I bothered to strain it, also silken.

The braising liquid, strained and ready to gravy-fy.

The gravy hardly needed any salt either. (The turkey probably contributed enough, since I rubbed it with salt the night before in lieu of brining. Why? It was self-basting, and the recipe said that's what I should do.)

To serve I cut dark meat and breast meat onto a platter, and gave the drumsticks to the people who like that sort of thing. Since it was 2 weeks before Thanksgiving, I was trying to ignore the usual conventions, and served with roasted fingerling potatoes and buttered kale. No stuffing, no cranberry sauce. Our guests brought an amazing bread.

Do you always roast turkey, or have you tried other methods? I've heard of the mysterious deep-fried turkey, but I don't know anybody who's invested in the equipment. I'd eat it though!

I started using Pinterest

2011-11-21T20:20:00.000-05:00

This is all your fault ACB! I do find Pinterest quite soothing actually. It's social, but I can show instead of telling. Nice relief for a professional tell-er. I also found that "liking" things makes a whole new board/list for me, without me having to actually repin and claim these things as my "own." If that makes sense. Anyway, join up! Follow me or someone cool! It's fun! I'm at http://pinterest.com/profkitty/

(Mom, Pinterest is like an online bulletin board where you can "pin" just about any image that you find on the Internet. Then you can go admire your collection of pins, and look at other people's too. It's kind of like the wall of postcards taped over my bed in college, except easier to look at.)

Source: designsponge.com via K. on Pinterest

New England Boiled Dinner

2011-11-18T21:18:00.001-05:00

I bought a big head of cabbage at the farmer's market and a bunch of little potatoes at the coop, planning on a dinner party. But the week turned out to be too busy for guests, so the cabbage and potatoes were still around. I was thinking of making my milk-braised pork chops or maybe frikadellen, and ran these ideas by my life-partner. Basically, tell me what kind of pork you want. His response was "My favorite kind of pork is... corned beef."

Oh no. I don't think I like corned beef. But I figured it would be easy. I could throw it in the slow cooker. What is it called when you put potatoes, corned beef, and cabbage in a slow cooker? Oh. It's called New England Boiled Dinner.

Here's part of my problem with corned beef. It is funny looking. It has a lurid reddish color that doesn't go away when it's cooked. It has disturbing fatty bits and quivering connective stuff. It looks like it should be inside of something alive, not glistening on my counter. The guy at Price Chopper kindly halved a $19 piece of corned beef so I didn't have to deal with a gigantic piece, just a big piece.

So I plopped this in the slow cooker with the cabbage, 2 large chopped carrots and about 5 potatoes. It was already past noon, so I cranked it to "high." I also added a bay leaf, about 10 peppercorns, and enough water to cover the meat so it could really braise.

Six hours later it was done. I only had to intervene once, to push the cabbage down into the liquid so it could get all properly floppy.

To serve, I spooned out all the vegetables, then put the corned beef on its own plate. LOOK AT THIS. This is what I'm talking about with the weird grossness of corned beef. What is that tripey bit???

I bravely scraped off the fat and gaggy stuff, then sliced what remained. It started to look normal. Even edible.

So we ate it. And guess what, New England Boiled Dinner is really good! This truly is a boiled dinner, nothing else was needed except maybe mustard. One kid loved the meat the best, the other only wanted to eat the potatoes.

For dessert we had a half-recipe of yummy apple crisp, liberally squirted with whipped cream.

I'm not from New England, but I guess this is a regular thing that people's moms make, kind of an eye-roller of a dish like meatloaf. But I recommend it! Have you ever had it or made it?

Roasted Vegetables

2011-11-11T19:19:00.003-05:00

It seemed like a good idea for a Sunday evening.
Slow-roasted vegetables. Two hours in a low oven.

Look at this tangle of autumn goodness.

Spaghetti squash buttered up, delicata squash with maple syrup & cinnamon

I put olive oil & Bragg's all over the rutabaga, carrots, & parsnips. Then I chickened out and also put spice rub on the rutabaga, and honey all over the carrots & parsnips. They were lush.

Dinnertime! Just squashes and roasted roots people. Enjoy!

Brown Rice Ginger Croquettes

2011-10-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

I invented these with my daughter one weekend evening. We just started mixing things together and ended up with these yummy croquettes. The batter is quite runny and chunky so kind of falls apart. I wonder how the Brattleboro Food Coop gets their Indonesian Rice Cakes to stick together? Our secret was just heat--cook one side thoroughly before flipping, and they don't fall apart as much.

Recipe in brief: Mix together in a bowl tamari, cooked brown rice (maybe 2 cups?), grated carrot, grated ginger, 2 eggs, flour (1/2 cup or so), sunflower seeds, and 1/2 onion that you have sautéed. Form into rough patties and put on hot cast iron pan or non-stick pan. Cook one side thoroughly before flipping (peek to see if it's browning). Flip carefully and cook the other side.

Serve with more tamari for dipping.

"Slaughtered": EP from Memory Tapes

2011-10-21T20:17:00.003-04:00

You know how some people choose a perfume or cologne, then purposely wear that scent every single day so that it becomes their scent? And every time you get close to them, you can smell it? And every time you smell it somewhere else, you think of them?

Here's what I'd like to do. The same thing, but with audio. I want to hook up tiny speakers and perpetually broadcast music, very softly but very constantly, so that whenever someone is close to me they can hear it. And if they hear something like it elsewhere, they'll think of me. I also have the music selected, it is Memory Tapes. Particularly the new Modular People EP release called "Slaughtered." I just want this on around me all the time, rising off me like a signature scent.

The track is over 22 minutes long, but here's a tiny taste someone posted on Soundcloud. If you like, go download the whole thing! It is delicious! Thank you Memory Tapes for this damn fine free EP.

Memory Tapes - snippet of Slaughtered by jobsmit

How You Like Them Apples?

2011-10-06T21:55:00.009-04:00

The death of Steve Jobs, when I consider it from a purely selfish, personal level, feels like the death of John Hughes to me. It feels like the end of an era, and it's my era. I grew up on these computers. My brain is wired a certain way because of them. They are such intuitive, comfortable products that they don't seem like gadgets or accoutrements or "products," they just seem like logical extensions of what I want.

I can never bear to get rid of them. Each Mac is a monumental and significant part of my life when I'm using it, so I keep them around even when I'm not. Do you do that? I think about the papers written, the games played, the fonts selected, the avatar badges built pixel by pixel, the terrible Photoshopping attempted. The flight simulators. The desktop photos I have loved. With the iPod, the miles I've driven and run in its musical embrace. These products are alive--from the 512K to the iMac, from the iMac to the Mac mini, from the Mac mini to the MacBook (wait, I still use both of them, one is for sitting and one is for lounging in bed). I have to keep them, and other family members seem to feel the same. We collected all of the Apple products in the house and did a photo shoot.

Pictured, clockwise from left: MacBook, Macintosh 512K, Applewriter printer, a "dual G5 MacPro" (that silver thing isn't mine so I have no idea what it's called), a ruby iMac, in the middle 2 Mac minis and an iPod.

Not pictured: A blue iMac exactly like the ruby one on the right. An Apple Newton that we decided was un-Jobs. A Touch that is probably lost in a pile of papers somewhere.

The Macintosh 512 K is the most meaningful of these, and was the most useful and fun for years. Like 16 years. We got it in 1984, and this computer got me through high school, college, grad school, chef school, and 3 years after that, until I finally was given a new computer in 2000. (Thanks Mom!) The "p" key on the keyboard was not in good shape toward the end. The 512K still worked the last time I tried it, but I fear it doesn't work any more so I don't want to turn it on again and be crushed. My favorite thing to do on the Macintosh 512K was play this labyrinth game that I could never win. I played it for years and years. In college I also got a copy of Tetris. Of course everything had to be on disc because the thing only had 512K. That was a GREAT COMPUTER. (The printer was great, too.)

Old school.

Woodworking Studio

2011-10-02T21:37:00.004-04:00

There's something about autumn and studio tours that goes together so well. If you're driving around looking at foliage anyway, why not stop and visit some creative people in their habitats? I highly recommend the annual Putney Craft Tour, happening every Thanksgiving weekend (this year it's November 25th-27th). Do not miss Ken Pick's pottery studio, where you can trace ceramic finger labyrinths and enjoy hot cider from the top of the wood stove while you chat with the artist.

This weekend the Vermont Crafts Council put on their Foliage Open Studio Weekend and we stopped by Jason E. Breen's woodworking place in the Brattleboro hills. It was a neat place and nice to meet Jason and learn how planes work. Here are a few vignettes.

Tools! That lighting makes it like some olde oil painting.

Clamps (?)

Bits!

Well-used brush, scissors

Feast at Tom Bombadil's

2011-09-26T20:03:00.005-04:00

For those who are keeping track of these things, September 26th is the day that Frodo Baggins and companions meet Tom Bombadil in the first book of The Lord of the Rings. After 3 days of travel and avoiding the terrifying ringwraiths, plus an afternoon of getting lost and soporific in the grips of the Old Forest, running into this jolly singing fearless fellow with his big ~~blue~~ yellow boots is quite the relief--for the reader let alone for the traveling hobbits. That first dinner with Tom and his lady Goldberry is described in simple terms: "It was a long and merry meal. Though the hobbits ate, as only famished hobbits can eat, there was no lack. The drink in their drinking-bowls seemed to be clear cold water, yet it went to their hearts like wine and set free their voices."

When I remember, I like to have a Tom & Goldberry feast on this day. Tolkien lets us imagine what might have been served. I like to think that thick bread, smoky sausages, abundant tomatoes, and rustic cheeses were involved. Here's the best we could do this year:

Bread & butter, cheese & sausages, wine and apple juice, and Israeli couscous salad (!)

I took several versions of this photo before I read about the drinking bowls, so I reset with bowls instead of glasses. That's a bowl of wine on the bottom left. Our bigger kid thought drinking juice from a bowl was great.

Fungus Among Us

2011-09-25T15:47:00.005-04:00

Today we went for a walk in the woods--the same place I described in August 2008 (with photos of newts!). This time it was so damp that we immediately decided we would have a "Fungus Walk" and try to find as many interesting and lovely fungi as possible. Here are just a few photos. (We also saw SIX newts. It was awesome.)

This guy was growing in a rotten tree that had been cut into sections, one left standing upright. I love the wood grain background.

Can fungus be "snuggly"?

Lovely and strange

There was more of this log, all covered with clusters.

Some kind of shelf fungus took over this log.

These are in a part of the woods where there are a lot of "twins"--twin toadstools more temporary than twin birches.

Super-super-beautiful (I was just reading about Jean-Paul Gaultier who says that all the time)

Apple picking in Vermont

2011-09-19T22:01:00.003-04:00

September days have a special luminousness like no other month's. The long-slanting late summer light imparts a certain glow to every object. High clear skies seem a richer blue. The air is crisp and focused, not the lazy splat of high summer humidity. Some September days become pure magic and instantly memorable just for their September-ness.

That's how I felt on our Sunday apple-picking trip to Cortland Hill Orchard on Bonnyvale Road in Brattleboro. I don't think I'll ever forget the look of the quiet orchard at the top of the hill, each tree bright and solid against the amazing deep blue sky, each branch from crown to ground clustered with powdery red Cortland apples, perfect picking for any sized person--even the very littlest. For only seven dollars we brought home half a peck of red-cheeked Cortlands, pretty much the best apple I have ever tasted. (It helps that we picked them ourselves on a perfect day, that adds an extra taste you can never find at the stand or the store.)

Just a September Sunday

2011-09-11T12:18:00.005-04:00

A lot has changed lately, some great and some scary.

On the great side, I got a new job that starts tomorrow. I'm so excited about it. It's going to rock.

On the scary side, our sweet little state of Vermont was smacked by the remnants of Hurricane Irene (she was a tropical storm by the time she hit us and filled up all the little brooks to become raging flooding maniacs). Our town has come out OK, though some businesses, homes and roads were hit hard. The state is cleaning up, digging out, rebuilding, and keeping chins up.

Also, girl-child started kindergarten. That is very cool and she seems to love it. If she is anything like me she will adore school for many years.

I've been cooking plenty of good things, including freaking amazing milk-braised pork chops that we had with local sauerkraut and mashed potatoes.

With everything going on I just haven't had time to write a blog post lately. That's a shame, so I'm kickstarting myself with a photo essay about this morning.

Did you know that today, September 11, is Grandparent's Day? Our children are playing at their grandparents' right this minute (thanks J&J!). Also, it's the day my parents first met and started to fall in love. Also, I'm pretty sure a certain little girl in England is turning 5 today. There's plenty of light and life on this day, or any day, if we look for it.

Leaves starting to fall

Curried lentil soup for dinner

Sunflowers hang their heavy heads

Happy sourdough rising

Summer gear abandoned

Tomatoes

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

Engraved by John Held Jr

2011-08-23T22:24:00.006-04:00

I feel that most who know the name John Held Jr. will think of his illustrations of flappers on the cover of the Life magazine, the stick-skinny girls with the knobby knees and droopy stockings, possibly lounging about, possibly necking or dancing with round-headed guys sporting gigantic trousers. (See the slide show below.) Also maybe you, like me, enjoyed those Time-Life This Fabulous Century books at the library that cover the first six decades of the 20th century (and have a different groovy fabric on the cover of each), and have noticed that the volume on the twenties is chock full of John Held Jr.

(I do have a major nostalgia problem and am wistful for eras I have never seen, the twenties being one of them.)

Anyway, where I first got to know John Held Jr was not as Illustrator of the Jazz Age, but as the guy who did those funny old-timey engravings during the infancy of the New Yorker magazine. Perhaps strangely, from an early age I loved poring over collected New Yorker cartoons, preferring especially a volume called The New Yorker Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Album 1925-1950, which I pretty much have memorized. (When Steve from the used section of the Harvard Book Store gave me a great quality hardcover version for my birthday, I was really really touched. Thank you Steve. That was an amazing, insightful gift.) I particularly liked John Held Jr’s odd choices of subject matter in his engravings, and I am tickled by the engraved captions he added to all. Some of these strike me as some of the best sign-offs ever.

Years later, I now have access to the complete collected cartoons of the New Yorker (isn’t being an adult amazing? And... technology?) So I ran a search on John Held Jr., and found he published many engravings (or maybe some are drawings that look like engravings) in that magazine between 1925 and 1932. Then either my computer froze up or he didn’t publish any more. I find myself wondering now about John Held Jr’s own interest in nostalgia. According to a 1966 Playboy article about Held, nostalgia was big in the 20s. Most of his engraved depictions seem to be olde tymey made-up scenes from the previous century, maybe around the time of Held’s birth (he lived from January 10, 1889 to March 2, 1958). I’m thinking the 1880s didn’t seem so long ago to him, maybe he could still find little pockets of old-fashionedness even in the blazing New York of the 20s. It was only 40-odd years before after all. I do my own math like that sometimes, thinking that the 20s were only 50-odd years before I was born, and if I look hard enough at old drawings and peep into enough old books and listen to enough 78s, perhaps I can grasp a tiny bit of what it was like.

I think these clever engravings should be considered as important a part of Held’s ouevre as the flapper/sheikh stuff. According to that Playboy article, Held’s very first art sale was an engraving, and his father was an engraver. I’m sure there’s a whole dissertation there about modes of expressing contemporaneous interest in the fairly recent past.

