Satisfaction is...

...a meal of grilled, locally raised steak, grilled vegetables, and bruschetta. Made with sourdough French bread drenched in olive oil, brushed with freshly pressed garlic, then baked, with Italian shredded cheese blend added in the last couple of minutes. Served plain (kids), or with a mixture of fresh tomatoes, onions, oregano, basil, more garlic, a splash of vinegar, and olive oil. The Hermit thought it was the best meal in the world.

Bruschetta!

I tried a wonderful way to use fresh tomatoes, garlic, and herbs the other day.

The tomatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs were marinated in vinegar and olive oil longer than anticipated. Actually, we were going to do this on a Saturday night, but went for convenience food and waited until Sunday night. Such is life.


The wonderful marinated mixture was spread over French bread and topped with Provolone cheese, then baked for about ten minutes to melt the cheese.

Delicious, although I don't like eating that much bread at one sitting. But, as in all things, use in moderation...:-)

Broccoli salad

I've been faced with the dilemma of four perfect broccoli heads all maturing at the same time. I would love for them to be spaced out more, perhaps one a week, but that's how it goes. We must enjoy broccoli now.

I found a good way to do that last night, one that is quick and easy, and so delicious we've had it two nights in a row. It's a cold salad made with broccoli slightly steamed, mixed with about three fried slices of bacon, sunflower seeds, chopped onions and a dressing made with mayonnaise, honey, and vinegar. It's that simple.

But I have a tendency to modify on the simple. I added a pinch of curry to the dressing, and some red cabbage, garlic scapes, quinoa, and poppy seeds to the original mix. Didn't harm anyone. My stepdaughter really liked it!

So how does one spill beer on the ceiling, anyway?

Floridacracker's recent post about painting the textured ceiling had me thinking about the inconveniences of what seemed like a good idea in the '90s. You know, that textured popcorn like bumpy ceiling stuff. It's difficult to paint, and melts away if you try to clean something off it. Like beer stains.

It all started when we were newlyweds, a year or two, and decided to get into making beer. We were living in this split level, semi rural development house that was very cookie-cutter like. And, it was too close to the freeway. Way too close. But it was on a pond with a wonderful view, and there were loons nesting outside my dining room window...So.

Anyway, we had recently discovered beer beyond Busch, and discovered that we could even make it at home! We invested in a "starter" beer kit, and followed the instructions to brew our first attempt, a stout. I proudly poured it into the primary fermenter, basically a six gallon bucket with an airlock on top. The day I first brewed, The Hermit had to head out for a business meeting, so I spent the first night as an anxious first time brew mistress alone.

At approximately 5 AM, I heard a loud BANG from the kitchen. I dragged myself out of bed to investigate. In the kitchen I found the fermenter, sans lid, and the lid several feet from the fermenter. Somehow the airlock had plugged up, pressure had built, and...BAM. There was a prominent dark brown stain on the kitchen ceiling, and dark beer splattered all over the kitchen.

The beer turned out okay. Very good, in fact, for a first time effort! The ceiling, well, I tried spraying bleach on it, with some success, but there was always a little spot there.

Kale and eggs--my new favorite quickie meal

I came up with this recipe yesterday when I realized, at 2 PM, I had not eaten anything substantial all day. It was a "grazing" day, where we didn't make an official breakfast or lunch, and I just wasn't hungry despite having gone for a three mile walk and mowed half the lawn in the morning. But I knew I should eat something, and there was an abundance of eggs in the refrigerator, and the kale is doing wonderfully in the garden, and I really need to eat more veggies. So I had an idea...

I melted about a tablespoon of butter in a medium skillet. If you're concerned about saturated fat, I suppose you could substitute olive oil, but butter has all those good Omega 3's, and it just tastes better! Then I threw in about five large kale leaves, cut into smaller pieces, and a couple garlic scapes, cut up. You could substitute a clove of garlic for the scapes; I just happen to have plenty of them on hand right now.

I sauteed the kale and scapes for a couple minutes, then pushed them to the edge of the skillet and cracked two eggs in the center. I let the whites set for a short time before I broke the yolks. Then I stirred everything around for a minute or less, so the yolks were still a little bit liquid. I turned off the burner, threw on a pre-grated blend of Italian cheeses, some green salsa, fresh ground pepper, and sea salt. I ate it right out of the skillet; no extra dishes that way, and no wasted paper plates!

This meal actually took less time and effort than microwaving some prepackaged lunch entree, and it tasted great! No artificial anything in it either.

