This past week, it was acting like August where I live. The tomatoes and peppers that I put in my garden blossomed overnight, and the seeds I planted sprouted within just a couple of days!  I kid you not.  Had I planted them a couple of weeks [...]]]>

Willow and Lark go for the berries

This past week, it was acting like August where I live. The tomatoes and peppers that I put in my garden blossomed overnight, and the seeds I planted sprouted within just a couple of days!  I kid you not.  Had I planted them a couple of weeks ago or longer when it was acting like March, they’d likely be to exactly the same point they’re at now. And we had pleasantly cool weather to boot. At one point, I commented to a friend “We’ve had heat indexes close to 100F, frost warnings, rain, sleet, hail, tornado warnings and fog all in 10 days. All we need is a good blizzard and a nice typhoon and we’ll have had just about all the weather on offer.”

My herb garden is well underway, too. I have more oregano, chives and cilantro than I can use, at least until the tomatoes and peppers ripen. At that point I can make salsa or pasta sauce, and I’ll have plenty of the right herbs to use in it. I also have quite a lot of thyme, lemon thyme, sage, various mints, and lemon balm. I’ve got basil and dill coming from seed (rapidly!) and still need to get marjoram, rosemary, tarragon and maybe parsley plants. The last week, we’ve been vacillating between those hot temps and rain showers every couple of days, so this is prime planting weather for quick germination.

So you’ll see lots of herbs in the menus for the rest of the summer. You can plant herbs in containers, Square Foot Gardens (like mine); even a rain gutter nailed at waist height along the side of your deck, shed, balcony or house. You’ll save a ton of money and your food will taste better. Plus there are many vitamins and minerals in herbs.

But if you really have no space? You live in a high rise with no decent window space, as I did at one point? In most recipes, you can substitute dried at half the quantity specified. But not in the chimichurri this week!

Chimichurri is a South American condiment/marinade that’s a bit like pesto, traditionally made with parsley. It’s sometimes made with oregano or cilantro, as it is here. But if you’re hungry for pesto, there’s some in the Untato Salad. We’ll also do some Korean-style grilled chicken; a seasonal Midwestern chicken and berry salad; a shrimp salad that would be home in Key West; and French and Italian ideas on what to do with a grilled steak. The bonus this week is chocolate-covered strawberries! Yum!  Lots of grilling, but you can do the grilled items on the stovetop if it’s cool or pouring rain outside.

Southern Hemisphere menus this week finally stop the grilling and start the soups, using seasonal produce like squash and pears in dishes like Roasted Chicken with Squash and Pears;  Cauliflower and Gruyère Soup with Sausage;  Looed Chicken; Carnitas in a Bowl and more, with the same style of shopping list.  All of it without sugar, artificial sweeteners or grains/starch.

Today, I’m taking all four kids (including one of my son’s best friends) to pick strawberries at a new organic farm that just opened in my area.  I anticipate making lots of those chocolate-covered strawberries!  Wish I had space for a strawberry patch like I had growing up.

Subscribers get all these recipes and more, plus the shopping list coded back to the recipes.  Subscribe today, and have more time to enjoy your summer!

We’re now in the identity crisis of spring, where the weather can’t decide if it’s spring, summer, or “tonight I’m putting on my winter frost face”, thanks very much. I’m still seeing some late daffodils and tulips and the lilacs are still out, but I’m starting to see irises and [...]]]>

First Greens of Spring

We’re now in the identity crisis of spring, where the weather can’t decide if it’s spring, summer, or “tonight I’m putting on my winter frost face”, thanks very much. I’m still seeing some late daffodils and tulips and the lilacs are still out, but I’m starting to see irises and my roses are getting buds on them! Officially the last frost date in my area is May 10th, but I just had frost last night and more is predicted. Wild asparagus is at its prime, while garden asparagus is starting to come in season. Those whose lettuce has survived the periodic frosts may have lettuce, but I’ve never had a lot of luck with early spring lettuce, due to the fickle weather.

So, according to some, I should have planted my peas, spinach, radishes and lettuce by now.  But last year, we had frost in late May, and then had hail about 4 weeks apart that knocked all the blossoms off my garden twice so that I didn’t have tomatoes, peppers etc. in July and August.  Instead, I had them in October and November!

