Food, Fresh, & More

I'm really incredibly tempted to just turn this into a food blog. Not that it'd be revolutionary or anything wonderful. Maybe a food diary is more accurate - recording recipes that we tried or what we're eating in the different seasons. What specifically brought this up was that while I blog about a lot of interesting stuff for my work blog, there are times when I make things or think things that are just not technically appropriate for my work blog.

Without more rambling, here are some things we have tried or discovered in the last week or so:

1. Panang Curry Paste - we found a packet at Asian Market a while back and just got around to cooking up a curry last night. Yum! While we were buying coconut milk at Thai Binh yesterday, we happened to wander around (it's just the way that store is...it sucks you in!), and discovered that they have large TUBS of red, green, yellow, panang, and masaman curry pastes for a very reasonable price. 1000 g (2 lbs) of curry paste for $3-4!! We love curry, but the jars of paste are always so expensive that we rarely buy it and then hoard it. So exciting to have a cheap source! 
2. Epic Rice Fail. Last week we bought some short grain sushi rice for risotto, since we thought we didn't have any more arborio rice. Then we found the canister of arborio rice. This week we bought a 5 lb. bag of long grain brown rice, because we thought we were out of long grain rice. (We usually use medium grain brown rice, unless we're short on time.) We got home only to find that we had a canister of long grain white rice hiding behind the other rice canister. Epic Fail. 
3. Whole Grain Pancakes. I had this recipe stashed away from my Bon Appetit Daily Calendar from 2008, and we finally got around to trying it. Since I've increasingly been on a whole grain kick, I thought this would be interesting. The recipe calls for whole wheat flour, corn meal, quick oats, and a little bit of AP flour. Oh yeah, and buttermilk. I think that was Steven's favorite part - the buttermilk. No sugar, except a little molasses. They were definitely tasty! They were more interesting and less sweet that regular pancakes. I liked the hint of cornmeal. The texture was really good too. Definitely a keeper in once-in-awhile breakfast food category. 
4. Broccoli Raab - yeah, tried this from the garden at work. Need to work on my harvesting technique for this one! 
5. Lemon Balm Pesto - made a pesto from lemon balm, parmesan cheese, and almonds this afternoon to use on chicken for dinner. Doesn't seem too exciting so far. 
6. Cheese Making Adventures - we made awesome mozzarella cheese from some raw Jersey milk two weeks ago, so we were trying to find cheaper milk to use to make cheese. We thought that we could use Hiland Dairy milk - it wasn't pasteurized at too high a temperature. Unfortunately - not so much. Goodbye cheese dreams!

Is Raising Beef Sustainable?

Here is a post written by a farmer about raising beef...specifically how much water it takes to produce a pound of beef. She cites an article (one of many out there) that state that it takes 1800+ gallons of water to produce each pound of beef. I've often wondered about statistics like that one, trying to figure out how they come up with that number and if it can really be right. Numbers like that have never made sense to me, but I never sat down to calculate out what a more accurate number might be.

She figured out that on their farm, it takes 17.5 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. Pretty sure that is comparable to the amount of water needed to grow a tomato plant in a location like Kansas, with a much more nutrient and calorie-dense end product. Hence, a more efficient source of food for humans. Not that tomatoes aren't healthy and all that or that they aren't nutritious, but you would need to eat a lot more tomatoes to sustain your life than beef. Well-balanced meals, people, is the goal.

The other thing that I always question, when I read articles or hear people talking about how cattle are bad for the environment, is the quality of the land they are talking about. Not all land is equal. Not all soils are equal. Certain land/soils should NEVER be tilled, or at least very rarely. Those particular areas are frequently well-adapted to pasturing animals. If there weren't animals being pastured on that land, then it would be completely unproductive, except perhaps for whatever wild game could be harvested off it in the proper season.

So if you want to go off on some sort of crusade about what is or is not killing the earth, at least do your best to know all the facts first.

No Blizzard for Us

In fact, hardly even any snow for us! I'm not sure if that makes me happy or not. In general, not. I'm very jealous of everyone that is getting large quantities of snow! Here, everyone is in a tizzy over a little bit of rain, some sleet/freezing rain, and a random flurry of snow here and there. To be fair, icy streets are really annoying and treacherous. Still, I would rather have snow. The downside to large amounts of snow here, is that it rarely stays cold enough for the snow to stick around more than a couple days, so no one learns/gets used to driving on streets that have a certain amount of snow on them. Ugh.

Pretty much my least favorite part about living here is driving to and from work when the roads are slick and the idiots are out and about driving on them. Although, I guess I can't complain too much, since I almost caused an accident myself this morning getting to work. A light turned yellow in front of me, and I didn't decide soon enough if I should brake or if I could make it through. Luckily, the person waiting at the light on the cross street saw that I wasn't going to be able to stop and didn't hit me. Thank God!

