Online Cookery

I've cooked LOTS of new stuff in the past week, too much to worry about catching up on. So I thought I'd link to the recipes I'd obtained online. I'll make a couple of comments for each link.

Flour Tortillas, what I like about this webpage is that they discuss some of the history of tortillas. Increasingly as I research recipes, I like to know as much as I can about the original form and ingredients. I'm finding that its often simpler and easier to make. Starting from the original you can tweak it according to your taste or convenience instead of starting in the present with recipes that have already been tweaked by other cooks. I use butter for the fat in one batch and then used olive oil in another batch. Both came out just fine.

Biscuits a la Alton Brown, I've recently become a huge fan of Alton Brown. If you haven't watched his show, do. Each show is usually about a food more than a recipe. There's a discussion of the history of the food along with nutrition and chemistry. He then generally makes a couple of items and often discusses quick ways of altering the recipe. The above biscuit recipe has alterations to make shortbread and scones. I've made both the shortbread and the biscuits and they came out great. I used butter as I don't use shortening. The scones are coming soon :) Below is a picture of the strawberry shortcake we had last week with strawberries we picked that morning. The shortbread is homemade (above recipe with an extra 1/3 C of sugar, though just biscuits would work fine) and the whipped cream on top was whipped just moments before eating. YUM!



Sour Cream, this is rather easy and before making this I didn't realize that buttermilk is cultured. Modern buttermilk is pasteurized and then they add back in the cultures they want. In any event, I like the overnight recipe (down the page a bit). You can be a bit glib with the recipe. Fill a small mason jar and just pour in some buttermilk. Let it sit at room temperature for 24 hours or so and bam, tasty sour cream.

Caesar Salad, I never knew caesar salad could be so elegant but this recipe does it. I recommend looking for the video of Alton doing this on YouTube, its season one, episode four. I also recommend that when you make your croutons you do so just before you make the salad. The warm garlicky croutons on the cool crisp salad is a great juxtaposition. You certainly don't have to, but its a nice touch. I also like to make my croutons just a bit chewy, not so desert dry, but that's personal preference. In any event, this recipe gives you a nice way to open a dinner if you're entertaining and a nice way to connect with your food (as opposed to pouring the white stuff in the bottle labeled 'caesar dressing' on your lettuce).

Tuna Surprise

I love tuna fish sandwiches. However, I'm sufficiently wary of mercury and overfishing to limit my consumption. Today I have found a vegetarian replacement and: it. is. amazing. Which is the surprise, I made this little recipe just to increase my bean-using-arsenal, but it turned out to be super great as a sandwich.

Made from the white kidney bean (also known as the cannellini bean) it is great! Its from online cookbook put out by the folks over at Stone Soup. I just started following the blog, but I heard about the cookbook through Lifehacker.

Here's the recipe (adjusted by adding salt/pepper as I'm not under the five ingredient constraint), its on page 16.

white bean & parmesan puree

1 can canellini beans (400g /14oz), drained
1 - 2 cloves garlic
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
60g (2oz) parmesan cheese, fnely grated
3 - 4 tablespoons lemon juice
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Place all ingredients in a food processor and whizz until very smooth.

NOTE: I used dry canellini beans, soaked overnight and then cooked in a pot of water (same water they soaked in). I overcooked them (a bit mushy) but it turned out okay since I was going to puree them anyway.

Another night, another bug

The circles are bad guys. The circle with a "2" next to it are bad guys having have bug sex...on my squash


This is the latest little rascal. I'm not sure what it is, but I find them eating the leaves on my squash plants at night. Hell, I catch them humping on my squash leaves! Is nothing sacred? Well, at least they died in a moment of pleasure. For now I just squish them between my fingers but once I figure out what they are perhaps I can learn something a bit more clever (and that results in less blood lost from evening insects).



I've found a couple of these on my potato plants previously while on my evening rounds and squished them. Now I find them on a tomato plant. Luckily they're not very quick, physically or mentally. They just kind of hang out on the edge of leave all long, brown and gluttonous.

Once again I have to say, knowing that many pests are nocturnal is super helpful. While its a bit buggy out at night, it is kind of nice to figure out what's been eating at your veges and catch them in the act.