Here's a list! Some of my favorite captions from the engravings are transcribed below. You'll have to imagine the images that go with because I don't dare post screenshots. The date given is the New Yorker publication date. Held mostly engraved in capital letters so I use caps where he does.

A CHILD OF THE CIRCUS
ENGRAVED WITH PATHOS BY JOHN HELD JR.
11/7/25

The STREET SWEEPER'S CHRISTMAS
A LOVELY ENGRAVING BY JOHN HELD JR
12/12/25

ROLLING YE LOG AT YE COFFEE HOUSE CLUB
ENGRAVED IN GOOD FUN BY JOHN HELD JR
2/13/26

WHISKER INSPECTION AT THE CENTURY CLUB
INDEED A QUAINT OLD ENGRAVING BY JOHN HELD JR
(2/27/26)

THE CLOWN WITH A BROKEN HEART
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR AND NICELY TOO
4/17/26

DANCING ON NOTHING
ENGRAVED WITH A LAUGH AND A SOB BY JOHN HELD JR
5/1/26

A POLICEMANS BEST FRIEND IS HIS HORSE
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO IS VERY FOND OF ANIMALS
10/2/26

The DEAR DEAD DAYS
WHEN THE WAITERS AT BILLIES SANG "MY ROSARY"
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR WITH A LUMP IN HIS THROAT
10/23/26

The DEAR DEAD DAYS
WHEN A GIRL DRANK BEER AND LIKED IT
ENG BY JOHN HELD JR WITH THE LAUGH ON THE OTHER SIDE OF HIS FACE
10/30/26

The CURSE OF THE OPERA HOUSE
"MAY ALL YOUR CHILDREN BE ACROBATS"
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR
AND SUCH AN ENGRAVING OH MY
11/6/26

THE MAN WHO SOUNDED AN R in the HARVARD CLUB
A RIGHT TONEY ENGRAVING BY JOHN HELD JR
2/19/27
(this one shows some angry fellows shooting another guy)

A SONG FROM THE DEAR DIM PAST
"YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS
WE HAVE NO BANANAS TODAY."
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR AND HOW CAN YOU STOP HIM
5/12/28

SHE'S ONLY A LASSIE WHO VENTURED
ON LIFE'S STORMY PATH ILL-ADVISED
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR WITH A HEART FULL OF PITY
7/28/28

BUT THAT DIRTY LITTLE COWARD,
THAT SHOT MR. HOWARD,
HAS LAID POOR JESSE IN HIS GRAVE
AMERICAN FOLKSONG ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR. WITH A HI AND A HO
9/29/28

TINY GARMENTS
ENGRAVED BY THAT SENIMENTAL OLD CODGER, JOHN HELD JR (sic)
11/10/28

MID CAMP FIRES GLEAMING
MID SHOT AND SHELL
I WILL BE DREAMING OF MY OWN BLUEBELL
A GRAND OLD ENGRAVING BY A GRAND OLD ENGRAVER J. HELD JR
12/8/28

A DAINTY NECESSITY IN MI-LADY'S LINGERIE
The CORSET COVER
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WITH A TOSS OF THE HEAD
12/28/29

VIRTUE'S DEFENCE THE HAT PIN
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR. AS HE CHOKES BACK HIS TRUE FEELINGS
2/8/30

The SECRET POCKET IN THE PETTISKIRT
OH MEMORY SO CRUEL, SO BITTER
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR WHO NEVER TOOK A LESSON IN HIS LIFE
2/22/30

DREAM GIRLS of a DIM DECADE
SEVEN SUTHERLAND SISTERS
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR SINGER OF OLD SONGS
3/15/30

WHEN THE THEATRE WAS FRAUGHT with ROMANCE
THE STARTLING INNOVATION OF THE MAGIC-LANTERN SLIDE IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE SERPENTINE DANCE
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO IS GAME TO THE CORE
11/8/30

WHEN THE THEATRE WAS FRAUGHT with ROMANCE
The Thought is born of the FORM DIVINE
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR ADELVING INTO YESTERYEAR
11/29/30

WHEN THE THEATRE WAS FRAUGHT WITH ROMANCE
THE SOUBRETTE SINGS A RACY SONG TO THE MAN IN THE BOX
ENG BY JOHN HELD JR WHO DEAR TO HIS HEART ARE THE SCENES OF HIS CHILDHOOD
1/10/31

WHEN THE THEATRE WAS FRAUGHT with ROMANCE
THE CHERRY SISTERS
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR Who Is a SLY ELF
2/7/31

WHEN THE THEATRE WAS FRAUGHT WITH ROMANCE
MRS. LESLIE CARTER IN "THE HEART OF MARYLAND"
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO DOESN'T REMEMBER VERY WELL.
5/9/31

WHEN FASHION WAS FRAUGHT WITH ROMANCE
The HORRIBLE SKIRT
ENG. BY JOHN HELD JR A SCAMP IF THERE EVER WAS ONE
8/15/31

The ZENITH OF REFINED ELEGANCE
THE MOUSTACHE CUP
A JOHN HELD JR. ENGRAVING, ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR UNDER The PERSONAL SUPERVISION of JOHN HELD JR
9/12/31

WHEN THE THEATRE WAS FRAUGHT WITH ROMANCE
BEN-HUR AND THE WHITE HORSES ALWAYS WIN
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO SOMETIMES WONDERS WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT
9/26/31

WOOD-CUT MEMOIRS OF LITTLE OLDE NEW YORK
FINE FEATHERS MAKE FINE BIRDS IN the WALDORF ASTORIA PEACOCK ALLEY
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO BOWS HIS HEAD TO NO MASTER
10/17/31

The RED HOT PAST
THE SOUVENIR GARTER WITH THE WITTY MOTTO
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO IS ALWAYS UP TO MISCHIEF
4/23/32
(the garter says "I LOVE MY WIFE BUT OH YOU KID")

The RED HOT PAST
SOUVENIRS FROM GAY PAREE
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR WHO A LITTLE OF GOES A LONG WAYS
6/4/32

The RED HOT PAST
A DAINTY REQUISITE OF MILADY'S TERLET--THE RAT
ENGRAVED BY JOHN HELD JR. THE "IT" MAN OF WOODCUTS
9/17/32
(this shows a lady at her toilet--that is sitting in front of mirror--holding the type of "rat" that makes hair look more bouffant)

Ricotta to the Rescue!

2011-08-15T19:55:00.007-04:00

Sometimes we have too much milk in the house. When that happens, one solution is to make ice cream. Soon I'm going to try yogurt. I've also made fresh mozzarella. But this time, I decided to make ricotta cheese. A big batch of ricotta would help me use up a whole gallon of milk. (Whole milk, too.) Here's all you need for the project--Ricki's Cheesemaking Kit.

This kit is pretty simple--comes with muslin (better than cheesecloth because it's a finer weave), rennet, citric acid, cheese salt, a thermometer and an instruction book. Sure you could probably find all those things separately for less money, but would you? I've had this cute kit for at least a couple of years and it still works fine. (I keep the rennet in the freezer.)

So to make ricotta, you heat a gallon of milk up to 195˚F while stirring it pretty much constantly. Also, you add citric acid. This serves to break up the protein from the liquid (which becomes whey). The protein gets strained out as cheese, and you have a whole mess of whey left over. Apparently you can get the same effect from lemon juice--see this Smitten Kitchen post for a description (and pretty pictures). I also used Smitten Kitchen's idea of adding some heavy cream for texture. I had half a pint kicking around. From... making ice cream.

Heating a gallon of milk slowly so it doesn't burn takes forever. Or put another way, at least half an episode of Sherlock. Then you turn off the heat and let it sit, then ladle the curds into the cheesecloth to strain.

Here is my straining system. It's hard to see, but I rigged up a figure-eight of two rubber bands to hold the handle and end of the strainer firm so it wouldn't slide back down into the bowl. I left it overnight to strain. (Refrigerated, of course.)

Here's how it looked inside the cheesecloth. It's a lot more compact and drier than commercial ricotta. It's more cheese-like. However it crumbles up fine and tastes pretty delicious. Like the essence of milk and cream, distilled and cheesified.

The first thing I made with my homemade ricotta was a batch of canneloni, our family's meaty-cheesy-tomatoey alternative to lasagna. Delicious. But I still had half the ricotta left. For this I wanted to try some sweet application. Crepes maybe? Then I saw an episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bourdain travels to Sicily. Guess what they invented there that uses sweetened ricotta?

Cannoli

I have never seen The Godfather so don't worry about mob-ilicious cannoli quotes. All I want is to use this lovely ricotta before it goes bad. Since it was kind of dry, I smashed it all up and moistened with a bit of milk. Then I sprinkled on white sugar and added a glug of vanilla. Stirred it all together and tasted--great! I stuffed it into one of my super-handy disposable piping bags and stashed it in the fridge. I bought 6 cannoli shells at the super market. I dug out some OLD cherries from the back of the fridge. Now I can pipe my own cannoli any time, man.

Cherries so old the label fell off. Piping bag full of sweetened ricotta.
Shells at the ready!

Piping action shot!

Piped not quite full. (I want the cheese to last for all 6 shells...)

I don't have pistachio nuts so I settled for chopped walnuts. I am not a purist. Cherry at either end.

Bonus: The picky eater likes these! I pipe her one every day for dessert. And then I eat one myself. TASTY.

Next time we have too much milk I'm thinking corn chowder.

Andy Serkis sets off a train of thought

2011-08-06T21:11:00.002-04:00

I just learned on Friday (by listening to NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which is pretty much how I learn everything these days) that Andy Serkis, of Gollum fame, played Ian Dury in a movie called Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. I also learned that Ian Dury had polio and the right side of his body was strong and energetic while the left side couldn't do much, so he would propel himself about the stage leading from the right. This sounds like a good role for Andy Serkis as he is so good at conveying acting through sheer physicality. Like being all the movements for Gollum through motion capture technology, while never actually appearing on film.

Then later in the morning iTunes randomly picked Perro Loco by Forro in the Dark, which is pretty much my Song of the Week right now. It keeps getting stuck in my head. The song reminds me a little of Ian Dury now that I listen to it. It is so peppy and saxophony and makes me want to pogo.

It also makes me think of the Young Ones and Alexei Sayle hopping about with that goofy look and his Dr. Martens. (Pull the playhead up to about 1:08 for the crazy dance.)

One more thought about the Young Ones, did you know that Vyvyan is married to Jennifer Saunders? Well actually Vyvyan is called Adrian Edmondson, he's the one who's married to Jennifer Saunders. I like to think of Vyvyan and Edina at home together. Actually I more like to think how Patsy or Rik might be appalled by their relationship.

Recipe or riff? Cold quinoa salad

2011-08-04T21:10:00.000-04:00

Lately I just focus on a single ingredient, and let the rest of a dish come together any which way. For example, quinoa salad. I cooked up a bunch of quinoa in some water leftover from steaming beets and sweet potatoes. It came out kind of pinkish! Then I doused it with lemon juice and olive oil while still warm, and let it cool for a day--just cuz. Later, I added chopped up bits of random refrigerated items:

pieces of roasted red pepper in jar
leftover bell pepper
kalamata olives, chopped
chopped up celery sticks, at least 2 weeks old (kept them in water)
tablespoon of artichoke hearts, leftover

I also threw in random herbs from garden, harvested with headlamp at 9pm and chopped fine:

chives
winter savory
rosemary
thyme

Salt & pepper were added, of course.

Right before serving, I threw on a handful on raw pepitas (pumpkin seeds), as I'd been reading about their health benefits. Delicious!

But is that a recipe? It seems pretty off the cuff, pretty random. It's a riff. If I had different things in the fridge--cucumbers or parsley or capers for example--I would have made a different salad. I like that. Being able to riff takes the pressure off. I don't need to be super-prepared or make big lists. I'm trying to do this with as much of my food-prep as possible! (I guess I always have, but this one was a revelation because I got rid of five containers that had been cluttering up the fridge with little bits of leftover stuff. FIVE!)

By the way, here are some other cold salads we've enjoyed lately:

Farmer's market green salad, with added kalamata olives & crumbled feta. I did not make this one because I dislike washing lettuce.

Steamed beets with sliced caper berries, lots of feta and cucumber slices

What riffs have you been working lately? What about cold salads? Do you put feta on everything too?

Bourdain contest fail

2011-08-01T21:35:00.001-04:00

The famous Kouign Amann

Last year Anthony Bourdain, who I felt very very strongly about (in the positive) at the time, held a writing contest. The theme was something like "How to Cook Well." I toyed with the idea of entering, but with a new baby in the house and low energy for anything but family, I never got around to it. I did jot down some notes during one late-night feeding though. Here they are.

My mise en place is set in small glass dishes. Tiny tomatoes from the farmer's market, rinsed. Parsley that could not be more local--I can see its terroir from the door. Organic chicken from some happy free-range farm. Lemon reamed on a vintage glass juicer. French feta, crumbled. The pasta is already cooked, cooled and coated with good olive oil. It's time to cook.

What I'm making is orzo and chicken salad with lemon dressing. The chicken: tender and be-garlicked. The dressing: cool kisses of lemon. When it's plated and done, I set it before the clients and watch. The guy with the beard likes it--he digs in. The one who is four, not so much. In fact, she hates it on sight. But it doesn't matter, I'm not hurt. I sit down to eat with them because when I cook for this family, I'm the best. I'm in the zone. They eat my "overcaramelized" (some might say "burned") Kouign Amann. They groan in appreciation at the crockpot chili (secret ingredient: bacon grease). They accept my incessant Vinho Verde or $4.99 Beaujolais pairings. (OK, only the adults get wine.) In turn, I try to remember their tastes and foibles. Eggplant is off the menu. Sectioned plates with discrete, not-touching foods are a must for madamoiselle. No matter how carefully I've seasoned something according to the recipe or my imaginings, I should always be prepared for clients to slather on tamari or hot sauce or ketchup. I stick to my standards and roll with it at the same time. That's cooking.

Steps So White

2011-07-26T22:17:00.007-04:00

It seems so long ago that I decided a lick of paint would be an easy, frugal way to do some home improvements chez nous. Above: one of the optimism-fueled "before" pictures I posted in those heady days... way back on July 1. I also posted 3 other "befores" of the inside of our add-on porch, sort of implying that I was going to accomplish a lot of porch-related titivation this month.

The truth is, after giving the project my best these past 3+ weeks, I have new, hard-won respect for those bloggers who make these things seem so easy (yeah I'm looking at you, Young House Love). With a full-time job and two fabulous little people to hang out with until dark, there's not much time left for fixing things up. Here's how far I actually got this month:

I scraped the steps. I'm not posting photos of the back steps here, but they do exist, so I'm talking 2 sets of steps while photographing one. Next, I power-washed the steps with the hose. When dry, I gave everything a buzz with my cute little refurb sander. Notice how all the gunk clinging to the risers in the "before" picture is now gone. The steps felt smoother underfoot, too, after being scraped and washed and sanded.

Next, I taped everything off and put down newspaper, since I figured paint-splattered concrete would be kind of a trashy look. Speaking of trashy, see that purple-handled paintbrush? It was one of a set of 3 from the dollar store. That means it cost 33 cents! (Trust me, I am simultaneously gleeful at the savings and outraged at the obvious misuse of some global resource(s).) The paint was glaring white porch paint (not its official name) from the local hardware store Brown & Roberts.