So this week, I’m waiting.  Waiting for the lilacs to be done (wish they’d bloom always) so that I can trim them.   Waiting for it to get just a tad warmer so I can plant radishes, peas, and lettuces.  Waiting for the tomatoes and peppers I’ve ordered from http://www.thechilewoman.com to come in so I can get them planted.

But that’s okay.  While I wait, my husband, with a bit of help from my son, have put corn gluten meal on the lawn to keep weeds from germinating; he’s pulled a bunch of tree seedlings that were trying to come up, as well as thistles; they’ve mowed the lawn and they’re going to build at least one more square foot garden for me.  Or should I say, for them, because they really do like to eat what comes out of our gardens!

And while I wait, I can still enjoy listening to my 5-year-old sing and play while I putter around inside and out, getting dinner.  I can enjoy the scent of my lilac bush and my tulips and my spring-blooming hazelnut, given to me by a friend who called it “spicebush”.

Waiting’s good.  It slows me down.

Soon I’m going to be waiting on some pork chops coming off the grill.  Subscribers will get 7 quick menus, with recipes and shopping list.  This week’s includes Thai Pork Burgers with Asian Slaw; Lamb, Asparagus and Snow Pea Skillet; a quick Greek Chicken; a Spring Salad and more.  The menu is up now and starts Saturday, but you don’t have to wait if you’re hungry!

Slow cookers.  Redolent of chili, barbecued Smoky links, macrame, mushroom decor, Avocado appliances, and a society-wide, decade long epidemic of bad hair.  The ghost of a thousand church pitch-ins.  One of the few gotta-have-it appliances from my childhood that’s still around (unlike the hot dog cooker that basically electrocuted hot dogs–I have [...]]]>

Just Like Mom's

Slow cookers.  Redolent of chili, barbecued Smoky links, macrame, mushroom decor, Avocado appliances, and a society-wide, decade long epidemic of bad hair.  The ghost of a thousand church pitch-ins.  One of the few gotta-have-it appliances from my childhood that’s still around (unlike the hot dog cooker that basically electrocuted hot dogs–I have one, if anyone doubts me).

For years, I associated slow cookers with that whole regrettable era of the 70′s; the years when “exotic food” meant “Chung King from two cans” (unless you were lucky enough to live in Manhattan or L.A.) and no one north of Texas knew what tacos were.  The only time my mom ever brought ours out was to make either chili or beef soup for some kind of pitch-in.  She didn’t even use it for pot roasts, because those were usually for Sunday dinner, and a slow cooker took too long and was too small!  And that’s the way I used the one I kept from the three I got for my wedding.  Until I got rid of it because it was only really a sauce-sized pot.

Two years ago, my life changed drastically when my daughter started with a pre-professional ballet school.  Suddenly I had almost no time to cook, because we were gone several evenings a week right over the dinner hour.  I had been subscribing to a menu service for a couple of years that told me what to cook, and the food was flat-out great, but it required time in the kitchen I just didn’t have.  And I realized I was going to have to deal with my leptin insensitivity/insulin insensitivity problems before I ended up with full-blown diabetes.

I thought about my options, and asked a couple of the other ballet moms.  The answer: a slow cooker.

It is amazing what you can do with a slow cooker.  I’ve done quiche; mashed “fauxtatoes”; spiced nuts; custard; roasts…I would say I’ve only used it for soup or dips less than 5% of the time!

When I bought mine, I wanted to get one big enough to actually be useful.  In the interim I’d been given the “average” 5 qt. size crockpot; but with a family of 5 that includes a teen boy I knew it was going to be too small.  So that put me into the oval slow cookers.

I also needed to deal with the problem of not necessarily being home when it was done, because they give the kids their full allotted time, no matter what the clock says, so that sometimes class goes over.  And I wanted to be able to take it places easily.  In the past, taking a crockpot of chili somewhere required a newspaper and plastic bag-lined box in case it spilled during transit.