Veni, Vidi, Edi

I'm fairly convinced that cookery in the ancient world was both a simpler and a more complicated affair. Complicated in the sense that they couldn't tune their oven to exactly 375 degrees, they didn't have food processors and for that matter a refrigerator. But what they lacked in convenience they seemed to make up in bold simplicity (and extremely vague recipes!). I tried a recipe today. I can't say that I'm terribly impressed so I'm not going to post it. However I've found a book with some other versions and I'm going to try those out. However, the 'cake' turned out okay (I had no expectations) and consists of only ricotta, flour, an egg, and honey drizzled over the finished product. There is a bay leave involved but I'm skeptical as to how important that is. Perhaps important for authenticity and I respect that. But to be honest I'm hoping to pillage history for simple dishes that reflect local cooking. Long before shortening, baking soda, and granulated sugar there was food. While I'm not planning on living like a medieval monk (they ate some weird crap) I think there are some valuable lessons to be learned but looking back.

Some things are free

As Tom and I were leaving the house yesterday for the weekly grocery run (NLC, Farmer's Market, Hannaford) we spotted this table amoungst other freebies on the side of the road. I've been thinking about a picnic table and with a little paint this gem will make a find addition to our yard. It cost nothing more than a couple of calories to pick it up and walk it home. Amoung the booty as a unused minnow trap, a package of 25 peat pellets, two mason jars, a bar soap holder (for the sink), and a coffee table that could use a little refinishing. One man's trash...is my next adventure :)

Color me Orange

Another recipe from Taste of Home. This seems like a good fall recipe (apparently we can grow sweet potatoes in New England). My friend Tom was up for the weekend while Sara hung out with her Dad and decided that this dish is really a dessert on account of the oj, brown sugar, cinnamon, and apples.

We started the evening out with Cream of Carrot soup. That may not sound like the most amazing dish in the world, but I was impressed with the simplicity of it and the fact that the recipe suggests other vegetables could be substituted without much being changed. So before I get to the the dessert let's spend a moment on the soup.

Cream of Carrot Soup

4 large carrots peeled and chopped up (save peels for broth making!)
4 C broth (I used my own)
1/2 C cream (or half and half or milk, but try to keep it creamy)
1 t sugar (not sure if you need this but used it anyway)

Bring carrots and broth to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool for 10 minutes.

Blend broth/carrot mixture until smooth (either in batches or all at once if you have a large enough blender) then return to pot. Add cream and sugar and heat on low, stirring until creamy and hot. Serve.

Yeah...pretty flipping simple! Tom and I found that a little salt and pepper really brought this to life (pepper more than salt in my opinion). This recipe really excites me, precisely because its short, simple and you get the idea. You're looking to soften some vegetable in broth, blend it then add some cream to thicken (you could probably work in some flour for a thicker broth). Then eat with bread. I think that this would be a good end of the week meal when you're looking around your kitchen and you notice some left over carrots or potatoes or broccoli that's past its prime. Since the vegetables are blended they're appearance and texture don't matter. Just as long as they taste like what they should. Adding the home made bread makes this a cheap and satisfying meal.

Onto dessert. I don't know much about sweet potatoes (other than that they store really really well) and so I wanted to start trying some recipes out. This comes out delightfully and while it's not chocolate cake I think you'll find it very satisfying (unless the last thing you ate was a twinkie)

Sweet Potatoes and Apples

A couple of sweet potatoes
A couple of apples
Some OJ (maybe a 1/2C to a cup)
1/4 C brown sugar (you could use honey and you could use a bit less probably)
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t ground ginger

Take a casserole dish (glass baking dish) you can use a large one if you're making a lot or a smaller one if you want to stack or make less. Essentially you're going to Boil the sweet potatoes for 20-30 minutes (though I might do less in the future to make them firmer) then slice them (you can take the peels off easily after you slice them and save them for broth). Then put pieces of apples on them (if you're fancy you can peel core the apples and put apple rings over the slices of sweet potato). Then pour OJ over them. OJ is not local but a tasty treat. Maybe something could be substituted for this? That is unless you live a bit further south and it is more local. Mix the dry ingredients and sprinkle.

I think some folks would view this as a side (as the cook book did) but there's a bit too much sugar in this to honestly do that.

As Julia Child would say: Bon Appetit!

The Organic Challenge...and a compromise

Buying organic can be done for many reasons, political, health and environmental are probably the big three. It is however expensive. While there are a number of very good explanations of this cost and very good justifications of this cost, it stands as one of the obstacles. If the option is either to buy organic or not I think many folks will opt for 'not.' There is a middle ground however.

When I was at the farm, Sarah recommended checking out the Environmental Working Group's site since they have a Shopping Guide to organic produce (there's also an iDevice app called "Dirty Dozen"). The guide features a 'dirty dozen' which are the highest risk veges and a 'clean fifteen' which are the least risky veges. This allows the shopper some level of compromise.

