Category Archives: food

Kitchen Frenzy and a Soup Recipe

Posted on by

I got home from an all day meeting today about 4:30.  I headed right to the kitchen.  Last night I was going to make a tomato corn chowder.  Then I got working and didn’t stop until way too late.  So I planned to make it tonight.  And I did.  It meant I had to get cracking.  And I did.  It was, how to say this, tasty as all [insert expletive here].

I tried to find a recipe but just couldn’t scrounge one up.  That was probably for the better.  It would have taken me longer to keep referring to a book and then half forgetting what I just read as I chopped garlic.  Here is what I did:

  • Sauteed three small leeks in about a tablespoon of butter and a splash of olive oil in a large pot and then set that aside
  • Cut up two medium size carrots (small cubes), a couple pounds of red potatoes (cubed), two sweet peppers (diced) and sauteed all that in the large pot in about a tablespoon of butter and a splash of olive oil
  • Added four cups of water and two teaspoons of salt to the pot and brought that to a boil
  • Removed the pot and then removed a couple cups of the potatoes to keep them in chunks, then pureed the rest in a food processor
  • Tossed three small tomatoes (OK I used the one weird large tomato I picked yesterday that looked like three small tomatoes attached at the hip), diced, along with four cups of corn I had removed from the cob (already cooked) into the pot.
  • Heated the tomatoes and corn gently for about ten minutes, then added the chunks of potatoes and the puree
  • Added a teaspoon each of chopped fresh oregano, chives and thyme
  • Added a cup of whole milk
  • Topped with freshly grated black pepper, heated for another 10-15 minutes (stirring to keep it from sticking to the bottom)
  • Ate it up

The children chowed it, even my son, who has been pretty picky lately.  I have to admit, and my wife said this aloud, it was worth the hour spent preparing.  The vegetables and herbs were all from our garden or from our CSA.  Even the milk was local.

Item two was making the base for coffee ice cream.  I whipped that up while the soup heated and stuck it in the fridge.

Then I went out with the kids and picked basil.  We have more basil than I can handle.  This is first year that the basil has really just grown.  I clipped it pretty well not long ago and it really grew back well.  I cut 12 cups of the stuff with my eager children who lost interest when they decided to mow the lawn with their scissors.  They didn’t get all that far on that project.

I made three batches of pesto (it is supposed to get pretty cold the next couple of nights–basil doesn’t like cold), froze two and popped the other in the fridge.  By now the children were off to bed with their mother, and I tried not to make too much noise with the food processor.  They did fall asleep eventually, even after the delivery truck woke them up.  Late delivery.

I just polished off the small bowl of ice cream from the batch I made after the basil was stored away.  I probably shouldn’t have coffee ice cream this late–it is made with coffee after all, which people drink to stay awake.  But I had to try some.  What kind of cook would I be if I didn’t taste what I made?  Plus, I didn’t have that much.

I waited to eat the ice cream after I had cleaned up everything (except the ice cream maker bucket–that thing was way too cold to wash).  Cleaning too far too long.  I was ready to be done when the counter was still covered with dishes.  My wife still is healing from her sliced finger, otherwise I am sure she would have offered to do all the cleaning.  I cook, I clean, I eat.  All after a day at work.  Not bad, eh?

One, Two, Three

Posted on by
Fizzy, Round and Just Plain Odd

Fizzy, Round and Just Plain Odd

I picked some more tomatoes today.  You can see the one on the right is a bit mis-shapen.  It looks like three tomatoes in one.  On the vine it seemed even more so.  I wasn’t sure if I was picking one big old fruit or three, or somehow two.  But, like all things, it was connected.  I have not sliced into it since the photo shoot (laboriously shot with sharp detail and vivid color  in my kitchen studio, as you can see) but I look forward to learning how sweet it is. The variety is called Cosmonaut Volkov.  I’m pretty sure it was developed in Russia, but that’s really just a guess.