After the first coat of paint, I set up a clever shield (with some help) using tape, scrap plastic and lawn chairs. To keep the wet paint safe from any critters in the area.

Here it is finished after 2 coats of paint and just a bit of rain (that's why there's... a puddle marring the perfect white glow on each tread).

It's, like, so white! I was thinking of going with this color for the entire porch floor, but I'm glad now that I did the steps first. This white is fine there and it'll get dirty and I don't mind. But it seems too glaring for my cool play-porch visions. Wait, let's see that before and after side-by-side, shall we?

I must admit that other porch improvements are not going to happen by the end of July at this rate. But I still have big plans! Will grey and yellow be involved? Or apple blossom white and lime green? Only time and indecisiveness can tell!

Cowboy caviar

2011-07-04T10:30:00.002-04:00

Perfect watermelon day

I guess if I write on January 4th that it's my birthday, one could do the math and figure out that July 4th is my HALF birthday. So I'm X-and-a-half today.

This cowboy caviar is blowing my mind. Someone brought it to work for a potluck and I HAD to have the recipe. See below.

Tostitos scoops are perfect for eating cowboy caviar. And they are multigrain no less.

Cowboy Caviar

1 15 oz can black-eyed peas, drained
1 11 oz can white shoe-peg corn, drained
1 avocado, diced
1⁄2 c diced fresh tomato
1⁄4 c chopped garlic chives or regular chives
1⁄2 c chopped cilantro
1⁄4 c olive oil
1⁄4 c red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic: pressed

Combine black-eyed peas, corn, avocado, tomatoes, chives and cilantro. Whisk together oil, vinegar and garlic separately to make dressing. Pour dressing over all. Refrigerate (stirring once in a while) for at least 4 hours, preferably 1 day.

Have a great fourth! Do you have a go-to dip or snack you like to have on this day?

A lick of paint

2011-07-01T21:35:00.002-04:00

July is gonna be busy. Two birthdays, plus an August party to plan for the one person who actually cares about having a party. A wedding anniversary. A beach vacation. A mini-reunion.

And, I'm giving myself a challenge. It's going to be my "paint therapy" project. We don't have much spare cash for the kinds of decorating projects and renovations we dream up (enlarged kitchen, finished basement with wet bar and guest room and snug, living room decor based on Versailles paneling, that kind of thing). But after reading some design/DIY blogs, I have a theory that a lot can be done with a fresh coat of paint. Not too expensive. Not too difficult. And a whole new look. I'm right, right? Wait, am I not the first person to come up with this idea?

This is what I want to do: paint our porch. I have set myself a goal finish date of Sunday, July 31. I came up with a to-do list and assigned dates to each item on the list. All I have to do is keep up with my own timeline and this'll happen!

Here are my BEFORE pictures to get things started.

The street-side steps to our porch. Also the cat's "troll hole" is the break in the lattice to the right of the steps. This is where he skulks off to if you look at him funny.

The porch is actually considered "empty" to prepare for my project, but stuff kind of collects there somehow. This is the door shown above from the other side.

Side wall of the porch.

The back door of the porch. That's our handy 3-step recycling system--black bag for plastic and cans, blue bag for redeemables, white bag for paper.

I also went around the house and put everything related to painting into one box, so I'll know where it is.

[Why do we have 4 pairs of safety goggles? No idea.]

This will be my go-to kit for the next month. Plus I'm sure I'll be adding to it after some exciting hardware store consultations and paint chip decisions in the weeks to come.

Fillo & feta pie

2011-06-28T21:42:00.005-04:00

I lucked into some nettles last weekend (thanks J&J!), and also had some fillo dough in the fridge, so I threw together an easy nettle-spinach pie with feta.

Ingredients

any cooked greens, such as nettles, chard, kale, spinach--about 1 cup (more is fine)
1/2 onion sauteed in butter and olive oil until soft, left in pan
dill and oregano and rosemary, chopped (or use pinches of dried)
about 1/2 cup feta, crumbled
About 12 sheets of fillo dough, cut into squares, or leftover bits to piece together
1/3 stick butter, melted
sesame seeds to garnish

Assembly

Heat oven to 350˚F.
Chop up the cooked greens and mix in with the onions. Add herbs, stir and heat through.
Brush butter on the bottom of a shallow casserole or pie dish. Layer on 4 squares of fillo dough (or piece together four layers from smaller bits), brushing each square with butter before adding another.
Sprinkle half the greens mixture and half the feta over the squares.
Repeat with 4 more squares, buttering each. Sprinkle on the rest of the greens and feta.
Top with 4 more squares. Fold over or just squish down the edges so they don't cook too quickly.
Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Cook 30 minutes or until fillo is becoming golden.

That is it! I love fillo dough, it is like a lazy woman's quiche in a box. What do you use it for? Do you get stingy with the butter like I do? I refuse to melt more even when I'm starting to run out.

Baby food mill

2011-06-17T20:05:00.000-04:00

When I wrote about making our own baby food with the Foley Food Mill, I was talking about large-batch purees, but that's not the whole picture. In fact, our baby's doctor seemed pretty sure at his 9-month checkup that he should be eating the same food that we were eating, even though at the time he only had one tooth. Not purees. I quizzed her to make sure I was understanding: so if we have spaghetti with sausage for dinner, he should too? Yes. So if we have ham sandwiches for lunch, he should too? She paused, then, yes.

We got home and tried giving the kid some chunkier stuff, and he immediately gagged and choked. Not ready yet! What to do? Let me show you our baby food mill.

KidCo Baby Steps Food Mill

I first laid eyes on this contraption when some parents at the farmer's market were running pad thai through it for their baby. Now that our kid is between the total mush stage and the ham sandwich stage, we use this mill several times a day. Sometimes we mill up the food we're having ourselves (chicken stew, for example). But often we're having some crazy spicy grownup food, so we'll improvise. For example, I keep steamed zucchini chunks or roasted sweet potatoes in the fridge. I mill it up, stick it in the baby food steamer, maybe mix in some baby cereal, and feed.

The First Years Bottle Warmer The brand doesn't matter, but if you have a baby you need one of these. Warms bottles of milk AND jars of baby food AND little glass bowls of food that I just set on top.

Another popular food with baby--canned beans (black or kidney) or garbanzos that have been through the mill. We keep a small container of these in the fridge, then grind them and add them to jarred baby food for texture and protein. A fully-cooked egg yolk also works well.

Milled egg yolk. I guess they've decided you can feed babies egg whites now, but we haven't yet.

Here's a food mill recipe: Peaches for dessert

1/2 canned peach (in water or its own juice)
1/2 cup whole milk plain yogurt
a few walnuts (optional)

Run the peach through the food mill--like this:

Before

After

Mix with the yogurt. Run the walnuts through the mill. Mix nuts into peach-yogurt. Feed to eager baby.

Kids in Nature: Leaf Hunt

2011-06-06T06:30:00.001-04:00

Saturday I went on a housecleaning rampage, and there was one thing I kept finding in the strangest places. Underneath a book bag on the hall chair. Set neatly next to the lamp beside the futon. Stuffed into the coffee holders on the stroller. Mixed into the bag I took downtown with water and snacks and sunscreen. They're leaves. Usually they're maple leaves, but sometimes there are others--long thin beech-like ones, pieces of flowering grass, strips of ornamental stripey grass found on our walks. I don't know how I didn't put this together before, but my kid likes leaves.

Thinking about these leaves this morning, I came up with a game that she might like to play with me. She's pretty good at plant identification, so I promised her a "Leaf Hunt." I made a chart of leaves with the names of each and a "typical" photo I copied and pasted from Google Image.

Nine leaves on the chart: Left column is chickweed, dandelion, maple. Middle is grape, clover and violet. Right column is cinquefoil, buttercup and plantain. (I went outside and checked that they were all there before I made the chart.)

We start our leaf hunt. She picked the order. Violet was first, then maple, then this favorite--dandelion!

We got a giant hardcover volume from our resident book guy and pressed each leaf in a fold of wax paper. We'll check on them again in a few weeks.

Her idea was to cross off each leaf after we'd found it. We got all nine and had a great little botany lesson!

Did you like leaves as a kid? Or do stuff like treasure hunts or scavenger hunts?

Stylin Blogs I Like

2011-06-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

I've been feeling overwhelmed lately and it's a drag. It probably has a lot to do with our favorite little person teething for over TWO WEEKS. I can see that bad-boy tooth almost coming in (top left). But it apparently still/always hurts judging by the crying and screaming and even trouble taking a bottle when I'm away at work. Poor little fellow! Sometimes it takes an hour after bedtime to coax him to sleep, and after that I'm just exhausted. Plus, getting up every 2 hours to soothe him some more. Ack! (Someday I'll look back on this and laugh! Ha!) Also, there's something about a house constantly exploding with toys and books and bottles of sunscreen and discarded kid clothes and CDs the baby has been "filing" on the floor and clean folded laundry piling up that is also pretty exhausting. I'm sure I'll get used to it someday...?

For now, I've been turning to some creative and lively blogs for relief and inspiration. Guess what, they're not about food or electro-pop (well not mostly). They're about DESIGN and STYLE.

jeremyandkathleen.blogspot.com I am obsessed with this blog--the bright home with cool touches, Kathleen's stylin' outfits, the gorgeous graphic design projects that she shares, tons of stories and photos and glimpses into hip lives in Oklahoma City. Wow. I think I even bought a pair of shoes because of Kathleen. Here she is:

Credit: Jeremy & Kathleen, Anatomy of an Outfit: My Favorite Skirt

Here are my new shoes:

Not really the same... but for me they're totally related.

**

www.younghouselove.com LOVE this blog. Sherry & John seem so adorable and full of beans, their writing has a casual, hilarious tone and they serve up lots of practical DIY and frugal-decorating info. For instance the ongoing story of their living-room parsons chairs (from craiglist find to slipcover saga to dyeing project) is fascinating! The concrete paver patio laid down in a frenzy for their daughter's first birthday party! The handmade "distressed" behind-the-couch console! The fact that they name pieces of furniture things like "Karl the Sectional"! The fact that doing all this is now their JOB. So funny and fresh, I admire yall.

Hello Memorial Day

2011-05-30T20:09:00.004-04:00

Hello new purple & white striped petunias.

Hello new spearmint that I finally caved in and
planted even though I know you'll spread everywhere.

Hello tender rosemary that I have to replant
every Memorial Day because winter kills you.

Hello new beach umbrella that also fits Patty O'Furniture.

Hello summer. Because we're in New England, summer starts RIGHT NOW.

Red Wine Vinegar, you fine old dame

2011-05-26T21:39:00.006-04:00

I decided to buy myself a present at the food coop today. It was supposed to be retail therapy, getting a treat just cuz. I could enjoy browsing for, and then consuming, whatever. Would it be a brownie? A croissant? A slice of cake? It turned out to be a bottle of red wine vinegar.

I am not the member of my family who is All About Vinegar, so I feel a little funny going on about it. I'm not the person who makes salad dressing the way W.C. Fields makes a martini--letting the vermouth pass near the gin seems like about how much olive oil gets in our salad dressing. That dressing can be pungent. And then when the salad is gone, this person will lift the plate and drink whatever vinegary stuff is left at the bottom. That is dedication.

I am not even known for liking salad very much (or anything not made of cheese, chocolate, coffee, wine or crackers). I have definitely said smug things like, "Salad is what food eats." But after a long winter of carrots and apples and butternut squash, I was ready for greens today, with a lovely red wine vinaigrette.

Here are my vinaigrette ingredients--garlic & chopped herbs on the cutting board, plus seasoned salt, pepper, dijon mustard, canola oil, olive oil, and the precious red wine vinegar. Not shown: Agave nectar.

Shake it all up in a Mason jar. I love how the red wine vinegar imparts a touch of pink.

Hey, did you know coupons.com has a $1 coupon for Olivia's salads right now? See how this one is marked 2.99? That means I got it for 1.99! I don't know if that's actually a good deal, but it excites me because I am peevish about sorting lettuce. With this stuff I can just wash and eat. Or... just eat.

Bonus addition from a quick round of weeding this afternoon--fresh young dandelion leaves. I tore these up and added them to my salad.

Put it all together with some carrots and peas. This was just what I wanted. The dressing was both silken and bracing. Crunch!

Do you make your own dressing? I shoot for a 50-50 vinegar to oil ratio, what do you think?

CSA Gourmet: The biz plan

2011-05-17T20:39:00.001-04:00

Often on Fridays I will have brilliant new business ideas. By the next week (if not sooner) they don't look so great and I discard them. One time I decided to build a local house-cleaning business. Another I was going to create a 2-week detox program and sell special herbal teas to go with it. Or I could start a kind of new-media-closet-cleaning business, where we'd take people's unedited video footage (aka boxes and boxes of film, tape, etc.) and turn it into sleek and awesome finished products to show off to friends, family, business prospects or whoever. My tag line would be "turning footage into film."

Meanwhile, here's an idea from last winter. Want it? It's localvore-y.

Glossary: As you probably know, CSA means Community Supported Agriculture. You pay for a share of a farm's produce in advance, then get boxes of the produce all season long. You've supported the farm by investing in their agriculture upfront.

Business idea/title/tagline:

CSA Gourmet: Taking Fresh to the Next Level

Summary of concept: Showcasing seasonal, local foods in ready-to-eat formats. A bit like if there was an "Iron Chef America Battle: Farmer's Market." Besides being interesting and creative, the project serves as public relations for CSA vendors at the Brattleboro Farmer's Market.

To do:

Assemble a list of typical CSA foods available, organizing roughly by season.

Come up with at least one recipe for each food.

Produce that recipe for public purchase, along with a small sheet about the produce item used and the recipe. Include an email address for feedback & recipe sharing.

Provide other flyers on localvorism, local CSAs & signups, other recipes, organic vs. local vs. both.

Interview local farmers about their CSAs: what are typical items, what are recipe recommendations for items.

Arrange rotating pickups with farmers for Weds or Thursdays, so produce will be fresh but can be cleaned and prepared in time for Saturday market.

Details:

It's an info booth that sells food. Not a restaurant. The key words are sustainable, local, seasonal. One goal is not to compete with the FM vendors. In fact, it would be like free advertising for them. "Where'd you get this jicama?" "Over there, at Gooseberry Ridge Farm. They're $3 a pound today." Or rather, it's like advertising that PAYS (because the food is purchased from the farmer originally).

Ideas for fare:

For each week, plan 3 items. For example, salad, sandwich (could be hot), other hot thing.

spring: mixed greens with sunflower sprouts. sourdough toasts with fresh chive ricotta & last fall's sauerkraut.

summer: banh mi with carrot-daikon pickles & cilantro. Localvore BLT. Edamame hummus.

fall: mushroom patties with chopped herbs and hot new potatoes. Kale chips. Root chips with rich onion dip. Garlic-ginger chicken skewers.

Aim to have 1 vegan and 1 gluten-free item per week (cd be same item)

Also serve a hot or cold herbal tea, depending on weather/season.

Homemade bread (sourdough) and sauces (vinaigrette, mayo, Real Pickles tartar)

Equipment:

coolers, gas stove, ice tea container with spigot, hot tea carafe, squirt bottles.