Start small, I certainly haven't made a full switch. I shift things around each week looking for a way to save a little money here so I can buy a better quality ingredient over there. While its a lot of work initially (my way anyway) it will quickly curtail junk food and take out. If you're going to commit to spending $7 a gallon for milk you're probably not also going to buy a bag of chips. The chips aren't necessary and so they're cut. Treats become more seldom (nice to have but not necessary). Lately, for me its been cheese. Its a lovely item, but nonorganic cheese is made with nonorganic milk which comes from nonorganic cows. Cheese is expensive (by cheese I do not include american or velveeta etc) whether its organic or not and its used a fair amount in modern cooking. When moving to organic cheese the prices are even higher so what do you do? Eat less of it.

Eating less processed foods, eating less meat, less fatty foods (still eating them, just less often and buying from sustainable practices) only stands to benefit your health and your wallet.

I'm not there yet, but I firmly believe its possible to buy safe healthy food and eat very well on a budget. In any event, this guide is really helpful and reduces some of the anxiety of not being able to do everything at once.

Now to find a list for foods in general.

Garden Ninja

Probably the most useful piece of information concerning garden pests I've read so far is that they are mostly nocturnal critters. If you go poking around at night around those plants being damaged you stand a better chance of catching the little twerps having dinner on your...well...dinner!

This is part of the organic approach, I'm not just going to spray the hell out of the plants and obliterate all that crawls or walks through my garden. There are lots of nice little bugs that do nice little jobs. Which is why, even when using an organic insecticidal soap you spray it at night, preferably on the little buggers. The soap has very little persistence and by the time you sun loving insect buddies return they won't notice a thing.

On my potatoes I found, in two of the buckets, these guys:



I haven't identified them yet, but I sure as hell smooshed their potato loving bellies all over my driveway. I also noticed earwigs in a number of places. This surprised me less since I recently caught a bunch of them. That brings me to the story of my first night time outing.

After reading about the nocturnal habits of vege loving bad guys I went for an evening stroll around my garden. I happened across a massive yellow slug perched ridiculously atop a green bean seedling. I didn't think to get my camera as I was too flabbergasted to think at all. It was like seeing an elephant perched in an apple tree, munching away! I grabbed the little bugger and introduced him to the afterlife and proceeded to research how to deal with slugs. I was convinced that these were the culprits in some seedling damage that I had noticed.

Turns out there are a couple organic ways of dealing with slugs. Of course the most direct is simply to go outside at night and hunt them down. Another way is to take a small container, a dish perhaps, and put some beer in it and leave it out at night. The greedy little bastards will help themselves without so much as a thank you and will rightfully drown. This was a fine excuse to buy a six pack of Gritty's Vacationland summer ale. As much as I dislike slugs I didn't have the heart to send them to their grave using a crappy beer. Besides I like buying local and Gritty's is made in Maine.

The morning after I set my traps I had no slugs, but legions of earwigs. Turns out they have a taste for fine local brews as well. It also turns out they can't swim well when drunk. Earwigs are a bit faster when the lights are turned on and so they're a bit harder to catch in the act. The dishes of beer serve nicely in this respect. It is a shame to waste good beer, but more of shame to let good veges go to the tummies of these little rascals.

The beer dish trap is something I'm pretty sure I've heard from my folks when I was young, but like most kids I didn't really listen a whole lot. Another tactic that I hadn't heard was sprinkling crushed egg shells on your garden soil. Turns out slugs don't fancy crawling over sharp pokey things and your soil won't mind the extra calcium from the shells. Its a win win.

One last note: night crawlers crawl at night. Yeah I 'knew' this but I hadn't ever seen it. Although they crawl pretty fast, so perhaps they deserve a flashier name: Night Runners...

Grassland Farm

A few weeks ago we made the switch from milk bought at Hannaford to milk bought at the Farmer's Market from Grassland Farm, which is located in Skowhegan (the Farmer's Market is in Orono).

I called up Sarah Smith, one of the co-owners and scheduled a time for Brenna and I to visit the farm. The best way to know how your food is produced is to go and watch how it is made/grown.

A little after 10 o'clock we arrived at the dirt road, Grassland Lane, and drove up the hill to the farm house. In the excitement of visiting a farm (its been a while) I left the camera in the car so if you'd like to see pictures you'll have to go to their website which I can vouch for. It was a beautiful day for a visit. Sarah showed us the dairy, calves and their bull (a big guy!). These cows (and their bull) actually get to have sex! Its one of those little pleasures of life I like to see offered to all life :)

The cows were out to pasture (as they should be) and Grassland Farm practices rotational grazing which benefits the cows and the grasses. They are also in the process of obtaining some large chicken tractors so that the chickens can follow the cows in the rotation. We walked along and saw many of their vegetable plots (they have about three acres of vegetables). Brenna was super awesome as we walked and talked for almost two hours and she looked nothing but content. We tasted fresh asparagus, peas and beet greens from their garden, played with their dogs and just had a great time.

