I am running out of internet time before I can blog. So you can follow our adventures on my photo diary (see link up in the right over there), or in my flickr stream.
Now I am shutting down the computer, and we are heading over for some camping at the Grand Canyon.
See ya!
Today we started in gray, showery Iowa. Then we moved on to flat and stormy Nebraska,
The minute we crossed into Colorado, the landscape changed — fast!
Denver made up for its mini-mall, box-store look by giving us a double rainbow,
And then we found ourselves in this:
A good start to our adventure!
Another pitiful local meal, which will be compounded by a pitiful blog post (We’re leaving for a 3-week Southwest Adventure tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., and the packing, she has not been started yet. [Yes! I know! it's 6:30 p.m. as I type!])
Tender collard greens from the neighborhood farmers market: local!
Snappy snap pea salad: Snap peas local! Everything else … not.
Quinoa and split pea pilaf (which actually became amaranth and yellow lentil mush [because that’s what we had in the pantry) … not.
I plan to keep this blog updated as we travel. We’ll see how that pans out.
10 June 2009
A couple weeks ago, the Consort and I were talking about how I am more of a cat person, and he’s more of a dog person (even though the cat ADORES him). Neither of these statements were a surprise, in fact, it’s something we’ve known for a long time.
The other day, when I was sitting in the yard, doing what I have been doing a lot lately*, the Consort had an epiphany: He said that, even more than a cat person, I really seem to be a chicken person!
I think it’s more that I love observing animal behavior: I like noticing any animal’s personality quirks, and thought processes at work — it’s really fascinating.
Anyway, yesterday I noticed the chickens on the bench under the plum tree:
They sit next to each other, nibbling at the leaves of the branch that comes out as far as the bench. That was really funny to me — chickens sitting down to have a snack. Ahuva quickly got up and turned around (the better to see what I was doing) when I returned with the camera, and Killer just waited to see what Ahuva would decide they should do: run away or stay and nibble?
*Observing/interacting with the chickens, of course!
It’s mango season, and the Consort has a sweet spot for mangoes, so we usually get a few even though they come loaded with food miles. The drinks book we have has a couple of recipes that are buttermilk-based, which I thought sounded neat, so I decided their mango smoothie would be drink recipe experiment #3 for us.
I bought some buttermilk from a local dairy, and used mint from the garden (remind me to show you pictures of our Jurassic-style mint plants!).
Whir up some buttermilk, milk, yogurt, mango, mint leaves, honey, and ice cubes, and serve.
“I look delicious, but I’m not.”
Not so good. I thought it was too thin, and the 3 other testers thought the mint was overpowering (overpowering, my foot! There were 4 little leaves in the blender — that comes out to the equivalent of one mint leaf each!). That’s easy to tally. Final score: –4.
I realized, after a Google* search for “buttermilk drink”** that the reason a buttermilk drink sounded like a good idea was this: that’s how lassi is made — you know, that refreshing drink you get when you eat out at an Indian restaurant. If you’ve never had one, I don’t want to hear about it. It’s one of the perks of eating Indian food!
I made some after dinner tonight. Of course, I was lazy and didn’t look up any of the recipes I found online the other day. So I just poured some buttermilk into the blender, dropped in 2 mangoes’ worth of flesh, added 2 tablespoons of honey, some cardamom, coriander, cloves, and ground ginger, and dropped in a large handful of ice cubes. Whir it up and pour (more accurately, “plop”) into glasses.
A little bit of this, a little bit of that…
There were only 3 of us at home tonight, but we all liked it. The only change I would make next time (and there will be a next time) will be to substitute milk for a portion of the buttermilk; mangoes are thick, buttermilk is thick, and I think a little balance with some thin would be a good idea. Final score: +3.
Do you notice the thickness?
*No WAY you’ll ever catch me “binging”. But then, I think most things Microsoft does is lame.
**I had lots of buttermilk left, so had to find some way to use it up!
If OLS started a few weeks ago, then I would have been able to rave about asparagus meals. The downtown farmers market opened the first weekend in May, and all the local farmers had lovely, thin, green stalks of asparagus for sale. We made asparagus risotto, asparagus tart (with local eggs), roasted asparagus — for four weeks, we made something different each time. Now, at the beginning of June, new things are starting to find their way to the market, but they’re still selling asparagus. Unfortunately, the girls have made it clear that they are sick (and tired!) of eating (and peeing) asparagus. No more asparagus for us this season!