I was supposed to be going up to Manhattan and then Topeka tomorrow for a website meeting, then the Turf Conference. Yeah, it's funny, I know. Me, going to the Turf Conference. Anyway, between the weather and this nasty cough I've had for a week now, I'm going to skip out. Apparently they do actually have snow up towards Manhattan. Driving through blowing snow before dawn is not my idea of fun for work. Definitely not.

Now to figure out what to do with myself for the rest of the evening...cross-stitch, another sewing project, wrapping Christmas presents, washing dishes (or not!), find a book to read....

Around and About

Obviously I've been hanging around this blog a little bit recently...not that there is actually anyone still hanging out and reading this blog, since it has been almost 7 months since my last post. I have no idea what that means, if anything. I may actually get around to posting something once in a while over the winter. Of course, the issue usually is not that I lack for brilliant ideas of things to write about. The issue is that I either don't have the time to write when I think of a brilliant post or that by the time I do have time, the inclination has passed. Anyway, enough excuses!

Weed or Not a Weed, that is the Question

The craziness of spring classes is almost done, but the number of questions we get during the day will increase drastically. The questions that are the most frustrating are the weed id/random plant id ones. Now, common weeds and plants - not a problem. What is a challenge is when someone brings in a few leaves, usually mostly wilted, and wants to know what it is and what to do with it.

These occurrences can usually be categorized in two ways: Unknown Plants in the Lawn and Unknown Plants in the Flower Bed. Each has its own problems, pitfalls, and headaches. To be fair, 7 or 8 out of 10 samples are easy and straightforward to identify and deal with. I have a whole novel in my head about this. However, I don't feel that it is really a good idea to spew that all out onto the Internet, at least while I am still gainfully employed at my current job. Sometime in the future, do ask me about it, and I'd be happy to spew.

Adventures in Shade Gardening, Part 1

I toyed with titling this post, and potential series of posts, Adventures in Shade Vegetable Gardening. However, that is much too clunky and not nearly as romantic or exciting. In fact, it sounds downright pitiful, hopeless, and semi-delusional. The reason for that is that anyone who knows vegetable gardening knows that shade and vegetables don't mix.

The view from the sliding glass door in our apartment, over the patio. Living on a lake might seem romantic, but in this case it really isn't very much so.

Our apartment faces north, and is angled slightly toward the east. Right now our patio gets about 3 hours of afternoon sun. Here's our sad little container "garden" as it is right now.

Most of the containers are herbs, which will do okay, even in shade. The strawberry pot has thyme, one pot has basil, others have chives, parsley, cutting celery, oregano, etc. The two long tan pots are planted to lettuce mix and mesclun mix. The greens should also do fine in the shade, especially as the weather gets hot this summer. Steven's two sad spider plants have also been relegated to the patio, on the theory that they will get more sun and more water out there than in here. Maybe they will even look healthy by the time fall comes and they need to come in!

At this point you would be justified in wondering why I consider our attempt at shade vegetable gardening semi-delusional. That would be because of this:
Yes, those are tomato plants. The tall one is 'Chocolate Cherry,' and the short one is 'First Light.' Chocolate cherry is a brown/purple indeterminate vine cherry tomato. 'First Light' is a very new variety of red slicing tomato (also indeterminate) that is supposed to have excellent flavor. The recommendation is to harvest it when the bottom half of the fruit is red and the shoulders are still green. The two plants are in a 13 gallon pot, which is technically large enough to hold both of them. I'll probably prune them to keep them under control, but we'll see. The real challenge is the sunlight issue. Tomatoes need 6-8 hours of full sun. Presently we get maybe 3. I'm hopeful that by mid-June the sun will be far enough north in the sky that our poor patio will perhaps get 5-6 hours of sun. If not...well....we'll have really beautiful plants with no tomatoes!

The Easter Coconut Cake

This is the Coconut Cake I made for Easter. Pretty, isn't it? However, when I filed the recipe, I dubbed it the "Not Coconut Cake" because the only reason it is really coconut cake is because there is a handful of coconut in the batter and the frosting is covered with coconut. The cake and frosting are really more almond flavored. Tasty, just not coconut.

The Leaning Tower of Pita

Hi again. Long time, no post. Did you really expect anything different? No, I didn't think so. It's been pretty busy and work and so on, but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel...sort of. At any rate, things should be slowing down somewhat for the summer.

I took Friday off, because 1) I have the time available, and 2) because I needed a nice long weekend. (Yes, I know Memorial Day is coming up, but that isn't a "lazy" weekend, what with family things.) So we got the apartment somewhat cleaned up, restacked everything in the second bedroom, went shopping for a few things, had a meeting with our insurance agent, and generally got to where we feel somewhat in control of the apartment for the moment. (If we didn't need to eat, it would be far easier to keep things clean!)