Its certainly unusual to be able to ask your food source about their practices and philosophies and then have them candidly answer your questions and show you their processes.

There will probably be some more local farm visits, hopefully I'll remember the camera next time :)

Sou-Fabulous Broccoli

Tonight I made the best soufflé I've ever had...of course this is the only soufflé I've ever had. So how do I know its not the worst soufflé ever? Well it tasted good in any event. It was fun to make. You have to separate the eggs in a souffle and that's something I always like doing. Then you have to whip the whites until stiff peaks form and hell that's fun. Then there's the 'folding' because if you just go 'stir-crazy' you'll basically undo the work you did getting the egg whites to hold all the air. So it was an interesting recipe to try. That and I have my eyes on a chocolate soufflé but I wanted to try something more run of the mill. Here's the recipe (Taste of Home Cookbook).

Broccoli soufflé

1 package (10 oz) frozen chopped broccoli, thawed and drained (though I didn't, see notes)

2 T butter
2 T flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 C milk
1/4 grated Parmesan cheese
4 eggs, separated

In a saucepan cook and stir broccoli and butter together until melted. You can set a little broccoli aside to top the soufflé later but you don't have to. Add flour and salt to the broccoli; stir tunil blended. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil and cook for a couple minutes until thickened. Remove from heat and add cheese, stirring until melted.

In a large mixing bowl beat egg yolks until thickened and lemon-colored (the local eggs I buy have deep orange yolks and that ain't going to happen) for about 5 minutes (really??? I did it but didn't see any real change). Add broccoli mixture and set aside. In a small bowl beat the whites until they form stiff peaks (I feel really cook when I do this). FOLD (not mix) into the broccoli mixture.

Pour into an ungreased 1.5 or 2 qt ungreased baking dish. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with the reserved broccoli (if you kept any) and I put some more grated Parmesan on it. Then bake it for 10 MORE minutes or until knife inserted near the center comes out clean.

Upcoming: Roasting peanuts in the oven...peanut butter to come :)

Breakfast of Champions

Nothing earth shattering here...except my pride. Homemade bread with homemade yogurt cheese spread over it (I like it better than butter) made from local raw milk. Then drizzle homemade fruit syrup. Yum, yum and yum.

Nut and Barley Bake

I've been looking (and still am) for recipes to use grains. Here's my first find. Its pretty simple and it gave me a reason to make (and use) the vegetable broth of previous posting.

Nut and Barley Bake

1 medium onion, chopped
1 C pearl barley
1/2 cup almonds (or pine nuts)
1/4 C butter
1/2 C minced fresh parsley
1/4 t salt
1/8 t pepper
29 oz broth

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large skillet, saute onion, barley and nuts in butter until barley is lightly browned. Stir in the parsley, salt and pepper.

Transfer to a greased 2-qt baking dish. Stir in broth. Bake, uncovered for 1 and 1/4 hours or until barley is tender and the liquid is absorbed.

NOTES: I'd like to find a way around using the fresh parsley as you can only buy it in chunks and you end up with a lot leftover. Maybe something dried? Next time I'll give that a try. My broth was a bit carrot-y since most of my cuttings were from carrots. The broth, I believe, has a lot to do with the flavor of the meal. That being said it came out pretty well. With some work on the broth however I think this meal has a lot of potential. For the time being I just added a bit of salt and pepper.

Fruit syrup

Maple syrup costing what it does and corn syrup not being something we want to consume anymore, we've played around with making some fruit syrup. Nothing fancy, some frozen fruit, a bit of sugar and water. The ratio of fruit to water I took to be 4:1 and added in some sugar by the tablespoon, tasting it as I went. (You'll see three pots: strawberries, mixed berry, and raspberry)



Then I strained the mixture and poured the syrup into some bottles I'd saved for just such an occasion.



It's amazing by the way. I think next time I'll try honey since sugar cane doesn't grow in Maine. But this is a very promising topping for pancakes, french toast etc.

I also ended up with the leftover fruit stuff



Which I couldn't bring myself to throw away. So I took some pie crust and made some mini pies I suppose you might call them. I would have taken a picture but they didn't last long enough out of the oven!

With strawberry season just around the corner I'm thinking of making up a large batch of syrup and then canning it for the rest of the year. Do you make your own syrup? Any suggestions?

Vege Broth

Another thing I've learned from the Naked Chef is to make your own stock/broth (yeah I don't know the difference). I realized that as we switch to eating a lot more veges I end up with a lot of cuttings. Of course I compost them, but heck, save them up for a couple days and then toss in any less than fresh veges too.