So, for this first week of OLS, I admit that the only local dish I can talk about is a mixed vegetable salad.
The small cucumbers and tiny red and yellow peppers were grown in a farmer’s greenhouse nearby, and the feta is from Northern Prairie Chevre, an operation located just north of Des Moines. Olive oil and vinegar not local.
The rest of the meal wasn’t local, but it was homemade — pupusas, stuffed cornflour cakes from El Salvador. The first thing I learned is that masa harina (corn flour) smells awful as you work it. Sorta like used kitty litter. But it sure is simple: just flour and water. I stuffed these with grated monterey jack cheese and some scallion I had in the fridge.
I think I rolled them too flat. No — I know I rolled them too flat; they were supposed to be 1/4-inch thick, and mine were more 1/16-inch.
But I was impressed at how easy it was to keep most of the filling covered by the dough; I had expected spillage and a big mess.
Pupusas are cooked in an ungreased griddle. The cakes did cook, but the outside was more of a toasty white than a toasty brown. I suppose that was because corn flour doesn’t cook like wheat flour (just like corn dough, as I learned earlier, doesn’t smell like wheat dough).
Pupusas are traditionally served with a cabbage and carrot slaw called curtido. This stuff is so easy to make, and so delicious! I think that because the vegetables are soaked in boiling water rather than dumped in a pot of boiling water, they stay more crunchy. And because this is a vinegar-based slaw, rather than a mayonnaise-based slaw, it is much lighter on the tongue (and the stomach!). Another traditional side dish is salsa roja. I didn’t feel like making a salsa, so instead I bought a jar of a local salsa (Juan O’Sullivan’s) at the farmers market. I’m not sure they use all local ingredients in their salsa, so although the final product is local, the intermediate ingredients may not be. Let’s consider that 50% local, then.
The pupusas were fun to make, I will definitely make them again.
[Bruegger's bagel commercial, take 3. Fade in.]
Choosy hens choose Bruegger’s Garden Veggie Cream Cheese on their bagels, 2 to 0
So if you have discriminating hens, get yourself some Bruegger’s bagels
“Bagels and cream cheese — it’s a taste treat!”
[Fade out]
“What do you mean, you’re done filming? I’m still hungry!”
“… I want more, dammit. I’m calling my agent!”
Dear Consort,
The garden is blooming! This has been a lovely weekend — the temperature was warm but not muggy, the sun was out, and I spent most of each day out in the backyard. I’m sure you’re having a good time out in DC (no yard work, among other perks), but this is what’s happening here:
I saw these lovely purple flowers, reminiscent of peas, near the Druid Circle:
When I showed them to Trixie, and told her I bet they were in the pea family, she replied, “Yeah, Dad said he planted some Prairie Peas over there.” So, there you go. Prairie Peas.
The gooseberries are plumping up nicely:
These fuschia flowers are peeking up near the birdbath:
Bachelor’s buttons? I thought ours were blue, though. (I especially like the spiky-ness of the buds before they bloom.)
And look! Baby plums:
They’re sneaky — being the same color as the leaves, they’re hard to see; I worried that we wouldn’t have a good crop this year. I have no idea why I’m so obsessed with the plums. They aren’t even my favorite stone fruit. But I love them!
You already know that the chickens were “lost” for a while last night, so I won’t rehash that unpleasantness. Let’s focus on the lovely garden pictures instead.
See you soon!
Imperatrix
The Consort and I are suckers for clearance cookbooks at the bookstore. Usually they’re on clearance because there is something wrong with them (for example, not including the number of servings made with each recipe), and many of them, I’ve noticed, are from the UK. (I wonder if they ship unsaleable U.S. cookbooks to England?)
Recently we picked up a book titled Smoothies, but really, that’s a misnomer since only a handful of the recipes are actually “smoothies”. It has an interesting selection of unconventional non-alcoholic drinks, and I think it will be fun to experiment with these ideas. I’m tired of the oversweetened powder mixes we usually buy in the store (even though we buy the unsweetened version which we can sweeten to our preference [less than they suggest, that's for sure]) with their crazy fake colors and synthetic flavors. (But I’m also tired of water all the time — sometimes you want a little flavor in your liquids!)
