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Month: December 2008

Strange Cabbage Obsession …

Strange Cabbage Obsession …

sprouts, bacon, potatoesYesterday was the Day of the Cabbages. Since Christmas, I’ve been strangely obsessed with cabbage — am I deficient in vitamin C perhaps? I wonder ….

My last batch of sauerkraut fermented up just fine, but unfortunately, the plastic bucket in which I made it retained a whiff of the Mrs Meyers cleaner I’d used to scrub the bucket out, so I wound up throwing out the whole batch. Yesterday I found a lovely 3 gallon stoneware crock at a local antiques store, so it was time to fire up another batch of sauerkraut. I did pretty much the same as the first time — alternating layers of cabbage and sliced onions, with bay leaf, coriander and celery seed, and of course, salt. I used about one soup spoon of pickling salt for each half a cabbage — kind of a rough estimate so we’ll see.

I also made up a batch of Asian cole slaw — cabbage, shredded carrot, mixed with the leftover sliced onions (which were too thick, I did them in the Cuisinart instead of on the mandoline) chopped in with cilantro and a little parsley. I grated one clove of garlic and a small knob of ginger in, then made a dressing out of the juice of one lime, some rice wine vinegar, fish sauce, a little soy, some sesame oil, and olive oil. Tossed it all and put it in the fridge overnight to do it’s thing. With a few toasted peanuts on top it’s delicious.

And then last night I had the weirdest craving — I have all these brussels sprouts that came out of the garden that have been hanging around the fridge for a while, so I crisped up some homemade pancetta, then threw in a chopped onion and a couple of cubed potatoes. When they were all sizzling away I threw in a rice bowl’s worth of trimmed and halved brussels sprouts, and then because it didn’t look green enough, I tossed in some leftover escarole. A splash of wine and the top on it for about 10 minutes, then one last blast of heat and a grating of raclette cheese over the top and it was a really nice meal that wasn’t meat-based.

Must be too much holiday. All I want is sautee’d greens with a hint of pork. Today I’m making my traditional pot of New Year’s bean soup — must mean I’m getting old, the holidays have been delightful, but there’s just been too too much. All I want for New Years is, as my five year old friend Simone wailed on Christmas eve, “my comfy pyjamas.” I have one little party I’m going to early, but I plan to be home, in my PJs, with the dogs, in a house that smells like ham and bean soup.

Homemade Gifts

Homemade Gifts

Christmas bags ... A few days before Christmas I made the rounds with this year’s gift bags (despite the fact that it was 10 below 0 out). What I love about homemade presents is the sheer bounty you can give to people without feeling like you’ve broken the bank. This year everyone got a half-pint jar of pate, one of artichoke spread, a jam or two, and I made a few boozy little fruitcakes. I also tucked a box of crackers in the bag. All in all, a festive and fun little bundle.

But the really fun part was what came back my way. I stopped by Scott and Jennifer’s and Scott gave me a jar of home-canned elk. He says it’s great with a little sour cream as a stroganoff, so there’s some cold winter evening when I’ve been working too hard all set. Jamie and Steve left a similar bag on my doorknob Christmas day with apple chutney, orange marmalade and some grape jelly from Jamie’s grapevines in the backyard. My Milk Lady left me a jar of her homemade feta cheese marinated in olive oil with sundried tomatoes and olives (had some on salad yesterday for lunch — yum). I gave Steve, my neighbor down the street who sno-blows my front sidewalk for me a jar of sour cherries from the trees in the empty lot across the street from his house, and he and his wife showed up the night after Christmas with a plate full of homemade candy — fudge and peanut brittle and some other stuff that looks really great.

I think this is what I love most about giving people stuff you’ve made — the way it ripples out. Now here in Montana there’s a general interest in making things for yourself — legacy of all those years when we were so far away from everyone — so perhaps the people I know are a little more likely to return a gift of pate with one of chutney — but what fun. It’s like a pot luck. You get to see what everyone else has made and you get to give everyone a little present that shows how much you value their friendship without having to buy stuff (well, aside from Ball jars — I think I’m single-handedly keeping them in business). And you get to taste everyone else’s food. A good thing all the way around.