The object in the middle is also a tomato.  That one is a different variety.  It is called Crimson Sprinter.  Supposedly it will ripen in about 60 days after transplanting.  It was around 70 days from gently easing the tender plants into the ground until I was blessed with this perfect, red, juicy, sweet and delicious globe of loveliness.  Not bad.  I ate my first of these two days ago.  Bring me more.

The third object is just my glass of seltzer.  It comes pre-flavored with lime.  Isn’t that convenient?  No need to cut an actual lime to flavor the fizziness.  The seltzer is nestled comfortably around ice.  I had considered creating a gin and tonic but, really, I was just too lazy to cut the lime, not to mention pour two liquids into the glass.  My wife cut her finger on a 10-inch chef’s knife yesterday afternoon and, although she is healing up nicely, I have to wash all the dishes for a few days.  With all that labor, I don’t have time to be slicing limes.  Or tomatoes for that matter.  Slicing will have to wait until tomorrow.  Once I polish off this beverage, I’ve got some work ahead of me washing out the glass.

Things I Would Like to Make Soon

Posted on by

1. I have been thinking about coffee ice cream.  I am ready to make it.  I just need a little time to whip together some cream and sugar and milk and eggs and coffee, and Voila!  Frozen confection.

2. Tomato corn chowder.  We have lots of corn left over from last night and I need to use it ASAP.  And now we have tomatoes.  Save a little of that cream from making the ice cream, add some fresh herbs and some other tasty bits and Voila!  Soup for a royal family.

3. Some bookshelves.  We have tons of books and I love to read and the good tomes are all still packed into boxes.  A post and beam home has one drawback–much less wall space.  That means less room for art and for furniture and for shelves.  So our books sit unread.  With a little creativity we can fit in some bookshelves.

4. An orchard.  Well maybe not an orchard on the scale of, say, one that sells fruit to markets, but a small one, with lots of trees to give us peaches and pears and apples and maybe even something more exotic, like walnuts.  And some more blueberry bushes.  And maybe some grapes.  That might mean a lot of work, I understand, but apple pie and peach ice cream and grape juice…

5. Some poems.  My writing has been limited to blogging and work, at least for the most part.  I should be tossing out some more creativity.

6. My wife happy.  I know one can’t really make someone else happy, but let’s face it, someone trying sure can make a difference.  Not that she isn’t happy, but one of my favorite things in the world is to see her face glowing with joy or laughing with abandon.  Seriously.  Seeing her happy makes me happy.  I love that woman.

7.  I also want to make some kindling.  Winter will be here soon enough and having a big stash of kindling on hand makes things a lot easier.  If I can make it soon enough that it will dry before we need it, I will be ahead of the game.  For years we had an supply of dry leftover lumber bits but that ran out two winters ago.  Now I have to gather and split to get the fire going.

8. A will would be good.  We have put that task off for too long.  We did talk with a lawyer at one point but then that morbid responsibility fell off the list.  Time to put it back on.

9. I need to make myself stronger.  I have been running and biking and that just plain old feels good.  I need to keep that up, and then get to a point where I can really get out there and fly.  Who doesn’t want to fly?  A long run, or a run in the middle of a snowstorm, or a zoom down a tree-lined path, those are like flying.  I want to fly.

Making things is about being creative.  And isn’t creativity a form of flying?  That is really what I want.  I want to fly.

Pile O’ Bounty

Posted on by
Pile of Quality Food, Grown Right Here

Pile of Quality Food, Grown Right Here

Had a good harvest day yesterday.  We picked our first tomatoes yesterday–three Crimson Sprinters.  The Cosmonaut Volkovs should be ready later this week.  Before we know it we will have more tomatoes than we can handle.  If only I could get them to be ripe earlier.

We also ate corn last night for dinner.  We got it from the farm in Richmond, Conant’s Riverside Farm, where we used to get it a lot, until we moved to Hinesburg.  This is our first time eating corn from there this summer, since my daughter and I were passing by there yesterday afternoon.  That corn is quality stuff.  One of these days I will try again to grow sweet corn.  Popcorn is growing well in our garden but it won’t be ready for a while.