Slow cookers have come a LONG way since 1974!  The one I found was a programmable Hamilton Beach with a clamp-on lid and thermometer, 7 quarts.  It has a stainless steel exterior and removable stoneware interior.  I can set it on low or high for increments of 1/2 hour up to 12 hours; it will turn itself to “warm” when it’s done and stay on that setting for another 12 hours, or until I turn it off.  Or I can use the thermometer and set it for a certain temp, and it will turn itself to warm once that’s temperature is reached.

There are other programmable slow cookers that cost as much as 8 times what I paid that will allow different timing increments, but they really don’t do 8 times what this one does.

And there are also slow cookers that offer a variety of insert sizes with one base, but they aren’t very transportable–they’re even sort of funnel-shaped and not terribly stable when the largest inserts are used.  Fine on a counter, but not on a table for a pitch-in (at least the ones I saw when I was looking).

Now I use my slow cooker starting when it begins to get cool sometime in September or October, up to when it’s grilling weather.  I sometimes use it in the summer when the weather’s nice by putting it on my deck table so it doesn’t heat up the kitchen, but not often.  It gets a vacation then.  And it deserves it, because it is rarely empty September through about May or June!

Whatever slow cooker you have, here are a few tips to make using it easier:

Sear meat before putting it in the slow cooker.  The Maillard Reaction of browning, where the sugars and proteins in the meat combine, adds a lot of flavor; browning meat also adds texture.

After you sear the meat, deglaze the pan using some of the liquids from the recipe.  If you use a very hot pan and don’t let it cool at all before pouring the liquid in, the stuck-on browned bits, called “fond”, will come right up.  This is the most flavorful part of what you’ve browned, so get it all!  Add a few extra ounces of the liquid to account for the evaporation from the deglazing.

If you can eat starch, you can bread the meat before browning it, and the starch will help it form a sauce as it cooks.  Otherwise, you can thicken with xanthan or guar gum, or Xpert Food’s Thick n’ Thin Not/Starch after removing the solids from the slow cooker at the end of cooking.

Whatever you put in the slow cooker is going to be juicier than you think, because the liquids won’t evaporate they would on the stovetop or in the oven.  I sometimes use frozen cauliflower to make fauxtatoes, and I don’t add any water at all so that I don’t need to drain them at the end of cooking time (about 2 hours), the way I would on the stove.

You can do custards and quiches by using a ceramic casserole dish that will fit inside your slow cooker (another reason to get a BIG one).  Put the ingredients inside the casserole dish and the pour very hot water inside the slow cooker to within about an inch of the top of the dish.  Cover and cook on low.  This works wonderfully on egg-based dishes that would normally take just a little too much time to do if you had to have the oven on that whole time. Oh, and cheesecakes!

You can even do meatloaf if you put it on a rack!  I’ve even done Carnitas in it.  And things like stuffed bell peppers and flounder rolls and stuffed seafood things!

You can make nicely-spiced nuts and nut mixes in your slow cooker!  Soak them as usual; melt butter, mix in the spices, and then mix with the nuts in the cooker.  A few hours on low does the trick.

And sometimes I do chili and dips.  Yes, I do.  And channel Mrs. Brady while I do it.

“Bears Gems.” That’s what the scientific name of the group, Gemmifera,  Brussels Sprouts belongs to means.

For many people, Brussels sprouts are something that we view as a form of culinary punishment from our childhoods.  “Now sit up straight, Bertina, and eat your Brussels sprouts or we’ll have to lace your corsets more tightly, there’s [...]]]>

“Bears Gems.” That’s what the scientific name of the group, Gemmifera,  Brussels Sprouts belongs to means.

For many people, Brussels sprouts are something that we view as a form of culinary punishment from our childhoods.  “Now sit up straight, Bertina, and eat your Brussels sprouts or we’ll have to lace your corsets more tightly, there’s a dear.”    Eating “little trees” (broccoli) is fun for kids, but eating little balls?  Ick. It’s almost like a bait and switch for kids. Very few of us look forward to them as eagerly as we look forward to tangerines or even cherry tomatoes.  Yet prepared properly, they truly are gems.