Getting Rid of Stuff …

Getting Rid of Stuff …

So, my post-Christmas mania has been getting rid of services I don’t need. I’ve been chafing at my cable bill for almost a year now — it went through the roof, nearly 90 bucks a month (I had HBO and all that). For a while I thought about getting rid of the premium channels, but that would only save me about 10 bucks a month, so it hardly seemed worth it.

And then when sorting out a mess with my TiVo bill, I noticed that TiVo had a new thing — if you hook your TiVo to your home network (either with a cable or with a wireless adapter you have to buy separately — I bought the adapter since the TV is in a different room from the router) then you can stream directly from NetFlix. I love NetFlix but I have to say, sometimes what has arrived in the mail isn’t exactly what I was hoping to watch at that point. TiVo also claimed you could get content from Amazon and YouTube, so I figured I’d see if it worked, and if so, then I’d get rid of cable. Even though there were some startup costs — a new TiVo box, the wireless adapter, if I could get rid of that huge cable bill it would all pay for itself in about three months.

It works! So I called Bresnan and got rid of everything except the basic networks/PBS channel package. They were shocked, of course, and kept trying to upsell me, but I said thanks but no thanks — just the most basic package — 20 bucks a month. I’d consider getting rid of that too at some point — we’ll just have to see. But a girlfriend of mine who has Apple TV said they kept the basic channels for local news and that, so that seemed reasonable.

I dropped off the cable box yesterday and I feel weirdly like I’ve been liberated from something. I have a huge number of interesting movies in my Instant Netflix queue on the TV — some TV series too. And I’m no longer stuck with that awful thing where you scroll through the million channels annoyed because there’s nothing to watch. Or wind up watching something dumb because it’s on. I just feel like I’ve been set free.

I’m also getting rid of my land line and going to my cell phone only. I bought a Bluetooth device so I can talk to my two best girlfriends while cleaning the kitchen or folding the laundry — that had been my hesitation. Cell phones are so slim you can’t hold them with your shoulder. Well, although I feel like a huge geek with my goofy Bluetooth thing hooked over my ear, it’s much nicer than getting a crick in my neck.

So there’s three money-savers for 2009. Got rid of most of my cable bill. Got rid of my long-distance carrier. Got rid of the land line. Yay!

Winter Wonderland …

Winter Wonderland …

The wind is howling outside this morning — a morning that dawned slow and grey although it looks like the sun might try to peek through sometime later. Drifts are piling up — all that lovely, sparkly, dry snow that has fallen in the last week or so is swirling into strange shapes.

I love winter here. Summer I spend outside in the garden, driven out into the yard from the time I wake up until it’s finally time to shut down the kerosene lantern hanging from the apple branch and go inside to bed. But winter has a different appeal. Winter is quiet. Winter is the time to retreat to my cozy, cluttered basement writing office and get back to work making sentences. In winter, retreat feels normal, going to ground like some hibernating animal, reaching back inside to see if I can find the words to tell the story I want to tell.

Is it my grandmother’s voice that drives me outdoors all summer? She’d find me reading in the far corner of my Aunt Lynn’s living room, inside on a bright summer day. “Go outside,” she’d scold, pulling the book out of my hands. “It’s a beautiful day, what are you doing in here?” So summertime I feel compelled — outside, into the garden, onto the trails, into the backyards of my friends where we grill and chat and watch the kids play on the swingset.

This week between Christmas and New Year has always been one of my favorites. The excitement of the holiday is over, but there are new toys to play with (my new TiVo box that streams movies from Netflix) and when I was little, every year, there was a new diary, with a tiny lock. A whole new year of blank pages stretching ahead of my. The promise of a new start in this week that feels like a general pause, a moment when we all take a deep breath, putter around in our new slippers and eat leftovers from our lovely festive holiday. I’m looking at a baggie full of lovely leftover beef and I’m thinking shepherd’s pie. Something warm and beefy cooking in my kitchen while the wind blows snow in swirls and I try to bring my moribund novel back to life once more.