Garden greens

I am enjoying an abundance of spinach, lettuce, and kale right now. I pick a fresh salad for lunch every day, but I realize there are still more greens than we can keep up with here. The Farmers Market doesn't start for another month, so we'll be on a green diet here.



Kale and spinach, before, freshly picked.



Kale and spinach after. It really shrinks, but it's good with sesame seeds, pine nuts, and fresh ground pepper.

Bread making, again, and other stuff I'm trying to do

I gave the bread machine a long hiatus, because I was somehow not finding enough time to even throw together the ingredients and let the machine do the work. But lately I've been thinking just ow hard it is to find good bread, something that has mostly organic ingredients and doesn't come in a plastic wrapper. Ugh, I've come to hate the ubiquitous plastic wrapping that our modern food must have. If I could eliminate the plastic wrapper, and all the energy it takes to ship a loaf of bread to my grocery store...I think it would make a difference.

Last night The Hermit was saying how he missed good homemade bread. So this morning, after the kids got on the bus at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM, but they wanted to, and they woke up on their own, I put the stuff for a caraway rye in the bread machine. It didn't take too long, and it would be even quicker if I made up a dry mix, put it in jars, and just had to add the eggs and oil and water.

The loaf is almost gone as of this evening. All of the kids had PBJ sandwiches with it, and The Hermit and I got a taste with butter.

In other things, the next homemade item I want to try is salad dressings. I have all but sworn off Kraft and other major commercial brands, due to the amount of soy oil and corn syrup, and I'm thinking: I could probably make something better than the bottled variety, with extra virgin olive oil, vinegar, and fresh organic spices. I could store dressing in pint jars in the refrigerator, without buying and having to rinse and recycle new bottles.

It's one step at a time, this life I want to live.

stinging nettles for dinner

Does that very title give you goosebumps, like it does me? I admit, I was very skeptical about cooking and eating the things. After all, I've had enough run ins with them to know they can be very irritating in their raw form. They cause a blistering rash that lasts an hour or so.

But actually they are very good steamed or sauteed; once they are limp the chemical that causes the rash has been deactivated. They can be dried and steeped in a tea or infusion as well. Nettles are very rich in nutrients, even better than spinach or just about any other green.

These are the raw leaves. I wore gloves as I picked small plants and cut the leaves off. I don't know why some of them are purple on the underside; this disappeared with cooking.

I steamed them in a small amount of water, then added butter for flavor. I knew the amount of nettles I picked would not make for much of a meal, but The Hermit had a work function to attend tonight and I had no intention of inflicting this on the kids...yet. This was my substitute for spaghetti noodles. I'm trying to go gluten free, or almost so, for a while to see if I may be sensitive to it.

The nettles have an incredible rich green flavor, better than spinach or Swiss chard. But I think you'd have to have them picked young, and very fresh, to get the kind of flavor I experienced tonight. I guess I'm lucky to have them growing wild, in unexpected places like one of my garden beds. Maybe there's a market for them at the Farmers Market!

more owww

A day or two after the serrated knife incident, I burned my index finger on the same hand so subtly I didn't even know it for a while. Okay, I might have known that I was using a pot holder mitt that had a thin spot in it, and that pot holder mitt ended up in the trash, but I was surprised to wake up with a huge blister on that finger, two days later. Of course the blister broke off, then the raw sore rubbed against something, and well you know. Never use a worn oven mitt.

The thumb, miraculously, is almost healed.

Owww...

So, the lesson to be learned is this: Serrated knives and somewhat dry,tough bread are not a good combination.

I was trying to cut a loaf of good, organic, but day old bread, with a serrated knife.

Need I say more, except I didn't cut the entire tip of my right thumb off (I'm left handed), it just hurts.

Basil revelation

I had a revelation of sorts as I was cooking tonight. I just happened to need some dried basil, since I have no fresh this time of year, and I opened up a plastic jar of store bought basil. For some strange reason, I sniffed it. Nothing there, really. A vague sweet aroma, but that basil was clearly past its prime.

There were, however, several whole basil plants that had been stashed in the corner, dried, since the first frost in September. I sampled a leaf, and found it full-bodied, spicy, fragrant, unlike the store-bought basil. I proceeded to strip the leaves from most of the basil I had left, storing it in the jar I had recently emptied of store bought basil. There just is no comparison.