We need to keep on it or things will get overripe.  Another warm and sunny day today–we won’t have to worry about what’s for dinner, just how to prepare it.  With the leftover corn from last night, and all the tomatoes on the way, a corn tomato chowder may be on deck for tonight.  Plus maybe coffee ice cream.  Who would say not to that?

Slaving Away Over a Hot Desk

Posted on by

Diskobolos

It’s back to work time for this boy.  No more lounging away the summer days on a ladder with a paint can in one hand and a brush in the other and beads of sweat dripping into the eyes one can’t wipe clear because of the protective rubber gloves.  No more happy encounters with cucumber beetles who wish to share their produce with those who live inside the house.  Alas, it is back to Excel spreadsheets and phone calls and eventually, talking with students about their promising futures.  Starting yesterday, my brain had to rev up like a DVD just inserted into its cozy drive.  I think it is still spinning.

I did not break a sweat as I prepared for the upcoming academic year.  I went to meetings.  Sometimes I break a sweat at meetings because I have to present or I have to be responsible for enough that my armpits drip.  Nervousness they tell me.  My friend Spike refers to that as squirreling.  No squirreling today.  I didn’t even break a sweat when I blasted out the house for a quick bike ride before prepping dinner.  It was raining.

Did I mention dinner?  I baked up a summer vegetable gratin again.  I had to wait a couple of days from gathering all the ingredients as we had family engagements the past two evenings (last night we posed for family photos–it’s nice to have someone just tell me where to stand once in a while).  Think fresh tomatoes, three kinds of summer squash, potatoes dug up just two days ago, parmesan cheese and fresh herbs.  All baked together into a bubbling and steaming delight.  Two words:  Ooh baby.  My daughter ate it.  My son would not.  We fed him oatmeal.

This job I’ve got means working at home, often evenings, sometimes weekends.  Already I am thinking about what I might get done as my spouse tucks the children into bed.  I resisted actually doing anything so foolhardy this evening, however.  Instead I read about ten interesting deserts (one in Brazil is littered with lagoons when it rains) and a list of weird allergies (people really can be allergic to water, apparently.  And sex.).  Then I decided to bust out the old blog and get cracking.

I hung out with a friend recently who said that she never reads blogs because all they are is a bunch of people boring anyone who happens to stumble across them with repeated fannings over their boyfriends or overly detailed descriptions of their new puppies foibles.  I tried to tell her she might be able to find something that caters to her sense of humor or to her modern and refined wit, but she was skeptical.   Certainly I wasn’t going to point her here.

Did I tell you about my new puppy?  My sister-in-law’s kids are so in love with it.  And the way it wiggles its little hiney.  SO cute!

Anyway, summer is still here.  It is in the 80’s for Christopher’s sake.  Two days ago it was 91 degrees and the air was pretty much saturated.  It felt like Florida, where my electric bill would be like ten times what it is here in Vermont since I would pretty much be required to have an air conditioner running at all times.  I did wish we had an extra fan the other night.  We let the children use them and just sweated into the sheets.  Now I have to wear pants in this heat.  I just can’t bring myself to wear shorts at a school.  Maybe I should when it gets this hot, however.  But what difference would it make?  I will either distract students with my balding pate glistening with rills of sweat, or I will distract them with my Discobolos-like calves.

I can’t win.  Not in this heat.

Compost Bandit

Posted on by

I take our kitchen bucket of scraps out to the compost bin every few days.  The bucket is made for kitchen scraps.  It seals tightly enough, and it has a carbon filter on it keep the odor down.  We don’t usually notice the bucket, except when it isn’t there, meaning I forget to bring it in after emptying it into our outside compost bin.  I do need to empty it, or fruit flies set it.  The scraps consist of lime rinds and the stale ends of toasted bagels and onion peels and pasta that fell on the deck during dinner and other rot.  It is pretty much stuff we don’t want to or really can’t eat.  Not everyone feels so timid about digging into the ort, however.

