I lack style.

Maybe you can help me out. The bedroom at our new place is a nice, big space. The walls are a warm beige; the trim is white. It has two windows, one facing west, the other north. It gets lots of lovely afternoon sunlight. It’s very blah, however, as we have pale bedding that just washes out.

The picture you see here is of a duvet cover I bought a year or two ago–It’s a nice pattern, like branches or coral, but on a tan background. I wished it were dark, chocolatey brown at the time, but Martha Stewart evidently only believed in pale colors. We have this, and another duvet that features stripes–pale, beachy stripes–and both totally wash out in our new bedroom.

The rug, incidentally, is a dark burgundy.

My question to you, dear readers, is this: how can I punch up the color in this room? I feel like perhaps some pillows would solve the problem–and I have no problem making pillow covers myself–but I have no idea what color or pattern to use. Please, post suggestions–links–ideas–I’ll be eternally grateful to you. I have no sense of style or color, and could use the help.

Thai noodle salad

Remember when this was a cooking blog? Moving took a lot of the wind out of those sails, as unpacking and winding down the semester were my primary concerns. But look, it’s a salad!

A long time ago my mom gave me a cookbook called “Ethnic Foods.” This cookbook is an eclectic collection, to say the least, of foods from different traditions. There are Chinese recipes, Italian recipes, recipes for Indian samosas, and British recipes. Creamed potato! Kidney pie! It’s a wacky bunch of recipes, and it sat on my shelf a long time before getting any love. If the other recipes in there are half as good as this one, it’ll go into the rotation.

This salad is a lukewarm, spicy, vegetarian Thai salad. I love Thai noodle salads. We didn’t have any rice vermicelli as called for, so we used regular vermicelli noodles, and it was still yummy. Supposedly this serves four, but we got about three. Well, two and a half. If you added some grilled chicken, cubed tofu, or something else of substance, you could easily feed at least four. As it was, we were hungry (we had a big breakfast but no lunch today–we were starving by 5, and ate early) and chowed down.

Start some water boiling for your vermicelli. You’ll need 9 ounces, approximately. While you wait for the water to boil, start chopping your veggies. Chop:

6 scallions
3 cups mushrooms (I eyeballed this–I used I think 4 or 5 white mushrooms)
1/2 peeled cucumber, cut into thin sticks (I used a Kirby–it’s small–and used the whole thing)

Put them all in a bowl. Get your noodles going, and toss them on top.

Mix your dressing:
4 T sesame oil
2 T fish sauce (don’t be afraid–it’s pungent but tasty mixed into stuff)
1-2 tsp chili sauce (I used Sriracha, and only 1 tsp, as I’m a sissy)
Juice of 2 limes
1 tsp sugar

Pour dressing over veggies and noodles and toss. You can add some greens if you’d like, and some cilantro. I didn’t feel like lettuce and we have no cilantro, so we went as is, and it was really good and came together quickly. It’ll be great on hot summer nights that are around the corner.

How does your garden grow?

After several days of rainy weather, not bad, actually.

Flower on Brandywine tomato plant

Baby yellow pepper

Spinach seedlings (I think)

Rogue lettuce, growing among the weeds

NYT: Home Canning on the rise!

For those of you who know me or who have been following this blog a while, you know that I like to can things. I’m good at canning applesauce; jam, well, that’s a project I’ll try again this summer. For a long time information on home canning was a little scarce and a little staid, but with the rise of people really questioning what they eat, where it comes from, and how it was made, preserving your own food is becoming popular. Here’s a link to the New York Times’ article today that gets into the subject in some detail, noting that it’s part of a trend including baking your own bread. I have a loaf about to go in the oven myself, and I made some mozzarella an hour ago. Course I just ate a Hebrew National hot dog, a handful of Lays chips, and a Vlasic pickle for lunch, but I can’t change everything at once!

Maybe we’ll try pickles again this year–we made them once years ago and it was a disaster and a mess. Hmm….so long, Vlasic!

The Garden

I haven’t posted lately, as the end of the semester was a killer and was followed immediately by training for something in the fall and the start of summer school. Also, I was working on this–the garden.

I wouldn’t qualify my thumb as green. Yellow-green, maybe, or simply greenish. But I’m trying. We have a 20×20 foot plot in one of the town’s community gardens. We spent one afternoon a few weeks ago giving it a first rake-through, pulling up huge weeds. Since then, we’ve raked in 200 pounds of compost and begun planting seedlings and seeds themselves. So far, I’ve planted the peppers you see here–6 yellow peppers and one heirloom called “Fat and Sassy,” which I thought was fantastic. I’ve also added:

3 Tuscan plum tomatoes (heirlooms)
3 San Giorgino plum tomatoes (heirloom native to CT)
2 different heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 heirloom Brandywine tomato
4 eggplants

I’ve seeded:
A small row of chard
A small row of spinach (starting to come up, at least I think so!)
A small row of lettuce (it being late spring already, planting too much would be a waste, as it tends to bolt once it gets hot)
2 small rows of carrots
49 onions (I dug each one a hole, so I counted)

And two zucchini plants. I plan to add cucumbers and winter squash as well as all the herbs and marigolds I started earlier. They’re still not huge, but I’m hoping for the best.

Here are the tomatoes, in cages I scored for free from a coworker:

I’m a little concerned about them. They don’t seem terribly dark green to me right now, but I’m not sure they’re supposed to be that dark. One has some little spots. I think I’m probably an over-concerned tomato momma.

