Category Archives: General

Food, General, Travel

Birthday Bonanza, Part 2

2 Comments

[Hello, lovely visitors from An Apple a Day! I was touched to see Amy’s post when I got back from a long weekend in NH, and I hope you like what you see and stay a while.]

When last we met, I’d told you all about Ben’s birthday dinner. The next day was my birthday, and he had planned a secret excursion. All I knew was that I needed my swimsuit and that we were packing a picnic. We used up the leftover meat from the night before in tempting steak sandwiches, hopped in the car, and headed north.

First stop: Ben had found a promising-looking farm online, and we stopped in to buy treats for our picnic. I picked out a handful of jewel-like little red plums, as well as a bigger yellow-blush one and a couple donut peaches. Ben got blueberries.

plums

We arrived at a little state park in NH, where the lake edge was dotted with picnic tables and shallow sandy entrances into the water.

We ate (Ben snuck a box of cupcakes into the car!) and swam and swam and ate and I discovered the world’s smallest fruiting wild blueberry bush:

When we eventually rolled away from the lake, we drove to a nearby town to go to a jazz concert on the green. On the way there we spotted this big tortoise, sitting still in the middle of the road, and stopped to urge it back into the woods:



Fables aside, that guy could move. He didn’t like the look of me, I guess!

The concert was amazing. The most ridiculously wholesome Americana you can imagine, with good music to boot! You can pretty much get the gist of it from the guys’ outfits:


There were also tons of things to see in the audience. I loved this distinguished sea captain type (note the fishing flies hooked to the band of his cap and old fishing vest, both of which suggest his captaining was actually in streams, not on the sea):

And I imagined the bigger girl here saying to the little one, “I told you, STAY over THERE.” She ran off within seconds of my taking this:

We wrapped up the day with margaritas and fish & chips at a restaurant on Newfound Lake. A sleepy drive home and the end to a perfect birthday!

(Sorry there wasn’t much food here, but there’s plenty of that to come. For now I have to go tend to tonight’s experimental dinner; I’m making up a recipe as I go along and should probably get focused. Poor Ben.)

Family, Food, General, Life in the Big Woods, Travel, Vintage

Maine: Misty mornings and Whoopie Pie Genius

17 Comments

While my parents were here (“Back East,” as we always said when I was growing up) we spent two nights with my aunt and uncle at a lodge they were renting on Great Pond in Maine. The weather cleared for us and we got to splash around in the lake and eat on the porch, and my dad and uncle did quite a bit of fly-fishing from the old canoe. The lodge is affiliated with a venerable and very cool boy’s camp, Pine Island Camp, which my uncle and cousin both attended. We got to have lunch there and tour the island, and it made me hope that I have at least one son one day, so I can pack him off to a mosquito-free island in a Maine Lake to canoe and row and sail and play crazy games and do carpentry and otherwise step back in time. I liked that there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on artistic achievement–music, painting, carving–as well as sports. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera that day, but Dad took a few shots. (The photo up top is of a group of boys rowing past our dock one morning.)

The campers still sleep in tents on platforms, just feet away from the lake.


(Photo by Dad)

Dad was smart enough to take a photo of an archival picture to show how little has changed in 100 years:


(Photo by Dad)

Other than that little trip, we mostly just cooked and ate and relaxed by the lake. We were visited by a distinctly un-shy loon:

Despite appearances, the green canoe was seaworthy:



Bug spray aside, this photo could have been taken 50 years ago:

And if this is basically my dad’s favorite kind of view (ok, he’d prefer a burbling trout stream, but framing anything with a fly rod helps):

I definitely captured his favorite way to shave!

Oh, and Mom and I cooked dinner one night!

——

After leaving the lake, we drove on back roads over to a resort in NH where my mom worked in High School. On our way there, we passed Douin’s Market, which looked like a convenience store, but sported a sign saying something like, “Home of the Brownie Whoopie Pie, STOP or you’ll regret it.” I yelled “STOP!” and everyone thought I was kidding. Once I made it clear that I take threats of brownie whoopie pie regret seriously, Dad and I ran in. He had the presence of mind to take an iPhone picture of a sign advertising the 10-lb Brownie Whoopie Pies Douin’s makes for parties:

We purchased the normal sized one (perched on the giant one in the previous photo), and devoured it with our picnic lunches. OMG, you guys. I like a whoopie pie as much as the next girl, but most of the time the cake seems to be sadly bland or dry. This subbed in the best brownie I’ve ever tasted–incredibly chewy and chocolatey and delicious. The market also makes a variety of normal whoopie pies, as well as some with peanut butter filling or pumpkin cake.