And, one can never get too much basil. I am upping my seedling production tenfold!

no deposit, no return

I hate packaging. Most of it is unrecyclable and it makes up the bulk of our garbage, which I would like to reduce to next to nil. When eating off something other than Chinets from Sam's Club becomes a viable alternative. :)

Glass, fortunately, is recyclable, although re-using it is the preferred alternative. To that end, brewing beer at home, storing it in re-usable glass bottles, and using the bottles for another batch of beer, seems to be a good option for reducing our impact on the planet. A little over a week ago I bottled our Baltic Porter, in bottles that had previously stored Three Hearted Ale and some Belgian Witbier. Using 23 ounce bottles reduces the number of bottles that must be washed, and who stops at just one 12 ounce beer anyway. :)

Unfortunately, our beer consumption still greatly exceeds our brewing capacity, so there is a net loss of screw top bottles to recycling, but any hobby that teaches a useful art is a step in the right direction.

venison jerky

My kids love jerky. I don't know how they developed a taste for it, since until yesterday, I had never made homemade jerky. I suppose it was some of the expensive, store-bought variety that got them addicted. It is a pretty healthy snack, and we had some venison steaks in the freezer, so this unexpected, long weekend I thought I'd try making some.

Two words: Easy. Delicious. The only thing is, it takes a bit of patience while it's drying in the oven.

The hardest part may be slicing the meat thin enough, which fortunately I didn't have to do because the venison steaks were pretty thin already. A good sharp fillet knife would work for slicing thicker cuts, and if the meat is partially frozen it's easier to cut thin.

The strips are coated with a small amount of liquid smoke and seasoning. I used, as I do for so many other dishes, Louisiana brand Cajun seasoning. Then when the excess moisture has evaporated a bit, the meat strips are placed in a covered bowl overnight in the refrigerator.

The next day, lay the strips on the oven racks, turn the oven on to about 150, just warm enough to dry the meat, and wait about 6 hours, checking every once in a while. When it's dry enough it should still bend a little, but not feel plump or "juicy" anywhere. The seasoned flavor really comes out when most of the moisture is gone.

We need to get more deer next year.

By the way, the recipe book that appears in this and the preceding post is a wealth of tips and recipes for wild game: Wild in the Kitchen, by Bob Schranck. It's probably out of print, so I'm trying not to spill too much on our copy.

pickled northern pike

The Hermit and I enjoy pickled fish on crackers as a winter appetizer. Pickled herring is readily available at the grocery store, but we much prefer pickled northern pike which can cost $4-$5 for a tiny jar containing maybe ten tiny chunks of fish. Luckily, northern pike are abundant here in Minnesota and the process of pickling them isn't exactly rocket science. And I think home-pickled northerns taste much better.

I suppose a catchy name for this recipe would be "pickled pickerel", but around here we don't call members of the Esocid family "pickerel". They are northern pike, or just simply "northern". Before the days of heavy fishing pressure and big motors and fish finders, there would be a 20 pound lunker or two lurking in every lake. Nowadays it is more common to find abundant numbers of northerns that are mostly 3 pounds or less. A lot of people don't like to mess with these "hammer handles", even though you can get good fillets off them, because they have "Y" bones that are like the little plastic filaments that hold the tags to your new shirt. These bones can be removed by cutting the fillets a certain way, but if you pickle the fish the bones dissolve completely.

I work with a guy who has recently rediscovered the tradition of fish spearing. He really doesn't like eating fish, however, so recently he gave me fillets from two northerns he had speared. I didn't want to bother with cutting out the "Y" bones, so instead I pickled them. I had recently "practiced" on some store-bought northern fillets, with excellent results.

With any wild-caught fish, there is the possibility of tapeworm cysts in the flesh, so it's a good idea to freeze the fillets for 48 hours, which will kill any cysts. Then, the first step is to cut the fish into bite size chunks. Put the fish into containers and cover with a brine of 2 cups white vinegar, 1/2 cup pickling salt, and about 1/2 cup pickling spice. Recipes will vary on how long to keep the fish in the brine, but usually it works out to be 5-6 days when I do it. Shake the fish every so often to make sure the brine gets everywhere.

After the brine is drained, soak the fish in fresh water for about half an hour or more. While the fish are soaking, prepare a mixture of 4 cups white vinegar, 2 cups sugar, 3 T. pickling spice and 2 tsp. mustard seed. Bring to a boil and let cool. Caution: if you let it boil for a few minutes in an area that is not well ventilated, you won't be able to breathe in the kitchen. Ask me how I know.

Then, layer the fish in jars with slices of white onion, and cover with the sauce. I pour a little white wine in each jar if I have any, and add some whole peppercorns. Refrigerate for a week or so, and enjoy. The home economist food police say pickled fish should be consumed within one month, but I see no reason why it would not keep longer in the refrigerator. Freshness dates on commercial pickled fish are up to a year.