Quick book, slow trip

Miles from Nowhere
by Barbara Savage

I failed to take any notes while I whizzed through this--it was that absorbing. Not to mention grim, upsetting, and chortlingly funny.

The grim part was traveling through Egypt. If I remember right, that's the place where everyone threw rocks at them. In other countries people were so curious about the strange travelers that they could hardly find a place to take a dump without an audience of silent, staring eyes. The upsetting part was the description of the many, many places where they couldn't get clean drinking water--there wasn't any.

I've camped in America, and I know the experience of having to boil water to purify it or filter it to get out algae, sediment, or bugs. it's all a fun adventure when you're camping. But for many people in the world, it's a way of life. And so is diarrhea, food poisoning, and constant fear of the very thing you have to have in order to stay alive.

In contrast to the grim and upsetting, you also get to read about the generosity of strangers and the breathtaking views of mountains.  And you get the marvel first-hand at the mind-boggling strength of these two travelers. I won't say they didn't come close to giving up, but they didn't.

Gardening in my Roots, heat season

 



At least they waited until June to forecast a 100+ day. (That's 38 for you Celsiusers) No more rain, either. It'll be sad to watch north-central Texas turn into a desert, but maybe I'll be gone before it's finished. The bigger, more mobile creatures will move to the north--roadrunners and imported fire ants will make it for sure, but I'm not sure about the tarantulas.





The okra likes it for sure.

And the winter squash seems to be traveling...away from the heat?

Squash vine borers are at work. (no picture; too sad) One of my little darlings is all wilty; it will be dead tomorrow. End of the peas. Loving them didn't stop me from composting them.  End of the spring broccoli, too, but I'm thinking about leaving them through the summer to see if they produce a fall crop. I did that once in the fall, although that time I think I was just too lazy to clean them up.

I harvested another handful of beans, which was a lot considering I only have about 20 plants. Interesting...the beans I planted for a replacement didn't show any signs of sprouting, so I'd given up on them. However, after a monster of a thundershower on Thursday, they finally decided to move.

Cucumbers are blooming!

Series end! AIEEE!

One Was A Soldier
by Julia Spencer Fleming

End of the series and didn't disappoint. An awfully good mystery, full of twists and turns, suffering and solving, combined with the stories of five veterans and the different problems they brought back from Iraq and Afghanistan. (Missing limbs; prescription drug addiction; short-term memory loss; anger; financial disaster.)

The ending ended sooner than I wanted it to--I wanted to know more about the soldiers' various treatments and struggles to fit back in.  But instead she left her soldiers armed with the magic bullets of therapy and time, and we're supposed to think that now they've been able to admit they need help, help will come. In today's mixed up world of medicine, I'm not so sure it's that easy. But we want to hope it is.

She did one thing perfectly--even while wrapping up the loose ends neat-ish-ly, she left three major plot possibilities open for future development, if she were to decide to pick up the story again. And one of those could be a spin-off. I wish it would.

Recipe Reduction 115-114

 

Pantry Puttanesca With Sardines
tinyfarmhouse.com
Not bad at all!  At one point the smell of it cooking was just like tuna, only of course, tuna with less mercury. I'm assuming that canned sardines are a sustainable seafood--I should check on that...if they're from California (Pacific herrings), good. Canada, okay. If they're European Pilchard from the Mediterranean, bad bad bad.  If they're real sardines from the Pacific, very, very bad because the fishery is closed due to population decline.

For a weeknight recipe, this one couldn't be simpler.  Cook some pasta and drain, reserving the cooking water.  (I failed on this one and dumped the water down the drain.)

In a little oil, saute shallots (I had to use green onion and a small clove garlic), add chopped tomato, olives, capers and the sardines, and cook until the sardines are falling apart. Add the reserved cooking water and the pasta, mix it all up--done!

The sardines only tasted the slightest bit sardiney, and if you're a fond of the flavor you'd be even more pleased than I was.  For me, it's a keeper.




Green Salad with Beets, Oranges & Avocado
by Gimme Some Oven

The lesson learned from this is that adding raw beets to a salad makes it pretty but doesn't do anything for the taste, and that adding oranges makes it pretty and tasty. Other than that, it's kind of like the recipe for a green salad in a beginner's cookbook--take greens, add some pretty vegetables, cheese and nuts or seeds; top with dressing.  I can't imagine why I saved it.