To die for. (Photo by Dad)

In case anyone will be in Maine soon, DO NOT MISS:
Douin’s Market, New Sharon, Maine
Home of the Brownie Whoopie Pie

Finally, on our way home Sunday we went to the very famous Polly’s Pancake Parlor in Sugar Hill, NH. We called ahead to get on the list, so we didn’t have to wait long. Polly’s is well-known for serving some of the best pancakes anywhere. Your server cooks them to order, and brings three at a time, then your next three, fresh and hot, when you’ve finished those. I chose a sampler so I could try a few of the many, many options–the best by a long shot were the cornmeal blueberry (the middle pancake in my stack, below).

The smoky, crisp bacon and the maple spread were my two favorite things, though! Also the placemats, maple leaf shapes cut out of red vinyl, and the mismatched chairs all painted bright red.

Great, now I kind of want bacon for dinner.

Cooking, Farm Box, Food, General

CSA Weeks 5 & 6: Simple dinners and repetition

9 Comments

The 5th CSA share of the season:

vegetables

-Peas (Ben’s new favorite thing)
-Carrots
-Chard
-Summer squash and zucchini
-Cucumbers
-Garlic
-Weekly eggs

And the following week’s purple-hued haul:

-Purple cabbage
-Cavalo Nero
-Red lettuce
-Purple (thai) basil)
-Cucumbers
-Zucchini
-Carrots
-Peas
-Eggs

Twice in two weeks I made basically the same dinner–first because I hadn’t cooked chicken in a while and I figured I’d give it another go, then a week later as a welcome dinner when my parents arrived for a week-long visit.

First, for me and Ben:

You can’t argue with chard like this; the leaves were small and tender and the colors stun me every single time.

I started by cooking the chopped up stems, then added in the leaves and lots of garlic.

The chicken was marinated in oil, garlic, salt and pepper, sauteed and topped with a squeeze of lemon juice.

And we ate the greens and chicken with some israeli couscous, also doused with a bit of lemon juice.

The next week, for my parents, there was cavolo nero on offer! I’d also gotten a gorgeous little purple cabbage, so I made slaw using a cider vinegar/oil/salt/pepper/sugar dressing. (Make it sharp, about a 1-to-1 ratio of oil to vinegar, and keep tasting for salt. You need a lot of salt!) Everything I cut into, from celery and melon for snacks before dinner to the cabbage, had a gorgeous pattern inside. Isn’t nature amazing?

(Could you use this as a rose stamp?)

The cabbage was muddy, and I had trouble getting it clean. I shredded it (not finely enough) and then washed it, and the purple pigment turned the water BRIGHT aqua blue. Again, nature is amazing.

The last in this string of charming visuals was something I didn’t even notice until I was reviewing my photos–check out the dopey cartoon face in the salad dressing, pre-mixing.

Once again, I cooked the kale in oil and garlic, with a bit of chicken stock to soften it up. I left it fairly chewy, though, and got the edges the slightest bit crisp. I could have eaten the whole pot myself but I had to share. I have an unhealthy obsession with greens; it makes me think of the witch in Into the Woods*. Actually, I suppose a greens obsession is very healthy. As long as you don’t anger any witches by stealing them.

—-

The next day we all headed up to Maine and NH for a few days–I have some lovely photos and I will post more tomorrow. We got back Sunday and my parents took off this morning; I’m just trying to get caught up after being offline for almost a week.

I’m also feeling a little down on blogging, I have to say. A few weeks ago I got a fairly nasty comment complaining that I don’t post enough, and it made me want to not post at all. I do this because I love thinking about food, writing about food, buying and cooking and eating food, and I like to think that a few people find it fun or useful. But I am also a freelancer who is seeking work and working on projects, as well as a real person who travels and gets sick and has obligations and sometimes can’t think of anything to say. Anyway, sorry it’s been sporadic, and I really am trying my hardest to motivate. It’s been a rough year for me and I treasure the friendships I’ve made through this blog and others. (On that note, check out some of the great folks I link to in my blogroll.) Thanks for your support!

—-

*“Greens, greens and nothing but greens:
Parsley, peppers, cabbages and celery,
Asparagus and watercress and
Fiddleferns and lettuce…”

Design/Living, Family, General, Home

Floral bounty

6 Comments

Oh dear…I am down and out with the worst cold I’ve had in years, plus a nasty work deadline and a ton of travel in the last few weeks. I do have lots of food to write about but it’s all on my camera and in lieu of finding the camera to upload the photos, I am going to show you pretty, pretty pictures of flowers.

