I’m having one of those days when I just feel kind of meh. I woke up kind of meh, shook it off by planning a “me” day, but then it started raining, hard, so two of my three plans (5 mile walk, putter in garden) came to a halt. Heck, I still walked two miles, but I was drenched and not about to do three more. And I just can’t seem to shake it off. What I need to do is walk away from the computer and set up my sewing machine, but it’s one of those days where even that feels like more work than it’s worth, and that’s just pathetic. I’m also out of coffee, so that’s not helping! Ok. I’m turning this off now. Putting up my machine. Sewing at least one quilt row (I can’t remember if I told you I was starting a new quilt–it’s a coin quilt). Maybe 2. Maybe 3. Going to Starbucks for at least a cup of coffee (I have to go to Trader Joe’s across town for the beans I like. So….far….). And cutting myself a leeeetle slack.
Eating Garden Veggies: Ridiculously Yummy Pasta
This pasta was one of those things that came together merely on a whim as we sorted out what, exactly, we had to eat in the house. The broccoli–a medium-sized head–came from our garden. There was one quickly over-ripening green zebra tomato (I think that’s what it’s called–it’s an heirloom variety I got at the farmer’s market). There was some goat cheese. And some bacon. Huzzah.
First, I cut the bacon (six slices I’d thawed earlier) so that the big fatty ends were gone altogether as they just get chewy in something like this. Then I chopped the rest into 1/4″ slices (the short way) and tossed it into a pan over medium heat. I cooked it about five minutes til it was nearly done, then added a sliced onion (also from the garden!). In the meantime, I brought a pot of salted water to a boil and added about 6 oz of rigatoni. It was supposed to take about 8 minutes to cook, and I let it go for five before added the broccoli stems, and after a minute, the florets. This let them cook just enough to soften up without being gross and squishy, or, alternately, undercooked. I added all of this, after draining, to the skillet with the bacon and onion. I tossed it around and added about an ounce and a half of goat cheese, which I stirred in to melt. And that was about it. I set aside some pasta cooking water in case I needed it to make a sauce, but the cheese did a fine job. Marvelous–we ate the whole pot.
Cooking Garden Vegetables: pizza!
The purple pepper I picked from our garden was a central feature of pizza we made late last week. Purple peppers are funny–they’re green on the inside and taste a bit tarter than green ones usually do. I don’t think the plant is going to give us a second pepper; it seems to have put all it’s energy into the first and is now exhausted. So we enjoyed it that one evening (and the next day) as pizza topping, along with one of our own onions, sliced.
The crust I made this time was a different recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches. She spread it out on a baking sheet, while I used my baking stone. It puffed up insanely large–there was a lot of crust–so I might not use that particular recipe again for a stone-cooked pie. Tasty, but a little too big. The sauce was some I’d made before and frozen–this doesn’t exactly work well, as the sauce crystallizes when frozen and is watery when thawed–but it did the job. After making the dough, I shaped it into a circle with uplifted hands and turning the dough so that it’s own weight would thin it out. I placed this and reshaped it a bit on a cornmeal-covered pizza peel, dressed it, made sure it wasn’t stuck, and then slid the pizza onto a preheated peel in the 425* oven. They only need about 12 minutes to bake. It was a nice way to eat our pepper, and we had plenty of leftovers!
Fabric for Sale
Some of you might recall that this blog started as a companion blog to my shop, Sweet Pea Handcrafts, where I sold kitchen stuff I made myself. Well, though Sweet Pea closed about a year ago when we moved, I still have remnants–huge remnants–of designer fabric. So I put a bunch of it on sale on etsy. There’s some awesome retro Christmas fabric, some fabulous bird silhouette fabric, some bold dot fabric, and other stuff. Come check it out! Help me clean my closet! :)
http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=1345
Wheat Berry Salad
This here is a wheat berry salad. A wheat berry is an entire wheat kernel, largely unprocessed. It’s a true whole grain, full of fiber and nutrients. I made something with them once–I can’t remember what–but saw this salad in last month’s Cooking Light and thought I’d try it with some modifications. It’s not bad and the texture’s nice, but the dressing is a bit too tangy for my tastebuds.