Recipe? Not really. I put all the veges in the pot and covered it with water. I threw in a clove of garlic and two bay leaves. My vege scraps were dominated by carrots and so the resulting broth was a bit carroty but still good. That and considering the investment, pretty cheap.

Tomorrow night I plan on using it for a barley recipe and naturally I'll post on how it comes out.

Munchies

Take a frying pan and put a bit of olive oil in it. Heat the pan over medium heat. Toss in enough raw almonds to cover the bottom and toss around for a few minutes to cook them. When you're done enjoy as is or add some salt and pepper to taste. I picked this up from the Naked Chef.

Time for a Corn-Sandwhich

When I think Subway I think about whole grain breads, meats, cheeses and fresh veggies. I really can't recall there being much corn on the menu. But take a look around the Ingredient Lists for Subway. Surprising and disappointing: more corn and diesel.

Cauliflower Quiche

Well sometimes you produce a winner and sometimes you don't. By the time I sat down at the dinner table last night the verdict was clear: no one liked it. This quiche is part of my "things I don't like but will try to more" effort. Its similar in motivation to the mushroom quiche I made a while ago. Cauliflower has long been the weird white broccoli thing I had little interest in eating. Quiche's are generally forgiving ways to sample vegetables (as they're covered in cheese and eggs :), but this didn't go over well. Honestly I didn't really like it myself. Let me give you the recipe as I made it and then make some observations about how it could be improved, in our minds. Sara and I both agreed that it wasn't horrible, just not good. This is from that same Vegetarian cookbook.

Golden Cauliflower Quiche

Pie crust
1 small head of cauliflower (about 4 cups chopped)
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2 eggs
1/2 C milk
1/2 C mayo
2 C cheese (you pick, but cheddar is a good stand in)
1/8 t pepper
1/8 t nutmeg

Heat oven to 400 degrees F.

Set up your pie crust and cook it at 400 degrees F for about 10 minutes as discussed in previous posts.

Cut cauliflower into 1/2 inch thick pieces until you have 4C. Steam for about 5 minutes over boiling water. Drain, rinse, drain again.

Once your pie crust is done, drop the temperature to 350 and spread the almonds on a pan and lightly toast them. Keep an eye on them it'll only take a few minutes.

Put the cauliflower in the bottom of the baked crust and sprinkle with almonds once they're done.

In a blender, whirl eggs, milk and mayo until smooth. Add 1 and 1/4 C of the cheese (saving the rest) along with the pepper and nutmeg. Whirl briefly to mix. Pour mixture over the cauliflower and sprinkle remaining cheese over the top. Bake on bottom rack of the oven for 30-40 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Let stand for 5-10 minutes before serving.

NOTES:

• Nutmeg = Yuck. I almost didn't use it but as I have little experience with cauliflower I went ahead and used it. You might like it but none of us did. Sara suggested garlic instead and I think I might add a minced (or pressed) clove next time with maybe a few tablespoons of minced onion also.
  
  
• Texture: My family also didn't like the texture, though I rather did. The cauliflower, being steamed, is almost crunchy. As crunchy as cauliflower can be anyway. But they've all decided that quiches should be a bit more homogeneous. I'm not sure I'm going to change that next time, I might just chop it a bit finer though I imagine you could toss it in a food processor along with the egg/milk/mayo mixture.
  
  
• Mayo: Increasingly I want to cook with basic ingredients not an assembly of other assemblies. So I could make my own mayo but we don't use a lot of mayo or perhaps I could try yogurt (my current favorite substitute for everything.
  
  
• Blender: You probably don't need a blender either. So if you don't have one, just get ready to burn a few calories...something we could all benefit from.
  

So not a success....yet!

What a load of crap

Imagine that you had a tall bottle of drinking water and I came up to you, took it out of your hand and urinated in it. What would your response be? Probably more than a little indignant. Suppose better yet, I defecated in it? Well every day we take drinking water and urinate and defecate in it. Then we flush it away into either a septic system or into our municipal waste system where it is then collected and treated so the water can be released back into the environment. In some places the solids are buried and in some they are composted by the municipality. In either case there is significant energy and resources going into the process.

Joseph Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook, thinks this is ridiculous and I agree. We waste a ridiculous amount of drinking water disposing of our excrement. In a world where we increasingly worry about energy, access to water and soil condition we contribute to those problems each and every time we step up to the commode.

The book is located online if you're interested in perusing it. Its a collection of thoughts, practices and well cited data. The author as of the time of the second edition I read had been composting his family's manure for about 20 years. He has a two bin system and it takes him one year to finish a bin and he lets it 'cure' for one year while he's filling the other bin. So two years after starting, his first pile is ready for use.

