And When All Else Fails

Thank goodness for food.

Hometime New Years

I am entirely too disorganized to post all the food and the adventure and the holiday I've been having, but in the spirit of 'one step at a time', I thought I'd just stop in to wish you a happy start to this year. I crossed into 2011 happily in the company of both of my siblings and my old time besties Abby + Matt in their fair Madison, WI. (This, you may realize, is a mere stone's throw from my hometown hometown, Neenah.) New Years's in Wisconsin have never been in my experience terribly memorable and this year, we were hoping to change that.

We made homemade ravioli! I've never done that! And despite their filling being a little 'overwhelmingly hazelnut', they were tasty. Other perks of the holiday included some scrappy rum and coke pre-gaming, champagne and cocktails at the new cozy & hip farm to table spot downtown for midnight, an awesome show in a crowded bar to finish off our livers, hot, frosted cinnamon rolls and breakfast sammies to cure any lingering hangovers this morning and, then, college football. With the exception of Badger defeat at the hands of TCU, it was perfect.










Not bad, Wisconsin, not bad at all. To the new! Cheers.

Epic Meats

Got a call from a friend on Saturday that something epic was afoot at the aforementioned Ice House. Boy, was it.


That, for the record, is a burger skewered on sausages and wrapped in a woven cloak of bacon, waiting patiently for space on the grill. One of many, many, many meat treats at the, get ready, Montrose Beer & Gun Club Annual Cookoff & Music Extravaganza, a benefit for, also get ready, kids who wish things were better. You pay five dollars at the door and then eat as much as you possibly can from the 20-30 little stands set up on the grounds at the ice house. Beer is for sale, like always, but mostly, there's just a crazy amount of food. Things get made in waves, the offerings change as the day wears on, but we saw lots of chili, six kinds of beans, tenderloin on the grill, a roasted pig head, tamales, tacos, chicken, quail, rabbit, everything. And each with some kind of sauce, tenderly drizzled over top. I got to eat some stuff here and there, but yeah, mostly I just watched.







That there? That's a candied jalapeno. Momentarily sweet but really just hugely spicy, for the record.

All the Fixins

In honor of President's Day last weekend, we went to Macy's and went out for lunch at the Claremont Diner. I ordered this gut-bomb you see below. Yes, that's mayonnaise atop swiss atop grilled onions, with a chocolate malt standing frosty and proud in the background. Although I'm sure this "went straight to my hips" as the kids would say, my heart is still operational because I've been getting fit at the Oakland Y as of three weeks ago. It was a veggie burger, though it hardly matters. I didn't quite make it to the clean plate club. And a good thing--the mall is no place to head when you're stuffed to the gills.



Leaning back in the booth, digesting, we were kindly treated to a gaze at the slowly looping model train which decorates the upper echelon of the dining room. Choo-choo.

Remember Summer?

Last night after a rainy afternoon and the glow of our soccer game wore off, I felt the first chill of fall settle in. I'm fairly ready for it. November is a great month, in my book. I feel more focused, more motivated, well-rested. And Thanksgiving at the end? November is a dream.







But I do miss the light of summer, the lazy dusk that stretches itself across hours, dinners out of doors and the surprising brightness of an overcast day. These prints, all taken June through September, were nice reminders of that so very summer quality of life. Nothing like the familiar warmth in a stack of photos to soften this chill.

Birthday, Girl: the Party

It seemed logical to just go ahead and wait another eleven October days to post pictures from my birthday party. It did take us two whole days just to finish all the dishes, after all! I always take hosting to next level, wear myself out entirely and overfeed everyone. I made a spreadsheet for cooking and brought home groceries from four different stores. But it was worth it. I love having parties.



I'll make mention of the menu here, which was mostly made in house, with several crucial contributions from especially well-mannered friends, attributed where appropriate.

For the liver:

Tamarind Whiskey Sours

For the belly:

Macaroni & Cheese, featuring Velveeta, my grandma's famous recipe

Rainbow Coleslaw with Buttermilk Dressing


Kobucha Squash salad with spring greens & roasted red onions tossed in a cilantro walnut dressing.

Homemade veggie brats

Grilled potatoes

8 hour marinated tofu log

Tarts of caramelized onions and fennel seed

Homemade caramel sauce and fresh apples

Meats for grilling, of various kinds and shapes (Various)

Stuffed mushrooms (JayDee)

Artichoke Spinach bake dip (Marianne)

Pumpkin chocolate chip bundt cake (Marianne)

Sweet potato salad (Jen)

And last but not least, almond coconut cupcakes with blackberry buttercream frosting. (Miriam)

I think it's safe to say no one went hungry, even after giving our new backyard ping pong setup a thorough workout. And we got party hats to make everyone look funny, which seemed like more fun.
It worked.


ps. Jen was better at taking pictures than me, so a lot of these are hers. She also has a whole lot of them here.

Dilly PIckles

If flowering dill weren't so dern tasty when it's floating in a spicy brine, I'd put the stuff in vases all over my house. That yellow of the flowers is nearly the color of paint covering the walls of our living room and man, I cannot get enough.