So maybe this exercise is teaching me to be a lot more selective about what I save. Can I hope?

Recipe Suffering 119...116

Leek and Swiss Chard Tart
Bon Appetit, October 1999  (from Smitten)

Man! I can really cook good when I ignore all the rules of good nutrition!
Here's the recipe:

Make a quick pie crust (one part oil to four parts white flour and way too much salt).
Slab 2 huge tablespoons of butter in a skillet and saute chopped leeks until soft. Add chopped Swiss Chard and saute a few minutes longer, until all the butter is soaked up.
Beat 4 eggs (the recipe called for 3 whole eggs + 2 yolks) with a half cup of heavy cream and three-quarters cup whole milk; add a little salt and nutmeg.
Put in all in the pie crust.  It might have fit if I'd used the right amount of eggs, but I doubt it. Bake until set.

And wow. Perfection. Artery-hardening perfection.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
author unknown

A crisp, if you don't know it, is a crustless fruit pie with crunchy toppings on it. In this case, it was a strawberry-rhubarb-blueberry pie and the topping was made with of oats, maple syrup, peanut butter and pecans. I had to stop myself from slipping the fruit into the compost pie and eating the topping right out of the bowl.

But I cooked it and it was good, although it reinforced the theory that I don't care for cooked strawberries. What if, instead of cooking the fruit, you just pressed the crumble into a pie plate and baked it until lightly browned, then ate it like a shortcake with the cold fruit on top? I wouldn't say no to a bit of whipped cream, either.


 
Baked Oatmeal Muffin Cups

Two thoughts on this experiment:
Can you really make muffins without flour? and,
Can a success be a failure at the same time?

The answer to the first one is yes, you can indeed. The stand-in was whole oats, and so long as the muffin tins are sufficiently greased, they hold together as well as regular muffins. maybe a little flat on top, that's all.


The answer to the second is yes, it failed, because I meant to do it differently and forgot. I meant to do it vegan, with flaxseed meal instead of the egg and nut milk instead of the cow's milk. But I was tired and the eggs and milk were sitting right there, and I forgot all about the alternative.  So now, if I want to know if it's worth making again, I'll have to make it again.

So even though they tasted good and smelled better (cinnamon!), I don't know if they're worth putting on the permanent repeat cycle.

 

Kale and Soba Salad With Miso Ginger Almond Dressing

Wiktionary says a salad is,
A food made primarily of a mixture of raw or cold ingredients, typically vegetables, usually served with a dressing such as vinegar or mayonnaise.

Pretty vague. By that definition, this might have slipped by if I hadn't insisted on warming it in the microwave. In fact, I pretty much trashed the recipe by cooking the kale, substituting rice noodles for soba, and replacing the edamame with blanched snap peas.  In the end, the soft noodles didn't play well with raw carrot and cabbage.

Good flavor; lousy combination of textures. Not a keeper.

Indecipherable

Double Cup Love

It's a cop-out to review a book I didn't finish, but I just wanted to give a word of advice--make sure you're prepared for this. If you're not totally up on modern culture and slang, expect  to spend a lot of time scratching your head and skipping over phrases you can't translate. Like,

I checked the dish on other people's plates and noticed the caramel color, the bouncy skin, the sharp edges on every cut. Every piece looked like chicken sushi, little lego bits of brown chicken with the bone hanging by a thread. Finally, our wei ji rou arrived. It was spicy, it was tingly, it was grounded by the leeks, but listen...I know you ninjas fuck with cold pizza so peep game. There is a particular sweetness that comes from the essence of cold poultry...

It's not the f-bomb; it's not the juxtaposition of street-speak with cerebral phrases ("essence of cold poultry"); it's the expressions that make absolutely no sense -- "you ninjas fuck with cold pizza so peep game".

In the time it takes me to try to make sense of them and give up, I lose track of the narrative. His dialog is fine, but anytime he relates anything going on in his head, it's unfathomable.  Probably he really talks that way, but reading it in a book is just too much work for me.

Flip the script on the world.
Go hard in the paint.
The Hypebeast Jumpman logo.
The god Sam Perkins can't do shit but shoot flat-footed threes, but it's enough.

Kitchen Thoughts

I just had an epiphany. My cooking is slow because I compromised my principles!