He's had it tested and there are no pathogens of any sort. There's actually been a fair amount of research on the destruction of pathogens in composting and I couldn't possibly do justice to it here. However there's something that really hit me in the reading of this book. I was reading another book on home composting about a month ago. It had confirmed what I had suspected for a while, that it is hard for a home composter to experience the 'thermophilic stage' of composting you always hear about. Certainly on my less than a tenth of an acre its hard to produce much matter. So I had contented myself with simple piling up my compost and going the slow route which would take longer and would certainly happen, but I would no longer be dissapointed by a lack of steam rising from my pile of leaves, grass cuttings and vegetable scraps.

Shit! That's the key, we DO produce plenty of compostable material that would easily create thermophilic conditions in our compost piles which would destroy weeds and pathogens, it comes straight from our bottoms! I should add a disclaimer here that I'm not going to start composting my own or my family's manure at this point. The world (heck...my family) has a lot of opinions on human scat which Jenkins refers to as fecaphobia. I certainly wouldn't want to run amok of local ordinances and get into trouble either. But it stands observing that we spend a lot of energy to rid ourselves of material that could easily be turned into very useful compost for use in the garden.

What? Use shit in the garden?! That's gross!! No, Jenkins isn't talking about using crap on your tomato plants...he's talking about using composted crap. Just like we use cow, chicken, pig, horse and rabbit manure on our crops. Hell, we BUY composted animal manure. That's right, we drive to the store and give people money for bags of composted crap. Which helps create the wonderful salads, jams, pies etc that we make with our home gardens.

Yeah, but there's disease and stuff in human poop! Jenkins acknowledges this in several ways. First he makes the distinction between 'nightsoil', the direct application of raw humanure to crops (as done in Asia traditionally), and the use of composted humanure. In the many studies done on composting humanure, you consitently find no disease. Moreover, if you're only using your own composted humanure, you'll only catch what you already have.

Yeah, but I don't want my house or my yard smelling like crap! It won't, the author assures us if you use a material like sawdust (he recommends sawdust from a lumber mill not the sawdust from a carpentry shop because of moisture). Each time you defecate (into a cleverly disguised five gallon bucket) you generously cover the excrement with a layer of sawdust (or similar material). This prevents the laying of fly eggs and it prevents odor. He describes a light earthy smell, but no smell of feces, which would be unpleasant. When he adds the bucket to the existing pile he covers it with another layer of sawdust. Keeping it covered at all times. The sawdust is more than just odor control. Its providing a source of carbon to balance out the nitrogen rich excrement. Compost needs to maintain a balance between nitrogen and carbon otherwise it will either stink or won't break down.

This probably seems extreme to many. But I suppose it depends on how much exposure you've had to compost and in particular composted animal manure. I've long been a fan of composted cow manure. You can take a handful and bring it up to your nose and smell it, you won't smell anything resembling a cow. It will smell earthy, it will crumble nicely in your fingers. It's no longer manure, its soil's best friend.

Another way of wrapping your head around this is looking up the use of urine in organic gardening. I'd be willing to bet that most folks feel a bit better about urine than feces. For example, your girlfriend will be upset with you if you stray while urinating (standing up of course). But see what happens if you drop a load and miss the bowl....its a-whole-nother story! Likewise there's the old debate about whether its okay to pee in the shower. Lots of folks on both sides of that issue. But ask someone if they think its okay to cut a few logs in the tub and see what happens.

Urine is rich in nitrogen and is good for compost and for gardens (usually diluted). Urine is essentially sterile (there are some qualifications there) and so most folks aren't too worried about it. If you can get your head around the use of urine in the garden and compost and feel okay using composted cow manure without a haz-mat suit on, then you're well on your way to thoughtfully considering the use of composted humanure.

The book is certainly something to read and think about. It offers a practical way of saving energy and reducing waste and reducing our insane use of clean water. It also provides us with a steady stream of matter for our small compost piles that will reward us with nutrient rich hummus to use in our gardens. Otherwise we end up driving (using gas) to the store to buy bags (plastic) of compost (driven in from somewhere else) to bring home (more driving).

What are your thoughts?

The doubting sprouter

I've read pretty consistently that you should only use 'sprouting' seeds/beans for growing your own sprouts. The justification is that normal seeds/beans have been treated in one manner or another to avoid sprouting. I had heard the same case given for potatoes.

But then the other day I was at the health food store and I noticed a bin of 'organic mung beans.' They were something like $1.50 a pound. Organic eh? Well that should indicate a lack of any treatment, right? So I bought a couple tablespoons worth and brought them home to sprout.