Every time I head outside to the compost bin to empty the bucket, there are bits scattered about the ground.  I scoop them up and add them to the top of the pile, but they come back again.  Some critter gets in there and roots around and eats stuff and makes a general mess.  It is stealing our future dirt.  It is a compost bandit.  Recently what finds its way out of the wire mesh of the bin is corn husks.  We have been trying to eat corn on the cob lately as often as we can.  Fresh corn season only lasts a few weeks, after all.  I did add a few cobs to the pile the first couple of times we ate local corn, but they take forever to break down, so I often get creative after dinner–read, toss them into the woods.  If the squirrels are going to nibble the cobs anyway, why invite them to dig through the scrap pile?

The thing is, although I have to clean up after them, the squirrels (they are most often the culprits, although turkeys have been knows to find the pile as well) do me a service, despite their slovenly ways.  Whenever they search for bits to eat, they dig, and digging means they move stuff around, and this means they add air to the pile.  They help aerate things so it all breaks down faster.  I do stir the pile whenever I add to it, but they make sure it happens more frequently than I might get to that task.

In the end, the animals can have their bits.  I will not feed them on purpose;  I will always do my best to hide things from them.  But if the critters find something upon which they enjoy dining, they can have it, as long as they have to stir things up and help me out in the meantime.  I don’t mind tidying up their spills.  I can accomodate some quality labor, even if it does make me forget to bring the bucket back inside on occasion.

From Groton to Gratin

Posted on by
Swimming in Groton

Swimming in Groton

Yesterday we were on the tail end of a trip to Ricker Pond State Park to camp overnight with friends.  It is part of Groton State Forest which, I learned a couple days ago, is the second largest state landholding.  I am guessing the first is Camel’s Hump State Forest.  That is a big one, too.  We swam lots and ate s’mores and slept on the bumpy lumpy campsite floor and listened to loons.  We had a fine time, squeezing one more tent adventure into our summer.

The summer is fading fast.  This evening, after dinner, feels a little like fall.  The light is swinging around and it is getting darker earlier.  The air has a bit of a chill.  But we are having none of it.  Tonight I crafted a summer gratin and I am, as I write, making the turns that will result in peach ice cream.  That is as summer as it gets.

This gratin is a dandy of a dinner.  Made with almost all local ingredients (hard to get local olive oil and parmesan round here) it is hot and crisp and juicy and just plain old delicious.  The basics:

1. Slowly saute a bunch of onions or leeks (I used both–bunching onions from our CSA and leeks from our garden) and add garlic at the end

2. Slice up tomatoes, potatoes par-boiled to get them nice and tender), zucchini and yellow squash and mix with oil and herbs

3. Arrange in layers with parmesan and cheddar in between, tossing in salt and pepper and fresh herbs (I used thyme and basil grown right here)

4. Sprinkle the top with grated parmesan and bake at 375 degrees for 70 minutes.

5.  Cool ten minutes and serve it up

6. You got yourself a gratin.

Gratin Just Prior to Consumption

Gratin Just Prior to Consumption

I’m telling you, it is tasty–fresh hot and delicious and the pizza box says.  Yesterday we were in Groton; today gratin was in us.

The sun fades on a perfect August day.  The clouds are tipped in pink and yellow.  Black eyed susans and day lilies bloom along the edge of the field.  Crickets chirp.  The smell of freshly cut hay drifts across the fields.  And peach ice cream on the way.  That’ll do.

Fresh Mint Ice Cream

Posted on by

I had the idea recently to use some of the mint we have in our herb garden to make some ice cream.   I found a recipe by another blogger with a recipe she tried that involved using fresh mint.  I tried it myself, with a little variation.  I used cream, of course, but also skim milk.  And I used good chocolate.  I chopped up a couple of bars of Lake Champlain dark chocolate and added that.