Utensils, paper dishes for items, paper cups for sauces, napkins

That's as far as I've gotten. What do you think--would you buy food from a CSA showcase booth? Would it be a good way to raise interest in local produce? Would it even be necessary? Maybe it should be a food truck? Maybe it should be a cook book. Maybe it should be a bunch of blog posts!

Happy Apple: very small rock (Song of the Week)

2011-05-05T20:43:00.004-04:00

First it's the Cole Porter trick, the same note repeated for, like, ever. Then comes the drum and it's sounding like Ui, with drum and lots of bass, driving. They could be leading up to anything. Sonic Youth? Something synth-y? But there it is. A liquid sax line, falling and soaring and weaving. Like Stan Getz just stepped in. Or Bach. That sax is playing a fugue statement, deceptively simple, infinitely mutable, plus just gorgeous. I spend the rest of the song listening for the restatement, cuz that's what a fugue does. It gets you hooked, then it plays around and around and around with those ideas while never sounding quite the same. You're panting and impatient, enjoying the sounds but also just waiting to hear that first magical bit again. Just as things start to wane and I give up hope, it returns. 40 seconds left maybe. I'm obsessed with this song right now!

This isn't on soundcloud for me to embed--please visit the track at bandcamp and press play. Easy. Or buy from Amazon by clicking below, heck!

P.S. Does the title of this song remind anyone else of a certain witch trial?

Craigslist ad as cultural commentary

2011-05-03T20:38:00.004-04:00

I had this brilliant idea for a Craiglist ad last month. I'm selling a now-rare plastic bag for $5. Here's a screenshot. I find this hilarious, but I'm also shocked that nobody has snapped this up yet! If you want this valuable piece please visit http://burlington.craigslist.org/clt/2321836990.html

What's the strangest thing you've seen on Craigslist? I just read a Village Voice article about a guy who sells heroin on craiglist. Golly.

Happy Easter 2011

2011-04-24T15:55:00.003-04:00

We had a fabulous brunch today, including ham, citrus tart, fresh-made kielbasa, sourdough and mimosas. There was an Easter egg hunt in the middle, right during the few minutes when the sun was out. (I am so happy Easter was not yesterday, when we woke up to snow.)

My baked contributions were mini crab cakes--this recipe is SO GOOD. Little piping hot savory seafood bites, crunchy outside, soft and delicious inside.

Also Apricot-raisin hot cross buns. My "cross" on the top didn't work out very well. Because the recipe had me cut a big piece of dough into 20 pieces, those original cuts seemed to be the ones that stood out when baking, not the crosses I snipped in later. This recipe was OK, but I realize I am used to sticky, iced hot cross buns. These just have an egg white wash--healthy, but not quite the same.

OK, I'm going to rush back outside for more easter, we're teaching the 4-year-old how to play bocce.

Song of the Week: Das Racist

2011-04-14T20:51:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I'm ashamed when I find out about popular music by reading The New Yorker. Shouldn't I already know these things from, like, legitimate hipster channels? But Sasha Frere Jones does a good job keeping up with these things and keeping me informed, so I'm grateful. For example one of my favorite songs of 2010, Shutterbugg by Big Boi, would not have been on my radar without my man SFJ.

So that's where I read about Das Racist, who everybody else has known about for a million years already. SFJ told me several things, like the "Das" is kind of fake patois for "That's," not a German thing. Also he explains the lyrics to their early (first?) song "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell." I love this song. It is pretty silly. But also a trenchant commentary on contemporary commercialism and the ubiquity of branding. Don't you think?

Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell by dasracist

500th post

2011-04-12T21:39:00.003-04:00

*photo credit below

It's taken almost 9 years, but I'm now up to post number 500 on this blog. Wow, that seems like a lot!

Thanks for reading the Cabinet of Prof. Kitty. I do this for the love and creative thrill of it. Even though I have a few ads and affiliate links here and there, I have actually never made a dime from this blog. That's OK. I like to be able to write about life, culture, music, rants, food, whatever, and not have a corporation or a fussy audience that's going to try to whip me into shape. My audience is you! You rock!

I am also proud and pleased to think that I might have inspired others to blog, or even just follow blogs now and then. I truly believe that everyone should have a blog, at least everyone who likes to write or take photos or opine. I do know one new blogger out there, someone without whom I wouldn't even exist. Please visit and revisit her brand new blog, Door Number 8. Welcome to the blogosphere Ma!

*Photo above taken by my true love using his cute new camera. For this shot, he stuck it inside a recycling dumpster.

Summertime, by Janis Joplin (song of the weeeeek!)

2011-04-05T14:04:00.005-04:00

It's been stuck in my head and it's one of my favorite songs. I love George Gershwin's "Summertime" anyway, but Janis Joplin really puts her mark on it in this version. It is so languid, so gorgeous, so haunting. Janis of course sticks in some of her weird scatting to make sure it can never really be replicated. (I really REALLY love Janis Joplin. She was there for me at a tender time in my teens when I needed a rough-yet-soft anti-role model with a crazy life and an amazing voice.) Do you think the pizzicato guitar at the beginning sounds a bit fugue-ish, a bit like Bach?

I sing this song to my children all the time as a lullaby. My version leans more toward Sarah Vaughan. I like to drawl the "easy," (eazaa-a-ay) and tone-paint up an octave on "high" (hi-EEEE). It is a great lullaby. I love the lyric "Your daddy's rich/ And your mama's good-looking." So reassuring. Rise up singing people!

Last note: Sean Penn uses this song to great effect in his 2-hour-plus epic Indian Runner. I like to brag about Indian Runner because it's when I first fell for Viggo Mortensen. YEARS before he caught everyone's eye as Aragorn son of Arathorn. I saw him first! ;-)

Decluttering the Kitchen, or The Night I Called Poison Control

2011-04-03T17:12:00.004-04:00

This is embarrassing, but I got carried away with scrubbing the cabinets for this 4th week of project:simplify, and accidentally poisoned myself... just a little. I was using a 10% bleach spray on some mildew stuff, and it was so gross I decided to also scrub it with some bleach wipes. Except... they were ammonium chloride wipes, aka AMMONIA.

I realized I was starting to get kind of drowsy and strange before anything terrible happened. I threw open doors and windows. I went out for fresh air. I googled the ingredients of the wipes (thus arriving at the horrible revelation I'd been mixing chlorine and ammonia, one of the few things I remember from high school science that One Must Never Do). Then I decided I was dying and called poison control. FYI, the number is 1-800-222-1222. The lady was really nice and totally unimpressed with my condition, which made me feel much better. She kept saying firmly, "You will be fine." And that there wasn't that much of either substance for me to really hurt myself. Still, it was scary. I would point out that on the same day last year, I broke my foot. I think next April 2 I just won't get out of bed.

But on to the awesome decluttering, which I finally finished this morning!

The Kitchen Cabinets

Threw out some strange mixes, ripped up the old nasty shelf paper, put down new paper, rearranged so that things like sugar and coffee are well within reach.

Kitchen Utensil Drawers

Trashed strange plastic items, put down cool shelf liner stuff underneath everything, also note adorable clothespin caddy (aka glass jar) right above the Vacu Vin Wine Saver Pump. We use these to close chip & cereal bags, and now they're all tidy.

The Refrigerator

Washed most of the shelves, did a bit of rearranging. It's pretty spare in there.

Three-Bean Slow-Cooker Chili

2011-03-30T20:09:00.001-04:00

Ingredients

2 cups dried pinto beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 green or yellow pepper, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
1/2 can whole tomatoes, pureed
1 small or 1/2 large yellow onion, diced
1 T vegetable oil
1/2 pound ground beef or turkey
1 t chili powder
1/2 cup bacon grease
whole cumin
oregano
basil
splash vegetable oil
about 1 cup water, maybe less
grated cheddar for garnish

Assembly

Day 1, morning: Put 2 cups pinto beans in a large mason jar (1/2 gallon) or bowl. Cover with water. Soak all day.
Day 1, evening: Drain the pinto beans and put in a large pot, covered with water plus at least 1 inch more. Bring to a simmer and boil for about an hour.
Also, prep vegetables and put them in the slow cooker. Put puree in slow cooker. Refrigerate. Chop the onion and reserve.
Day 2, morning: Sauté the onion in the vegetable oil. When it starts to get glassy and soft, add the ground turkey or beef. Stir to break up chunks of meat.
Add chili powder, be liberal about it. It should smell like chili. Then, add the bacon grease. Stir until melted and everything is coated. Pour into slow cooker.
Add the herbs and spices. Stir.
Last, add enough water so the chili will not dry out and singe. This may take practice with your particular slow cooker. Mine calls for maybe a cup of water or less. You don't want to submerge the beans/meat/veggies in water, but have liquid at least halfway up.
Set on low and cook all day (for me that's about 10 hours). If someone is home, it can be stirred 2-3 times during the day.

I find the result to be an amazingly creamy, hearty dish with nice chunks of beans and meat and carrot, also a great smooth sauce with a superb mouthfeel. That would be from the bacon grease. Lately we have used Vermont Smoke & Cure bacon for our grease source, and when used in chili it imparts a subtle, smoky flavor that is quite a treat.

Sorting kid's toys and clothes

2011-03-25T20:17:00.000-04:00

If it's Friday it must be project:simplify. We're up to hot spot #3, children's toys and clothes.

It turns out that by attacking the last two hot spots, closet/wardrobe and paper clutter, I had a head start on this week's projects. I'd sorted some kids' clothes along with my own, and I tidied up the paper/drawing area that's in our pantry areas. And we're pretty tidy anyway: The preschooler's toys live on closet shelves. We keep the baby's toys in a little basket on the floor, which also gives him a reason to try to wriggle/crawl over there and get at them. (He is just starting to crawl.) This left two problem areas:

I took everything from this nasty basement pile and from the "art closet" (actually a shelf in our linen/games/equipment closet) and strewed it on the living room floor. Some things got put away elsewhere. Some things got thrown away. Some things got consolidated into two boxes.

These are going back in the basement, labeled and waiting for the day when we need Something To Do Quick. (Our house is too small to have all the kid stuff available at once.)

Look, now there's room for "linens" in the linen closet.
Also candles, binders, frames...

I also sorted out kid clothes with the preschooler's help. She only wanted to part with a small pile of her stuff, and I've set it aside for donation ASAP. And I have a pile for baby clothes where I put stuff as soon as we find it doesn't fit him any more.

One note about this project: it doesn't seem to have much room for sentimental value. Nostalgia is a big, important part of my life. I love keeping things that used to mean something to me a long time ago. I've gotten myself down to about 2 small bins at this point. But I'm hoping to pass down my love of the past to my kids. That means that even if we're done with tiny baby clothes, I'm still going to keep some of them in case they're wanted for my grandchildren or some other precious babies. They're in giant Ziploc bags, sealed away for the future.

Song of the Week: "Find Your Peace" by Geotic

2011-03-21T20:28:00.005-04:00

Geotic is one guy, Will Wiesenfeld, who already has another band (Baths). But he tore through creating a new Geotic album, called "Mend," in under a week just a few months ago. He is generously offering the whole album as a free download at the link above. Here's one of the songs, "Find Your Peace."

Can you scroll down and press play now, then scroll back up? What do you think? I find it gorgeous. It reminds me of the 80s, but the introspective, ambient side of the 80s. Like if you're at the mall, and you just watched Local Hero, and you're feeling kind of transported and want to be quiet and get away from the crowds. So you go to a little Japanese restaurant where you can just sit quietly and sip some miso soup behind the paper screen, still in your big shoulder-padded jacket. Maybe a massage later. This song would be an excellent accompaniment to all that. Extremely soothing.

This isn't on soundcloud, thus the Youtube link. I dare you not to think of a mall and shoulder pads and at least one Bill Forsyth film. (I guess I am really talking about Mark Knopfler soundtracks. The Local Hero s/t is so pretty it makes me weepy.)

Tackling paper clutter

2011-03-18T20:08:00.000-04:00

This Friday means hot spot #2 in Simple Mom's project:simplify 5-week decluttering program. (Can I call it a program? I just didn't want to say "project" twice. Oops.)

This week's hot spot is paper clutter. This post will be a combo of bragging and equivocating.

Maybe this is silly, but I can't bring myself to show our household filing system to the Internet. Heaven forbid, but I feel like it's saying, "Hey freaky stalkers, come break in and look RIGHT HERE for the good stuff!" So this post will not be a grand tour of how we file our bills or keep our passports or tax returns or whatever.

BUT, I am proud to say that I think these things are pretty much under control anyway. We have a nice system of in-boxes that's up and out of the way in the kitchen, one per family member. Mail and random paper stuff gets put in trays as soon as possible. Once a month we meet to talk about money and do household filing, and every month or so I go through my own in-box and sort things out into my filing system. We recycle lots and rip stuff up because we don't have a shredder. So that kind of paper clutter is in good shape.

But look, what's that on the coffee table?

A drift of preschool artwork, and piles of magazines stuffed underneath? Let me just take care of that.

That's better. Our child is an amazing artist and creates at least 3 new drawings a day, so there's no way we can winnow down to 3 pieces that will represent this whole year of her life, as suggested. The kid artwork is filed away in the banker's box wedged under the coffee table. But I did make a big pile for her Grammie to have. I also left her most recent pieces (green for St. Patrick's day) on top so there would be no emergency situations like "WHERE'D IT GO MOMMMMM?"

I also recycled some of the magazines I'm in charge of, which isn't many. However the other paper clutter person in the household is pretty good about sorting these out every few months. They are tidily criss-crossed by magazine title. I have a terrible feeling that once they are older than a few months they get stashed in boxes in the basement. But basement cleaning is a later and larger project, and most of it is stuff that does not belong to me *cough* PACKRAT *cough*. That's it! How's your paper clutter situation?

Buttery rich cabbage with sausage

2011-03-17T21:26:00.000-04:00

I invented this cabbage dish recently and it is so rich and delicious. It's hard to believe it is not laden with cream and truffles or something. I think the key is to have a LOT of cabbage and to slice it very fine. It transforms into something soft, almost sweet, and totally mouthwatering.

Ingredients

1 T olive oil
1/2 head green cabbage, sliced thin (I used the slicer attachment on the Cuisinart)
3/4 cup water
2 T butter
1/2 chicken bouillon cube, crumbled (I use Knorr cubes, which are soft and crumbly)
2 sausages of your choice (I used chicken-mushroom from the local coop)

Assembly

Heat oil in skillet on medium-low heat, add cabbage.
Pour water over the cabbage, add butter and crumble bouillon cube over all. Cover and let steam-fry for 5".

Stir, make sure there is water left (if not, add some). Cover for five more minutes.

Stir again. Cabbage should be very soft and wilty, but not browning (because of the water). Leave the cover off and move the cabbage to make space for sausages. Turn up the heat a little.

Cook and turn the sausages until they are done, maybe 10 more minutes depending on the size of your links.
When the liquid starts to steam off completely, the cabbage will start to brown. Try to time this so it happens pretty close to the end. (In other words, if the cabbage is drying out and the sausage is not done yet, add a bit more water.)

We had this with buttered quinoa. It was all very beige but a flavor explosion.

Simplifying the Closet

2011-03-11T20:26:00.000-05:00

I'm trying out Simple Mom's project:simplify, a group blog project where everybody declutters and otherwise shapes up 5 "hot spots" in the home over 5 weeks.

The first hot spot is wardrobe/closet. (Phew!)

Here are my BEFORE pictures.

