Today was our warmest yet this year, which was to be expected since I spent most of it hunched over the pile of tax-related paperwork that helps keep Spring from being too completely pleasant. Dinner was to be super simple- rice, greens, chicken, and salad- but when I ran outside to take a much needed break in the garden, I realized that by cooking and eating outside we could make a mundane meal into something…
Year: 2008
Milo and decided to go to Vermont on a whim; he rightly pointed out that we hadn’t been there yet this year, and since Mommy was away I had all the dizzying power of an unchecked Unitary Executive. So naturally I abused it. There is still a ton of snow up there, which was fun, but I’m so smitten with Spring fever that it did feel like a great leap backward to have to deal…
I’ve got the boy to myself this weekend, so I made him shepherd’s pie- one of his favorite dinners. It conveniently helped use up a bunch of leftovers and remnants to make some room in the fridge. I made a broth from the chicken and lamb bones plus some veggie scraps, then got a roux going while some blue potatoes baked. After I whisked the broth into the roux, I added leftover braised cabbage, carrots,…
Shopping with a kid can be a fun random-vegetable generator for the home menu. It can also involve many pleading lunges for the infinite variety of ghastly sugared crap all conveniently arrayed about three feet off the floor for maximum grabability. For the most part, though, it’s enjoyable, and we end up bringing home things I wouldn’t normally get, like eggplant in April. They were too big and shiny to resist, and it’s hard to…
Today was not as warm, but the sun was out, and there was a nice breeze, and after a morning spent cleaning the studio (including scraping tons of rock-hard paint off the glass tabletop that I use as a palette) I was fed up and ran outside to get some exercise. This involved turning all the lovely composted manure into those beds which were to have hardier things planted in them. Pre-turning, I dug up…
Today it was warm. Rainy, yes, but warm. 65 degrees, balmy, no-jacket required warm. The smell of rain and dirt and leaves borne on the breeze (a warm breeze, mind you) was enough to send me into spasms of joy. I did the only logical thing and bought a shitload- that’s the technical measurement- of manure for preparing the garden beds. Milo actually came into the garden with me for a bit wearing his “farmer…
This is my first entry in the Royal Foodie Joust contest, and underwent a bunch of last-minute changes due to weather and whim. The required ingredients were some form of seafood, citrus (lemon or lime) and coconut. Initially I wanted to make ceviche with scallops and coconut ice cream, but figured ceviche was too obvious. Plus it’s still cold here, so cold food didn’t seem right. I did want to make the ice cream, though,…
This morning I did some much-needed shopping, and also picked up some things for the garden; the experiments at overwintering some of the veggies have been so successful that I started a bunch of things in the ground a month early, figuring that the plastic will protect them from the colder nights. Time will tell, but they’re all hardy things and should be fine (until we tear them from the ground and devour them, that…
Well, not really, but Korean-inspired at least. To begin, I ground some local grass-fed beef stew meat with garlic, herbs, salt, and (after separating some for Milo) togarashi. I let it sit while I cut sweet potato fries and chopped pak choi, and while the fries were going cooked the meat and then sautéed the greens in the burger pan with a little lemon and soy sauce. Topped with homemade kimchi, these were damn fine…
Sometimes having nothing easy in the fridge can be a jumping-off point for a much better meal than the standard go-to things that I grab or make by default. In this case, as with Easter breakfast, a couple of eggs saved my bacon. I mixed up some pasta dough, and while it was chilling in the fridge I took Tuscan kale, pine nuts, feta, garlic, and lemon juice and spun them all in the food…