~Miz Untitled~

Haul

nobody@vox.com(mizuntitled) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 12:05:05 -0500

Today's farmers market haul:

1 bunch celery (who grows celery in central Illinois? My friend Lisa the Biker. It's v strong, will be good for stock)
3 baskets cherry tomatoes of all shapes and colors
8# apples (Granny Smith and Pink Lady)
2# walnuts (I used to hate walnuts!)
3 bulbs garlic
1# salad greens
2 heads broccoli
1 bunch gorgeous flowers
2 pastured chickens
2# pastured ground turkey
1# grassfed ground beef

I've had too much coffee already today.

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Shalt Not

nobody@vox.com(mizuntitled) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 22:17:36 -0500

'Course, I can't have both - they don't match.

Oh, come on. At $200 or so a clip, I can't have either one.

[If I had to choose one, though? The boots.]

When I was in high school - back in the Dark Ages - we started getting the J Crew catalog in the mail. Despite the punk rock I favored, despite the ripped out jeans and Sharpied jackets and old-man sweaters, I was smitten with J Crew and its rugby shirts and its blonde-bobbed models and its clean-cut boys, its fascination with sailing and parties and old-monied, Kennedyesque romping. My mother, who wasn't particularly fond of my thrift-shop taste, had to admit that my affinity for looking like a senior citizen was certainly less expensive than trying to look like my J Crew "peers".

Now? I think they have good corduroy pants, and their color sense is terrific. The few J Crew items I own (all gifts - I don't think I've ever ordered anything from them personally) have been well-made and have lasted around ten years or so. Well, except for the black turtleneck sweater - it was wool, had this great boxy shortcut fit, kind of a big turtleneck, and I just abused it. I wore it out at the elbows and around the neck. I think it was circa the Fall 2000 catalog. I still own it, of course.

Gardenshot

This photo is for K, who wants more garden. Well, I'll tell you, K. My garden is out of control. Stuff is everywhere. I plant things too close together in the spring, because everything looks so depressing when it's small, and by August I'm all, OH MY GOD, the Accidental Amaranth has taken over the herb garden, at least the part where the cucumbers and watermelons (both of which are dying) haven't yet traveled, and I cannot find my sage plant, and some large creature, perhaps a befuddled deer, has walked through my 24 tomato plants, and who will dig the potatoes, and please remind meto never again plant morning glories, even if they're purple, and if I see another goddamned squirrel taking a bite out of my sunflowers there's going to be some serious hijinks.

Does this mean I hate my garden?

Absolutely not. It just means I'm a lousy manager of my time. I will say I've fake-canned* whatever tomatoes we don't eat - I just do another batch every night. Having garden tomatoes for sauce in January is a little bit heavenly.

* Fake canning: what people like me do when they have jars and lids and rings and even a water-bath canner, but lack time. I have two large Pyrex baking dishes - I wash and quarter all the tomatoes I have, place them in the baking dishes, fire up the oven to 450, drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil, salt 'em, and put 'em in the oven to roast for about 30-45 minutes. If I'm not lazy and my shoulder isn't sore, I'll put the results through a food mill. Last year I think I sustained a chronic injury to my right shoulder while food-milling tomatoes (I'm serious), so this year I'm putting the tomatoes in the jar with the skins and the seeds and everything. Just let the tomatoes cool a little, then put into clean jars using a slotted spoon. Seal and cool further in the fridge, then place in the deep freeze the next day. Yum yum!

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Hobby Cooker

nobody@vox.com(mizuntitled) — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:43:27 -0500

Pots et pans

Julia Child mentions E. Dehillerin in her posthumous memoir My Life in France (and Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini has written about it as well) and it just better be open when I head over to France in 2008. OK? OK.

Tonight's tres unglamorous dinner was, unfortunately, barely-passable pizza from a new place we thought we'd try. You'd think, for a town that supposedly has more pizza possibilities per capita than any other place in the US (I don't believe it, but Jim swears he read it somewhere), that we'd be able to get our hands on a decent pizza, but you'd be WRONG. I've never really liked the pizza here very much, with the possible exception of this one place, but their shop on our side of town closed a few years ago and getting their pizza now means venturing onto campus, whcih drives me insane. I make a pretty decent pizza - lately I've been relying on whole wheat dough made by my friend S at the co-op, but Julia's crust recipe in The Way to Cook is awesome - but tonight we were stumped for a meal, and paying for pizza seemed like a good idea. Ick. Never again.

Dessert, on the other hand, ~~should be~~ is excellent - homemade vanilla ice cream (I didn't make it, though I'm officially in the market for an ice cream maker now that I have such a good line on clean, local dairy products, so if anyone has a recommendation, I'm all ears... or eyes... whatever) with Ah!Laska chocolate syrup. A few bites and I'm good.

Jim folds clothes. Cody frets over North Korea. Lilly draws me puffy hearts with glitter.

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