I went to a clothing swap recently so got rid of some stuff already, and picked up some clothes I actually like. Still, there's more to do here.

I've had this dresser since I was about 5. Some people (hi mom!) think I should get a grownup dresser someday. That would be nice. Meanwhile, look at all the T-shirts stuffed in the bottom drawer there!

Tsh said to gather ALL my clothes, so I even hauled up my "seasonal" bin from the basement. It's full of summer stuff right now, like halter-neck shirts and sleeveless dresses. The other bin is for part of my "after" plan.

At first I was bummed that this project was Monday-to-Friday only, because I only really have time to do stuff on weekends. Then I realized that this is actually a good thing. I don't need more projects in my already hectic weekends. Basically, I only have about 90 minutes a week to devote to to this project. Luckily that's all it took to go through everything. I even looked at my jewelry like I was supposed to. I trashed and weeded out a lot of stuff. Very satisfying.

Better! The basket in the lower left is where the T-shirts ended up, along with other running gear including my sneakers. I want to have it all in one place so I can rummage through early in the morning and get on the road without making much mess or ruckus. Basically the closet looks the same, but with less stuff.

The bottom drawer is empty now. Not sure what my plans are yet. The middle drawer has camisoles/tanks. In summer I can fill it up.

Here's the exciting part--the bag of "toss" stuff, the bag of "give" stuff, the seasonal bin repacked (on the right). And the best of all, I created a "dress-up" bin. No way am I getting rid of all my cute dresses and outrageous bizarre outfits, even if they don't fit or I would NEVER wear them again. My children will love them down the road, if my children are anything like I used to be.

That's it. Except I kind of want to put the two closet photos side by side, just to see.

Homemade English Muffins

2011-03-06T21:25:00.003-05:00

It's crazy, but I got it into my head to make English muffins from scratch. Totally inspired by a recent post from Utah Deal Diva, she has some lovely muffin photos that sealed the deal.

I've made my own pitas and my own naan, and neither of them were worth the trouble. I'd rather just buy the stuff. But I might be into making my own English muffins. They didn't seem as easy-as-pie as advertised, but they weren't too bad. And they seem... just like English muffins.

Rather than frying in grease, these English muffins are fried in cornmeal. Wait, did you know English muffins are made on the stovetop and not baked? I didn't.

Not a lot of nooks & crannies. But I also cut this open with a knife instead of a fork, I am crazy that way.

What's in the bucket?

2011-03-05T13:01:00.002-05:00

Well someone was prepared!

It was back during Bush II, January 2007, when a friend of the family put together a well-provisioned emergency supply kit. I'm not sure what the complete provisions were, but there were at least two large white buckets, sealed, full of staple foods in case of some apocalyptic incident.

These buckets are now 4 years old, and it's high time to "rotate the stock." This is a key part of emergency preparedness! It's not enough to put together a supply kit. You also need to make sure the stuff is fresh and usable should The Day ever come. Because our friend just moved to another state, we inherited one of the buckets to unpack and use up.

It feels a little like opening Al Capone's vault! What's in there?? Actually there's a list with checkmarks on the side & top of the bucket so I'm pretty sure it will be beans & peas, quinoa, sushi rice and couscous.

An exciting amount of sushi rice! It was poured over the top of everything to fill every little crack and crevice.

I was inspired to break out the scoop. The bucket contained some 15 pounds total of rice when I got it all scooped out and bagged up.

Everything that wasn't rice was tied up in small cloth bags. What could this one be?

Yep, split pea soup will be on the menu soon.

I've already made up a big batch of Texas-style black-eyed peas from this bag below (jalapenos, bacon, and chili powder were involved). They're good hot or cold.

Interested in learning about preparedness? Try the CDC or ready.gov for all kinds of info and lists.
One note: Dried beans and peas and grains are great staples to have packed away, but this would be for a real long-term disaster, once you've established a water supply and cooking methods. For short-term preparedness (like for a power outage), pack yourself stuff that doesn't require a lot of cooking or extra water. (It's best to save water for drinking & washing.) So that means pack a lot of canned stuff that could be eaten straight from the can, or dried items like cereal bars, crackers, pbj. And plenty of sealed drinking water.

Song of the Week: Rum Hee

2011-02-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

Remember Rum Hee by Shugo Tokumaru? It's been around for almost 2 years, and was apparently used in a VAIO ad campaign in 2009. This guy is awesome. If you miss spring, and summer, and all things happy and sprightly, if you need some tinkling bells and jolly sounds in your life, press play right now.

Shugo Tokumaru - Rum Hee by souterraintransmissions

Shugo Tokumaru has an album out, Port Entropy, that contains Rum Hee plus other adorable songs like Lahaha. According to various websites, Port Entropy came out in April 2010, or maybe it came out last week, it's hard to tell. It's out now though.

Baby food and the Foley Food Mill

2011-02-23T21:20:00.002-05:00

I ran into somebody who works in advertising. He sold me on a Mirro Foley Stainless Steel Food Mill, even though he has no financial interest in my buying one. I guess he is just good at his job, eh?

The main selling point of this rather simple, clunky item is that it's great for making homemade baby food CHEAP. The clincher was when the guy said, "As I used it, I could just feel the amount of money I was saving by not buying the stuff in jars. My freezer was FULL of baby food. Plus, if you have guests over and need a side dish, everybody loves pureed sweet potatoes." Also he told me that you don't have to peel or core anything beforehand. The food mill will strain out the seeds and skins and stuff for you. Oh man, I had to have it!

Purchased at Brown & Roberts

So here's what I do to make baby food. I am not into ice cube trays, so I've come up with the "frozen globs" method.

First, cook the food. I'm mostly talking vegetables here, or tree fruits. You can bake it (works well for butternut squash--halve it, scrape out seeds, put facedown on foil, bake). You can steam it (carrots & yams). I'm sure you could also boil it.

Then, put your food in the Foley Food Mill and start cranking. This part is a little uncertain for me. The box did not have any instructions. (I did find a PDF of vintage instructions online.) Basically, turn the mill 3-4 times the "right" way, then turn it once backward to clear it. Repeat. And repeat. This is an old-fashioned machine and it does take elbow grease. It takes me at least 5 minutes to mill any particular vegetable.

Next, I spoon globs of the puree onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment. I place it in the freezer for a day or so. Then, I label a freezer bag, pile the frozen globs in there, and stash it back in the freezer. I thaw one glob at a time by popping it in a small container and refrigerating. Amazing!

At $35 I really need this thing to pay for itself, and I think it's working. The organic hippie baby food I would normally buy costs 80 cents a jar, and a jar is probably about the same as one glob. So I'd need to make 44 globs to replace that number of jars. I'm pretty sure I've done that already. From here on, it's all gravy!

A closeup of some globs. Isn't this yam strange? It is something Japanese--purplish outside, surprising yellow-green inside. The baby loves it fortunately.

Side note: The food mill is also good for mashed potatoes of course, and for making fine applesauce. Another useful discovery--I bought a can of whole tomatoes because it was on sale, and turned it into tomato puree because that's what I actually needed.

Have you ever used a food mill like this? And/or made your own baby food?

Shrimp broccoli stirfry with noodles

2011-02-22T20:42:00.002-05:00

New discovery at the supermarket. Pouch of 2 is under $4.
Here's how to make an easy stirfry using these noodles.

Ingredients

1 T toasted sesame oil
1/2 pound or more of broccoli (can be frozen or uncooked/fresh)
2 cups shredded bok choy or cabbage
2 T water
1/2 pound cooked shrimp
Ka-me Stirfry Hokkien noodles (2 pouches)
1 T hoisin sauce
1 T tamari/soy sauce
1 t black-bean chili paste
green onion garnish (optional)

Assembly

Oh this is easy. Heat sesame oil in a large pan, then steam-fry the vegetables. This means throw them in the oil til sizzling, then add the water and cover for about 5 minutes. (If the broccoli is cooked but previously frozen, this will just heat it up nicely.)
Add the shrimp and the noodles. The noodles need some pulling apart with fingers before being added.
Add the hoisin sauce, tamari and black bean paste. Stir together until everything is heated through and the noodles have started to get soft.
That's it! Serve, garnish with green onions if desired.

This photo is so bad I decided it's actually arty.
This is not tinted or anything, just naturally bizarre.

Winterwear

2011-02-19T08:20:00.002-05:00

It's fashion week somewhere and you know I am all up in the latest stylezz. Kidding! But I have been thinking about my own style, such as it is. In the past 4 years I have pretty much settled on my "uniform." Here are my BULLETED thoughts!

Gauzy sheers, layered for modesty
Layering, such as a tank top with a short-sleeve button down, unbuttoned. A long-sleeve T with a flutter-sleeve shirt. Lots of cardis.
V-necks, scoop necks.
A-line skirts, tiered/ruffled skirts (within reason)--nothing above the knee
Solids or ombre, only rare patterns or stripes
Boot cut or flared pants, khaki, grey or black (or med wash jeans)
Colors: grey, white/cream, black, charcoal, burnt oranges, dark reds, pale pinks, washed out greens
Accessories: Pops of color, like a red or green necklace with a black/grey outfit.

I would like to get more unique pieces, like with strange seams or interesting shirring or folds. I could probably use an infinite number of layers from camisole to long-sleeve T to cardigans.

Hey, have you tried polyvore? I made a little collage thingy.

Again with the gray & cream by profkitty

Lemon

2011-02-16T21:05:00.001-05:00

This photo has been languishing in my drafts box for a long, long time. It was part of my food blog gift in 2009. Hello beautiful, juicy, organic lemon. You are lovely!

But you know, I can't remember what I used it for. Do you have favorite uses for lemon? If you had one perfect lemon, what would you do with it?

Here are some ex tempore ideas:

squeeze into several glasses of fresh, cold water for a nice light detox
cut into wedges to spritz over fried fish
use the juice plus zest in some tarty-tart baked good
slice super-thin to have with bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon and capers
toddy-time with honey, hot water and rum or whiskey
vodka tonics (oh boy, I haven't had one in a LONG time)
squeeze over a buttered chicken, then stuff into cavity and bake
make up a batch of lamb-stuffed grape leaves

Chicken salsa chili

2011-02-14T21:56:00.000-05:00

This was originally going to be a taco-flavored chicken/salsa stew, but I put in some beans as an afterthought and it turned into chili. Pretty good for 6 ingredients!

Ingredients

1 jar Mrs. Renfro's peach salsa
6-8 chicken thighs, boneless, skinless, chunks
chili powder
1/2 chicken bouillon cube
1 can (15 oz) black beans
olive oil
water

Assembly

Brown chicken in olive oil, sprinkle with chili powder while you're browning (maybe about 1 t total, or more).
Put chicken in slow cooker and cover with salsa. Add black beans. Break up bouillon as best you can and sprinkle around. Pour water over all until the mixture is about the consistency you want your chili.
Cook on low for 8+ hours. Serve over white rice.

I also made cornbread on the side slathered with butter and honey. Outstanding.

Cut Copy—New Song, New Album

2011-01-27T21:01:00.006-05:00

AAAAh! This week I was thinking of dedicating my new "song of the week" feature to Cut Copy and the track they dropped last July, Where I'm Going. Reason being: The Coachella 2011 lineup* was just announced and it's pretty exciting. It includes Cut Copy of course, right there on the poster in 3rd largest type, on April 15. If you are a long-time reader or listened to my radio show in 2008 you might recall I was practically foaming at the mouth that year with love for Cut Copy, especially their 2008 album In Ghost Colours. And now they're back.

But wait! In the last 24 hours, a new song has appeared on the internets as a taste of the new disc, Zonoscope, that drops in about 10 days. It's called Need You Now. I listened ~~once~~ twice and am going for it again. Please join me--press play! What do you think? (They are on tour in April, if you live between NOLA. NYC and Toronto and want to see them, visit cutcopy.net for a dates.)

Cut Copy - Need You Now by cutcopymusic

*Here's a fantasy game: If through some miracle of space and time you could see every band you wanted to at Coachella, who would you be interested in seeing? My list (in order of the poster):

Chemical Brothers
Crystal Castles
Cut Copy
Tame Impala
Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti
!!!
YACHT
Titus Andronicus
Animal Collective
Broken Social Scene
The London Suede (that's the same as "Suede," right?)
Scissor Sisters
New Pornographers
Daedelus
Two Door Cinema Club
Foals
Radio Department
Yelle
Thao with the Get Down Stay Down
The Joy Formidable
Here We Go Magic
Freelance Whales
Bomba Estereo
The Strokes
Duran Duran
Ratatat
The Presets
HEALTH
CSS
Delorean
Menomena
Rye Rye

Yeah... that's all.

Tofu Udon Soup with Vegetables

2011-01-23T15:01:00.001-05:00

This soup is pretty easy with nice umami tastes, and can be as spicy (or as mild) as you like. Another meal in a bowl! (Here's an earlier recipe from 2005, also.)

Summary: mix together broth, noodles, tofu, and steam-fried veggies of your choice. Garnish.

Ingredients:

Broth: Bonito and kombu (kelp) OR chicken broth (1 box)
Tofu, 1 pound cubed
Udon noodles (6-8 ounces dry)
Vegetables: bias-cut celery, shredded cabbage, chopped mushroom (any kind)
Sea vegetable (either sliced reserved kombu from the broth, or dulse)
Ginger, either fresh grated or dried--a generous dash
Canola oil
Toasted sesame oil
Miso
Garnishes (optional): sesame seeds, hempseed oil, hot sauce, chopped scallions

Assembly:

If making broth with bonito, do this first. I follow the instructions on the package (a simple matter of boiling and straining). Save the kombu to chop up and add later.
Read the udon package and boil up the noodles. Takes about 10 minutes. Drain.
Put tofu in pot with noodles, broth, kombu or dulse, and ginger. Put on low heat.
Meanwhile, heat canola and toasted sesame oils in a skillet or Dutch oven. Steam fry the cabbage, celery and mushrooms. (Meaning get everything sizzling hot, then throw a little water in and put the lid on. Stir occasionally til everything is fork tender.)
To serve, put a spoonful of miso in the bottom of bowl and make a paste with some of the hot broth. Cover with the noodle-tofu soup. Pile high with vegetables. Garnish at will.

It's cooking.

Steve Martin & Internet comments

2011-01-16T18:47:00.001-05:00

This is actually my song of the week post, but includes lite ranting about the nature of the Internet.

Steve Martin has been popping up a lot in my life in the last few weeks. For Christmas I got his memoir about stand-up comedy, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. It was good! Here's what I wrote on Goodreads (where I am trying to review the books I read so I can hone my opinion-having skills).

I liked this, but it went by too quickly (it's 207 pages with largish type and lots of white space). Steve Martin says that writing about his stand-up years is like writing a biography of someone else--that's how completely he stepped away from and closed off that part of his life when he quit stand-up comedy. This is a lot about his philosophy of comedy, his interest in magic, plus somewhat interesting assessments of his motivations and of showbiz in general. He seems truly uncomfortable with his then level of fame, perhaps only recently dealing with his famousness well. Where there are glimpses of his routines they seem pretty funny; from one: "I've learned in comedy never to alienate the audience. Otherwise, I would be like Dimitri in La Condition Humaine...."