The problem is that when Brussels sprouts are overcooked, they release a sulfur compound.  And then they do taste bad.  But because most people don’t grow them in their gardens, and during the Fabulous Fake Fifties of glorifying processed foods they weren’t included in TV dinners, the vast majority of people forgot how to cook them, if they ever knew.  Cabbage is good when it’s cooked a long time, they reasoned, and these are supposedly little cabbages, so let’s cook the daylights out of them.  And that’s when Brussels sprouts turn into a slippery, smelly, olive-green mess that my aunt couldn’t even get her farm animals to eat.

The key is a short cooking time.  They’re done when they’re bright-green, crisp-tender.  This is why in Europe they’re preferred as small as possible.  That way they can be cooked very quickly.  If the ones you have are large, cut them in half and steam or stir-fry them.  They’re actually sweet, done correctly!

And now for a little history with your proper cooking technique: Romans had Brussels sprouts, although probably not quite in the form we have them, because they were bred down from wild cabbage, along with other vegetables like kohlrabi, broccoli, and kale, among others.  But by the Middle Ages, Brussels sprouts were nearly in their modern form in Belgium, and definitely were by the 1500s.  A vegetable that will stay pickable into December in your garden was a bonus before there was refrigeration available!  Many people suffered from the lack of fresh produce in the winter, so cabbage family members were desireable.

Brussels sprouts were introduced into the U.S. by French settlers around the year 1800 in Louisiana, and spread from there.  Currently most of what we have is grown in Washington State, but I have seen fields of Brussels sprouts in the lovely river basin area on the southwest side of Indianapolis, in the old German market garden area, where there are still beautiful houses and gardens.

As I learn to cook with more seasonal vegetables and fruit, the more I realize why cruciferous vegetables used to grace tables at Christmas: in most areas, people could still pick them fresh from their gardens.   So in the coming weeks, subscribers will see some festive recipes for cruciferous vegetables.  The Hanukkah menu used several, and they tasted wonderful!  No more bait and switch.

We gardened extensively when I was a child because I couldn’t eat processed foods due to mold allergies (lucky me, truly).  And my mom went on a wild and wacky journey, experimenting with all kinds of nearly-forgotten vegetables.  Funny thing that the ones that she adored and I hated then are [...]]]>

Beautiful Box o' Squash

We gardened extensively when I was a child because I couldn’t eat processed foods due to mold allergies (lucky me, truly).  And my mom went on a wild and wacky journey, experimenting with all kinds of nearly-forgotten vegetables.  Funny thing that the ones that she adored and I hated then are the ones I adore now!  We truly do become our parents, in more than just the usual can’t-believe-I-just-said-that way.

Most squash have stringy interiors near the seeds; but in spaghetti squash, the whole interior is stringy.  But unlike most other varieties, the strands are tasty and tender after cooking.  You can use it nearly anywhere you’d use pasta, which is a boon to those of us with metabolic disorder or celiac disease, or gluten/wheat allergies.  It has a glycemic index of 2 and is very low in both carbs and calories.

There are several ways to deal with spaghetti squash: you can cook it whole or in parts (use a meat cleaver or thick-bladed knife to cut it for safety’s sake); you can steam it, boil it, or bake it.  Cutting it into sections before cooking reduces cooking time but increases the chances of the knife slipping (thus I use a meat cleaver); cooking it whole means no knife, but you could also get a steam burn cutting it open unless you let it cool a bit first.  You can even use a slow cooker–several hours on low with some water, which is a good option if the rest of the meal is going to occupy most of the stove and oven.

Squash originated in Central America eons ago.  If you’ve ever glanced through a seed catalog such as Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Territorial Seeds or Seed Savers Exchange, which carry heirloom varieties, you’ll be blown away at the amazing variety of squash and gourd varieties.

Spaghetti squash was developed in Manchuria in the 1890′s.  It was picked up by the Sakata Seed Company in Japan in 1934, just a few years before the influx of American GIs.  So in Asia, it’s often called Shark Fin Squash for its resemblance to the solids in shark fin soup.  In almost every European language, the word “spaghetti” is attached to it, whether translated or not.

The original variety is ivory to pale yellow in color.  Burpee introduced it in 1942, although some California gardeners already had it in the 30′s.  People did grow it during WWII in America, but kind of forgot about it once rationing ended.  The Sakata Company reintroduced it in 1962; the Frieda Company, also founded that year, started pushing it.  People finally started taking widespread notice in the English-speaking world in the 70′s, which was when my mom, an early adopter, planted it. The bright yellow-orange kind typically seen in markets today was bred in the 80′s in Israel, and is now more popular than the ivory kind.  We like bright things.  And it’s also higher in beta carotene.