Bionic Dog

Bionic Dog

p8240024.JPG After nearly a year of surgery and recovery and then blowing the achilles tendon repair, my vet and I decided to go for an exoskeleton solution. This is Owen in his very fancy orthotic device that the nice folks at K-9 Orthotics in Canada built for him. We made a fiberglass cast of his leg (and cutting it off was the most traumatic part of the whole saga of the leg — poor guy, that cast saw completely freaked him out, and he was on a lot of drugs at the time) and they built him this spiffy brace.

p8210023.JPG Unfortunately, he had a few hiccups adjusting. The straps rubbed a little sore spot on the back of his ankle so we had a couple of days of bandages while I tried to figure out what to do. And then it dawned on me — fleece! I cut a strip from an old fleece blanket and ran up a couple of sleeves on the sewing machine. There’s a lot of that blanket, so if they get too grubby I can just throw them out, and I assume that after a while his little leg will get accustomed to the pressure. But for now, they’re working great — he’s cruising around like his old self, poking at Raymond to come play and in general, acting like a happy boy again. p8240025.JPG

Shocked …

Shocked …

There’s a pretty good article in the New York Times this morning about the way people are economizing on their food budgets. The shocking part, to me anyhow, is that the article cites several families who were eating out four to five nights a week. What? Perhaps I’m old, or cheap, or a misanthrope or something, but this seems really shocking to me.

Of course, it might be different if you live in a big city. We have a very limited number of restaurants here in town, and I remember when I was young and broke and working two jobs in New York City that I’d grab a cup of hot and sour soup and an egg roll from the Chinese joint on the corner when I’d get off the bus after job number two. But the families cited in the NY Times article are grad students, and a mom with small kids. Anyhow, eating out all the time like that seems very strange to me, perhaps because I like to cook and I like my own cooking. I remember flying home from Paris once dying for a roast chicken in my own kitchen. Maybe I’m just weird that way.

On the other hand, there was a piece on the front page of our local paper about how the restaurants in town are struggling which makes me think I need to make a little bit more of an effort to keep them afloat. I’m as broke as anyone right now, but I like my friends who have restaurants, so I guess I should try to go out once a week or so to see if we can’t help them survive the winter.

Homemade Butter

Homemade Butter

butter My beloved Milk Lady recently sold her calves, so my weekly gallon of milk has been coming topped with a full quart of cream. Which is a lot of cream. This weekend, I had about a pint of cream left from last week when looking at my new delivery, and so, I decided to make butter. I found this terrific tutorial over on Saveur which was very helpful. I used my trusty old KitchenAid, and while I’m sure one isn’t supposed to make whipped cream before making butter, I did discover that the gorgeous Jersey cream whips up beautifully. The butter doesn’t have any color added — that’s just what color the butterfat is — and so now I have a little less than a cup of lovely fresh butter. Yum.

Thinking about Local Eating

Thinking about Local Eating

I’ve been listening to a lot of back episodes of The Splendid Table lately. My local NPR station doesn’t carry it, but I’ve been downloading episodes to my iPod and listening to them in the car or at the gym. Apparently, they had a year-long listener experiment in locavorism — they selected a dozen or so readers who tried to eat 80% local food for one year and blogged about it. So yesterday I had to do some errands and I was listening to the host check in with one of the locavore eaters, this is perhaps the second one of these segments I’ve heard, and I was somewhat surprised that the entire discussion was couched in terms of “what did you give up? how hard was it?”

Sigh.

It was interesting hearing this younger guy from North Carolina talking about how he’d been a big fan of cereal, and that was one thing he gave up. Sugary cereals with bannanas — Honey Nut Cheerios, Fruit Loops. He was wondering now that his year was coming to an end whether he’d fall back into that habit — he said he felt much better after eating whole, local foods for a year, and that walking down the cereal aisle felt like “visiting the halls of a high school you used to go to.”

This is where I feel like something of a freak. It’s been years really since I’ve shopped much in the interior aisles of the grocery store — you know, where all the processed foods and cereals and “snacks” lurk. In part, it’s because I didn’t grow up eating that stuff — my family were not snackers, and we didn’t eat much processed food. The occasional box of mac and cheese, but Cokes were a big treat, as was the occasional trip to McDonalds. Mostly we ate real food that we cooked for dinner every night.