Then I watched most of The Jerk on instant Netflix (a movie I have seen many times before), which is SO funny. Also my family watched a Season 3 Muppet Show hosted by Steve, but I fell asleep at 7:30 that night and missed it. Also I've been catching up on 30 Rock (Netflix is MAGIC!) and last night was the "Gavin Volure" episode guest-starring... OMG Steve Martin!

One more Steve Martin thing that has given me pause for thought is the recent "conversation" he had at the 92nd street Y in New York, for which the Y offered refunds to audience members because Martin's talk was too boring. Apparently he'd written a book about art and was proceeding to talk about art, but it was also a live feed and viewers were sending in negative comments while the conversation was taking place. (I like to think they were like "why doesn't he have an arrow threw his head LOLz>!") I have been thinking about this because it's yet another example of my belief that the world of quality, edited content is ending. Because I am a writer I refer to this phenomenon as "the apocalypse." When anybody can comment on anything (just about), and often does, we get the content we want from the author, but also have to endure the unsolicited opinions of random Vinnie Boombatz commenters.

I was going to rant next about how many comments are just stupid or degrading, and they demean me when I read them, and they bring down the whole piece, whatever it is, by their existence. For example, on Thursday I read a nymag.com thing about Helen Hunt called "Helen Hunt on How Age and Parenting Have Transformed Her Career." It's an interview where she somewhat thoughtfully considers her career, her directing, death, birth. Then the first comment was two words: "What career?" I guess the commenter is either being catty, funny or a total troll, but jeez.

I was also going to write about Emily Gould and Tracy Gaughran-Perez, who I think are fantastic writers and who I also think have endured unnecessary slagging in the form of dumb comments. I worry that mean comments about Emily Gould have had a chilling effect on what Emily Gould is willing to write, and that's a shame. (Her famous Exposed cover story in the NYT Magazine currently has 1216 comments.) What kind of wonderfulness would we be reading from her if she hadn't had to deal with and process everybody's opinions about her? (She said on her blog she has turned off Google alerts about herself, but just in case: I love you Emily!) As for Tracy Gaughran-Perez, who I also admire, she has written about struggling with mean commenters on her personal blog. Like, what is the point of that? If she's writing about her own personal life of her own free will, you either read it and like it or you go somewhere else. Don't read it and then be mean, that is so playground! Commenters gotta follow the Thumper rule: "If you can't say somethin nice, don't say nothin at all" (Don't get me started on comments that just say "First!")

I might have also complained about some other stuff like this that has been bugging me. But as I kept thinking about this rant, I realized I am having a bout of "Why Wasn't I Consulted?" According to Paul Ford on ftrain.com, this is the whole problem (or the whole beauty) of the Web. Everybody is encouraged to have an opinion about everything, and to SHARE that opinion. The problem is that clearly MY opinion is the best, but nobody knows that. In fact everybody else believes THEIR opinion is best. I must tell them otherwise! I must comment! So the Web is a cacophonous free-for-all of thumbs up/down and like buttons and facebook sharing and screen names and witticisms and stupidities and rarely, gems. I am frustrated by comments I don't agree with. I am frustrated about commenting in general. And really, why wasn't I consulted on this? Some things shouldn't be commented on. Unless I feel like commenting on them, of course. Because my comments are the best!

Back to Steve Martin. It is a damn shame that we can't even let a public event evolve naturally without trying to tweet it into submission. However I would like to give a thumbs up to the cute ukulele duet from The Jerk, called "You Belong to Me." My favorite part is when Bernadette Peters randomly pulls out a trumpet near the end and plays a solo. In his book Steve Martin complains that at the premiere, people walked out during this scene to buy more popcorn. But judging by the number of covers and tributes and ukulele how-tos on Youtube, this song impressed a lot of folks over the years. Good job, Steve.

Homebrew Photo Essay

2011-01-11T20:34:00.002-05:00

One of the Christmas gifts that we made this year was homebrew. It was fun to get brewing again after more than a year off! Also, Brattleboro now has its own brew supply store on High Street, Microbe Brewers' Supply. Very, very exciting (especially after my complaining that we needed such a store). Here is a photo essay from the brewing process. We did the steps over 3 different days--boiling, racking and bottling.

Day 1: Sterilized items laid out to dry

My favorite recipe is one I wrote myself and published in discontent #13.
Also one must have a beer while one is brewing.

We had so many grains we needed 2 grain bags.

Removing the spent grains--pressing to get all that good flavor and color out.

Adding light malt extract.

The boil.

Here are the hops we used, bitter Warrior on the left, milder Willamette on the right. Plus your basic brewing yeast, Munton's.

The wort is poured into the primary fermenter, with floating thermometer.

We tried something new this time because we were using tap water. We put 3 gallons of water into mason jars, then left them in the sun all day to burn off the chlorine. Then we refrigerated them--made the cooling period after the boil MUCH shorter.

Activating the yeast. I decided to do it in the warm wort. Not sure if that was wise or not.

Day 2 (about 4 days later): Take the lid off and here's what I see. Activity!

Here's my awesome auto-siphon doing its job--moving the beer into the secondary fermenter.

View from the top. The primary fermenter (bucket) is on the counter, and secondary fermenter (glass carboy) is on the floor.

Closeup! I'm really excited about this carboy I guess.

Airlock on. Ready for the closet.

The sludge at the bottom of the barrel.

Day 3 (about a week later): Sterilizing bottles in a B-brite (bleach) solution.

Corn sugar ready to mix with water and heat. For carbonation purposes.

Specific gravity check.

Lovely color! Racking back into the (clean) primary fermenter for bottling purposes.

Sterilizing bottle caps. Then we filled the bottles, capped them and put them away for another week.

Finished product: I pasted cut-outs from wrapping paper onto the bottles, to make a nice gift for Uncle M. (We also put wrapping paper on a 6-pack holder to make a festive little carry-all.)

The beer was delicious by the way. We used the bitter hops at the very end of the boil and it gave it a great hoppy character that is just what we like.

"Fences": Phoenix

2011-01-08T15:38:00.006-05:00

I'm still taking a break from my weekly radio program, Beef Jerky Time, formerly broadcast on WVEW-LPFM 107.7 Brattleboro, VT. But I haven't stopped listening to music and wanting to share it. So I'm starting a new "Song of the Week" column here on the Cabinet of Prof. Kitty. Yo yo welcome 2011!

This week I'd like to pay attention to "Fences" from Phoenix's 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I find this song both driving and mellow. I love the falsetto-y vocals going on. There's a smidge of disco in the background (wait.... hear that tiny handclap? Like around 1:31?). The fact that these guys are from Versailles makes the music extra awesome for me. (I understand that if you're actually from Versailles it's totally lame. But I'm not! And so!)

Phoenix-FENCES by reptart

DJ opinion: I would say this would be a good song for driving into a sunset wearing mirrored aviators, nestled in a playlist between the Strokes and Don Henley's Boys of Summer. Wait, I'll stick those below too so you can see what you think.

Someday by The Strokes: Soundcloud track got yanked so here's youtube

Boys of Summer by Don Henley. As above, the Soundcloud track is gone so here's youtube. I don't mind
though because this video is rad. I love the built-in nostalgia of the recurring running-on-the-beach clip.

Goodbye Christmas Tree

2011-01-07T20:46:00.000-05:00

We were so in love with our Christmas tree this year. It only cost $20 at Lilac Ridge Farm and it was just sweet. Perfect size for our house, perky boughs, gorgeous when covered with lights and ornaments. Thank you little tree for brightening up our holidays and being our tannenbaum.

Sadly though, round about December 26th, it became unclear how much longer we would want the gorgeous Christmas tree in our house. But... remember those crafts where you have to coat a pinecone with peanut butter and then dip it in birdseed? We wondered what would happen if we tried that with the whole tree.

First we stuck it in a snowbank in the front yard (see above).

Then we dosed it with delicious bird friendly ingredients. Specifically, we used peanut butter and birdseed. These items can be assembled any which way, but at our house we first dipped a spoon in peanut butter, then put it in a pile of birdseed, then scraped the spoonful over the tree branch.

We also sprinkled extra seeds over the whole sticky mess. We were hoping birds would be irresistibly drawn to all this. Turns out... apparently squirrels are the ones who are down with the peanut-butter-Christmas-tree-birdseed-vibe. Welcome cute furry peeps!

Birthday party

2011-01-04T20:25:00.004-05:00

For my birthday I decided to drag my family to a buffet for lunch and get really full, and then for dinner we'd just have appetizers. Whee! It was a fun day. We got some great salumi from Brattleboro's North End Butchers (hot sopressata (spicy!), Genoa salami (peppery!), Molinari finnociona (fennel-seedy!)). I also got some Maytag blue cheese that was so ripe and moldy it burned the inside of my mouth (but in a good way). And some soothing French brie. Plus as a salute to my childhood, little Mini Babybel and Laughing Cow wrapped cheese products. Some of us drank prosecco and some had sparkling cranberry juice.

Thank you Gramma and Grandpa for the lovely stargazer lilies! They smell amazing!

I consider my birthday the last of the holidays that started way back at Thanksgiving. Now it's time to buckle down and get on with 2011 for reals. Happy New Year!

DIY Alfalfa Sprouts

2010-12-30T21:01:00.001-05:00

During winter I feel wrong buying nice fresh lettuces. They can't be in season, can they? So I tried a DIY lettuce substitute straight from my childhood--homegrown alfalfa sprouts.

Through the mists of time I remembered my mom always used a tablespoon of alfalfa seeds. She had a fancy Biosta Sprouter, and before that some Sprouting Strainer Lids (basically plastic mesh tops that fit mason jars). Having none of these, I used a mason jar, cheesecloth and a rubber band. I found the alfalfa seeds in the bulk section of the local food co-op.

Alfalfa seeds in jar, covered with cheesecloth secured with elastic

I put the jar on the sink like the bean sprouts I made in the past, and watered them daily by filling the jar and then pouring the water out again. The cheesecloth got a little funky-looking in the process, but the resulting sprouts were fine.

My alfalfa sprouts were ready in about 5 days. I removed them from the jar and put them in the fridge to stop the growing and keep them fresh. Before refrigerating, I like to hold them loosely under running water to rinse away some of those little brown seed hulls.

Then I store them on a paper towel (the rinse water makes it wet, which is good) in a plastic takeout container.

An egg salad sandwich with sprouts--no lettuce!

P. S. When I was in grade school the other kids picked on me for the alfalfa sprouts my mom put in my sandwiches. "Ew, WORMS!" I just rolled my eyes.

P.P.S. On second thought, I guess lettuce is OK if it's locally grown, like the stuff at the Winter Farmer's Market.

Favorite Songs of 2010

2010-12-18T22:08:00.005-05:00

I divided this list into two sections, as seemed natural: "regular new" and "smacks of the 80s." Also I'm trying Soundcloud this year so you can just listen right off the page. (Give it a few secs.)

Regular New 2010 Songs

Subliminal Message: Happy Birthday

This band is from the town where I live. That is remarkable because Brattleboro, Vermont only has about 12,000 people. Yet I did not discover Happy Birthday through word of mouth, or at the bar, or at a show. I found them the way I find everything--on the Internet. It was only after I picked this song for my radio show that I learned they're from like, down the street. Anyway, I love the glides (glissando)--that thing where, like the beginning of "Rhapsody in Blue," the notes swoop from low to high, sounding a bit like a classy siren going off. Nice.

Happy Birthday - Subliminal Message by subpop

Let's Get Out of Here: Les Savy Fav

A song about going home together. "I just want you to want me right now." It's like a grunge ballad--sweet but still rockin.

Les Savy Fav - Let's Get Out of Here by Wichita Recordings

Boy: Ra Ra Riot

This band from Syracuse was also on my 2009 list (remixed). I just love their sound I guess--joyful, propulsive, perfect pop. Very crisp guitar lines, nice strings, beautiful pogo-sticking from the bass & drums. This song always makes me smile. No idea what it's about.

Ra Ra Riot - Boy by Arts & Crafts

Real Life: Tanlines

This is like club music gone psychedelic, plus tabla. I love it. The lyrics play to my drippy nostalgic side: "You might think I'm still that way. It's only natural. It was a past life thing, it was a past life thing. It wasn't anything at all." I also love the apparent shout-out to Missing Person's "Destination Unknown." You guys are awesome.

Tanlines - Real Life by musicmule

Bang Bang Bang (f. MNDR & Q-Tip): Mark Ronson

MNDR & Q-Tip are a great pair on this track. It is super catchy, with a very pleasing stutter-synth that is a real earworm. I don't know what MNDR is saying but her attitude is so cool that I sing along with her anyway. "Shake it to morella!" Or whatever.

Bang Bang Bang (Feat. MNDR & Q-Tip)- Mark Ronson by kmdskier

Landscapes: Gregory and the Hawk

Sweet, quiet vocals from Meredith Godreau and some instrument I can't quite identify. Hammered dulcimer? Some gamelan thing? Wait, is it a KOTO? No matter, it's lovely. Her voice makes me want to hang out with her, maybe get some tea.

Gregory and the Hawk - Landscapes by FatCat Records

Shutterbugg: Big Boi

This song got me running again after baby. I'd cue it up on the iPod and go. It is not even close to electro-pop. Big Boi's rapid rapping, the goofy "buh-buh-buh-buh" bass, the foul language--all great to get you up and moving and singing. Sasha Frere Jones calls it "sparkly and irresistible" and he is correct.

Big Boi- Shutterbugg by darkbloom

Loxtep: Annuals

They're from North Carolina, but this song has a fabulous Latin vibe (besides being quite beepy, which is how I like it). "Your line around my neck keeps pullin' pullin'"... and then the pretty children's chorus!

Annuals - Loxtep by IndieHearts

Songs that Smack of the 80s

Your Woman: Cats on Fire

They're Finnish! This cover is amazing, yet with kind of a classic sock-hop sound and lyrics. "I could never be your woman," explains the lead singer. "Why did you play me that way?" Except I'm pretty sure the lead singer is a guy. Apparently this is also true of the original version by White Town (1997). The guitar on this really slays me, it sounds like if Johnny Marr is playing the balalaika. Too delicious.

Cats on Fire - Your Woman by joolsjoyce

Not In Love: Crystal Castles

What better way to make your song sound authentically 80s than to get the guy from The Cure to sing for you? Robert Smith's voice immediately transports me to cold teen Novembers of mild misbehavior and pining to be grown up. This is one of several songs here with lyrics that make me sentimental like a 3-hanky movie: "And we were lovers, now we can't be friends." (The Internet tells me this was a Platinum Blonde song from 1983. BACK IN THE DAY.)

Crystal Castles - Not In Love (Feat. Robert Smith) by Posh Magazine

The Mall & Misery: Broken Bells

The team of Danger Mouse and the guy from the Shins (OK, I know his name, it's James Mercer) formed Broken Bells and released a like-named album in March 2010. It's as good as you might expect. (That is, very.) This particular song starts out a little bit twangy country, then a sweeping string section comes in after 30 seconds, and only after almost a minute does the beat and all the rest kick in. My favorite parts--the little soap bubble pop sound in the background during the verse. Best of all, the raw and twangy Joy Division guitar thing that shows up. Egad!

Boo, the Soundcloud track got taken down, so here's Youtube.

I Can Change: LCD Soundsystem

Do you like Yaz? Gary Numan? How about Flock of Seagulls? If so, then you will love "I Can Change." This song is almost too 80s even for me. But not quite! I can take it!