As the image above can attest, they sprouted just fine. This creates unbeatable savings as a pound of mung beans now costs less than a little box of sprouts you'd buy at a store, but a pound of mung beans creates an enormous amount of sprouts!

This is just another lesson of why it is good to doubt.

Spinach-Feta Quiche

Egg and Cheese dishes have a lot of versatility as far as seasonal eating. Chickens produce eggs year round and cheese stores well. The seasonal items in this dish are spinach and green onions. Currently the recipe I use calls for frozen spinach though I'm in the process of converting to fresh spinach. However I want to make sure I get the moisture content correct, a runny quiche is not a pretty sight.

Spinach is widely available and I plan on trying to grow it indoors this winter. I plan on trying to substitute chives for green onions and trying to grow chives inside as well. That could make this an 'anytime meal.' My chives are adapting well but they're not ready for any trimming quite yet. So that will have to wait.

This recipe is a hit with both kids and has been for a while. This had surprised me given how 'green' it is and that there's feta in it. But go figure, they love it. This is another recipe from that generic vegetarian cookbook.

Spinach-Feta Quiche

1 pie crust (I still use store bought for the moment)
1 10oz package of frozen chopped spinach
6 scallions (green onions) I just use the tops
1/2 C cottage cheese
6 oz feta cheese
4 eggs
1/2 C milk
1 t basil
1/4 t pepper
1/2 t garlic salt


Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Prepare the crust on the pie plate and bake it for 10 minutes. Strain the spinach to get out as much water as you can. Then toss the ingredients in the blender. I haven't found it really matters what order you do it in. Once the crust is done, pour the contents into the crust and bake at 400 for twenty minutes then turn the temperature down to 350 and bake for another 15-20 minutes.

NOTE: Baking the crust helps to prevent the crust from ending up soggy. I happened to find some small ceramic balls and I put them over some tin foil which prevents the crust from rising (air between crust and pie plate), but you could use dried beans as weights. Poking holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork helps too.

Enjoy!

Tis the Season...to eat...

Seasonal and/or local eating, that's the challenge. This is one of the tools I will use. There are twelve squares, one for each month. The little pieces of white you see will be the names of various meals that can be eaten at different times in the year when certain foods are seasonally available. The hope is that this visual aid will help me develop a collection of meals evenly distributed throughout the year.

There are three rows, the first is Nov-Feb, the second is Mar-June and the third is Jul-Oct. I figure that this is a rough way to organize the year. The last row should be the easiest to fill, from July to October there are tons of foods coming into season. While the first row and the second row will be somewhat harder.

I've been thinking a lot about the transistion to seasonal eating and I think I've developed a good way of thinking about it. At first I focused on what I wouldn't be able to have, the restrictions it would place on my consumption. Then I realized that instead of focusing on what I would lose, I should focus on how to enjoy what was available.

So when strawberries come into season shortly I want to try and shift our diet to consisting of a lot more strawberries. No grapes or pears or apples say. But strawberries. Eat them on your waffles, make muffins, have chilled strawberry soup. Enjoy them while they're here. I plan on taking the kids and picking a bunch locally and also making preserves (to enjoy when they are out of season). When strawberry season passes, let it go and move on to the next item and enjoy it fully.

We have a ways to go before we're eating seasonally. Indeed right now I'm just trying out lots of different recipes to find out what we like and any successes will make their way to the wall above. My goal is that by (or hopefully well before) this time next year that we will be eating seasonally.

Do you eat seasonally? How long did it take? What were your experiences? Your sources? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Extra Herbs

I was perusing one of the Naked Chef cookbooks and came across this lovely idea. If you buy fresh herbs and have some left over that you know you're not going to use, hang them up and dry them. No sense keeping them in the fridge just to rot and then throw away.

And yes...it is a coat hanger.

UPDATE: Its June 10th and the herbs are crispy crunchy dry. Used some in a quiche tonight and they worked wonderfullly ;)

Rain gathering

While I'm beginning to see the point of creating a more elegant rainwater collection system, urgency moved me last night. After a week of no rain I was out of rainwater. But today was supposed to rain and it did. So I arranged my barrels and spare buckets to catch what I could.

I certainly won't get any points for ingenuity for the following, but I needed a quick and cheap overflow mechanism:



Near the top of the white barrel I bored a hole and fed a length of garden hose from it into the blue barrel. It works quite well. The blue barrel is over half full at the moment.

Zucchini Frittata - pictures

Nothing much new this time around, though I used summer squash instead of zucchini. However while I was assembling the ingredients I eyed the board and was pleased with the assembly. These were the things I was putting into my family's dinner. It felt good. In the past I have made and eaten many a tater-tot and fish-stick dinner, and to come this far...well I had a moment of pride.