When I was a kid, we had a dish rack stuck in half of the kitchen sink. That half was seldom cleaned and the drain below was slimy and the sink half pretty much unusable, because why waste time moving the rack with its heavy pile of dishes?  (Exaggeration there, but only a little)

When I moved out I swore I wouldn't have a permanent dish rack, not even the kind that sits on the counter, because (a) I needed the counter space, and (b) having a dish rack simply encourages you to leave dishes drying around for days on end. Dishes need to be put away.  When you're washing up, it's okay to put a towel down and spread them on it, but that's a temporary situation. At the end of the day, they need to be put away.

And then, somehow, without me noticing it, my brother snuck a dish draining mat onto my counter. It was beautiful and red and spongy, and I kind of enjoyed it. At first it was just for the cat dishes, but I started using it for my knives and my husband for the coffee pot parts there....

What the heck!!!???!!!  Somehow, without any conscious thought at all, I've acquired a permanent dish drainer  No tacky pink plastic this time, but the same space-stealing clutter-attracting construct.  One fifth of my kitchen counter is consumed by drying dishes and another one fifth by a coffeepot (another compromise of my principles but that's a different story).

The reason I finally realized the problem is that I was considering trying to make muffins after work. Here's my normal method for making muffins, given the following kitchen layout:

|========countertop=========|---sink---|==countertop==| |flour,salt..    .|
|  [clutter]  [coffee]   [   workarea  ] |    sink    | [dish mat]        |  |baking pans |

1. Get the muffin tins (far right), carry them to workarea.
2. Get the non-stick spray (far right), carry to workarea; spray tins; put it back.
3. Cross kitchen to turn on oven
4. Get the flour (far right); carry to workarea; measure; put it back.
5. Get the salt and baking powder (far right);  measure; put it back.
6. Get the oil....

Okay, enough. You're already laughing through your teeth. It's so obvious
    if I eliminated the stupid dish drying mat and reclaimed my work area on the right-hand side, I could stand in one spot for 90% of the prep time.

Doing it--done. That sucker is effectively downsized for the duration.  (it folds nicely)

Stay tuned as I attack the left-hand 'clutter' area and start on the mess under and over the counter on the left side. I'll address issues such as, "Who uses phone books anymore?" "Why are they kept in the kitchen when there hasn't been a phone there for ten years?" "How long should you keep boxes of tea bags you never use?" "Do coffee mugs reproduce in dark spaces?"

Not what I'd hoped for

Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human

by  Vybarr Cregan-Reid

Seldom have I anticipated a book so much nor been so glad when it was over.

Chapter 1, Footnotes to a Body of Knowledge, was exactly what I was hoping for:
an overview of the many adaptations in our species that fit us for running.  If you've read Born to Run, most of it won't be new, but still very interesting to re-visit. To sum up,

...as a Homo sapiens, you have evolved to be one of the best running animals that the planet has ever witnessed. Running is not what we might do; it is who we are as a species.

I thought the book was going to go on in that pattern, maybe talking about the pre-historical evidence for running, running games in native societies, the 'persistence hunt' legends, competitive running in the Greeks and Romans and maybe even the Oriental societies.... Be forewarned: it doesn't.

The rest of the book relates all of the cool deep thoughts he has during his own running and how they connect to the poetry and prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If you're a Brit-ophile, or an English major, or really into Thomas Hardy and Leslie Stephens and William Hazlett; and if you even know who those people are, you'll eat this up. But I failed to see what any of them had to say about running. In fact, I frequently failed to see what they had to say, period.

If the soil weren't so wet it would look seared...
It folds and rolls away toward a leaden sky...
The cut wheat like greying stubble
slowly dying on the sagging jaw of a corpse.
 

 And--even more embarrassing--I didn't even get his modern allusions--

...feeling like Daniel Craig sprinting up crane arms pursuing the bombmaker, Mollaka, in Casino Royale.

Sorry; meant nothing to me. A few near-misses are to be expected; too many, and a book means less than empty words.

The running descriptions are great. The historical bits, like his description of the trials and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde or of the origin of the workhouse treadmill, are fun (and sad). I didn't see any significance in knowing that treadmill went from a punishment for criminals into a necessity for fitness addicts, but it's interesting to know that it did.

One of his themes is that running outdoors, away from advertisements and TV screens and recorded music, frees the mind from stress:

Not-thinking, huddling down into the body's experience, is a kind of mental repose, a Pilates for the brain.