And you’ll like it.

When I was home in Oregon a couple weeks ago (catching this cold) my mom and I visited a good friend who lives on a little farm a few miles outside of town. Linda is a fanatic gardener, especially of roses, and she took me on a garden tour that ended with the culling of more peonies than I’ve ever seen in my life. I filled all of her vases and still took home enough to fill my parents’ entire house. Witness:

The water lilies are blooming, and they should be grateful for the chance, since Linda wants to take out their high-maintenance pond home:

water lily

The gooseberries are ripening, in their magically glowy way:

gooseberry

It’s a bower:

wild rose

Our harvest (incomplete):

peonies

peony

We saw this man on our way home. That is a…dirt unicycle?

One of the many tagalongs I found in the flowers (one earwig managed to evade us until falling into a coffee cup the next day!!):

All arranged:

Linda also had 4-foot calla lilies, so I arranged some of those in the Orla Kiely pitcher I’d brought my mom:

Such ruffles:

If that isn’t luxury, I don’t know what is.

—–

As long as I’m posting greenery-themed photos, I took these in Rome for the darling Germinatrix, who loves overgrown buildings.

ivy covered

Cooking, Family, Farm Box, Food, General, The Apartment

CSA week 1: Greens aplenty, chicken with tatsoi

5 Comments

I was in Oregon for a week to visit my parents and go to my cousin’s high school graduation (yay!), and I was going to be in the air en route from Salt Lake to Boston when the hour of the first CSA pickup rolled around. So Ben went. He also took lots and lots of photos of all the vegetables before washing everything* and putting it in the fridge. Thanks, honey!

So! Week 1, 2009:

produce
-1 head of lettuce
-1 head tatsoi
-Mesclun
-Small bunch of arugula
-Very small amount of large spinach leaves
-1 bunch radishes
-1 pint strawberries (!)
-1 parsnip (Did he overwinter in the root cellar? Does he know I hate parsnips? Poor thing.)

Ben took beauty shots of many of the items, so let’s admire the strawberries:

strawberries

And an extremely exciting** development at Stone Soup Farm this year was the acquisition of lots of chickens! So we got an egg share in addition to our veggies:

eggs

Later in the week I used the tatsoi in a simple stir fry with chicken. It would have been even simpler if the greens weren’t quite so organic, because it took me ages to get them completely free of the aphids and little hard-shelled bugs clinging to each leaf. But I would rather clean off pests than eat pesticides.

Tatsoi is an Asian field mustard variety that looks, to me, like a wedding bouquet:

tatsoi

While I cleaned the greens I marinated a couple chicken breasts in soy sauce, grated ginger and minced garlic. I’d sliced the chicken against the grain, which gave it a nice texture. (I’ll spare you raw chicken photos today.)

Then I sauteed the chicken in two batches in my wok. The strips were thin and cooked really fast; at the end I added in the greens and cooked them very briefly, until they wilted, and served the whole thing over sticky rice.

The chicken looks dry in that photo, but it wasn’t, actually. Considering that rice and chicken are the two things I’m not comfortable cooking, this came out remarkably well.

*While rewashing the many, many aphids off the tatsoi I explained to him that dashing the greens under water for a second doesn’t do the trick. Also that it’s better to just wash everything right before you use it. But I appreciated the effort!

**Eggstremely eggciting!

(Help.)

—

In other news, I don’t normally talk about books here but… whyever not? Last night I finally read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and it was grand. Lots of fun. I adore epistolary novels (must be the sensation of eavesdropping? And maybe the slight mystery of jumping into something already in progress and getting to know the characters in dribs and drabs), and now I want to reread 84, Charing Cross Road (which is actually not a novel; they are real letters) and Ella Minnow Pea. I was crushed when I first visited London and found that 84 Charing Cross Road is now a Pizza Hut or something similarly hideous. Anyway, if you enjoyed The Guernsey Longest Title Ever, you might check out those two: 84, CCR is the post-WWII correspondence between a writer in NYC and a bookseller in London (similar content and tone!). Ella Minnow Pea is an extremely funny/odd little book of letters by residents of an imaginary island off the coast of South Carolina, where the alphabet is being gradually outlawed by the government as letters drop off a statue of the island’s founder, the man who came up with the “quick brown fox…” sentence. Hee.