I buy a few things in the interior aisles — stoned wheat thins are a staple, tea, salsa or rooster sauce from the “ethnic foods” aisle — but I don’t eat cereal (I don’t like sweets for breakfast) and I hate bannanas, so neither of those would be something I’d miss. I guess, looking at my diet from the outside it might seem to someone used to processed foods to be a diet of deprivation — I don’t eat very many fruits or veggies out of season, and frankly, I eat fewer and fewer fruits and veg that aren’t local mostly because they taste so bad. I’d really rather have good peaches for a few weeks when they’re delicious and in season than eat those weird crunchy things they sell in the store as “peaches.” I’d eat canned peaches before I’d eat those.

But it never feels like deprivation. I guess that’s the part that bewilders me — that the concept of eating food produced closer to home is parsed as some sort of deprivation. I’m lucky because between the garden and living in an agricultural state I can source my milk, eggs, wheat, lamb, pork, beef, and most of my vegetables from Montana producers. I do buy some stuff from non-local sources: wine, cheese, oranges, some vegetables (especially in winter), spices, olive oil, dry pasta.

I eat extraordinarily well, and while I might not cook with tomatoes out of season, it’s less out of some abstract rule-based thing than it is from having gotten used to my own tomatoes, and having learned enough to put them up. I wonder whether all this talk about “locavorism” might be, in the general discourse, masking a larger discussion about what Michael Pollan calls “food” versus “food-like substances”? That is, is the divide not between those of us who like to choose local products and those who don’t, but really between those of us who cook at all and those who don’t cook and rely on processed food?

I’m not trying to rag on The Splendid Table — it’s a terrific show and I’ve really been enjoying it. I do live in something of a bubble out here, all my friends cook and are interested in food, and well, we’re already slightly freaky artist types — so what I’m talking about is a meme I’m hearing from “out there” — the “normal” world if you will. And it’s the odd note that is catching my attention — if it’s such a radical idea to eat locally is that because it’s still a sort of radical idea to eat whole foods and to cook at all?

Walking the Dog in my Astronaut Suit

Walking the Dog in my Astronaut Suit

It was seven degrees this morning and originally I was going to leave Raymond at home and go to the gym instead of going for a walk. It’s a block and a half to the gym, and warm in there, while walking the mile and back to the dog park was going to be cold. But when I stepped outside and realized the wind wasn’t blowing, I went back in to suit up.

My winter dog-walking outfit must be a sight. When Patrick died, I kept his really really nice North Face jacket, which is, understandably quite large on me. This is the genius of the jacket. It’s huge. It’s like wearing a bubble. With fleecy tights underneath my ski pants, and my vintage Patagonia reverse-fleece jacket under the ginormous coat, and a hat, and the hood pulled up over the hat, and my thick ragg wool mittens, I’m actually quite toasty in there. I must look like a troll since I am a short person wearing a lot of clothes, some of which is very large — and frankly I feel like a little kid in a snowsuit (remember that immobilized feeling?). But it works, and so I made a deal with Ray this morning — if the wind isn’t blowing, we’ll still walk. If the wind is blowing all bets are off because even bundled up I hate it when my face freezes.

So off we went this morning in the near-dark. Me in my pile o’clothing, and him skipping along like the animal he is. It was a beautiful morning — sunny and clear and sparkly snow and the Crazy Mountains all pink in the sunrise. Totally worth bundling up for — and it’s such a relief to be old enough to not care that I look goofy. Forty minutes outside in the fresh air looking at the sights and saying hi to my dog park friends. It’s the best part of my weekdays.

Not Approved by the FDA

Not Approved by the FDA

p8070026.JPGUsing my cold frame as a refrigerator. But it works! Last night, I put the pot with the chicken in it outside in the cold frame for the night. The pot is too big for the fridge, it was in the high 30s last night and even now it’s only in the mid-40s. Really, about the same as my fridge — and I don’t have raccoons or other critters to worry about. And as you can see from the photo, the cold frame is right outside the back door, which is off the mud room, which is off the kitchen. So into the cold frame it goes, and tonight I’ll de-fat it, and probably reheat and then pack it up afterwards in some less oddball manner — or I might not, it’s perfectly fine out there.