I forgot to take a picture of the first recipe the Consort made (a peppermint tea/grapefruit juice mix). But although it tasted a bit weird at room temp, once it was thoroughly chilled it was quite refreshing.
Yesterday, I made lemon barley water. It seems that this is a pretty popular drink in England, but I had never heard of it except once, in a young-adult fantasy novel by Tamora Pierce (Terrier — highly recommended, by the way).
It’s so simple! A handful of pearled barley simmered in 8 cups of water for 20 minutes. (Also in the water were the rinds of 3 lemons, which I then juiced and kept aside.) Take it off the heat, mix in the juice of the 3 lemons and 3/4 cup sugar, then let it all cool (this steeping takes a couple of hours). Strain it into a pitcher, and chill until nice and cold. Serve over ice.
The barley added a softness to the lemonade — I think it must be the gluten which it adds to the water. So easy to make, and it makes for a nice change from regular lemonade. (And supposedly is good for the complexion — an extra perk!)
The Consort is at a conference, but this one gets 3+ votes from the rest of us.
I’ve used chiropractic for many years — I don’t believe it will solve every problem, but if I have muscle pain (mostly in my lower back or shoulder), then I know that getting a few adjustments over the span of a couple of weeks will resolve the issue more thoroughly than just taking prescription anti-inflammatory pills just to hide the pain (as has happened when I went to an MD with elbow pain).
So after I had been dealing with strong neck pain for 3 weeks with no amelioration (because sometimes these pains go away on their own), I made an appointment with a chiropractor. She cracked me and massaged me, but unlike previous times, the pain wasn’t getting better (it wasn’t getting worse, but by this point I had been feeling pain and tightness for 5 weeks). She suggested that perhaps, since the pain was so high up on the neck (it was the base of the skull, really), chiropractic wasn’t the best treatment, but acupuncture would be. (Did you know that headaches or muscle aches on the back of the skull is a sign of liver imbalance? Now you and I do.)
I’ve got friends — real world and online — who swear by acupuncture, and the results they described seemed just shy of miraculous: back pain so bad they could barely walk, gone; cigarette addiction, gone; excess weight gain, gone. But the whole needle thing … that needle thing. (Oh, and the little detail that acupuncture is not covered by my insurance; but after 5 weeks of pain, that little detail doesn’t seem as important anymore — would you prefer less money in your pocket or short-temperedness in your spouse/mother? I thought so.)
On Friday, with a deadline looming at 2:30 pm (it could have been 5 pm but the last soccer game of the high school season [did I mention on here that Impera was on the soccer team, or was that just over on my photo diary?] started at 3, and I didn’t want to miss it), I received a call that the acupuncturist I would be seeing next Wednesday (which would have brought me to my 6th week of pain) had a last-minute cancellation — did I want to take it? Yes? OK, get here in the next 15 minutes.
After consulting with me, and sharing some URLs I might find useful, the doctor (do you call them that?) had me lay face-down down on a table and started poking me. Literally, unlike what usually happens at an MD’s office. I got punctured in my ear lobes, the sides of my ears, my wrists, my ankles, and the back of my skull. He placed a wireless doorbell in my hand, and told me to buzz him if I needed him before the 30 minutes of treatment were over. Then he left me to a nice warm room, suffused with Asian New Age music. I felt some of the needles going in — acupuncture is not a pain-free treatment. And interestingly, at different points in the 30 minutes, I felt each of the needles on my right side throb for a little while. Never more than one location at a time, thank goodness, and nothing that a little meditative outward focus couldn’t take care of, but since my right side is my weak side (that’s the plantar fasciitis foot, so it’s the side where I’ll first feel back pain or shoulder pain), I wonder if my misalignment of Qi (ooh, listen to the poseur use the lingo!) is worse on that side?
I didn’t need to use the ringer (I’m not a wuss, I can handle 30 minutes, even of throbbing needles!), and the 30 minutes didn’t feel interminable. So, that’s good, right? But here we are 24 hours later, and my pain hasn’t miraculously dissolved (I didn’t really expect that to happen, although my heart of hearts hoped for it). I’ll be going in for a second visit this week, and I just hope this pain will be gone by June 15. Because that’s when we’re leaving for our 3-week Southwestern US adventure. Which will include lots of hiking, and camping. Two activities that do not mix well with neck pain.