Oh, and I also painted a little canvas based on one of my photos from Rome. I’m trying to paint the way I sketch in my travel journals; looser and less worried about perfection. It’s in my Etsy shop!

Fiat painting

Cooking, Family, Farm Box, Food, General, Recipes, Travel

What’s for dinner: BLT Salad

5 Comments

Here’s what I’m actually cooking tonight, despite incredibly chilly weather that makes it a bit inappropriate. It’s also what I made the night we got back from Italy, which is why I haven’t yet found a homemade creamy dressing recipe I like, and am instead trying to use up a bottle of creamy parmesan dressing from Whole Foods.

Ahem. Anyway. Back in March I was in DC reporting a story and I had the pleasure of visiting with my friends Rachel and Jen. We ate dinner at Matchbox, and I basically bogarted the “Matchbox Chopped Salad,” a genius easy-to-eat BLT with pasta subbing in for bread. When I spotted a sale on grape tomatoes at Whole Foods in my post-flight stupor, I grabbed them and happily spent the next few days eating bowls of this salad. (See note at the end for instructions on making it last!)

Here’s the thing. I used a head of organic iceberg for this, and I really do think that crunch and ease-of-slicing is best. Tonight I have regular leaf lettuce or mesclun (from the 1st CSA box of the season!), but in general if you can find iceberg that is more green than white, it’s great here.

BLT Salad
4 servings

1 small head of good iceberg lettuce
1/4 red onion
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2 lb. pasta, preferably a loose spiral or something (I used what I had on hand)
1/2-3/4 of a pound of good, thick-cut bacon (I used hickory-smoked, I think), cooked
Creamy dressing of your choice, to taste

I quartered the grape tomatoes and diced the red onion:

I cooked pasta and then rinsed it in cold water to cool it down, and added that in:

When you’re ready to serve, chop up the cooked bacon (I bake mine in a 400 degree oven until crispy, so it stays flat) and your lettuce, add them to the tomato mixture, and dress to taste. Hold back a few pieces of bacon to scatter on top. It doesn’t look like much but it is soooo good.

Note: To make this keep for a few lunches, as I did, only dress the portion you’re using the first night, using only that proportion of the lettuce and bacon. Store the pasta/tomato mixture in a tupperware and wrap the bacon and lettuce up separately; it takes 2 seconds to chop up some more lettuce and stir everything together with the dressing at lunch time.

(It really is cold out, though. Maybe I should do a absorption pasta with tomatoes and bacon and a salad on the side? Hmm. Oh! I think we got arugula from the CSA. I could stir that in at the end. But I’m craving the salad. Oh dear.)

General, Good stuff, Travel

Make me a water bottle*

4 Comments

Our last night in Italy I fell so much in love with the bottle from our mineral water that I actually packed it in my suitcase and brought it home with me. I also discovered that photographing clear glass is incredibly tricky.

Once we got home I soaked off the small label that was on the bottom section of the bottle, and I will use it as a water carafe this summer. Those embossed raindrops kill me—so simple and great. Is it weird that I brought back a mineral water bottle as my favorite souvenir?

——-

On a completely different topic, I am thinking a lot about my goals and wishes for this blog, and trying to figure out which direction to go with it. If you have time, do you mind telling me what you’d like to see more of, or what you enjoy reading about? CSA season starts in about 10 days, so I will have lots of produce to write about, and I’m considering a few more ambitious projects, as well. I would love your input.

*I am sad that Salome was kicked off Make me a Super Model while we were gone.

General, Good stuff, Travel

I am back!

5 Comments

We are back from Italy, and thoroughly exhausted. So many things in 8 days–next time we will start in the city and end in the country instead of alternating. My feet!

A quicky recap of things we saw:

Giant mountains as we wound sloooowly (and car-sickly) through the Dolomites:
dolomites

Our name everywhere in Ben’s Dad’s hometown:

A cruise ship trying to eat Venice:

cruise venice

A moody evening in Tuscany:

Unseasonably warm ruins in Rome:

Also a total 70s pornstache in the Capitoline museums (sweet choker, too.):

Much, much more to come… The food was not as fabulous as in past trips, but there were some memorable meals and of course I have lots of photos of gorgeous produce. Currently we’re just trying to stay awake until 9 p.m.

Did I miss anything this week?

Food, General, Travel

Simplicity and charm

1 Comment

Before we take off to Italy (tomorrow night!) I thought I’d post a couple recipe-free things that you might consider eating while I’m gone.