He may be right--but only for 21st century humans who are uneducated about the green world. For people whose only thoughts are, "Ah, green leaves!" or "Distant clouds; so pretty." or "Silent airplane tracks on the sky!" 

I'm not one of those people--my outdoor brain is constantly interrupted by nitpicky thoughts--is that a hawk's screech or a bluejay? What is this grass--wheat or something native? Should I grab a specimen? Oh, no, is that a skunk and is it turning its back to me?!!  Primitive man, whose very life depended on constant observation, would have had it worse. I wish Mr. Cregan-Reid had asked a hunter-gatherer what he thinks about when running a trail.

I also think the editor needed to do a math check. While discussing treadmill running, he writes,

As a species we have been running indoors for only 30 of the many millions of years of our history (that's about 0.000015 per cent of our time on earth).

Huh?  Last I heard the Homo sapiens species had been around for about 300,000 years. 30 years is .000015% of 300,000,000, which is indeed 'many millions' -- but humans haven't been here that long.  Maybe he's thinking mammals, like mice. Mice run indoors--at least in my brother's house.

I'm sorry to be so down on the book. It's a beautiful book and he's a lovely author and he describes many fascinating runs. Read it. It's a book of poetry, deep thought, insight, and great heart. I think you could have replaced the word 'running' with 'walking' on 75% of the pages without any loss of meaning, but I could be wrong. Start with an open mind and see for yourself.

I need running because I want to stay curious. Our curiosity needs to be continually teased out of its shell and into the world. Because it feels like once that goes, everything else follows. Nothing unites us with the world so completely as our curiosity for it.

Still on the series; still obsessed

I Shall Not Want
by Julia Spencer Fleming

Only one more after this--I'm already feeling bereft. But my thinking brain says six books without a break is enough.

Her hot topic for this one is migrant workers.  A nun is trucking around a load of farm workers with fake work papers; her truck gets a flat tire at high speed and rolls off the road; they run off into the forest, except for the two with injuries. A search team looking for the missing workers is joined by--of course--Claire Ferguson, who happens to be friends with the nun.

Mrs. Spencer-Fleming isn't a bleeding-heart liberal writer--she just likes to tackle a difficult issue and show lots of sides to it.  The workers are normal guys, neither good nor evil, just working folk like anyone else you meet. The farmer who employs the illegals can't afford to hire local labor even if he could find it. The loutish rednecks think all Mexicans are thieves and rapists. The Mexicans think all people in uniform are dangerous. And the townspeople, well, they're as prejudiced and gossipy as always.

There are a couple of real baddies, tool.  I love/hate the way she takes hold of a villain and makes me almost hate to read the words he's written in. (or hear them--the audiobooks are awesome) Sometimes I get so mad at a person I have to back off and shake myself--it's okay, the author is doing this on purpose--this is not real--it's not my problem. I've not had to skip forward yet, but I've wanted to.

Great writing. A couple of times her two main protagonists act in ways that don't feel consistent, almost like they're being out-of-character in order to drive the plot in the direction she wants. But I'll let her have it--real humans aren't always so consistent either.

Gardening in my Roots, end of the pease

It's the end of pea season--I didn't see a single bloom. But I'm satisfied with what I got (and still have in the fridge.)




How did I go from "first precious little bean" (right)

to "need to pick, now!"? 


I think it took about one week. But I don't need to worry about having beans coming out of my ears, because there just aren't that many plants.  Note: Maxibel from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange needs near-perfect conditions for germination. According to my record, I planted the first half on March 17 and the second on April 14, but that seems unlikely since they were up by March 24 and then we had that frost. And I can't remember which side I planted first, so I don't know which one made it and which didn't.  All I know is my bean patch is gorgeous on one side and completely empty on the other.
 

If these taste good, I'll get them again--but I'm going to buy double of what I need and plant them weekly for the whole of the six-week planting period.







Looks like the squash deluge is about to begin. But how sweet they are!

Recipe Reduction 121-120

 Spinach and Feta Pita Bake

No feta for me--I used a little queso blanco from the freezer. Much better.

Here's the recipe: top a few pita breads with pesto (made last summer and frozen), spread with spinach (frozen, cooked, chopped), slice some dried tomatoes on top (also from last summer), top with cheese. I added sliced olives. Back at 375 until the whole house smells heavenly.