Spaghetti squash can be used as a base for the usual pasta sauces; but you can get creative, too.  It’s in season right now, and I’ve just used it for the first time in this week’s menu for Pizza Steaks.  You’ll be seeing more of it as an option here, as well as Shiritake Noodles, another great substitute for pasta that does not involve grain and is very low glycemic and in carbs.  But that’s for another post.

Last week in Indy, a whole roadside of chicory was in bloom. Lovely, but it’s usually a sign of the 4th of July around here, with the heat of August forcing it dormant. We didn’t get the heat of August–August happened in mid-June this year– and now we’ve been [...]]]>

Soup in a Basket--Parnips on Outside

Last week in Indy, a whole roadside of chicory was in bloom. Lovely, but it’s usually a sign of the 4th of July around here, with the heat of August forcing it dormant. We didn’t get the heat of August–August happened in mid-June this year– and now we’ve been having November since mid-September and are now coming out of mid-December, so no wonder the poor things got confused…but that was last week. We’re finally having some seasonal weather, with highs in the 60′s. It’s always a toss up whether my kids can go trick-or-treating in just their costumes (even when my daughter went as a belly dancer) or will have to wear winter coats. Which kind of negates the point of the costume, but try telling them that. They could go in fancy footwear those years and spare us the cost of costumes.

In other seasonal news, some of you may have fall gardens or farmers’ markets still going. So you may be seeing fall root vegetables.

I’m glad to see parsnip, because they’re a little-used but traditional vegetable. At one point in time, after the birth of my first child, I developed an allergy to carrots (among other things; celery being another one). Because carrots are a basic ingredient to the flavoring mince of mirepoix (carrots, onions and celery in equal amounts), this was a bit of a disaster. Fortunately, my Michigan-gardening-belt-raised mother suggested parsnips as a replacement.

This is another one of those root vegetables many of us look askance at. The problem with root vegetables is that they grow underground, and have a tendency to be knobbly, dirty, and not too colorful (unless you count rainbow carrots, radishes and some turnips). Like those screaming mandrakes in the Harry Potter movies, they’re not attractive. Comes with sharing the underground space of worms, beetles, and trolls and ogres (just to get you in the holiday mood). They’re not pretty, like peas or peppers or striped tomatoes.

Yet, before the introduction of the potato to Europe, root vegetables, especially rutabagas, turnips and parsnips, filled the place the potato now occupies.  We had an early root vegetable exchange when Columbus took the potato back to Europe.  About 100 years later, in Virginia in 1609, early settlers brought the parsnip to the New World.   Prior to that, parsnips were a favorite ingredient in ancient Rome. Believe it or not, parsnips were heavily bred in the Middle Ages to produce tastier, sweeter, and meatier varieties. Small fortunes rose and fell on the parsnip! (And then they had to reinforce the bank’s walls so it wouldn’t happen again. But enjoyed the resulting mashed side dish.)

Parsnips develop their full flavor and sweetness if they are left in the ground until a hard frost (like some varieties of pear need to be left on the tree, the Moon River in particular). This allows for their starches to turn to sugars. Some farmers will leave them in the ground until late winter or even spring to get the sweetest ones. Commercial farmers hold them in cold storage for a couple of weeks to make them sweeter.

Like potatoes, they will brown after exposure to air when peeling, so a little lemon juice in water will keep them nice if you’re peeling them well ahead of cooking them. And like potatoes, you can use them in many ways, from steaming, sauteing, baking, mashing, roasting–and like carrots, you can shred them in a salad, stir-fry them or eat them raw in sticks. Added to stews, casseroles, tabbouleh–they add a sweet, delicate flavor all their own.

Parsnips are a higher carb vegetable.  They have 17 grams of usable carbs per cup raw, or roughly 10 1/2 grams cooked.  So fit them in where your way of eating allows: as a flavoring agent, perhaps, if you have to really restrict them.  If you can handle more, then by all means think about making them a more major part of a dish.

