As I noted last week, I’m taking up Bob del Grosso’s challenge — the Fanatic’s Proposal this year. I’m going to see how little food I can buy, how much of that food I can buy locally, and how much I can live out of my own garden, pantry, and freezers. So here’s the roundup of what I bought and ate this first week of the project. Bought: 6 Tangerines 1 bunch scallions 1 gallon farm milk Cooked/Ate: breakfast: toast with melted cheese, or breakfast of champions last week’s ham and bean, and escarole-potato soup (lunches) turnip greens from the…
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This is my “new” Griswold cast-iron skillet and it’s changed the way I think about cast iron altogether. I’ve had a 12-inch Lodge skillet forever, and it’s great for searing meat or for big stir-fries, but it’s really heavy, and the skillet surface is sort of pebbly. This new skillet (which I got in an antique store) is smaller, 8 inches, and lighter, and has a smooth surface. This is the best pan I own. I love this pan. Because it was old it was pretty much seasoned, and with a swipe of olive oil after each use, it’s non-stick…
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Finally! It was gorgeous today — 20 degrees, blue skies, and most important, almost no wind. I mean, a normal breeze, but not like the last several weeks where every time you go outside you feel like you’re getting punched in the head. So this afternoon Raymond-the-dog and I went up to Suce Creek for my Favorite Skiing Expedition. As far as I’m concerned, the Suce Creek road is the perfect ski — a mile and a half uphill, you get all warm and out of breath, then you get to turn around and race your dog back downhill on…
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Yesterday 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…
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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…
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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. Unfortunately,…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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Using 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.…