LCD Soundsystem - I Can Change by IndieRockReviews

I also really liked:

Living Days: Let's Kiss (Youtube)
I Feel Bonnie: Hot Chip f. Bonnie Prince Billy (rcrdlbl)
O.N.E. (XXXChange remix): Yeasayer (The Fader)
A Million Miles: Don Diablo (SoundCloud)
Summer: Atypicals (Bandcamp)
Julius: Starf••ker (Myspace)
Tom Cruz: Plants & Animals (KEXP)
Dissembler: Woodhands (Spinner ***extra stars for video that makes me homesick for Toronto)

Brattleboro Winter Farmer's Market abuzz

2010-12-11T15:40:00.005-05:00

In Brattleboro, Vermont, we are lucky because the indoor Winter Farmer's Market starts up downtown right after the outdoor Farmer's Market ends in October. The Winter Market is organized by Post Oil Solutions and runs from November to March on Saturdays, 10am to 2pm. There you'll find agricultural products, artisanal crafts and baked goods, plus hot ready-to-eat food and live music. The market is in the River Garden space at 153 Main Street.

I stopped by the busy market today and took a few snaps. It's so hopping there around lunch-time that it helps to move with the "traffic" of people shuffling counterclockwise looking at the stalls and products and chatting with the vendors. There are many other vendors and products there besides those pictured of course--this is just a sampling.

Crates of vegetables greet you at the front door of the River Garden

Dwight Miller Orchards syrups, vinegar, and jams (left), apples (right)

Amazing Planet Farm squashes and pickles (left) and eggs (right)

Orchard Hill Breadworks

There are tons of crafts and gorgeous handmade items at the market, like this jewelry

Handmade creations (above and below) by Dandelion Design--such cute stuff!

Fairy house (background), acorn people and gnomes

Susan Dunning's gorgeous hand thrown pottery

Want food NOW? There's plenty of delicious prepared food, like this
African spinach dish with rice and fried plantains

African Chicken Stew with Peanut Sauce

2010-12-10T15:10:00.001-05:00

As far as I can tell, this stew is "African" because it contains peanuts and exotic spices... like cumin. Perhaps it's as African as calling something "American" because it contains cheese and ground beef. Nonetheless, this slow cooker stew is very delicious. (And it also uses up chickpeas!)

The stew originated because I made the "African Peanut Sauce" on page 299 of Terry Blonder Golson's cookbook 1,000 Lowfat Recipes. To make the sauce, start with onions & garlic sautéed in oil, then throw in a bit of curry powder and ground coriander, then stir in a large can of crushed tomatoes, some peanut butter and some chopped roasted peanuts. Cook together and you're done.

But I made a mistake. Instead of crushed tomatoes, I added a can of puréed tomatoes. Horrors! The result was VERRY tomato-y. I could tell the tomato taste would overpower and wreck whatever slow cooked stew I wanted to make. I did not freak out! Instead I divided the sauce into 3 portions and froze two of them. Then I made my stew--here's the recipe.

Ingredients

3-4 carrots, cut into chunks
1/2 can (15 oz. can) of chickpeas
small onion, chopped
oil for frying (such as canola or olive)
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
6-8 chicken thighs cut into chunks (or 2-3 breasts in a pinch)
dashes of ground cumin, ground ginger, and cinnamon
1/3 recipe of peanut sauce described above
1 T peanut butter
1/2 cup chicken broth (or water is fine)
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt

Assembly

Put carrots and chickpeas in the slow cooker.
Fry onion in oil until aromatic, then add garlic.
Add chicken thighs and stir them around until they are cooked on the outside. Add spices and stir together.
Add sauce, peanut butter, and broth. Cook together briefly, stirring until peanut butter has been incorporated. Pour into slow cooker.
Cook on High all day (about 8 hours). I like to stir it halfway through if I'm home.
About 1/2 hour before serving, add the lemon juice. Salt to taste.

We have this with whole wheat couscous and greens. Serves 4.

Chickpea & orzo salad

2010-12-05T21:12:00.006-05:00

I have a lot of chickpeas and have been trying to use them up. Hummus of course. Also Molly Wizenberg's Curried Lentil Soup is an unexpected and delicious vehicle for chickpeas. Handfuls thrown on a salad are nice. But I still have more chickpeas. Here's a recent invention.

Combine:

cooked orzo (1 cup dry)
crumbled feta to taste
cooked kale (maybe 1/2 cup)
15 oz. can chickpeas
dressing made of lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and dried basil
salt & pepper
chopped red onion (save for garnish)

If possible, let chill for at least 4 hours. We passed this with the chopped red onion so folks could add as much onion as they wanted (or reject it, as in the case of our smallest diner).

Any favorite uses for chickpeas? Also, do you prefer to call them garbanzos?

Sourdough for Busy People: Master Recipe

2010-11-30T12:05:00.001-05:00

Do you love fresh sourdough, nice chewy sandwiches, crisp delicious toast? Do you like to bake but find you have Very Little Time? Please consider my Sourdough for Busy People. With this recipe, sourdough can be made regularly, quickly, and easily. I figure the whole process takes about 12 hours from start to finish. (That's fast!)

What I've come up with is actually a combination of 3 recipes or systems. The ingredients and measurements are from my mother's "Tried and True for 20 Years" recipe. The kneading ritual is from SourDom's helpful tutorial on sourdough.com. The scoring and baking (and a few other tips along the way) are from Peter Reinhart's excellent book The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

So first, I figure out my schedule. The kneading/rising/baking time takes about 3 hours. Before that, figure on about 8 hours to wake up the starter. This means that if you want to knead and bake at night (say from 6 to 9pm), you can prepare your starter in the morning (by 10am at the latest) and you'll be good to go. Or if you want to bake in the morning (a nice weekend ritual), prepare your starter the evening before and leave it overnight. Then you can knead/bake from 9am til noon. Sometimes I write myself a little timeline, like this:

8am: Prep starter.
5:50pm: Prep yeast
6:00: Combine yeast with other ingredients. Cover and let sit.
6:10: Knead briefly. Cover and let sit.
6:20: Knead briefly: Cover and let sit.
6:30: Knead briefly. Cover and let sit.
7:00: Knead briefly. Cover and let sit.
7:45: Punch down. Shape. Cover and let sit (proof).
8:25: Turn on oven to 500˚.
8:30: Uncover and score loaves.
8:30: Bake at 500--mist every 30 seconds 3 times.
8:40-ish: Turn loaves in oven, turn down to 450˚.
8:55 (approx): Done! Let loaves cool one a rack for at least an hour before eating.

That's it! OK, here are details.

Prepare the starter

As mentioned, do this at least 8 hours before you'll start to mix and bake. To prepare the starter, I take it out of the fridge and if I have an hour or so to spare, let it come to room temperature. Then I scrape it into a bowl (there is 1/2 cup of it) and combine with 1.5 cups of flour and 2 cups warm water. Cover with a towel and leave it. If it is very cold or hot in your kitchen, you can put it in your oven for a more even "room temperature" experience. Just remember it's in there. (I write myself a note.) (See very bottom of post for starter recipe.)* I use All-Purpose flour for this step.

After 8+ hours

Remove starter

This is a simple step, but very important. When you're ready to mix, knead and bake, the first thing you do is take out 1/2 cup of starter from your bowl. I use a glass 1-cup measure and just scoop out or pour 1/2 cup into it. Put it in a dedicated starter crock and stick it back in your fridge for next time. If you miss this step, you'll have no more starter for next time.

Prepare the yeast

I just use regular active dry yeast, such as comes in a packet like Red Star or Fleischmann's. Recently I found that our coop sells this type of yeast in bulk. I figured out that 2.25 teaspoons is the same amount as one packet. I put the yeast in the same 1-cup measure I just used for removing the starter (I don't wash it). I add 1/4 cup warm water from the tap and let it sit for 5 minutes until at least some of the yeast is dissolved.

Mix ingredients

While the yeast is dissolving, I start pouring the dry ingredients on top of the mixed starter in the bowl. I put in 3.5 cups of flour. 1/2 cup is White Whole Wheat, and the other 3 cups are bread flour. (I used AP flour for this for many months, but I find the bread flour is really better. Go for it!) Also add 1 T salt. Mix in dissolved yeast mixture and stir everything together. It doesn't have to be mixed well yet--a ragged dough is fine. Cover it with a towel and let it sit for 10 minutes. The idea is that gluten (the structure strands) starts to form when the flour and water get acquainted. Just let it do its thing!

Knead briefly 4 times

According to SourDom, just knead for 10 seconds at a time. Sometimes I get carried away and knead a little longer. Do the kneading 10 minutes apart 3 times, then wait half an hour and knead one more time. How exactly? Here's what I do:

Spray a countertop or other smooth surface with oil. (Spray oil seems like an odd ingredient, but Peter Reinhart recommends it and I do find it SO handy. If you flour a surface, you're changing your flour ratios.) Dump the ragged dough onto the area. Knead for 10 seconds or whatever.

Still life with spray oil and dough scraper

Then, oil a new bowl and plop the dough in. Spray the top of the dough too if you like. Cover with a towel and let sit for 10 minutes. (You could also just wash your first bowl, dry and oil, then plop the dough in for however long is left of your 10 minutes.)

After 10 minutes, do it again. You can re-oil the bowl before plopping the dough in again. Or not.

After 10 minutes, do it again. You'll find the dough is starting to look a lot smoother and be more stretchy when you knead. Perfect.

After 30 minutes, knead for 10 seconds one more time. You're done kneading! Put it back in the bowl and cover.

Let the dough double

I give it about 45 minutes. I let it rise until the dough touches the bottom of the towel that's covering it. This is an imprecise measurement, but it's the way my mom did it (or that's how it looked to me).

Divide, shape, and proof

This recipe will make at least two loaves. There are many different ways to shape and proof each loaf--just doing it on a counter or baking sheet, using a brotform (rising basket), using a baguette pan, using a towel or piece of canvas to hold the dough up, and so on. I have a double baguette pan and two brotforms (one round, one oblong). I find this recipe makes one baguette and one loaf from either brotform. Or it could make two small baguettes and one small round loaf. This time I decided to make an oblong loaf and one baguette. Whatever you decide, here's what to do:

Dump dough on oiled counter. Dimple it with fingers to "degas" some of the air bubbles. Cut it with the scraper, guesstimating sizes needed for individual loaves. Shape each loaf by kind of tucking it into its own center. (It's kind of the gestures you'd make if you were rolling a shower cap into itself starting at the outer edges and tucking everything equally into a small mushroom shape.)

Spray surface of loaves lightly with oil and cover with towel. Let loaves rise--"proof"--for 45 minutes.

Loaf in (oiled and sprinkled with cornmeal) baguette pan is seam-side down. Loaf in (floured) brotform is seam-side up.

Same loaves after 45 minutes.

Scoring

After the loaves have proofed for 45 minutes, turn on the oven to 500˚ Fahrenheit. When it's getting close to heat, I carefully tip out the brotform loaf onto a baking sheet that's oiled and sprinkled with cornmeal. (Parchment is easier, but I ran out.) Now the seam-side is down.

Then, score all loaves. I use a boxcutter for this. A sharp knife will also do. I like to put diagonal slashes on long or oblong loaves. A round loaf gets an "x" shape.

Bake 25 minutes

Here's my method, adapted from Peter Reinhart. Set oven racks low and high in the oven. Place loaves on racks and mist with water for about 5 seconds. Then close oven for 20-30 seconds. Open and mist again. Close oven for another 20-30 seconds. Open and mist again. Set timer for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, rotate loaves. Turn oven down to 450˚ and bake another 12-15 minutes. I found from trial and error that 15 minutes in my oven was too long (the bottoms turned black--almost burned). You want a loaf that is clearly golden-brown and baked through, and that sounds hollow-ish when tapped on the bottom, but is NOT dark brown or burned looking.

Wait! Don't slice 'til cool. It's still cooking in there!

That's it!

I hope if you try this, or even just read the recipe through, that the directions make sense. Let me know! I'd love to hear what works for you, too!

*One way to make starter:

Mix up slop that includes yeast and leave it sitting out for several days. Ideally it should look a bit bubbly with a layer of clear liquid on top. My mother's recipe is just to combine 1 cup of flour with 1 cup of water and 1 packet of yeast. Use 1/2 cup of this for batch #1.

Crock with starter

Mini Pizzas and the Cold War

2010-11-29T20:35:00.005-05:00

Mini foods are always more enticing than full size, no? Our preschooler asked me to photograph the dinner we made together today. You can pretty much guess the 5 ingredients: English muffin (lightly toasted) topped with marinara sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni (sliced into interesting triangles) and black olives.

Last night I watched The Russia House for, like, the seventh time. Each time I see that movie I am confused by the spy stuff. But I keep coming back and getting different things out of it. With novel by John LeCarré and script by Tom Stoppard, it has some great lines. This time I paid attention to Russell the CIA guy (Roy Scheider), who is complaining to his British Intelligence counterpart about how notebooks smuggled out of the Soviet Union detailing their military ineptitudes will have a chilling effect on the brisk trade of the arms race.

The trouble is, a lot of highly paid favorite sons are in danger of having their rice bowls broken and going hungry, all on account of these goddamn notebooks. The Russian military effort is stalled, the American military effort is stalled. Their rocket motors suck instead of blow, their ICBMs can't get out of their kennels, their scientists can't do solid fuel for shit... Our customers don't like to hear that.

It got me reminiscing about the Cold War--seems so long ago. Seems like the favorite sons figured out a new game fairly quickly though.

I Feel Bad About My Stock

2010-11-19T10:51:00.007-05:00

Onion skins. Celery ends. Beef fat trimmings. Mushroom stems. Carrot tops. Garlic sprouts. Chicken bones. No, it's not the contents of a Rachel-Ray-type "garbage bowl" that I'm going to throw away. It's what I save for making stock!

There is a bay leaf just right of center! A "real" ingredient!

Well apparently, this is all wrong. So says Chef Pardus. Crap.

You see, I thought I was being so clever and frugal. I always saved these bits and scraps from making meals--kept them in a bag in the freezer. Every now and then I'd heave them, unthawed, into the crockpot with water to cover. After 8 hours or so on "low," I'd have something I called stock. (It tasted like onion water.) I'd salt it up and use it in soups or stews.

However, after reading The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman, I discovered that Chef Michael Pardus (Culinary Institute of America) does NOT consider stuff like vegetable trimmings to be legitimate stock ingredients. Ruhlman describes the basics class where CIA students are learning to make stock. When asked if the carrots for stock should be peeled, Pardus said something like, "If people want carrot peelings so much, put them in a salad." Takeaway: Don't make stock from garbage. Use peeled carrots, not carrot peels. (The worst part of this story is that once, before I'd ever read Making of a Chef, I posted a comment on ruhlman.com giving my little freezer bag routine as a handy kitchen tip. Idiot! Now Michael Ruhlman knows that I make stock out of garbage!)

After crockpotting, strain. Use the liquid for soups or stews.

I really should know better, since I went to coooking school myself once. Stock should be made with mirepoix, a sachet of parsley and peppercorns, bones. I know that. But honestly, when I have carrots or celery or onions (aka mirepoix), I need to cook and eat them, not boil them for stock. Is it so wrong to save my garbage and make... onion water? Aren't I rather clever?

WHAT?

Postscript: The minestrone I made was a big hit with the family. You'd never know it was made from onion water.