Any one of you have a green thumb? What are you growing right now? Those of you with longer seasons than we have in New England are probably harvesting already. Strawberry season should be here in a couple of weeks–I might take a stab at making jam again. Or I might not…

I think I ruined a batch of yogurt

I made a batch of yogurt yesterday afternoon, not really paying attention to the time. I checked it after 7 hours of incubation, before I went to bed, and it still seemed thin. I figured, well, I almost always seem to wake up at midnight since we’ve moved, I’ll just pop it in the fridge then. But alas, last night I slept all the way from 10:30 until 6 this morning–and my yogurt incubated from about 3 yesterday afternoon til I woke up. That’s some 15 hours. The cooler was nowhere near 100 degrees by morning, and the yogurt still seems thin, to boot. Some websites I’ve checked simply say that longer incubation times yield tangier yogurts; another one said that as the temperature changes and time marches on, it becomes ripe for mold. I’m not sure what to do. If I toss it, I’ll lose 3 pints of yogurt, worth about $1.30 in terms of milk, and I’ll have to start over with a new culture (ie, new cup of plain yogurt, rather than my own). I’ll probably do that–better safe than sorry, I suppose. What a bummer, though I am glad for the sleep.

Easy barbecue pulled chicken

In a glorious world I think I would eat barbecue at least once a week. Pulled pork is one of the best things ever created. Piled high on a sandwich, pulled pork is just divine. But I am lazy, lack a proper barbecue, and instead have created something that I don’t think stands in perfectly for the deliciousness of pulled pork, but which does a fine job of satisfying the craving.

First thing you need is barbecue sauce. If you are looking for the short route, buy a bottle. I, however, like to make barbecue sauce. The particular recipe I used for this batch is one from recipezaar, adjusted for taste. But you should find one you like and run with it. For a long time I made the standard one in my Joy of Cooking cookbook, which I’ve told you about before. At any rate, you’ll need about a cup of the stuff. The more the merrier.

The other thing you’ll need is a slow-cooker. Ours sat in storage for a long time at our last place (well, 10 months, anyway), and came out of hiding for this. Add a package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts to your cooker. Thighs would probably be even better. If you did this with chicken that had bones your flavor might be better, but it won’t be as easy. Pour sauce over chicken and turn heat to high. Cook for a few hours, stirring once. When chicken seems largely done, break up a bit with a wooden spoon and turn heat to low for a few hours. After a total of six hours, the chicken will be pretty much falling apart. Encourage that by using a spoon to break it up more, into shreds and chunks, and toss with the sauce to coat. Voila. We had our chicken with homemade wheat bread and coleslaw.

Yay, moved!

After a sleepless night (a ridiculous story, but I’m not bitter anymore so I’ll just let it go), Mr. Pea and I, as well as a few now-beloved friends and relatives piled what was left of our belongings into a moving truck yesterday and headed across town. All went far too smoothly until we could not get our enormous couch through the doorway. Front door, back door, didn’t matter. We almost got it stuck a third of the way into our place, a third in the hallway, and a third out the front door. My father-in-law, however, would be damned if the couch didn’t make it, and he took off doors, he took of molding, he took off chair feet, and eventually it popped through. We won’t be moving again until that couch is beyond repair. So far, we love our new place. It is unbelievably quiet here. No blaring radios, rude neighbors, screaming teenagers. I hear birds. I have a sunporch/dining room (that’s what you see above). I could take a nap, if I didn’t have to grade til my fingers bleed. I unpack just to put the grading off.

Last night one of my colleagues came over to bring us dinner. This is easily one of the kindest gestures I’ve ever heard of. She brought a salad, a baked pasta, homemade ice cream and cookies to make sandwiches, plus a bottle of wine. We were thrilled. We’ve had our fill of takeout in the last week and that meal hit the spot. I’m planning on doing some grocery shopping tomorrow (currently all we have are leftovers and liquids–beer, soda, water bottles, all purchased for our moving crew) and getting back into the kitchen. I spent a few hours this morning trying to put it together. We’ve moved from a large kitchen with lots of cabinets, most of them quite deep, into a smaller, cozier kitchen (truth be told, I wasn’t nuts over the big one) but with fewer, much narrowing cabinets. Getting all our stuff in wasn’t easy, but I did it with a cabinet to spare, for tomorrow’s purchases. We’re also going to get some propane for the grill so we’ll be back in business there. I’m hoping to make some kebabs in the near future, and I’ve been itching to have a proper steak, so I plan on splurging on a ribeye or strip steak for a grill night. I’m also curious about our ‘new’ stove. It looks to be vintage 1983, but as long as it works (and by works, I mean heats the oven evenly as well as having functional burners), I’ll be happy. It’s electric, so that’ll take some getting used to, but I’m aching to knead some bread and set it to rise, then bake it so the whole house smells delicious. Yum.

We pack. We move stuff. We pack more.

The last several days have been rather a whirlwind: work has been busy and somewhat stressful; my Saturdays have been absorbed by a service project; and my spare time has been spent packing. This process–we pack boxes, pack up the cars, bring stuff to our new place–has surely limited my cooking. Now that we are down to just a few pots and pans, that’s only more the case. We’ve eaten a lot of takeout, and have a few simple meals planned for the week. Nothing special–a chopped salad for tonight, some Applegate Farms turkey dogs for later this week, some simple chicken and spinach and whatever’s still here for a starch; and a simple pasta with tomatoes. If we keep it simple, we’ll keep ourselves from just ordering sandwiches every night and then needing to buy lunch the next day as a result.

Wish us luck…we’ll be ensconced in our new place on Saturday. While it’s smaller, it has a dishwasher and a garbage disposal. Hello, late twentieth century!

Only one of us is unaware of the dramatic changes to come….