You begin with 1 1/4 c of wheat berries. I found mine in the bulk bin at whole foods. These go into a pot of salted water to simmer for at least 45 minutes to an hour. Then you drain and rinse them until cool. Put in a bowl with 1 1/2 c packed lettuce/arugula, about 1/4 c chopped parsley, some chopped zucchini (maybe half a cup, small dice?), though the recipe originally called for cucumber. Add a chopped tomato (a big one) and 3 oz crumbled goat cheese. Toss. Make your dressing: zest of one lemon, about 3 T of juice (two would be enough), 2 T olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar (half a teaspoon). Toss with salad. I think we had too much dressing, plus I didn’t dry the lettuce enough, which left us with a pool at the bottom of the bowl. No matter–we ate it anyway. Serves six.
Harvesting
Today I took what is really the first substantial harvest out of our garden. I’d been avoiding it a bit–there was rain to contend with, other things to do, and the dead tomatoes had really taken the wind out of my sails. But today I went back and was richly rewarded, although I am starting to think that instead of growing veggies cheaply, I’m working on growing the most expensive veg out there. The tomato loss is mostly responsible for that, but today we also lost our winter squash (not much to look at there anyway) to vine borers. I tore one plant out and saw the worm–came home and confirmed it. I’ll go back for the other later, before it, god forbid, spreads to my zucchini.
Anyway, today there’s the usual mountain of lettuce–I’ve been bringing enough home for us and the upstairs neighbors, as there’s no way we’ll get through it all before it eventually bolts. Two rows of lettuce go a long way. I was going to pick chard, but have no use for it today or tomorrow and Friday we’re out of town for a wedding. So I’ll wait. There’s a head of broccoli, which is pretty exciting. I think I’ll hold onto it for a stir-fry tomorrow. There’s a teeny tiny carrot. This thrilled me to no end. I’ve never grown carrots or seen them grown. This one was a stray that had seeded itself by the herbs, and I pulled it. It’s not big, but it’s orange and carroty and that makes me happy.
There’s also a nice pile of basil which I just turned into pesto and popped into the ice cube tray and into the freezer. There are also three! onions. Threeeeee! The whole field-now at I think 45-isn’t ready, but a couple had begun to tip and were clobbering other plants, so I pulled them. I’ll slice one to have on a pizza with that other veggie you see, the purple pepper. It hasn’t grown any lately, so I pulled it before it rotted. There are two others–the green-turning-yellow ones–that are nearly yellow, so another week and they should be ready. Hopefully. I also salvaged a few cherry tomatoes to see if they’ll shelf-ripen without blighting. We did get one sungold cherry that way. Yay. The $18 cherry tomato 
How does your garden grow?
Thank you, Serious Eats
Make this recipe. One pot, minimal cooking, served cold–fantastic in July. It’s part of Serious Eats’ series on meals for under $8. This one, Shanghai-ish Noodles, is essentially a cold peanut noodle with whatever you have on hand. I made ours with linguine (no Asian noodles in the house–I used about 6 oz dried), half a huge zucchini, cut into strips, a julienned carrot, some frozen corn, and some deli ham, sliced up–a little under a quarter pound. Faaaaantastic, and super cheap. I’d eat it every day, but then I would have to run every day to burn off all that noodle and peanut butter goodness, and frankly, that’s not going to happen.