Braised Cucumbers

Sunday night, Sara and I turned out living room into a pretend-cinema and watched Julie & Julia on Netflix. Its a good movie and two things caught my attention, given the recent cooking. The first was to 'not crowd the mushrooms.' I've only just started considering mushrooms as food (versus cousins to athlete's foot) and this hint is something I'll consider when I make the mushroom-crust quiche again.

The second item was braised cucumbers. Cooking cucumbers at all is new to me. I did use them in a potato-yogurt soup recently, but they were blended in and you could only tell if you really thought about. But to sauté cucumbers? I used this recipe at http://robshearer.com/blog/.

Thoughts: They're hot. Cucumbers, even seeded, contain a lot of water and so once heated contain a lot of hot water. So be warned. They have a subtle flavor that you can manipulate. I found that a little salt and pepper went well with them. Sara suggested vinegar and so maybe I'll try them again and throw in a little vinegar at the end. Might they taste a bit pickly?

A novel way to use cucumbers, especially if you have a bumper crop.

Perhaps Bees?

Well I just heard back from the code enforcement officer and Old Town has no ordinance concerning bees. So the next step is to talk to do my homework, talk to my neighbors and with their acquiescence, next spring I will be a budding bee-keeper.

A single colony can produce as much as 80 pounds of honey a year, in addition to what the colony needs to over winter. That's a sizable amount of honey and there's bees wax to boot. The initial investment is on order of a couple of hundred dollars, but if you're a fan of honey (and I am) it can pay for itself rather quickly.

I was able to visit a bee keeper and his five colonies a few weeks ago. It was amazing. We wore the bee suits, but we didn't need them, though the hood brings with it a nice sense of security. The bees were very forgiving of our explorations and curiosity. As we approached the hives you could see some bees, but not there was nothing like a swarm or cloud. The bees are a busy lot and they're generally either inside or coming and going.

My plans are to locate the hive on my roof. My house has a on story addition and there is a perfect place to locate a hive where it will be sheltered by the two story part of the house but will receive morning and evening light. This way the bees can come and go well above our heads. Hives only need checking on every week or two, and given that the one story roof has a shallow slope, it will present no trouble to do so. Out of sight and out of mind these little guys will travel up to three miles to gather nectar. They'll contribute to local pollination and provide a connection between nature and our food.

I'm psyched. What are your thoughts?

chickens...:(

Well I've been meaning to call the town for a while to find out the specifics of Old Town's ordinances regarding chickens and bees. The bees are still up in the air while the chickens seem out for the moment. Apparently if you live in town you can't raise chickens.

I could have a bunch of great danes...but no chickens. I could have a half a dozen cats...but no chickens. I could have dogs, cats, gerbils, fish and hamsters...and what the heck a snack or two...but no chickens.

Apparently there has been a lot of interest in chicken keeping within Old Town and so I think I'll look into the process of challenging the ordinance. However that may not help. I've read over a few ordinances from other towns, South Portland for example. They're depressing (not all of them) in that they all but require you spend an inordinate amount of money to create fabulous looking coops that you must also keep at the back of your lot, hundreds of feet from neighboring property lines. Make it pretty...then hide it.

Time will tell...

Other resources:
http://www.sailzora.com/Chicken%20Laws.htm

bring on the rain :)

Yesterday I ran out of water from my cache. Today it rains! I rigged up the new 55 gallon barrel I picked up so that any overflow from the original (smaller 35 gallon) barrel should pour into the new barrel. I think I might go browsing for some plumbing fixtures and make this a little fancier.

In other news I'm on the look out for a good baked beans recipe to alter. Ideally I'm looking to use honey instead of maple syrup (too pricey) or brown sugar (imported) and I don't want to use ingredients like "ketchup" or "barbeque sauce." Or for that matter, I don't want to use cans of beans. Its amazing how many recipes call for baked beans. I mean...why not just open the can and eat it? I don't really take a recipe serious if its ingredients aren't real ingredients, but other food products. I've certainly eaten and enjoyed some assemblies, but that's what they should be called, assemblies. "Can I have a copy of your Baked Bean Assembly?" that would mean the thing using ketchup and a can of pork and beans.

Another interesting observation is that a number of these recipes seem to follow a 2:1 or even a 1.5:1 ratio of beans to bacon. Unfortunate for me, 'good' bacon costs too much and I can no longer eat cheap bacon in good conscience. So these beans will end up being vegetarian.

With any luck today will see 100 gallons of rain water and some beans soaking tonight. Stay dry.