So if it’s warm where you are, don’t pull them yet. And don’t be afraid to try them. While their neighbors might go bump in the night, they don’t.

Of course, if you have one of those nifty fantasy touchscreen computers [...]]]> I just saw this on Lifehacker, and thought it might come in handy for Good Life Menus users.  This way, you can print out exactly what you want, without having to put things in Word to get the part of the menu you want.

Of course, if you have one of those nifty fantasy touchscreen computers embedded into your counter, like Microsoft ran in an ad last year, then you don’t need to worry about printing out the recipes.  Or if you don’t have kids who are likely to spill the olive oil all over your laptop’s keyboard as they “help”.  Not that I don’t highly recommend having your kids help you in the kitchen!  It’s a key way to teach them an enjoyable craft; it builds closeness; and it’s essential to the battle against pickiness.  But that’s another post.

The link is The Printliminator .  Simply drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar, and click it when you need it.  It should work in any browser.

And then at our food co-op, the Honey Crisp apples the group ordered, which are still very much in season here, didn’t come in.  My solution?  Go to an orchard.

Where I live, there [...]]]> I just saw a news item that the moderate temperatures and abundant rain this summer are making this a great year for apples.

And then at our food co-op, the Honey Crisp apples the group ordered, which are still very much in season here, didn’t come in.  My solution?  Go to an orchard.

Where I live, there are a few orchards, even though we’re still far enough north we could have dozens here.  Where my parents live you almost bump into one every few miles.  They’re part of the American Midwest’s lovely Fruit Belt, which extends over much of northern Michigan into upper Indiana.  My family, both the one I was born into and the one I’m in now, have fueled road trips by frequent stops at roadside stands.   Sometimes they were set up in front of homes with several fruit trees; other times they were part of orchards stretching up the hills behind them.

Where I live now, one of the orchards fits that description.  They specialize in carrying both the better-known popular varieties, like Honey Crisps and Galas, and introducing new ones.  They introduced both varieties to our area within years of hybridization.  It’s a lovely place, with hills, lakes, and picnic tables.  And plenty of bees.

The flat orchard, as my kids call it, is much closer to my home.  They carry the popular varieties too, but their specialty is heirloom varieties.  They carry kinds Laura and Mary Ingalls might have picked, like Summer Rambo, Cox’s Orange Pippin, and Fameuse.

One of the great pleasures of life is eating fruit straight off the trees.  For example, Galas taste completely different just after picking than they do bought from the store. They only keep a few days, so unless you’re making apple sauce or butter, it doesn’t make sense to buy more than your family will eat in that amount of time.  Galas do make spectacular apple butter without needing to be peeled.

I have no room for fruit trees where I live, although we had a few trees when I was growing up. I thought I didn’t care for apples until I picked a Gala and bit into it.  So a few visits to orchards are a must for me.  I’ve tracked down what I think are the best orchards in my area: the one that introduces new varieties, and the one that preserves the best of the old ones.  One flat, one that not look out of place in northern France.  Both of them a great place to take a picnic lunch and come home with bags of living treasure.

The herbs are doing very [...]]]> Seems like the summer just flew by this year.  Where I live, there has been an unusually cold summer.  All the wonderful European market varieties of vegetables I planted this spring either got hit by hail (twice), or discovered by the possum that even our dog has failed to drive off.

The herbs are doing very well, though, with the exception of the basil, which I planted from seed rather late.  Which meant it wasn’t around for the hail.

It just occurred to me yesterday that I’m no longer being offered bags of zucchini or green beans by friends whose gardens were not in the path of the hailstorms that knocked all the blossoms from my own plants.  Which means that farmers’ markets are not going to have any green beans or zucchini, most likely.  And those markets themselves are going to be over in a few weeks.

The kids and I went to a local orchard and you-pick berry farm last Thursday.  It was beautiful and baking hot; probably one of the hottest and most humid days of the summer.  A true Dog Day of August.  Just the one, though.  The next day the temperature dropped and we actually had to get out sweaters and long pants.

But for now, I can continue to have dinner outside on our deck, near our herb garden, watching the kids catch lightening bugs and enjoying the cool of the evening.