Then--my own unique addition--store in a plastic container, take to work, and heat in a toaster oven. After the first toaster cycle, decide they're not crispy enough, and set a second cycle. Take them out, ignoring the blackened edges, and enjoy.

Just goes to prove that there's no food so delicious that I can't overcook it.
Here's a picture of my second, unblackened try:



 







Szechuan Bok Choy
from Vegan Without Borders

Strange recipe...sesame seed instead of sesame oil and no cooking sauce at the end. There was a sort-of sauce--soy sauce, mirin, and sugar--but not one of those cornstarch-water mixtures that glaze the vegetables. Which is good. My tastes are trending away from heavy sauces; I'm coming to prefer the light, broth-based ones that enhance the vegetable flavors, not obliterate them.

All that said, I might have liked this if I hadn't overcooked the vegetables. (I only had a little bok choy so I supplemented with broccoli and snap peas)  But it was a win for another reason:
    12 ingredients, from scratch, on a weeknight--twenty minutes! 
No, I didn't time it but it felt like twenty minutes.  How's that for fast food?

Maybe I should do as they suggest on those trendy foodie sites--whenever I pick garden produce or get the CSA box or return from the farmer's market, immediately prepare everything for cooking and store it in the fridge in individual containers. Then I could whip up a hot, fresh dinner every night.

Or maybe not. I like my leftovers.

Recipe Reduction 123...122

Whipped Chickpea Hummus

Points in favor
- Proves you can make hummus without tahini
- Low in calories and could have been lower with no loss of taste
- Supremely nutritious
- Glues loose veggies into a pita bread

Points against
- Green
- Very green
- Scary

If you can get over calling a bright green paste "hummus," you may like it.  But don't try to mix it in a blender! A food processor would have done the job in less time than it takes to wash the blade. Recipe here: https://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/001393.html


Veggie pitas

Not really something you need a recipe for--cut a pita in half, open up the pocket, spread with something gooey and shove chopped veggies in.  The only reason I saved the recipe for so long is that I couldn't find any pita breads at the grocery store. I'll give you a hint: they're not in the bread aisle.

Forgot to take a picture, so I'll describe: picture a pita half crammed with bright green hummus, lettuce, tomato, olives and shredded carrots. Some banana pepper rings would be good, too. Or a pizza.

But now it's just a fond memory.

Except for the crumbs in my lap.

Recipe Reduction 125...124

Taco Bell Copycat Taco Seasoning Mix

I have two theories to propose:
(a) the author just threw every spice he could think of in and hoped for the best, or
(b) I don't have the taste buds to tell the difference.

Did it taste like real Taco Bell mix?  Dunno, but it tasted close enough that I'm going to check the price on the mix packets very carefully next time.  It only takes ten minutes to pull flour, cornstarch, cumin, chili powder, paprika, cayenne, onion powder, and five other spices off the rack and dump them in a bowl.  If I measured the amount of the mix to use, I could make a big batch and freeze it.  Worth the time? I don't know, but definitely worth a try.







Crunchy Korean Bean Sprouts
from norecipes

Crunchy, for sure. I'm not so happy with the recipe--it said fourteen ounces of sprouts would be a "handful", but my sixteen ounces made three very large handfuls. They were bland and oily tasting until I added a handful of crushed chili, and then they were slightly spicy and oily tasting. I tried adding salt, and then they were salty, spicy and oily tasting--no better.

It might fit nicely on a relish tray to accompany a fiercely hot entree. Otherwise, no

Recipe Reduction 126

Rhubarb Crumble
by Smitten Kitchen

I am not known as one who thinks well on their feet. I'm always a little flustered--and confused--at the farmer's market, with all those eyes looking at me, all that glorious vegetableation spread out....  I usually babble inanely or talk not at all; buy things I don't need, and if I go prepared with a list, never fill it.

But I was there in search of rhubarb and the facebook post for [name withheld] Farms said they had it. I've been sitting on two recipes for rhubarb crumble for years and finally had a chance of doing them!

Barely glancing left or right, I tracked down the farm stand and saw--no rhubarb. So I had to ask for it. The vendor remembered my face so I asked how she was doing and we had a short talk about her knee problems, then I screwed up my courage and asked about the rhubarb. "Yes," she said. "I didn't even know I had it, until they told me." She went to the cooler in the back and pulled out a big bunch of bright red stems with gorgeous puffy leaves. I asked for two of them; she produced another and I paid.