Where was I? Oh yes, PICKLES. Usually I'm more of a refrigerator dills sort of a girl, thanks to the expert tutelage of my friend Gerik, but we really wanted to complete this trifecta of canning projects with something more savory. Tomato sauce seemed a bit risky and we'd heard mixed reviews of canned salsa, so with little hesitation we picked up this hefty bottle of vinegar at the store and mixed it up with several shades of carrot and bean.





Keeping with our habit of beer pairings, we sipped a dark porter whose name I can hardly recall. I swear that at the time the beverages were clouding our minds just enough to numb the swell of our ankles and dull our sense of time's passing, not enough to get sloppy in our sterilizing and incubate the makings of botulism. Promise.


In the end, this was probably our least successful of the three recipes, mostly because we lacked the foresight to anticipate how beautiful purple carrots when bathed in hot brine would turn the whole mess violet! Also, we should have erred on the side of stubby vegetables instead of tall ones because while processing them in boiling water, we lost some brine out of the jars. Now the tips of some of our vegetables protrude above their liquid, which is no way to craft a crunchy pickle. Worst case scenario, they'll grow mold. We were really too tired to worry much about it at the end of the day. Total cost for 8 quarts of pickles? $9. If they're inedible, we'll live.

From this insane project I believe we gleaned a few lessons:

1. Jam is best made in small batches to ensure you can get a nice pectinated result.
2. A dishwasher is not for chumps. It is one of modernity's conveniences and comes in handy for washing jars.
3. Refrigerator pickles are probably easier and just as tasty as canned ones. While living in California with year round produce, canning pickles may be actually unnecessary.
4. Three canning projects in one day is a bit of a stretch, but doable.
5. Holiday weekends are perfect settings for crazy projects.

{High Five!}

Peach Butter with Cinnamon and Vanilla Bean

I mentioned I was out collecting mason jars, but did I mention why? I don't think I did. This labor day weekend, Miriam and I opted to labor over some of late summer's bounty and put it up over 12 odd hours in her cozy kitchen. It was the perfect thing for a three day weekend. One day to gear up, one day to do it, and one day to recover from all the hard work. Maybe we're insane, but we undertook three separate projects to do in one day. Which means that by the end, we'd made more than fifty jars of preserved food to gaze upon with self satisfaction. If that constitutes insanity, then you'd better lock me up. I'd do it again in a heartbeat...but give me some time to get through the stuff. There is a lot of food in my cupboard now waiting to be slurped, spread and crunched upon.

We bought a box of peaches from the Temescal Farmers Market, 50 cents a pound for the bruised ones. Even these were of such high quality that we squirreled away some of them fresh while we were busy cooking down the rest.


Here are some photos of the festivities. I'm going to post them in stages, so that no one has occassion to be overwhelmed. To keep things light, we paired a nice beer with each phase of the process. For the huge batch of peach butter, we selected Anderson Valley's Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema. The beer was light but flavorful, a good combination to savor over the three hours that pot of butter sat on the stove. Waiting for spoon-coating consistency can seem an eternity and so it was important to keep our hands full of cold beverages.



Next up: Strawberry Fig Jams

First of Many

Obviously there are the daily howdies. The sharing of sugar, flour and eggs. The occasional dog walking sorts of favors and chit chatting on the front stoop to digest the humdrum of our days. But there is one thing about neighboring that doesn't occur to the mind immediately upon moving in: that someday you'll co-host a dinner party together with your two kitchens, your two sinks, your two sets of plates and forks and knives. And that together, the two of you will maneuver a cart full of produce around the Berkeley Bowl and gather a mix of friends to feast upon it--two sets of hands at the helm of the ship, steering it toward the dusky table where masterfully, you'll feed the people.


With a little planning last weekend, Marianne and I did just that in the second half of a Sunday afternoon. Chopping vegetables and finding ways to prep things for grilling in our rather cozy kitchen was challenging, but also meditative; washing dishes between rinsing mint and pots balancing on stools, for instance.







No matter how much you think about setting the table, I love when you can count on the guests to contribute top-shelf costume elements to the mix. That orange pattern pictured was a jumpsuit Nicole wore, and she may as well have overtaken that small vase of daisies as our centerpiece.

It was the first time we've played host to so many people at once, now with the expanded space of our backyard to use. And we billed it as a trial run for our grill, which newly functions thanks to some rigging. On both counts, it was quite a success, as the grill carried on like a champ and our otherwise huge table felt perfectly sized, and we settled in elbow-to-elbow over some of the finest food of my summer.




The menu was changing up until the last minute, but at last count featured: White Sangria; Goat Cheese with Roasted Garlic dip; New Potato Salad with Salsa Verde, Grilled Corn & Shaved Fennel; Panzanella; Red Onion, Eggplant, Zuchini, Mushroom & Lemon wedge skewers with Red Pepper Pumpkin Seed Slather; and for dessert, a Gingersnap Mascarpone tart topped with stone fruits and fresh mint.