First of all, it’s asparagus time. Get out there and eat as much as you can while it is in season–we had our first bunch about two weeks ago and every year I am shocked by the grassy deliciousness of the really in-season stuff. You eat enough asparagus in random restaurants, etc. year round that it’s easy to forget the power of the real thing. We just tossed it with olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled it alongside some sausages. I could have eaten the whole bunch myself, but I shared with Ben.

asparagus

Last week I was avoiding buying too many groceries or creating leftovers, since we were about to take off for almost two weeks. We made burgers last weekend and still had a couple soft rolls, so I picked up (*cough*) frozen breaded cod fillets from Trader Joe’s, along with tartar sauce, added sliced tomatoes and a salad and called it dinner.

Scrumptious, diner-by-the-sea dinner.

In other news, I bought a $1 mini-pot with basil seeds from Target, and lo and behold I planted them and they SPROUTED. I’m so proud! Just before we left for NYC they sent forth their first real basily leaves. A kind neighbor is babysitting them and I’ll repot them when I get back.

Also, as long as I’m rambling incoherently, these photos amuse me terribly. Ben usually puts my coffee out for me before I leave for work, and sometimes he’ll leave this tiny wooden sheep (which I bought in London last summer) somewhere silly, for a laugh. I was pretty impressed when I found this last week:

But when I laughed and touched the mug…

Uh-oh! I hope that is not a portent for our drive along the switchbacks in the Tyrolean Alps. (I’ll be the one hunched in the passenger seat with her hands over her eyes.)

Have a good week, and I’ll see you all on the flip side! Comment and let me know what you’re cooking; I’ve left a couple posts to pop up while I’m away.

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Family, Food, General, Home, Recipes, Travel, Vintage

Chili, cornbread, and leftovers

2 Comments

It was months ago that I saw a chili recipe on Oh Happy Day and thought “must make.” And, actually, it was months ago that I made it–oops! Jordan called this “Pepper’s Famous Chili,” and I think it’s a great starting point to play with. I’ve made it a couple times and it is a bountiful and delicious recipe, extremely filling.

“Pepper’s Famous Chili
As seen on Oh Happy Day!

1lb. ground beef
1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (15 oz.) can kidney beans with liquid
1 (15 oz.) can pinto beans with liquid
1/2 c. diced onion
1/4 c. diced celery
2 med. tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp. cumin
1 T. chili powder (2 T. if you like it hot)
1 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. salt
1 c. water

Brown beef and drain liquid. Crumble beef and put into a large pot mix in all other ingredients. Cook over low heat stirring every 15 to 20 mins. for 2 to 3 hours. (You could also use a slow cooker.)”

I bought everything at Trader Joe’s, so the sizes of the cans of beans were a bit varied, but I don’t think it matters. And one time I made it with stew beef instead of ground beef, with moderate success–you need more meat, it turns out, and Tom was visiting and we ran into a bit of a problem while browning the meat (too much liquid, too small a pan), so it wasn’t as flavorful as it could be. Both times, I made cornbread muffins to accompany the chili, first using an Epicurious recipe, then ceding control to Tom for his favorite recipe.

Ingredients:

The fresh stuff livens up all those cans of beans and sauce:

tomatoes onions celery

Honestly the cooking process doesn’t present many opportunities for photos. You brown the beef, then throw everything in together for a couple hours. (Incidentally, I didn’t have chili powder and cumin but I thought I did. I ended up using a taco seasoning mix from the awesome spice shop in Inman Sq., which worked just fine.)

Here’s the result with ground beef:
chili cornbread

Good stuff, easy to make. Not bad! I must say, we were eating leftovers for what felt like a year. I think next time (and it took me two batches to think of it; I am so braindead lately!) I’ll freeze half.

—

Oh man, while Tom was visiting we hit the slightly pathetic array of thrift stores in the neighborhood, as per tradition, and the one good find was a  sweet white-enamel 8-inch Copco cast iron frying pan for a couple bucks. It was *filthy* but we soaked it in soapy water and scrubbed it with barkeeper’s friend and fine steel wool, and now it’s in really great shape. Love.

Before:

After:
clean

Fantastic shape—I love the little pour spout.
copco frying pan
—

Note: Why yes, I’m posting things I cooked in March, why do you ask? The good news is that I’m hoping to pull together a couple posts to publish while I’m away next week. In Italy. HURRAY! (Also? Panic. I get so freaked out before trips because I loathe packing, never feel like I have the right clothes, and actually never do have the right shoes. I’ve got a fresh sketchbook and some maps, we should be fine!)

And: 1 more month until CSA time! Thank god.