I made a vague remark about how it was funny they left the leaves on, since the leaves are poisonous, and she said, "Is that so?"  I said I thought so and luckily, another customer came up.

When I got home and started to prepare it, I looked closely and wondered why it so very closely resembled Swiss Chard. Did the two really look so much alike? I'd never seen the leaves of rhubarb before.  I tasted a bit of the stem--not sour at all. It tasted exactly like Swiss Chard. It was Swiss Chard.

To wrap this story up, no Rhubarb Crumble was made that weekend.  And I was too big a coward to eat the leaves. I composted them and cooked the stems for a side dish.  A few days later I went to Central Market and paid $7 a pound for three stems of bonafide, sour as lemons, rhubarb. And this was the result:

It was good. All of her recipes are. If I do it again I'll use more butter in the topping. And take my advice on this: if you get tired of waiting for a crumble to brown on top and you put it under the broiler, WATCH IT.  Blackened crumble is not a dessert you want to serve.

Nostalgic memoir

My Own Two Feet
by Beverly Cleary

Amusing and inspiring tale of her college years and first jobs with the army as post librarian, her marriage and finally escaping the controlling clutches of her mother, and at last, the thing we'd all been waiting for--the writing of her first book!  I wish she'd gone on to the second and third and fourth....

The first volume of her memoir occurred during the depression and this one transitioned into the war years, so you see firsthand things you often only read about. Here's one:

I found six dollars in the style of the times. Hems twelve inches from the floor were no longer fashionable, so I opened a skirt-shortening business: fifty cents a skirt if it was straight and didn't have pleats.

And another,

From our kitchen window I watched the Japanese family, laden with bundles and suitcases, quietly leave their home and climb into a taxi on their way to the Relocation Center. It was a sad scene; they were such gentle, courteous people.

Gardening in my Roots, heating up outside

I'd not been paying attention to the tomatoes. Honestly, they depressed me--the thin branches with tiny leaves on weak, spindly plants; already starting to bloom and set fruit, but no foliage to shield it from the scorching sun.  Here in Texas tomatoes are especially prone to sun-scald.  The only treatment for it is to pick them early and hope they don't rot on the countertop.

But there is a preventative you can apply--cover the tomatoes with a light cloth before they start showing signs of sun-scald.  I went out Saturday, determined to install tomato cages and cover up any tomatoes that were out in the sun.  But installing tomato cages is harder than you think.  For one thing, if you wait too late (I did) the plants are sprawled all over and are hard to tease up into the cages. Luckily I was able to borrow a second set of hands for this part of the job.  And for another thing, you can't just shove the bottom wires into the ground and leave them.  If the plants grow, the cage becomes top-heavy and a strong thunderstorm will blow the whole thing over on its side, snapping the bottom stems.  It's happened before and will likely happen again.



Each cage need to be tied to a stake pounded deeply into the ground. Luckily I have the stakes, thanks to me scavenging the ones I found left around on the street by work crews in town. I have the mallet. I have lots of old sheets.  And I have results.









And rewards.

Recipe Reduction 128-127

Lettuce Wraps
from Vegan Without Borders

The note I made on the recipe was "good, but will I ever want to make this for myself again?" That about sums it up.  UPDATE: changed my mind on this. It's great and I will make it again.  All for myself.

But I learned something. At Jimmy John's sandwich shop, they make a lettuce wrap using two or three huge leaves of Romaine bound around with paper and tied up with tape. You could hit someone over the head with them.

But this recipe called for a soft, frilly lettuce, such as Boston.  So I used the biggest leaves from the head in the CSA box, rolled them tightly and crammed them close together. Hopeless--after one good bite they lost their stuff.  In my lap.

I'd saved it as a "guest food", but would I really want to inflict these impossible-to-eat little morsels on a guest?  Nah, I'll just eat them myself. With a fork. 

Summer Quinoa Salad
author unknown

It's a cheat to say I made this, but I'm saying it anyway. I made the Quinoa Salad; I didn't make the dressing.  On second glance, I see that was a mistake--I thought it was one of those nasty vinaigrettes, but it was actually a honey mustard with lemon. Maybe I'll make it later?

