Radio Playlists for October 2013

The name of the show: Blackbeard's Delight

Your host: Prof. Kitty

The station: WVEW 107.7 Brattleboro, VT

October 3, 2013

• Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Stevie Wonder
• My Bag: Lloyd Cole
• Wah-Wah: George Harrison
• Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him: John Lennon & Yoko Ono
• Four Winds: Bright Eyes
• You're Insane: Rod Stewart
• Electric Feel: MGMT
• If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free: Sting
• Katrina: Childsplay
• Catch the Wind: Donovan
• Vo Kerch: Kiran Ahlu Wahlia
• Golden Years: David Bowie
• Dying is Fine: Ra Ra Riot
• This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody): Talking Heads

October 10, 2013

• Johnny Too Bad: UB40
• The Ghost Who Walks: Karen Elson
• Great 5 Lakes: Buffalo Daughter
• Smiley Faces: Gnarls Barkley
• Phantom Limb: The Shins
• What Is Life: George Harrison
• Tell Me: Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
• Mixed Bizness: Beck
• Hearts Like Ours: The Naked & Famous
• Keep Your Eyes Ahead: The Helio Sequence
• Back to the Old House: The Smiths
• Round & Round: Ariel Pink
• Your New Cuckoo: The Cardigans
• 
  

October 17, 2013—tapping the jazz archives, I'll put the year where I know it. The day after this show I found out Howard Brofsky had just died. His immense spirit was in the air.

• Passion Flower: Johnny Hodges (alto sax) & his orchestra, 1940
• Love Is Here to Stay: Lester Young (tenor sax), 1956
• I'm an Old Cowhand: Jimmy Smith, 1962
• Moon Ray: Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra, 1939
• Rosetta: Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, 1937
• So Sweet My Little Girl: Johnny Coles
• Polka Dots & Moonbeams: Howard Brofsky (trumpet), 1999
• Time on My Hands: Ben Webster (tenor sax) Quintet, 1957
• Alone Together: Hal McKusick (alto sax), 1957
• Angel Call: Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), 1947
• I'm Alone with You: Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra
• Careless Love: Sidney Bechet
• 
  

October 24, 2013

• Adir Adirim: Balkan Beat Box
• Pump Up the Jam: Technotronic
• How We Exit: Gentleman Reg
• Hong Kong Garden: Siouxsie & the Banshees
• Radio: Black Cherry
• Bring on the Night: The Police
• Disco Infiltrator: LCD Soundsystem
• Animal: Miike Snow
• Wild About You: Worryin' Kind
• High Times: Elliott Smith
• Back of the Van: Ladyhawke
• White Winter Hymnal: Fleet Foxes
• Star Sign: Teenage Fanclub
• From Africa to Malaga: jj

October 31, 2013—Halloween edition!!

• Cemetry Gates: The Smiths
• Superstition: Stevie Wonder
• Frankenstein: Nosotrash
• Cemetery Lawn: The Rosebuds
• Ghostbusters: Ray Parker, Jr.
• Terror: The Stockholm Monsters
• The Boy Who Drew Cats—story narration
• I was Stabbed to Death in this Very Doorway: Steward
• Loupgarou: Crispy Ambulance
• Eve of the War: Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Blue Oyster Cult
• I Want Candy: Bow Wow Wow

Easy No-Boil Lasagna

 

Here's a make-ahead or make-right-now lasagna recipe. You can have this on the dinner table in about 90 minutes, or make it ahead and reheat in about an hour. The trick is to use oven-ready lasagna noodles.

Ingredients:

• 6 oven-ready lasagna noodles, I used half a package of Ronzoni
• 1 jar of prepared pasta sauce, such as Muir Glen (25.5 ounces)
• 3 sweet Italian turkey sausage (or any sausage you like; we use Shady Brook)
• 8 ounces of cottage cheese
• 1 egg
• Handful of chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, rosemary, oregano, basil (dried is also fine)
• Salt and pepper
• 2 cups or more of grated mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup or more of grated Parmesan cheese

Assembly:

First, if you're going to bake on the same day as assembly, preheat oven to 350F.

