Fillo & feta pie

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

1. Heat oven to 350˚F.
   
2. Chop up the cooked greens and mix in with the onions. Add herbs, stir and heat through.
3. 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.
4. Sprinkle half the greens mixture and half the feta over the squares.
   
5. Repeat with 4 more squares, buttering each. Sprinkle on the rest of the greens and feta.
6. Top with 4 more squares. Fold over or just squish down the edges so they don't cook too quickly.
   
7. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

*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!)

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

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

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

1. Day 1, morning: Put 2 cups pinto beans in a large mason jar (1/2 gallon) or bowl. Cover with water. Soak all day.
2. 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.
3. Also, prep vegetables and put them in the slow cooker. Put puree in slow cooker. Refrigerate. Chop the onion and reserve.
4. 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.
   
5. 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.
6. Add the herbs and spices. Stir.
7. 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.
8. 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

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.