The salad was nothing more than quinoa with snap peas, kale and green onion--the lesson learned here is that you can pair quinoa with any combination of vegetable, call it a salad and have great eating.

 I cooked the snap peas and kale, even though I wasn't supposed to. My kale is inedible unless cooked, and the snap peas, while perfectly edible raw, are a whole different vegetable when cooked.  Splash on a couple of tablespoons of water and zap in the microwave for 2-1/2 minutes--they're still crunchy but they acquire a supremely sweet and intense flavor. Yahoo!

UPDATE: made the dressing. Not as good as I hoped--could be sweeter--but not bad at all. Probably won't make it again, but at least it was worth a try.

I love three day weekends.

 Hairy Vetch is an outstanding winter cover crop....except it doesn't go away when spring comes. And if you accidentally let some loose in your snap pea crop, this happens:













Biggest snap pea harvest ever!  This is one days' picking. And guess what I got in my CSA box this week?

Recipe Reduction 129, 128

Swiss Chard Slaw with Creamy Avocado Dressing

Neither great nor bad...what to do?  I guess dump it. My idea of "slaw" is crunch, and Swiss Chard doesn't.  The bok choy I threw in when I ran out of chard did better, but only the stalks had the requisite texture. Don't mean to be old and set in my ways, but I don't think slaw should be made out of anything except cabbage or maybe Brussels sprouts.





Rice Pudding and Mango
from Modern Spice

Good!  I wasn't expecting to like this, but I did.  It's just basmati rice slow cooked in milk, with cardamom. The recipe called for whole milk plus two tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk, but I cheated and used almond-coconut milk plus a tablespoon of sugar.  But mangoes are so incredibly sweet, I think it would have been just fine without the sugar.

It's a keeper, and it's also the only rice pudding I've ever enjoyed. Sorry, mom.

Oh-oh, looks like I'm going to start birding again

Lost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year

by Neil Hayward

Depression...is a cruel disease that robs you of your awareness and the motivation to do something about it. It's like a symbiotic organism has crept into your ear, jumped headfirst into the nearest blood vessel, and worked its way deep in your brain. Once there, it fiddles around with the circuitry so that you're not aware of what's happening, and that's when the slow and inexorable slide begins and the color drains out of your world. That dim sense that something is wrong, that things aren't as they used to be, remains a distant feeling. I sat with it for so long that I'd almost forgotten that I was once someone else.

So what do you do about it? Frequently, nothing. Sometimes it lifts on its own, or so I'm told. I'm still waiting for that to happen. Working toward a goal seems to help--I once spent a year getting into shape to go to Hawaii; at the end of that year I was about as mentally healthy as I've ever been. The author helped himself out too, in part by deciding to become a member of the 700 Club.

No, it's not a cult. It's a small group of birders who, following strict rules on what can and can't be counted, identify 700 bird species in one year. It has to be done within the continental U.S.; identification by voice is allowed but birders prefer to see the field marks; but other than that, the rules are self-imposed. It ends up being a public enterprise--you can't see that many birds without a lot of help from others.  It seems that there are a lot of people willing to post the sighting of a rare seabird visiting the coast of Alaska, and a lot more people willing to jump on a plane and head there.

Nutcases, you mutter. So do I. But so much fun to read!

Gardening in my Roots, post May-the-Fource

May 7 in North Texas and the temperature chart has added another tick at the top:
the 90 degree mark. (For the rest of the world, that's 32)



We won't likely be losing that vertical line for a long time, and when it finally happens, an early frost will kill any plants still alive. Pretty negative, no? How can I not be? The spinach is four inches tall and bolting; the bok choy is harvested (already bolting), and broccoli is 'buttoning' instead of producing decent heads.

My only hope of growing these plants is a cold frame and an extra early start. Maybe even a fall start. But here's something much more positive:






This was planted last fall and left to overwinter. It may not look like much, but it tastes great. I'm not much of a gourmet, but I can really tell the difference in taste between supermarket carrots and home-grown.

As long as I have a plot to plant in, I'll be planting carrots. And this. Always this.













And maybe sneak a little squash in--it's so purty when it's small.

Recipe Reduction 131...130

Will I ever reach the century mark?

It hurt, but yesterday I stole enough time from outdoors work to make two dishes. Easy ones, of course.