1. Squeeze sausage out of casings and fry, chopping and moving with a spatula to break it up well and cook evenly.
2. Beat egg in a bowl and combine with cottage cheese, salt & pepper, and chopped herbs.
3. Start layering in a 9x9 inch glass baking pan as follows: put a bit of pasta sauce on the bottom, then 2 noodles. Spread on half the cottage cheese mixture, half the cooked sausage, and pour on more sauce. Then sprinkle on half the grated mozzarella.
4. For the next layer, place 2 more noodles, the other half of the cottage cheese mixture, the other half of the sausage, more sauce, a third of the mozzarella, and half the Parmesan.
5. Finish up with 2 more noodles, a good final layer of sauce, the rest of the mozzarella and the rest of the Parmesan.
6. Cover with foil. At this point you can either refrigerate and bake later, or proceed with baking as follows.
7. Place in the oven for 30 minutes. At that point, remove the foil and bake for 10 more minutes.
8. Secret tip: crank the heat to 450F and bake it uncovered for 10 more minutes. Then remove from the oven (it should be nice and browned and bubbly) and let lasagna rest for at least 5 minutes.
9. Serve! Ideally with a healthy salad, but don't feel bad if this is so delicious it just gets inhaled solo. It is good!

PS I got a ridiculous new app for the iPad that makes photos look like 70s developing mistakes, see above. I think I like it! It's hard to get those strange lens flares and hairs these days. It is cheesy-good, just like lasagna.

Honk if You Love Cheeses of Vermont

At the beginning of summer this year we had an international guest, and I picked up a few Vermont cheeses at the Brattleboro Food Coop to show off our local color. Little did I know I was facing a summer of being addicted to Vermont cheese. The cheeses I picked were SO GOOD, we ended up buying others in the same weekend, and I have been trying to make a study since then of super Vermont cheeses... when I can afford it.

I would like to share a few notes about some that I've tried so far.

Lazy Lady Farm: Sweet Emotions (cow and goat milk)

Small round brie-type cheese. Lovely texture and perfectly "brie" taste. Creamy, minimal "stinkiness." (I actually wrote "minimal pong," but I'm not sure that's a cheese term.)

Blue Ledge Farm: Plain Chèvre (goat milk)

 

Lovely on a cracker, this was more of a "slicer" chèvre than the "spready" type that I'm used to. Moist, small-grained texture, light goaty taste.

Scholten Family Farm: Roger's Robusto (cow milk)

I wanted to like this cheese, but it wasn't pungent enough for me. It has the texture of chèvre but not the taste. Coating it with herbs didn't really help. It would be nice for people who like very mild options though!

Jasper Hill Farm: Harbison (cow milk)

This cheese is amazing. Look, it's wrapped in bark, for one thing. It has incredible texture, heavenly taste. Nice bite, herby/grassy notes, really premium and complex. Shown here with some French Morbière, which I also fell in love with this summer. Harbison was even mentioned in Bon Appetit magazine recently.

Woodcock Farm: Summer Snow (sheep milk)

Summer Snow was the last cheese on my tasting list for the summer because I had to save up for it. It's not crazy expensive, but at about $10 for what you see here (bottom left), it's a stretch. It is deliciously piquant, soft grading to crumbly that's a lovely contrast reminiscent of boucheron. Shown here with another piece of Morbière (bottom right), as well as a hunk of "Lake's Edge" from Blue Ledge Farm (top right), which is another yummy Vermont goat's cheese I'll try to review another time.

This all has expanded my love and knowledge of Vermont cheeses 100%, and I'm very grateful and inspired. I feel like I've been missing out for years not really knowing much about these places and tastes... and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Exciting!

Vermont baking: First, make your own butter

When fall comes, I feel like baking. For one thing, I wanted to make a plum cake that called for buttermilk. So I put buttermilk on my shopping list. I also kind of wanted to make a chocolate cake that called for a stick of butter. 

At the farmer's market, a vendor we like a lot told us he had fresh cream to sell. We almost passed it up until he mentioned it could be made into butter. When I quizzed him, he said the easiest way was to pour the pint of cream into a quart jar and just shake. He said he used to do it when he visited schools to show kids how butter is made. My mind started to work. Butter.... means buttermilk! We bought the cream.

The cream and the quart jar.  I shook that stuff for about 20 minutes. Shake shake shake! I was just starting to give up when a miracle happened.

Butter!! I made it myself, all Vermont style!

Strained out, the butter part was exactly a quarter of a pound. That's what I needed for the chocolate cake recipe.

"Grandma Effie's chocolate cake"--super-easy recipe from my mother in law. Dump everything into a food processor, blend, pour, bake in a bundt pan, delicious.