Saturday we ran around and went to the Farmers Market, grocery shopping, etc as is the norm for Saturday morning. I also checked on the "kids" in the Demo Garden. We planted tomatoes last week, and I was afraid that the ridiculous wind (80+ mph straight-line) from early Friday morning might have broken the stems or knocked the plants over.

Saturday night we didn't want a big dinner, but we'd been craving pita bread and hummus. So Steven went through The Bread Bible to find the pita bread recipe and looked through the Mediterranean cookbook to find an acceptable hummus recipe. (For the uninitiated, hummus is basically chickpea/garbanzo bean puree seasoned with other things.)

The pita bread was very simple. (We actually made the dough Friday night and refrigerated it. Not necessary, but handy.) Homemade pita bread is far tastier than what you can buy, and very cheap! The only moderately scary part of the process (other than the extremely sticky dough to start with) was slapping the discs of dough straight on the baking stone (you can use a cookie sheet if you lack a stone), closing the oven for 3 minutes, and opening it with the expectation that the bread is done! Surprise! It worked!Mmm...tasty looking pita bread in all shapes and sizes!

Steven did up the hummus, and then topped it off with paprika, pine nuts, and the Kangaroo Paw Lemon-Myrtle Infused Olive Oil. (Yes, it would have been cheaper to go to a local Mediterranean restaurant and get an order of hummus by the time it was all said and done. So?)We sliced up some tomatoes we got at the Farmers Market to finish off the meal. Yes, we got fresh, Kansas-grown tomatoes. We bought one from a grower who grows hydroponic tomatoes in a greenhouse, and the others from a grower that grows in a greenhouse, but uses bags of soil for growing the plants. We intended to do a taste test. The hydroponic tomatoes were larger, but the soil-grown tomatoes were much tastier. I wasn't extremely surprised by that outcome.

The leftover pita bread became the Leaning Tower of Pita.
Yes, this entire long post was written with the sole purpose of giving me a good reason to post the "Leaning Tower of Pita" picture, and thus to allow using the same as the title of this post.

WOOHOO!!!

The Thank You Notes are DONE!!!!

Well...they are all written. There are 5 for which I still need to find the appropriate addresses, and 1 which needs a couple other items to go with it. Otherwise, they are all written, addressed, stamped, and ready to go in the mailbox. FINALLY!

15 Questions for Heavy Readers

15 Questions For Heavy Readers

Go ahead, include up to 3 answers each if you like. If you’re religious, consider The Bible or other religious texts a gimme, particularly for question #15. I have to admit that I don't read near as much now as I did in pretty much any prior stage of my life, so this isn't quite as exciting as it might be. Someday soon I may need to write a post ranting about technology and its effect on modern society and specifically my life.

1. Most treasured childhood book(s)?
- Little House on the Prairie series
- Janette Oke animal books
- A Little Princess

2. Classic(s) you are embarrassed to admit you’ve never read?
- Classics? What are those? I have a modern public school education. We aren't supposed to read classics.
- Okay. Seriously? Anything by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (except Crime & Punishment)
- Wuthering Heights

3. Classics you read, but hated?
- Out of Africa
- The Grapes of Wrath - oh wait...I didn't actually have to read it. We only watched the movie in 9th grade English.
- Of Mice and Men

4. Favorite genre(s)?
- Mystery
- Fantacy/sci fi
- Historical fiction

5. Favorite light reading?
- J.D. Robb
- Various mysteries - Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, etc.
- Cookbooks

6. Favorite heavy reading?
- Anything on modern agriculture/food system, etc.
- Religion/theology
- Jane Austen? Does that count as heavy reading?

7. Last book(s) you finished?
- The Glorious Cause by Jeff Shaara

8. Last book(s) you bailed on?
- Hmm...bailed on? Not sure...I've been working on The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila for over a year now...I'm not bailing though! I'm not!

9. Three (only three!) books on your nightstand?
- The End of Food by Paul Roberts (I really recommend it, even though it is slightly apocalyptic.)
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Yeah...I'm probably not going to actually crack this one open before it's due back at the library...)

10. Book(s) you’ve read more than once?
- Little House on the Prairie
- Perry Mason, all of them
- David Eddings books

11. The book(s) that meant the most to you when you were younger (ie, college/young adult)?
- Umm....I think I still am young adult? Although the library defines that as teenagers...I'm confused.
- N.T. Wright books
- Lots of stuff John Woodward gave me to read.

12. Book(s) that changed the way you looked at life?
- N.T. Wright books
- The Catholic Passion by David Scott
- The Politics of the Cross by Craig A Carter

13. Favorite books
- The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
- Lots of others...

14. Favorite author(s)
- I think I've mentioned most of them already.

15. Desert Island Book
- I really have no clue how to answer this question.

BONUS!
Desert Island Book for Your Worst Enemy
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (I actually liked this book, but I know it drives most people crazy.)