Arugula Salad with Tofu Goddess Dressing
author unknown

Turns out I'd made this before and failed to move it out of the to-try folder. But my comment was, 'good', so  I ventured to make it again.  It is good.  This is one of the lower-calories salad dressings that actually works--tofu, a little olive oil, dill, lemon juice. It called for parsley but my parsley isn't happy right now, so I left that out.

The arugula, not so good.  With the dressing it was tolerable at best.  I still think the proper proportion of arugula to lettuce is one leaf arugula to twenty leaves lettuce.  Or fifty.




Miso Tofu Noodle Soup with Corn, Kale, and Snap PeasAn Eats Well With Others Original

No more quick-cooked kale for me--I used bok choy. The next time I eat kale I'm going to slow cook it for a long time.

This recipe was easy, fast, and delicious. I'm cooking it every spring from now on.  The directions for the tofu were way off base--my tofu never browned and started to crumble up, so I quit torturing it and continued. I'm going to try the "frozen tofu" thing next time--apparently if you freeze tofu that gives it the leathery 'restaurant' texture when it's cooked.

 

But as for the rest, it's so easy it's a no-brainer. Stir fry a little garlic, ginger and green onion, add vegetable broth with miso and soy sauce, add noodles. When they're almost done, add snap peas, asparagus, and greens. If the corn is fresh, add it now; I used frozen so I threw it in at the end. Simmer for about three minutes.

And the last step--the one which produced the magic--was all my own invention. Turn off the heat and leave it sitting on the stove for the rest of the afternoon.  The noodles soaked up all of the liquid, becoming creamy and flavorful, the vegetables softened.

It wasn't soup anymore, but it was great.

Recipe Reduction 133...132

Snap Peas Daikon Egg Soup
from Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat
Great soup! Even with all my screwups--radish instead of daikon, invalid dashi, not enough dashi, overcooked eggs--it was great. I'd make only one change, if I could: fewer eggs.  This called for four large eggs to make about four cups of soup.  Overly eggy.

(My dashi was invalid because you have to have nori to make dashi and I haven't found any so I used dulse)

Maybe if I ate a lot of this, I wouldn't get fat either.

Mayan Pumpkin Seed Dip
Recipe adapted from Food and Wine 2013
by the Sprouted Kitchen
Sorry, I don't get the point of this or why it's considered "Mayan".  It's spicy but has no real excitement to it. I recommend it should be served at a party where all the people are on a diet--then, no one will feel the need to have seconds.

Recipe Reduction 135..134

I used my first harvest of kale to make:
 Raw Kale Salad
by Miriam Krule  for Slate's You're doing it wrong series

Would have been good if only she'd given a clue about how long to massage it for. I kneaded it until my hand was tired and then quit, thinking the 10-minute rest with the salad dressing was going to do some magic. It didn't. It tastes good and I'm sure it's full of healthy vitamins, but it's tough as oak leaves and about as hard to swallow.

Verdict? Keep it but change the word "massage" to "pulverize."




Curried Chickpeas and Kale
from FatFree Vegan Kitchen

Okay, but not worth keeping a recipe for. I could have adapted a tried-and-true recipe and gotten better results, or at the least, results I liked better. It's probably a matter of taste.

But I learned a valuable tip that I'll share with you:
     when adding mature greens to a soup, stew, or slurry, always chop them small!
It's just gross to dip a bit of naan bread into a curry and come up with a long, stringy strand of kale.  Spinach breaks down; Kale persists forever.

Gardening in my Roots, almost summer now

The two cold snaps have resulted in my bok choy going to seed before the plants were big and also one of the broccoli to "button".  Which is a fancy term for going to seed early.  I cut a tiny head last week, about one-inch wide. We will see what the others do.  But, oh amazement: see what the Kohlrabi are doing!




Just what they're supposed to.  How can I bear to harvest the little darlings?






Now I have to admit something stupid. After the heavy frost damage of early April, I ran out and bought replacement tomatoes and peppers for the ones that were hit worst.  But then, when I transplanted the replacements, I didn't have the heart to pull up the damaged ones. They looked horrid, but they "weren't dead yet," so I planted the replacements near to the ones they were replacing but left both plants.

And now they're coming back to life.  I could be in big trouble come mid-June.

But probably not. This time last year the plants were twice and bit and thrice as leafy. These are not healthy plants. Keep them mulched; keep the watering even; and wait and see.