Pumpkin Seeds

2010-11-11T12:50:00.005-05:00

At Halloween this year we never got around to buying an "official" large pumpkin to carve. Instead we carved the two cute little pumpkins we had at hand. (Thanks Gramma J!)

Then, a week after Halloween, some family members were buying cider and saw that big pumpkins were on sale for $2. They bought one and made another jack-o-lantern.

Lights out, please!

It was agreed that the pumpkin was worth $2 because for one, it was a fun evening project for parent and kid. For two, we made a favorite snack--roasted pumpkin seeds.

Is there a recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds? We just faked it. Put them in a bowl of water to help separate pulp from seeds. Salted. Roasted at around 200 until dry. Cranked up to around 350 until the seeds started to brown and pop. That's it. Should I mention here that the person who likes pumpkin seeds doesn't peel them, just chews them as is? That person is NOT ME. Heh.

Cloth Diapering: My Basics

2010-11-09T10:52:00.006-05:00

Sometimes people ask me about cloth diapers, as I have used them with two children. I thought it might be useful to post an overview for easy reference. I call this "my basics" because everybody seems to have slightly different reasons for using cloth diapers, and slightly different ways of using them. The key, of course, is just to do what works. This is what works for me. I hope it's useful. (Please note that nobody paid or rewarded me to mention any particular brands, they're just what I happen to have. However if one were to click through to Amazon and buy something, I might make a few cents on those links.)

Basic supplies

I've tried several kinds of cloth diaper and there are many many more options available. What works best for me and my slap-dash manner is prefolds--basically just a piece of cloth that has a thicker section in the middle third (most visible in the top diaper shown below). I fold these and put them into a "wrap," which is a washable diaper-shaped holder that can be reused over and over... and over.

A note on fabric: the prefolds shown below are Indian I believe (there are also Chinese ones). They are a soft cotton with a smooth-ish surface. There are also prefolds available, like Gerber brand, that seem more gauze-y, not so smooth. I don't recommend these for diapers (though they make excellent burp cloths).

Prefolds: Infant size on top, larger on bottom

How many prefolds do you need? As many as you can afford! The more diapers you have, the less often you have to do laundry. However, prefolds do seem to cost around 2 dollars apiece, so don't go too crazy. Kitting yourself out with 24 prefolds and 4 wraps might cost you up to $100. (Put them on your baby registery or ask for a gift card if you can!) To compare, a package of disposable diapers might contain 48 diapers and cost $10. I am feeble at math, but I think that means that the cloth diapers start paying for themselves after about 3 weeks. (I use an average of 12 a day, so I'd be buying a new bag of disposables every 2 days or so.)

Also, kids grow and diapers don't. So one would need several sets of diapers. Here's what I use:

For the first 6 weeks, 24 infant size prefolds with 3 newborn wraps. I have Bummis brand for wraps.

From 6 weeks to about 6 months, 24 larger prefolds with 5+ wraps. For wraps I used Bummis again, Imse Vimse (I have "Bumpy" style) and Mother-Ease ("Rikki" style especially). More important than brand here I think is the velcro--if you're changing diapers 12 times a day, I'd suggest velcro wraps and not snaps, cuz the snaps get really old really fast.

These are both velcro--so easy to secure.
The top is Imse Vimse and the bottom is Mother-Ease.

The top is velcro--Bummis brand. The bottom is a Mother-Ease with snaps.

After 6 months I also started rotating in Mother-Ease One-Size Diapers. Theoretically these can be used for small babies too but it takes a lot of folding & snapping and I was just too darn lazy. But once the child is bigger and not wetting/soiling a million times a day, the One-Size gets more worthwhile. (Note, I've used both regular and organic and frankly like the regular better. It has a more absorbent/washable lining, and I found the organics started to fall apart rather quickly.)


For a large baby or toddler, use the One-Size unfolded and at the outermost snaps.	For an infant or smaller baby, fold down the top row of snaps and there are more snaps on the back. Then cinch in the side flaps and snap as tightly as needed. You can even snap the right-hand-side on top of the left-hand-side for the smallest possible fit.

A few more supplies: I recommend a plastic bucket with lid for holding used diapers (see pic at very beginning of post), and a simple dollar-store basin for rinsing (more below).

Using the Diapers

I was taught by our local "natural parenting" store, where we purchase diaper supplies, that prefolds can be folded differently for girls and boys.

For a girl baby, place the diaper sideways as shown on top, then fold in either side to make a 3-layer rectangle. The thickest part of the diaper will be in the middle.

For a boy baby, start with the diaper sideways, then fold in one side just a few inches. Fold down the top and bottom so they meet in the middle. The thickest part of the diaper is now in the front. (You then flip it over and put the smooth side toward the baby.) Actually, that first inward fold is optional--the key is to just fold both sides in to the middle.

Then whichever way you folded it, you put it in the diaper wrap and put it on the baby. I keep using a wrap over and over again until it gets poopy. That means I might go through 3 or 5 or 8 prefolds in the same wrap before I need to change the wrap.

Washing

So cloth diapers, super cheap & easy, right? Yay, right? Well I must disclose that using cloth diapers does involve Touching Poop. You can't just fold up a nasty one and throw it away like with disposables. So here's the deal with washing these reusable beauties.

My 2 dozen diapers seem to need washing every other day. I put used ones in a bucket with lid. (Honestly, the diapers of an exclusively breastfed baby are not very smelly. When "real" poop starts, I might start keeping the bucket in the bathroom.) Then when I use the last diaper (and usually not before!) I haul out the bucket and follow these washing steps:

Separate out any poopy diapers and wraps.
Soak these in a dedicated plastic basin in the bathtub.
After 10 minutes or even overnight, I rinse these out, rubbing a little to dislodge matter. I try to catch all rinse water in the basin. I pour any soiled water down the toilet. My goal is not to let the diaper water touch the bathtub... much. (Once solid food is started this job will get yuckier.)
Throw all diapers and wraps into washing machine. We have an HE (High Efficiency) washer that doesn't use much water, and we found a "normal" cycle leaves the washer smelling funny. So we use an extra rinse cycle, and also pour some white vinegar (maybe 1/4 cup) in the bleach dispenser. We wash on Hot. (Never use bleach because it will destroy the diapers quickly. Washing them constantly is already wearing them out.)
We air dry the wraps, but do put diapers in the dryer. That's where the nice soft wrinkly texture comes from. (When we first bought prefolds they were large and stiff. They need to be pre-washed and dried to shrink and soften. We actually didn't have a dryer back then so we boiled the diapers and then line-dried them. Line-dried diapers are not as soft and cuddly though.)
Use those clean cloth diapers and wraps, and be ready to wash all over again in 48 hours.

Further Thoughts

**An Important Disclaimer: I always use disposables at night, so I am not a total-cloth gal. Gasp, I know! With baby #1, I found she woke up less often with disposables, and sleep trumped sustainability for me. Baby #2 seems to know when he's wet whether it's disposable or not, but it's also easier to put on a disposable in the dim night-time bedroom, so that's what I do.

Also for the very first week or so after birth, we used disposable Newborn diapers because it's just such an intense time. The last thing we needed to deal with was more laundry. (Basically, using disposables in a pinch is always my policy, be it laundry time, an expedition somewhere, or just cuz.)

Washing costs: Even though cloth diapers pay for themselves after several uses, they aren't exactly free after that because they need to be washed and dried constantly. Our electric bill does show a slight change.

Checking for wetness: I think it's amusing that many moms have a two-fingered "swipe" they do to see if a cloth diaper is wet--rather than undressing the baby to check (that's what dads do--ha!). If the baby is wearing pants one can check for wetness up the leg and into the diaper with no undressing/unsnapping at all.

Blowouts: I believe that cloth diapers are better at holding poop explosions than disposables. Or at least the disposables I use. It's always a little sad when a cute onesie gets stained (and you have to change everything the baby is wearing) because a blowout went "up the back." For us, this happens less often with cloth.

Wipes: Do I use cloth wipes? Nope! :)

DIY wraps, inserts, doublers, etc.: I know people who sew their own wraps. I know people who have used flushable liners. I've seen "doublers" to go into One-Size diapers at night and soak up more during that time. I know people who use wool wraps and swear they hardly ever need washing, just a wipe and some drying time. I know people who have tried cloth and gave up because it was yucky or the baby didn't seem to like it. I know people who used disposables all the time except in the evenings, when mom would use cloth. I know people who wouldn't dream of using disposables unless it was some kind of emergency. This is all to say again--if you want to use cloth diapers, just do what works for you. There are no laws or terms that must be followed!

Links: I did not do any researching because I want to use my own words here. While I was putting this together, I did see a post come out on Simple Organic about rationales for using cloth: Cloth Diapering: It Doesn't Have to Be All or Nothing. Also as a Vermonter I must mention Green Mountain Diapers, an online store based in Vernon, VT!

Baby steps

2010-10-31T09:33:00.000-04:00

Back in July I posted about these brand new feet.

First week

When I saw this photo, as much as I loved those little toes and legs, I made it my vow to FATTEN THEM UP. Here is how we have progressed so far (photo evidence was difficult as these feet move around a lot). Chunkier!

Fourteenth week

Well I just wanted to report that we are doing very well and wallowing in much much cuteness around here. =)

Buying a Whole Chicken: Better Value?

2010-10-30T20:46:00.001-04:00

I am all about the frugality these days. More than usual. Maybe it's the cooler weather that makes me want to dig into my stores and start noshing roots and beans and slow-cooked stews. (Check out my Trying to Eat Cheap series for example--one November spent keeping close track of dinner and how much it costs.)

So here's the thing. For some reason I always believed that buying chickens whole was just a better value. You cut it up yourself, you get the added bonus of giblets and carcass to use for stock, and it's cheaper per pound than if you buy the meat pre-cut. Right? Here's a little demonstration of my thinking:

A whole chicken costs $14. (It's Murray's Chicken.)

Cut into 4 pieces, I've got 2 full legs (left) and 2 breasts with wing (right). The breast is boneless except for the half wing I left on there. I could have left the whole wing, but realized this too late. (Lesson learned: always read your Julia before making the first cut)

Bake the breasts until golden and you have dinner. Put the legs away for later. (I deboned them and made a crockpot stew.) So that's two dinners from one bird.

Here's part of that breast, with a shiitake gravy. Plus brown rice & broccoli.

BUT. I noticed something about the amount of work this takes. There's a lot of cutting, planning, freezing and remembering to do. Am I factoring in the cost of my time? Is this whole chicken costing me more like $20 once I add in all the bloody bother? Also, I am terrible at making stock. Those giblets and that carcass are not huge assets. When I got to thinking about that $14 price tag, I realized I could also get (also Murray's):

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (about $8)
6 boneless skinless chicken thighs (about $5)

This is actually more meat, and more meat that I can use right away, than can be found on a single chicken. Obviously.

My conclusion: it doesn't make sense to buy a whole chicken if the intention is to cut it up. Buy the skinless boneless breasts or thighs and save yourself the hassle. And buy a whole chicken because you want to roast a whole, crisp, toothsome, juicy chicken. Give the bird--and yourself--that honor and respect.

Guinness-Milk Chocolate Ice Cream

2010-10-24T21:21:00.001-04:00

OK, we caved. We started making custard ice cream. We use PLENTY of egg yolks for silky smooth super creamy batches. (I was trying to go eggless over the summer, but the time came to branch out.) The first custard batch was plain chocolate, from David Lebovitz's acclaimed ice cream recipe book The Perfect Scoop.

Above is pictured our current batch from the same book--Guinness-Milk Chocolate. It is good! The first few bites tasted of both the chocolate and the stout. Then the flavors melded and became a delicious milk chocolate confection with an extra special tang.

So--thoughts on how to use egg whites? I know about egg white omelettes and angel food cake...

Weekend Herb Blogging #255

2010-10-17T20:06:00.005-04:00

Weekend Herb Blogging is becoming quite a venerable event--almost at the 5-year mark!

This is my fourth time hosting Weekend Herb Blogging! It's a blog event founded by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen and managed by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once. The idea is to blog about using an herb, fruit, vegetable, nut, seed or flower as a main/key ingredient. Each week a host puts together submissions and posts a recap. I always enjoy hosting and learning new-to-me uses of things I know well, plus some that are more unfamiliar too. Here's the roundup for this week (October 11-17). I placed descriptions below each photo.

From Germany, Reshmi Ahmed from A Feast to the Eyes and Stomach made Cheese Bread with Chives. I agree that warm and cheesy bread is such a comfort food. The ingredients seem simple, but the result is so satisfying. The added savor of chives sounds just right!

From Switzerland, Chriesi from Almond Corner made Date Ice Cream and served it with hibiscus syrup. Oh my, this ice cream looks so sweet and creamy. I hadn't realized that dates come in 4 different "ripenesses"--Chriesi describes these, with a bit of date geography too!

From Melbourne, Australia, Sue of You Can Do It... At Home! made Silverbeet Ricotta Quiche. It's springtime there and the silverbeet in Sue's garden inspired this tasty-looking light lunch. (And I want a forkful of that avocado!) I looked up silverbeet and found it's what I know as Swiss chard--yum!

Winnie from Healthy Green Kitchen in New Paltz, NY made green tomato chutney, which she recommends having with Indian food or in sandwiches or wraps. The spicy sauce keeps in the fridge for about a month. It is great to know what to do with those cheerful green tomatoes just sitting on the vine not getting any redder now that October is here.

Simona of briciole made involtini di bietole/rainbow chard roll-ups. She reminds us that you don't have to discard chard stems--chop them up and add them to whatever you are making! Her filling includes barley, cheese, raisins, and carrots. Also, she includes an audio file so you can listen to her saying "involtini di bietole" (what a lovely language to listen to!).

WHB's current organizer, Haalo, made Wartime Chocolate Pudding using carrots. Wow, this is surprising but makes perfect sense. With sugar rationing during wartime, carrots were used as sweetener in a pinch (along with a bit of sugar and golden syrup in this case). The pudding gets steamed and comes out spongy, English-style. Haalo suggests serving with custard or thick cream--yes please!

Brii from Briiblog in English, living in Valsorda on Garda lake, Italy, made persimmon jam with lime and pepper. Properly ripe persimmons are key. She is quite right that it has the colors of autumn--beautiful! I would be tempted to try it on a nice thick piece of fish. Or spread on piping-hot buttered biscuits--what do you think, Brii? :)

From Toronto, Canada, Janet from the taste space made Happiness Soup. A celebration of yellow, this barley-laden soup looks like it sticks to the ribs, but with a light lemony taste. All that sunny color must brighten both the tummy and spirit at once!

Thank you bloggers for these excellent entries! Next week (October 18-24, 2010), Weekend Herb Blogging is hosted by Chris from Mele Cotte. Visit the Who's Hosting page for more info!

Onions in the House

2010-10-13T08:53:00.001-04:00

Our house smells a bit... oniony. It's cuz of an old wive's tale/Internet rumor that having cut onions around will absorb germs and mold and stuff and help the humans be healthier. Even though snopes.com refutes this, they also show that the rumor has been around for over 100 years. Heck, just because there are no scientific studies proving it doesn't make us afraid to try! And the onion smell actually goes away after the first few hours and then the onions just sit there working their magic. I'll get back to you in April with much excitement if none of us get sick this winter. (I'm also getting a flu shot tomorrow... just in case...)