Here’s the link:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/07/eat-for-eight-bucks-shanghaiish-cold-noodles-recipe.html
So sad: tomato blight
Remember those beautiful, robust tomato plants I showed you a week ago, full of joy and excitement? Well, they are a thing of the past, ravaged by what you see here: late blight (not my photo–I didn’t have my camera). I’d noticed this devastation spreading in the community garden and a woman who I call Debbie Downer, who likes to visit my plot and tell me things won’t grow, had told Mr. Pea and I about while we weeded a couple of weeks ago. And today our poor plants had begun to croak. I had a feeling it was coming–late blight (the same disease that caused the Irish potato famine, isn’t that charming?) starts with brown spots on the stems, and I had spotted those a week or so ago. Today those spots were splitting and cracking, the leaves were blackening, what little fruit had grown (they’d just really started to set) were getting blotchy spots, which would ultimately rot the tomato and turn hard. I took what was growing and not blotchy off, pulled off the dead stuff, but I don’t think there’s much of a chance for the plants themselves.
Late blight is evidently not uncommon but typically comes later (thus the name), after harvesting. With all the rain we’ve had, and our unseasonably cool weather, it came faster. There have also been accusations levelled at big box stores such as home depot for the blight: evidently some of the plants they sold in the northeast were infected and then as they sat on shelves, the infected spread their spores to other plants, and then these plants were put in gardens, and, well, here we are.
Oh well. As Mr. Pea says, life doesn’t always go as planned, and really, they’re just plants. And as another gardener (who, incidentally, looked like Santa Claus and gave me a present of a zucchini from his garden–coincidence?) noted, at least we don’t depend on these tomatoes for our livlihoods or sustenance. That would be much worse, indeed.
No electricity, no bread.
Yesterday I made bread dough. I mixed it by hand, kneaded it for 15 minutes, set it to rise. Folded it. Let it rise. Formed into loaves. Let it rise. Here I made a fatal error and shoved it in the fridge about 2/3 of the way into the second rise so I could go get lunch. Took it out an hour later. Let it sit half an hour. I should have let it sit longer, but as you’ll see, it didn’t matter. Put it in the oven. Twenty minutes later, the power went out.
I have two dense bread-bricks, a product of both my desire for Mexican food (thus leaving the house) and the oven shutting off. No oven spring. I’m not even certain they’re cooked all the way through. I should find that out.
Oh well. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do! Had I let it rise longer, the bread still would have been a bust and overrisen, and ended up back in the fridge, as the power was out for 2 and a half hours.
Working with bits in the fridge: the stir-fry
Working with leftovers and odds and ends, as we discussed recently, is a nice skill to have. It keeps you from going hungry some nights of the week, and keeps you from tossing out otherwise usable food. Today the Mr. and I went to a Mexican place in town for lunch (finally, some delicious, authentic Mexican food, just over the Hartford border) and we really weren’t terribly hungry for dinner. Mr. Pea works on Tuesday evenings so if we make dinner, we have to have it on the table by 5. We feel like old people. He had a sandwich (something rare in our house, but his mom gave us some cold cuts over the holiday weekend) and ran out the door. I dawdled for an hour, finally felt hungry, and then scratched my head in front of the fridge. There was food, but most of it was intended for meals later in the week. This left me with almost a full serving of cooked, cold quinoa; a little red onion; half a zucchini (meant for a meal, but I’m taking it, anyway, I figured), and garlic. We’re pretty much out of oil and have no butter, so this was going to be interesting.
I started by chopping my veggies and warming my pan; I added what little canola oil was left (maybe a half-teaspoon), and added a touch of sesame oil. I added the veggies and stirred them about. Impatient, I added a little water and covered the pan. A few minutes later my zucchini was softened and everything was ready. There were eggs in the fridge, so I beat up one of those, squeaked a little more oil out of the canola bottle, and added both to the middle of the pan. I cooked the egg, pushed it aside, and added the quinoa, a good splash of soy sauce, a grind of black pepper, and stirred it all about. The end result was actually delicious. I haven’t made quinoa in ages–those of you who have been reading this a long while might recall I cooked it a lot when I was actively losing weight–but it has a nubby texture and is high in protein and fiber. All in all, it was a great dish made from fridge odds and ends–I saved some stuff from getting tossed in the garbage, and myself from going for take-out I’d regret later!