Chocolate Chopping

Chocolate Chopping

It was very minty.  My wife described it as having a “Kapachow!’ right when you tasted it, but then a mellow finish.  It has a fresh real mint taste.  I might use less mint next time, but maybe not.  I wouldn’t want to lose too much of the flavor I was after to begin with.  Overall, I think it tasted about right.  Here is the finished product:

Chocolate Chip Mint Ice Cream Ready for Snacking

Chocolate Chip Mint Ice Cream Ready for Snacking

Here is recipe I used, (a variation on this one), which makes about 1 quart:

Ingredients:

1 cup skim milk

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups cream

pinch of salt

2 cups packed mint leaves

5 egg yolks

6 oz. chopped good quality dark chocolate

Directions:

1. Mix the milk, sugar, salt and 1 cup of the cream in a saucepan and warm it gently.  Submerge the mint leaves in the liquid and set aside to steep at room temperature for an hour.

2. Pass the mixture through a strainer into another saucepan, pressing on the leaves to remove as much liquid as possible.  Toss the leaves into your compost bucket and rewarm the liquid.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks until fluffy (a couple of minutes).  Slowly pour the warmed mint liquid into the egg yolks, whisking the whole time.  Then pour the egg cream mint mixture back into the saucepan.

4. Stir the mixture over medium heat with a silicone spatula that can take the heat, scraping the bottom, until the mixture thickens and sticks to the spatula.

5. Pour the 2nd cup of cream into a bowl and place a strainer over it.  Pour the warm liquid through the strainer into the cream.  Mix until blended.

6. Cool your ice cream mixture thoroughly, several hours in a refrigerator or chill in an ice bath and then cool an hour in a refrigerator.

7. Freeze in an ice cream maker, adding the chocolate bits at the end and mixing them in well.

If you try it, please let me know how it comes out for you.  Next up on the ice cream circuit:  peach.  We are off to go camping overnight so it will have to wait until at least later in the week.  We do have to get through this batch first, although I can’t imagine that will take very long.

Bouquet

Posted on by

My daughter really wanted a bouquet for dinner.  She and her brother had pulled the small table from the porch onto the lawn and had spread out a blanket.  She wanted, in fact, a picnic bouquet.  “We’ll set out everything on the little table here and then just take what we want,” she explained.  And she and her brother worked to make it all happen, albeit with a few spills on the way.  Dinner was a fine and fulfilling buffet.

Keeping the Old Brain Sharp

Posted on by
Some of the Puzzle Books I'm Taking On

Some of the Puzzle Books I'm Taking On

There was a recent article in the Guardian, The Lifestyle to Beat Alzheimer’s, about what one can do to keep dementia at bay.  The headliner was about coffee (this New York Times article has more details about that).  Coffee drinkers, it noted, “will be clinking mugs in a toast to new research suggesting that just two strong cups of the black stuff a day can reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.”  I’ll make sure to keep sipping the dark roast.

The article mentioned several other things that research suggests can keep one’s brain sharp enough to avoid slipping into forgetfulness.  To summarize:

  • Drink two strong cups of coffee (the regular stuff, not decaf) per day
  • Eat blueberries, kale and broccoli (and other vegetables)
  • Don’t smoke (duh)
  • Drink one or two alcoholic drinks per day
  • Stay in shape
  • Speak more than one language
  • Stay married (no divorce allowed as that can increase risk of getting dementia)
  • Do crossword, sudoku and other puzzles

Other than speaking multiple languages, I’m doing pretty well on this list.  I am working on the puzzle thing especially right now.  I’ve got multiple books of them going at once, in fact.  I have been tackling crossword puzzles, sudoku, kenken and new to me, kakuro.

My parents gave me five new books of puzzles for Father’s Day.  My mother sees dementia every day, since she works in an elderly care facility.  I guess she wants to keep me sharp for longer than other people.  I’m good with that.  My parents really do love me.  Puzzles: the gift that keeps giving, even when you become an old codger.

I am afraid I could use some help with staving off dementia.  Already, I forget crap all the time.  If taking the time to do some puzzles will help, I’ll do it.  It may get in the way of other things but that is the way of it.  “Sorry, honey, can’t paint the house right now; I’ve got to prevent Alzheimer’s right now.”