As for the buttermilk, I got about 1 cup after straining out the butter. I used it to make a plum cake with my mother's recipe, perhaps we should call it "Grandmaman's Buttermilk Plum Cake." I love this recipe because it's great with different fruits, like raspberries or peaches or maybe even pears.

Have you ever made your own butter? When I talked to the cream farmer the next week, he mentioned he'd forgotten to tell me that the cream should be around 55 degrees to turn into butter. Don't chill too much, but also cooler than room temperature. Good to know!

Butternut maple apple coconut soup

Inspired by a coworker's description of a soup with cumin and maple syrup, I've worked out yet another way to eat butternut squash. Try this as a warming, sweet-savory lunch for fall!

(See also Butternut Pasta with Sage & Bacon, Butternut Ravioli 2 ways, & Butternut Cranberry Bake)

My version is pretty thick and chunky, this could be puréed and thinned if desired.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil and/or butter
• Onion, chopped
• Garlic clove, crushed
• 1 T Maple syrup 
• 1/2 t ground cardamom
• 1/4 t ground cumin
• 1 butternut squash, peeled & cubed
• 1 apple, cored and cut up
• 3-4 baby carrots or 1-2 regular carrots, cut up
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 4-6 fresh whole sage leaves
• Salt and pepper
• Coconut manna to garnish

Assembly:

1. In large pot, such as a Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and/or butter. Add onions and sauté. 
2. When glassy and just beginning to brown, add the maple syrup, garlic, cumin, and cardamom. Heat until you can just start to smell the spices & garlic.
3. Next, add the squash, apple, carrot, and broth. Add some extra water if needed to just cover.
4. Give whole sage leaves a bit of a squeeze to loosen up the oils, then add to pot.
5. Boil on low until the squash is falling apart, perhaps for an hour. Salt and pepper to taste. (For a less chunky version, try mashing or pureeing at this point, then thin by adding coconut milk or just water.)
6. To serve, fill a bowl with hot soup and add about a tablespoon of coconut manna. Stir until the coconut is melted and incorporated. Enjoy!

I found a new variety of sage this year that has amazing, wide leaves. I love this plant. It seems so happy and profuse!

Lobsterland: Maine photo essay

My last trip to the Maine seaside was in the late 90s. I only live two states away, so a few weekends ago we decided it was high time to re-visit Vacationland. Our idea was to have a multi-generational trip that would give kids lots of chaperones, parents some date-night time, and grandparents some colorful traveling companions. I think that's basically how it worked out... Here are some photos!

I had a craving for lobster rolls weeks ago, but held out until I could get a real one in Maine. I'm not so sure about those Vermont lobster rolls. This one was PERFECT.

We got our lobster rolls at Scarborough Lobster, a wonderful "shack" in Scarborough, Maine.

 

The kind guy there also gave our daughter a lobster tour, getting different sized lobsters out of their tanks and showing her their long antennae, their rubber-banded claws, and how to stroke a giant lobster to sleep. He was awesome.

 

This store just down the street in Scarborough specializes in local and natural foods. Nice logo.

View down the beach from our hotel, you can see the Old Orchard Beach Pier.

Typical tourist counter. I did kind of want some poutine!

Oh the neon! Most of these shops were closed since we got there after Labor Day.

Of course we had to visit the GFB Scottish Pub. It's a huge place that probably gets pretty wild when a band is playing. Here's the bar-island, check out the row of taps over there in the middle right. Those are the other taps.

Their haggis had raisins in it, so instead we split an order of Scotch Eggs. GOOD!

Flags at the GFB Scottish Pub. I have some issues with their website's spelling of "whisky," but I love the idea of this place and wish them good success. They just opened a few months ago!

Dinner at Joseph's by the Sea was a highlight of the trip--love my restaurants! This is my starter, a lobster potato pancake.

For my main I had Seared Scallops with "spicy rouille." Delicious.

Fabulous and fancy dinner ended with a Chocolate Espresso Torte... and a decaf.

For one of our date-night evenings we visited the Palace Playland arcade (open through Columbus Day) and did ridiculous things like dancing on computerized squares, shooting balls at clowns, driving virtual racecars on mountain roads, trying to roll quarters into tiny dump-trucks, and posing in a photobooth.

For the record, we stayed at the Edgewater Motor Inn which seemed like the nicest place on the strip.  Don't go to OOB for the museums, but do go if you like to relax and be a little lowbrow and touristy!